The First Fund is the Deepest
Our exhaustive review of the fundraising process for ParkerGale's first fund. We cover the strategy for launching the fund as well as the tactics we used to raise $240 million.
Why I Returned to ParkerGale
After three years working with the ParkerGale team at our old firm and spending two years getting my MBA, I decided to re-join the team. Here is why.
You don’t have to be the market leader to win big
There is nearly a constant stream of chatter in the venture community about fielding a product in a highly competitive market. On the one hand, lots of competitors typically indicates that you are in a hot market.
My “Maslow” hierarchy of application needs
Almost everybody is familiar with Abraham Maslow’s famous paper outlining the various levels of human motivations. Maslow’s hierarchy is built as a pyramid, with its foundation based on physical needs: food, water, and oxygen.
You don’t need world-class solutions for every problem
I was killing a little time drifting around my Twitter stream over the past few days. As always with Twitter, I never know when I will find something that catches my eye. Here, what caught my eye were variations on the phrase “building a world-class XXX”. Where XXX might be a sales team, business intelligence solution, mobile application, … basically anything. That’s a noble goal, to build a world-class something.
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Why Salesforce.com and not a full-blown ERP?
Recently we’ve been doing podcasts about our experiences with implementing Salesforce.com. While we favor Salesforce as a CRM solution, it’s not the only CRM that we’ve implemented in our portfolio.
| Company Building, Technology
ParkerGale’s Reading List
One common trait among our team is that we read a lot. We are curious and we believe in second level thinking – not everything is as it seems. Everything we do as investors and operators has been done before. Our job is to find the best thinking and incorporate it into our strategy, process and execution. This isn’t everything that we’ve read, but it’s a good start.
Web-based service companies can slip away like thieves in the night
If you are a Twitter addict, as I am, you will have already heard that Zirtual “paused” operations late last night. You can read all about it here at Business Insider. For those of you unfamiliar with Zirtual, I can get you up to speed fairly quickly.
| Company Building, Technology
There isn’t necessarily just one tool for the job
My dad went from the US Navy to IBM. Basically, he was in the military for his whole career. He had no glamorous job, he was a field engineer.
Apple announces that it is open-sourcing Swift
Apple announced today at WWDC it is open-sourcing the Swift programming language.
| Technology, Company Building
Don’t ask the question if you won’t listen to the answer
I recently bought a new car. I wasn’t planning on buying a new car, but I had a smaller car and my wife doesn’t like small cars.
Integration projects are always a mess. Always.
Integration projects aren’t like green-field software development projects. They are ugly, they involve systems and platforms you can’t control and you have to learn to live with finished product that will offend your engineering sensibilities.
Tim Cook’s new MacBook aka ruthless product management
I’ve been an Apple laptop user for many years now. I refresh my hardware every 12 months. You might think that’s a little rich, as laptops last way longer than a year, but I live and die by my laptop, so I consider it a cost of doing business.
We’re Not Fanboys and that’s a good thing
If you read anything about pop-culture online you have no doubt seen the phrase “fanboy” bandied about. The Urban Dictionary loosely defines a fanboy as being a “passionate fan of various elements of geek culture“. I’d argue that their definition is a little generous, as most fanboys that I know go well beyond “passionate”, often veering into the realm of fanaticism.
Fighting Superfish with White Box PCs and Virtual Machines
Everyone in the tech business has heard about the Komodia/Superfish debacle by now. If you haven’t heard about it yet, have a quick look here at Lenovo’s Superfish mess.
| Company Building, Technology
Yet another example of changing APIs
Seems as if LinkedIn is changing their developer application programming interfaces (APIs) to remove some functionality from the control of 3rd party developers.
The Internet of Things and Automatic Restroom Faucets
Here’s what worries me about the Internet of Things: the automatic hand sensors in public restrooms. You wave your hands frantically under the faucet and get … nothing.
| Company Building, Technology
We can’t always keep digging in the same hole.
I recently finished reading Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking. I won’t bore you by trying to summarize all of de Bono’s points but it’s an interesting book and I would recommend it to anyone that is looking for new ways to solve problems. I will however, highlight one particular point from this book that I see over and over again.
We’re built to withstand a little randomness
Fooled by Randomness. I just finished reading Nassim Taleb’s “Fooled by Randomness“. It’s a great read if you like your thought processes to be challenged and are willing to slog through his slightly pedantic style.