VC

Recap: Emotional Intelligence

Social intelligence, social competence, emotional competence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, emotional adaptiveness, emotional quotient, emotional intelligence, EQ, and EI.  There are many schools and many thoughts about what is and is not emotional intelligence.  And just as many tools that attempt to measure, monitor, and predict the impact of emotional intelligence. For me, Emotional Intelligence [...]

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Mergers and acquisitions systems thinking strategies, part 3

Systems thinking strategies for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) provide better integration valuations and post-merger operations.  Organizations are composed of several components that interact with each other while simultaneously act as part of a whole.  Systems theory helps explain dynamic interrelationship of several parts, beyond information technology or back office functions. No matter the motive for [...]

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Mergers and acquisitions systems thinking strategies, part 2

Many mergers and acquisitions fail to understand the full impact of what systems truly encompasses.  When evaluating merger integration risk the reality is true integration risk identification can only happen with an evaluation of systems integration.  However, systems strategy discussions frequently devolve into information technology systems strategies. As much as the information technology needs an [...]

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Evaluating risk: financial models versus competency models, part 2

Models attempt to identify the assets that have value.  How to manage those assets.  And how to strategically turn these assets into money.  This is a 2nd, follow-up, post comparing financial models to competency models to evaluate risk. As I mentioned in that post, typical financial models and their build-outs inherently ignore important aspects of [...]

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Venture Capital and the descent into irrelevance

The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. Elemental finance: you assume the amount of risk suitable for an expected payoff. You assume bigger risk and its bigger payoff with the full caveat that there is an equally big downside loss that could happen. Invest in a money market and get slow, steady, decimal-point-% returns; [...]

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Sam Thompson, Vice President, Progress Partners

“Toby regularly demonstrates a noble ability to think on his feet when offered the challenge. He has a sound ability to quickly ramp up with a team, conceptualize process, communicate the options back to the room, and then provide actionable dialogue. “When a business or team becomes out of sync with it’s market, customers or [...]

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Human capital risk, now that’s real risk

You commonly hear an equity firm or VC partner claim, we invest in the people and when it comes to costs, human capital usually represents nearly 70% of all operating costs.  Human capital risk is the real risk, but most investment firms don’t focus investment decisions and deal valuation not on quantifying the people or [...]

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Human capital assessments – the symptom or the disease

The drive to evaluate operations and to contain costs is mistakenly applied as an operational issue across the board.  Too often human capital assessments are lumped into the systems theory world of process and become a technical asset for management’s diagnostic view for cuts.  The result becomes an assessment or evaluation process that is really [...]

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Notes from Boston: the state of US venture capital

This was originally posted in the nowEurope, where I was a brief contributor. nowEurope reported on technology innovation in Central Europe Centrope ICT Technology Transfer. CENTROPE is the integration and cooperation of the quadrangle borders between the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria. Here is the article, as originally posted: In Boston, I recently attended the [...]

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Why Startups Should ALWAYS Compromise When Hiring? — Never!

Reading a blog on the venture capital website Start Up Hire called: Should Startups Compromise When Hiring? I found a reference to a blog Dharmesh Shah, Chief Technology Officer & Founder of Hubspot* and Onstartups.com, wrote, “Why Startups Should ALWAYS Compromise When Hiring?”. I posted a comment to the blog as I felt Start Up [...]

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The VC’s missing formula: human capital discounted cash flow

What valuation models measure human capital ability to meet financial and strategic business goals? What formulas are used to measure human capital contribution to profits? What are the human capital risk factors you justify when you build your financial statements and projections?  Accounting’s assignment of assets and liabilities and financial management’s current or pro forma [...]

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