In Search of the Perfect Investment

Tarzan got around by swinging from vine to vine.  Which is my way of saying you finding entrepreneurial opportunities in what you’re doing, or trying to do. What problem are you’re trying to solve.

This is not rocket science. All the best startups have come from the founders’ personal need. I wrote the first edition of Newton’s Telecom Dictionary because I needed to find out what telecom words meant. The dictionary went on to sell 800,000 copies, a major success. I remember starting a bunch of magazines and tradeshows by thinking to myself, “What the world needs is a …”

When I read this story from Business Insider over the weekend, I thought these guys got the message. It’s a classic:

These Two Guys Built Dropcam To Catch A Dog – And Just Sold It For $555 Million

Dropcam founders Greg Duffy and Aamir Virani

The story of Dropcam is a classic tale of Silicon Valley success.

Late Friday, Google’s Nest announced that it was buying Dropcam for $555 million in cash.

Dropcam is a five-year-old San Francisco company, founded by two engineers from Xobni, Greg Duffy and Amir Virani. (Xobni was an email inbox app sold to Yahoo in 2013 reportedly for more than $30 million.)

Dropcam is a simple internet camera that people can set up to watch their homes or places of business. Then they can pay for cloud storage for the videos if they want. The company says that 39% of its customers pay for its cloud.

But Dropcam started out as a side project to help Duffy’s dad, who was trying to find out which of the neighborhood dogs was leaving droppings in his yard, according to the history posted on Dropcam’s website.

Greg’s dad kept fiddling with webcams but couldn’t get them to work right and didn’t want to store the huge video files on his hard drive.

Duffy and his friend Virani thought they’d stumbled on the next big idea, a home surveillance camera that turned on when it detected motion and would store the videos in the cloud.

Sadly, none of the investors they talked to were interested in funding them until they talked to tech pioneer Mitch Kapor. He kicked in the seed money. Duffy and Virani, who wrote most of the original code themselves, created the product and Dropcam launched in 2009.

Kapor is known as the founder of Lotus Development, which made an early spreadsheet for the PC known as Lotus 1-2-3. That app helped launch the personal computer revolution. He went on to become a VC and today his Kapor Capital has provided seed money for an impressive list of companies (AngelList, Asana, Bit.ly, and Uber, to name a few.)

In the early days, Duffy and Virani packed and shipped every Dropcam sold themselves.

With Kapor on board, they had far less trouble getting new rounds of investment. Eventually they raised nearly $48 million beyond the seed round, including a $30 million round about a year ago.

And this week, they walked into the arms of Google Nest, and a half-a-billion-dollar exit.

Dropcam has never disclosed its revenue, but as Re/Code’s Liz Gannes points out, it is regularly listed as the top-selling security camera on Amazon, and it recently started being carried in retail stores like Apple and Best Buy. It became popular as a baby monitoring cam.

And yes, Duffy’s dad caught the dog and, apparently, still has the video to prove it.

The Hidden Cost of Trading Stocks. From the weekend’s New York Times:

 Best Execution’ and Rebates for Brokers

There’s no escaping the conclusion that the stock market is not a level playing field where all investors, large and small, have an equal shot at a fair deal.

A recent groundbreaking study found that undetected insider trading occurs in a stunning one-fourth of public-company deals. Experts have long debated the pros and cons of high-frequency trading, another pervasive practice, but there is no doubt that it gives superfast traders the jump on others in trading stocks. And the very idea of trading on a public exchange, where stock prices and trading volumes are visible to all, is being eclipsed by private trading of public stocks in off-exchange venues, called dark pools, usually operated by banks.

These are not the only ways in which big market players make money at the expense of other investors. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations recently held a hearing on “maker-taker” pricing in which stock exchanges pay rebates to brokers for sending them buy-and-sell orders. The practice has been around for years, as a growing number of exchanges – there are now 11 public exchanges in the United States – have battled for business. What is new is the compelling evidence that the rebates are corrupting.

For the rest of the article, click here.

Brilliant  Beijing Hotel Brochure – Translated as only they can.

A friend went to Beijing recently and  was given this brochure by the hotel. It is precious. She  reads it whenever she feels  depressed.

Getting  There:
Our  representative will make you wait at the airport. The bus to  the hotel runs along the lake shore. Soon you will feel  pleasure in passing water. You will know that you are  getting near the hotel, because you will go round the bend.  The manager will await you in the entrance hall. He always  tries to have intercourse with all new guests.

The  Hotel:
This  is a family hotel, so children are very welcome. We of  course are always pleased to accept adultery. Highly skilled  nurses are available in the evenings to put down your  children. Guests are invited to conjugate in the bar and  expose themselves to others. But please note that ladies are not allowed to have babies in the bar. We organize social  games, so no guest is ever left alone to play with them  self.

The  Restaurant:
Our  menus have been carefully chosen to be ordinary and  unexciting. At dinner, our quartet will circulate from table  to table, and fiddle with you.

Your  Room:
Every  room has excellent facilities for your private parts. In  winter, every room is on heat. Each room has a balcony  offering views of outstanding obscenity! .. You will not be  disturbed by traffic noise, since the road between the hotel  and the lake is used only by  pederasts.

Bed:
Your  bed has been made in accordance with local tradition. If you  have any other ideas please ring for the chambermaid. Please  take advantage of her. She will be very pleased to squash  your shirts, blouses and underwear. If asked, she will also  squeeze your trousers.

Above  All:
When  you leave us at the end of your holiday, you will have no  hope. You will struggle to forget it.

 
Harry Newton who has a weekend house in Columbia County, 127 miles north of New York. We were invited to a friend’s house. I was stunned to see the tallness of his trees. For a moment I thought I was in the Pacific North West which has magnificent tall trees. Amazing. Now, how do I get my trees to grow this tall?

I woke up on Saturday morning with the most awful cold, coughing and spluttering and barely able to talk. I get one of these every few years. I wish I knew why. They’re pretty debilitating. I’d hoped to spend more time on my birthday presents.

Wimbledon tennis has started. You can watch it on The Tennis Channel on your TV. Or on the Tennis Channel Everywhere on your smartphone. I’m watching it now on my iPhone. Remarkably good quality.