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excerpt: In China, the red-hot tech scene seems dominated by a small group of entrepreneurs who paid their dues in Silicon Valley before returning home to create successful Internet and software startups. Aside from finding fame and fortune, these "returnees" are also laying the foundation for a startup culture that will allow grassroots entrepreneurs to flourish as well. Returnees - Chinese nationals who studied or worked the U.S. - head up just 3 percent of all tech companies in China, yet they represent nearly 70 percent of all startups that go public in the U.S. market (still the largest measure of success in the industry), according to an internal study by Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capital firm GSR Ventures, which deals exclusively in China. The firm also found startups created by returnees were much likelier to become financially successful and hire more employees than startups founded by Chinese entrepreneurs who never worked in the U.S. Part of that may be cultural: a culture Jack Jia, a partner at GSR sees changing, albeit slowly. he still sees a "drastic" disparity between startups founded by home-grown entrepreneurs and their returnee counterparts during pitching sessions and business plan competitions all across China. Thus, he rarely funds companies headed up by Chinese engineers without managerial-level experience at tech companies in the U.S., even though he would like to encourage the growth of Chinese entrepreneurs who have stayed at home. "Most have no clue what they are doing. The basic expertise, the passion and experience is often lacking," he said. "And it's not that they don't have the same talent or ability, it's just they haven't been exposed to the same things as their American counterparts."

Byron Deeter is right, but perhaps he's holding back on his reasoning.  Silicon Valley is all about platform, and platform plays only come about once every ten to twenty years.  They come like great waves of change, not replacing the previous waves as much as taking away and running with the future.   Cloud Computing is the fourth great wave.  It will replace the PC and Network Computing waves as the future.  It is the target of all developers and entrepreneurs.   The four great waves are mainframe, workstation, pc and networked pc, and the Internet.  Cloud Computing takes the Internet to such a high level of functionality that it will now replace the pc-netwroking wave.  It's going to be enormous.  Especially as enterprises move their business productivity and data / content apps from the desktop/workgroup to the Cloud.  Enormous. The key was the perfect storm of 2008, where mobility (iPhone) converged with the standardization of tagged PDF, which converged with the Cloud Computing application and data model, which all happened at the time of the great financial collapse.   The financial collapase of 2008 caused a tectonic shift in productivity.  Survival meant doing more with less.  Particularly less labor since cost of labor was and continues to be a great uncertainty.  But that's also the definition of productivity and automation.  To survive, companies were compelled to reduce labor and invest in software/hardware systems based productivity.  The great leap to a new platform had it's fuel; survival. Social applications and services are just the simplest manifestation of productivity through managed connectivity in the Cloud.  Wait until this new breed of productivity reaches business apps!  The platform wars have begun, and it's for all the marbles. One last thought.  The Internet was always going to win as the next computing platform wave.  It's the first time communications have been combined and integrated into content, and vast dat

Today's high-tech entrepreneurs have at their command more than just the ability to invent new technologies - they have mastered the discipline and the methodology required to harness those technologies in order to serve customers. Such a combination of new technology and new understanding is unlocking new opportunities. In order to maximize such opportunities, this generation of entrepreneurs combines extremely low costs with faster cycle times to produce what I call lean startups.

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman gave a speech today about how entrepreneurs can "invent the future". Speaking at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, he recited a list of 10 rules of entrepreneurship.  Wow!  Not your typical MBA stuff for sure.  Put this advice in the commit to memory immediately category using the special survival of the fittest anti Alzheimer wrapper.

Must read for every entrepreneur!  When your product and service can command these kind of terms, for sure your company is worth investing in. "A founder-friendly term sheet When I invest (outside of YC) I make offers with the following term sheet.  I've tried to make the terms reflect what I wanted when I was a founder.  A few people have asked me if I'd share it, so here it is.  I think it's pretty founder-friendly. If you believe the upside risk theory, then it makes sense to offer compelling terms and forgo some downside protection to get the best companies to want to work with you. What's most important is what's not in it: *No option pool.  Taking the option pool out of the pre-money valuation (ie, diluting only founders and not investors for future hires) is just a way to artificially manipulate valuation.  New hires benefit everyone and should dilute everyone. *The company doesn't have to pay any of my legal fees.  Requiring the company to pay investors' legal fees always struck me as particularly egregious-the company can probably make better use of the money than investors can, so I'll pay my own legal fees for the round (in a simple deal with no back and forth they always end up super low anyway). *No expiration.  I got burned once by an exploding offer and haven't forgotten it; the founders can take as much time as they want to think about it.  In practice, people usually decide pretty quickly. *No confidentiality.  Founder/investor relationships are long and important.  The founders should talk to whomever they want, and if they want to tell people what I offered them, I don't really care.  Investors certainly tell each other what they offer companies. (Once we shake hands on a deal, of course, I expect the founders to honor it.) *No participating preferred, non-standard liquidation preference, etc.  There is a 1x liquidation preference, but I'm willing to forgo even that and buy common shares (and sometimes

Precious stuff! And funny too: Summary statement: Abstract Valley Girl 2.0 Acronymitis Using Meaningless Expressions This is when you combine the four diseases above. So you get phrases like, "You should meet this guy with the SIO. He's sort of this kind of social entrepreneur thinking outside of the box in the sustainability space and working on these ideas around sort of web-based social media, and he's in a round two capital raise in the VP space with the people at SVNP." How many times have you heard what you now recall to be precisely this sentence? This would all be funny if it weren't true. People just don't make sense anymore. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble if you internalize this. Observe it, deconstruct it, and appreciate just how ridiculous most business conversation has become.

Good slide show!  A keeper

1)  What's the Best Android Phone for Verizon Right Now? Droid X. This was one of two reviews to break into the top 10, both of them on Android. It hit as the Android frenzy was reaching a crescendo and highlighted how a bigger screen could work on smartphones. This review and the number two post also hit the top mobile posts of the year. 2)  Android Sales Overtake iPhone. This has been a theme that has generated a lot of traffic all year. With Android ascendant, we saw the first quarter where recent sales surged past the iPhone. While the iPhone appears to still have a larger overall installed base, the reports of Android's rise touched off a lot of debate about where the two platforms will end up. 3)  Nexus One: The Best Android Phone Yet. This post went up in January and foreshadowed a big year for Android. While praising the device, Om said it still didn't match the experience of the iPhone, but it showed Google was ready to compete. 4)  4chan Decides to Do Something Nice for a Change. This was a nice change-up and showed that 4chan, despite its reputation for sophomoric humor and sexual imagery, could be used for good. The online community banded together to wish 90-year-old WWII veteran William J. Lashua a happy birthday. 5)  Your Mom's Guide to Those Facebook Changes and How to Block Them. Where would we be without a Facebook post in our top 10? This post looked at the expansion of the "like" button to outside websites and instant personalization and explained how users can sidestep the features. This fit into a larger story about privacy on Facebook, which never seems to get old. 6)  Is Apple About to Cut Out the Carriers? This post stirred a lot of conversation after we reported that Apple was looking at putting its own SIM card in iPhones to sell devices directly to consumers. The move would have allowed Apple to cut out European carriers. It looks like the plan didn't come to pass, but it illustrated the power of Apple and its am

Great interview. Interesting statements about Microsoft's future (or lack thereof).    excerpt: Steve Blank is the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a guru. The serial entrepreneur turned writer and professor has a big theory: entrepreneurship is a skill that can be taught. At Stanford and Berkeley, Blank teaches scientists to get out of their labs and find real customers for their ideas -- without getting bogged down in the traditional MBA weeds of spreadsheets and revenue models. There are two major strategies. You either build, or you buy. What do you buy? You can buy IP, you buy teams and people, product lines, companies, P&Ls, bottom line. I think Google has tended to focus on teams and products. If you look at their most innovative counter to disruption, Android, it had nothing to do with the company, they bought it. Not only did they buy the technology, they bought the individual who's the driving force between what might keep them in business. The one thing they haven't figured out how to either build or buy is to counter Facebook. You look at Microsoft going through this -- Microsoft is the living dead. Microsoft is a standing joke now in the technology business. The one game you could see playing out is they buy Skype, they buy Nokia, Steve Elop finally injects some life into the company and replaces Ballmer and Microsoft reinvents itself. Elop is a great politician and a great IT guy, and maybe they could reinvent themselves along that axis. But it wil never happen as long as Steve Ballmer is Bill Gates's best friend. Microsoft is the new Wang. Remember Wang?.....................

Good intro to LeanLaunchLab.com.  Great idea for startups! excerpt: Entrepreneur Steve Blank has spent a lot of time thinking (and writing) about how ineffective old-fashioned board meetings are when it comes to building and scaling startups.

Good in depth article about Huddle, and their challenge to Microsoft SharePoint.  We met these guys at the 2006 and 2007 Office 2.0 conference in San Fran.  Lengthy conversations about the Windows Productivity Environment and how Microsoft built that platform.  Need to take a closer look at how far they have come.  The Cloud is a greaqt opportunity for a new Productivity Platform.

Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman has a great post where he lists the tools he used to get his company off the ground. We're using it with our own amendments and suggestions to give you the best tools to get your startup off the ground.  Business Insider has a slide show for the 11 tools.  Good stuff!

Good interview but i'm looking for ways to short Box.net.  I left lots of sticky notes and highlights on this page - all of which are under the Visual Document list since i didn't have a Cloud Productivity list going.  I spend quite a bit of time studying Box.net, DropBox and a ton of other early Cloud sync-share-store operations while doing research for the Sursen SurDocs product.  Also MS-Live/Office/SkyDrive and Google Docs Collaboration.  No one has a good bead on a Cloud Productivity Platform yet.  But Microsoft and Google clearly know what the game is.  They even have a plan on how to get there.  Box.net, on the other hand is totally clueless.  What are these investors thinking?