PureVC

Top Services & Gadgets

I read other VC bloggers every day and one of the things I always look forward to is when someone posts about a new gadget or service or cool technology. Venture capitalists are notoriously gadget freaks and are always on the lookout for new technology, so they tend to embrace new technology more often than the average consumer. I've found out about many great technologies this way that have made my life more efficient, so I'm starting a new series of posts about cool services, gadgets, or technology. If you know of something cool and useful, please send me a note and I will post what I can about it. One of the inspirations to this series is a post by VentureBlog about companies that survived the dot-com downturn but whose companies never really took off even though they make great products or services. Here is the beginning of my list of Top Services & Gadgets in particular order:

1. Paytrust - I started using this service after I read Kevin Law's post on VentureBlog about the service. This truly is a service that I could not live without. For those who are on the run, spend a lot of time away from home, this is the perfect service, totally worth its cost. It collects your bills, keeps records of them, notifies you when the bill comes, allows payment of the bill from your checking account, and can be accessed from any internet connection.  I love this service. No more trips to the mailbox, no more hurrying home to pay bills, no more worries.

2. Skype - Stole this idea from Ed Sim of Dawntreader who first posted on this at BeyondVC. Ed was saying that one of the things he requires from his portfolio company executives is the use of Skype and he even goes as far as sending them a Plantronics headset. So far Skype has saved me the most dollars when calling overseas for 2 cents a minute. As you've probably read my previous post about Skype, you know the story...

3. Mozilla/Firefox - Not sure who first told me about this one, but Mozilla/Firefox is the original Netscape browser developed by an open source community. While it is not perfect, it has two great features. First, it is not targeted as much as Internet Explorer for viruses and adware. Second, there is this awesome feature on the bookmarks so that you can open all the bookmarks of one category into tabs. I didn't realize how much time I used to waste by selecting each bookmarked page into another window, but the "View in Tabs" feature is sweet.

4. TiddlyWiki - Ed Sim just posted about TiddlyWiki the other day. I have been using it for a few days and I love it. I actually have it bookmarked on Mozilla/Firefox. For organization purposes such as notes, memos, calendar, and contacts, I have used a mixture of Palm Desktop, Blackberry RIM, Outlook, and Mozilla Thunderbird. Over time I have nixed Outlook and have been trying to phase out of Palm Desktop. It look slike Tiddlywiki will allow me to do just that.

VC Primer: The J Curve

In private equity and venture capital there is something called the J-curve effect. This basically means that in the early years of a fund, the book value of investments will show losses and decline, then in subsequent years (usually 3 or more), the fund's value rises. The J curve is important for several reasons. Investors in search of funds will typically seek out the fund's internal rate of return (IRR). This can be misleading precisely because of the J curve effect - funds early in their life cycle do not typically show the true value of their investments on their books because of the J curve. One or two big winners and the IRR can be completely different. The J curve also has a nice effect for investors who must sustain the tax consequences of their investments. The accumulated losses over the first few years of a fund are nice losses to show because they are "unrealized" losses. For investors wanting to take advantage of the J curve effect, secondary funds are a good way to get into funds later in the J curve. Similarly, some argue that every company has a J curve and that the different stages of investing utilize the different stages of the J curve. Early investors get in at the beginning of the curve and take the most risks while later stage investors come in at the crest of the curve to minimize risk.