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Jason Mendelson has a great post that is an open letter to the Obama administration about how to foster innovation in the United States.

I couldn't agree more.  What separates the United States from so many countries around the world is our embrace of entrepreneurship.  It is the spark that lights the fire of progress and advancement of not only our citizens but of people around the world.

We absolutely must retain and encourage that spark, rather than snuffing it out because of temporarily challenging conditions, the actions of a few bad actors or bad regulatory governance.

Cheers,

Don Jones

VentureDeal

A lot of venture capital partners will say that they add value by bringing contacts to the company, bringing industry expertise or general management knowledge.  London-based VC Nic Brisbourne has a different take.

He says that venture capital is best used to accelerate success.  What that means is that a company should already have some degree of traction in the marketplace when they go out for a significant round of venture capital funding.

Now, many of you are thinking that you don't need VC if you've already got traction in the marketplace.  He uses the example of Google, who already had significant traction in the number of users, but who used venture capital to give it the time to increase adoption before having to execute on a revenue generation plan.

The bottom line is that you should know exactly why you are interested in raising venture capital and whether or not that funding is appropriate to your company stage of development.

Cheers,

Don Jones

VentureDeal

This week, Intuit announced the acquisition of Mint.com, an online personal financial aggregator startup, $170 million in cash.

While no one would say that the floodgates of tech M&A are opening just yet, I would not be surprised to see a significant growth in technology startup M&A activity over the next 6 to 12 months.

Corporate acquirers are realizing that the economy has stabilized and this allows them to get a better read on what a target company is really worth, given the new set of assumptions about the economy.

Along with greater M&A activity will come an improvement in venture capital industry returns and general funding environment.  It won't happen overnight, but the trend is probably beginning to look up.

Cheers,

Don Jones

VentureDeal

It's been fascinating to watch how the dissemination of news has changed from standardized news outlets to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

The trend will no doubt continue, but I wonder if these services are really more focused on "life streams" rather than hard news.  Sure, news is included in and passed around by millions of users, but the news has to be generated and reported on by someone.  Since users value credibility, there will no doubt be many instances of non-credible news getting passed around these networks, thus reducing the value of these networks as hard news sources and more as lifestream sources.

Cheers,

Don Jones

VentureDeal