The Venture Intelligence Blog

Silicon Valley lore has several famous episodes of acquisition talks that did not materialize: from that of Google by Excite (whose CEO apparently refused to pay up $75,000) and by Yahoo  (when the Google founders walked away from a $3-B offer) and that of Yahoo (for $44.6 B) by Microsoft . In March 2015, the lore extended to Indian shores when,  InMobi - which dares to combat Google and Facebook in the mobile advertising segment - walked away from a $1 billion offer from the search engine giant (according to multiple media reports, sample:  Business Insider ). Will  InMobi CEO Naveen Tewari's decision to walk away  turn out as well as that of Google's own or more Yahoo like? Only time will tell. But questions are being raised as to why, when other Indian startups like Flipkart, Snapdeal and Ola are able to attract investments at   valuations of multiple billions of dollars with seeming ease  over the last couple of years, hasn't InMobi (that las...

Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital is an investor in several well known US consumer web, mobile, and wireless technology startups like Twitter, Kickstarter, Uber, etc. A lawyer by education, he earlier worked at Google. Highlights:   Personal story Amazing story of how he lost millions in leveraged trading and how he clawed his way back. "Fake it till you make it": Highly entertaining story about how, when he was out of job, he created a fake management consulting company, The Salinger Group, and handed out its card at various networking forums (including TiE). He even offered to let his friends who were also out of jobs to use the company's name! On Entrepreneurs  Truly Disruptive Entrepreneurs: Failure is not part of the options for them. They never doubt the outcome. They just think "the world will be a better place if this product gets built". "If I'm the one asking the entrepreneur 'how can this be bigger', then...