Archive for the ‘TechCrunch’ Tag

Why Silicon Alley Insider is the king of creative valuation…

Posted April 3, 2008
Filed under: Business, entrepreneurship, Internet, investing, online, revenue models, technology | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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I’m going to take a moment and profess my love for the Silicon Alley Insider… it is not only an insightful place for news on digital business (not just product innovations, which TechCrunch tends to focus on), it has a smug humor than comes from its roots in NYC and Wall St. That style makes it different from other destinations for business news I’ve found.

One of my favorite themes from their reporting is “what we would do if we ran these companies”. Better than anyone else I have read, SAI have great opinions on how to extract the true value from the companies they cover. Some great examples include: Craigslist, Yahoo, CNET, and AOL.

But, my favorite post was on Wikipedia… SAI showed how Craig Newmark could earn around US$900M annually for the Wikipedia Foundation, if he ran Wikipedia as a competitive for-profit business, and donated the profits to charity (ala Newman’s Own).

Key lesson – Hidden value lies in almost every business… you just need to know where to look and how to find it. And, that’s why SAI is the king of creative valuation.