BTSIV, LLC

From small beginnings come great things

It's challenging to put into words the roller coaster ride that is building a company from the ground up. There are many hats to be worn, many needs to be met, and many expectations to exceed. For our investors, I want to create a highly profitable return on their investment; for employees I want to create a positive work environment that allows them to meet career goals while caring for their families; for our millions of local business owners I want to create the very best platform to help ... READ MORE Posted May 26, 2011 at 08:41 AM

An update on a great deal

Mesmois a deal I mentioned before.  I did it around the same time I didTapulous.  Davin was a guy doing a bit of advisory work for MerchantCircle when he founded it.  I did it with Maples,Senkut, Stevens and a number of others I have invested with a few times.   They pulled off a remarkable pivot and I still remember sitting in a meeting where they asked for some money to pull it off and a group of guys lead by Senkut and Maples gave them half what they aske... READ MORE Posted March 14, 2011 at 11:14 PM

Interesting Information

IP analysis is a powerful tool. I am always amazed at how people think they are anonymous on the internet. A little big of log analysis for some IP addresses: 24.6.209.83, 24.6.194.236 and you have the general location of the source with the tool.Then if it is someone you know, a quick header analysis of your incoming email and you have the person who did the post.If you know people at a few other sites where they post, you can call in a favor to confirm they posted there from the same I... READ MORE Posted February 10, 2011 at 08:50 PM

Read The Latest Newsletter from BTSIV, LLC

We've just published a new edition of our newsletter! You can check it out on our website and get the latest information from BTSIV, LLC. Let us know what you think! Read It Now Here READ MORE Posted December 27, 2010 at 03:04 AM

Tapulous and Disney

I was fortunate enough to do two great deal with incredible entreprenuers over the last couple of years. Tapulous was the first of these and was just sold to Disney in a great transaction for everyone involved.   In one of the earlier times I talked about Tapulous it was at just around 6.5M users.  It is now well over 35M users and it did this while going to cash flow positive within the first 18 months and ending up with more cash on the balance sheet than was invested in it. ... READ MORE Posted July 18, 2010 at 12:42 PM

New DNA

Startups are interesting organisms.    There are not alot of organisms where you can add DNA.  In fact, I am not sure it is easy to do to a start up too late into the development cycle.  I have found it very difficult to do in Fortune 500 companies, at any cost.   I guess this means you need to pick your DNA pretty early and do it right. Having said that, MerchantCircle has been adding some DNA recently.  When a big issue came up recently, I found 3 new... READ MORE Posted June 08, 2010 at 09:54 PM

Great Advice from Steve Blank..

I will not be adding anothernon failure from Stanford GSBtoday.  All my very successful friends fromGSBare now asking so I think I have a blog a day for about 60 days.Instead I wanted to call out a great quote fromSteve Blank.  Steve has not only done it once but he has now done it multiple times.  He creates great companies.It comes from adiscussionabout a board meeting where a VC finally stands up to the rest of the board to support a new rethink by the CEO.  This is som... READ MORE Posted April 15, 2010 at 02:22 PM

Brightroll...great business built at the right time

It has been a while since I have blogged about a deal.  This one will be another on that I missed but not in the usual way.  This is one I never looked at investing in but where the founder is an executive who worked on my team at Spoke and who I talked to about creating MerchantCircle.  Tod is a great entreprenuer who has been working to create something important since he walked out of Stanford and who is one of a very few Stanford B school grads that are the exceptions to my... READ MORE Posted April 12, 2010 at 09:58 PM

A visit to Santa Cruz for the Tsunami

We had a chance to race down to catch the Tsunami in Santa Cruz today.  It says alot about technology that I was able to hear about the earthquake in Chile thousands of miles away on CNN, check on my cousin in Santiago on facebook, check the web and twitter for when the wave would hit Santa Cruz, chat with Andy in his hottub on the cell phone as he was watching the Monterey Bay from up on the hill, and then share and post about it on MerchantCircle just a few hours later while listening ... READ MORE Posted February 27, 2010 at 06:56 PM

A Big network on MerchantCircle

I took a few minutes during open invite weekend to grow my MerchantCircle network.    I wanted to see how my experience changed without much work when I grew my network on MerchantCircle. Here are my findings: 1.  I invited about 5,000 merchants from around the country to connect to me. 2.  I now have a network of about 2,200 local merchants Results: 1.  My traffic on my page grew by 2 fold. 2.  My listing page rank increased by 1. 3.  I met 10 new merc... READ MORE Posted February 12, 2010 at 11:47 AM