“How easy is it to build a business on the Web these days? VC David Hornik writes a humorous post about how he had to help his eight-year-old son start his own skate brand. After trying to explain to his son what he did as a VC, his son mulled it over and came back to him with a business idea.”

“Welcome to Thumbstacks.com, a new site for making and sharing presentations on the web… With Thumbstacks.com, you can make presentations — like slideshows, or outlines — right in your web browser. When you’re done, you can share your presentations with anyone, anywhere, just by sending them a link. Want to see an example? Here’s a presentation about us.”

“I have a friend–let’s call him Bob–who does double duty as a home repair/contractor and restaurant owner. He wants to talk to me about his web site. Bob, like a lot of small business owners starting out on the web, is dissatisfied with his web traffic. It seems to have peaked at around 300 unique visitors a month and most of this is due to referrals coming from Google… I explain to him about weblogs or blogs–how a lot of other organizations and successful entities like Microsoft, Mark Cuban, presidential candidates and even Donald Trump are using blogs’ unique ability to leverage influence to increase traffic and presence on the web dramatically. ‘Bob,’ I say to him, ‘you need a blog.’ And Bob looks at me and he shakes his head and he says, ‘Yeah, but that’s not my business.’”

“Some personalities that come out in meetings, especially at big software companies.”

“Many people feel as though all ‘web 2.0′ companies with funny names are all in the same boat, but that’s certainly not the case. Lumping all the new companies together is probably bad for the whole, considering there are many companies doing amazing things but I’d say even more companies who will probably fail this year. Here are some separators/questions that I think all ‘web 2.0′ companies should be analyzing and answering themselves…”

“The growth certainly puts strains on all aspects of your business. Hiring more staff, expanding the resources necessary to support new customers, managing cash flow, building new systems to support your business, and so forth all take time and attention. If you do not get these issues taken care of properly, your business can suffer or even fail. But, growth also creates challenges for the entrepreneur. Here are some of the more common issues that entrepreneurs wrestle with as their business grows…”

“I’ve just come back from a grueling week of corporate meetings, a 5 day marathon of seemingly never ending PowerPoint presentations. As the person in charge of marketing and IT, part of my job is to be the contact point for all of the attendees, folks ranging from 1st year sales reps to divisional presidents, COO’s and CEO’s. Everyone is required to send me their presentations in advance, so that they can all be put on a single computer. If I get them in time, I usually go through them quickly and fix any of the obvious problems. Human nature being what it is though, most people actually gave me their presentation the morning they were presenting, usually on a memory stick with the words ‘I made some last-minute changes, just put this one in instead…’. Sometimes this doesn’t work quite as well as they would like…”

“I shared a pint the other day with Bob Suh, chief technology strategist for the giant consulting company, Accenture… To my surprise, Suh described his best clients as stuck in a rut. He told me that, technologically, many large firms are in the ‘hospice business’ of nursing old, out-of-date computer installations slowly into that good night. For the small business, my takeaway was there’s not much to learn from them except what not to do.”

“‘Don’t work too hard,’ wrote a colleague in an e-mail today. Was she sincere or sarcastic? I think I know (sarcastic), but I’m probably wrong. According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I’ve only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they’ve correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.”

“Badbossology.com is not a showcase for inappropriate or unethical tactics to get revenge on bosses. It’s not a place to make specific comments about a particular boss or organization. It’s not a site for complaining and whining. It’s not for people who won’t accept their responsibility to analyze and understand their boss’s negative behavior and to develop a plan to deal with the situation and improve it while they are there.”

“This is totally off-topic but this is a must-watch for anyone doing presentations in front of an audience. The content is pretty interesting in itself (the concept of electronic identity) but the form of the presentation is what will blow you away. This is absolutely brilliant.” (”Watch Dick [Hardt, Founder & CEO, Sxip Identity] deliver a compelling and dynamic introduction on Identity 2.0 and how the concept of digital identity is evolving.”)

“It’s often true that employees quit their bosses (rather than their companies), but all of them doing so at once is a rare and beautiful occasion. Four employees of Blenz Coffee in Vancouver went the extra mile, walking out mid-shift and taping a note on the door…”

“While there are several advantages of an LLC over an S-Corp (ability to issue different classes of securities, ease of set up, informality of operating agreements, lower state taxes, non-US investors), venture funds typically cannot (or don‚Äôt want to) invest in LLCs.”

“The process of due diligence is something that is customarily done in the venture capital community to evaluate the potential of ventures and startups, and it consists of analyzing and validating the information that is contained in the business plan. This process is valuable for entrepreneurs, startups and companies of all sizes to use for any new product idea. Because of the thorough approach normally used during the process, every aspect of the idea is examined, from market potential to customer fit to technology solution to the financial forecast. This cross-functional evaluation means greater potential for the ideas that pass this scrutiny and ultimately results in greater profitability as the idea is developed and then launched. Any company can use due diligence principles to evaluate new product ideas.”

“The Guy Kawasaki Theory of Schmoozing version 1.0 was ad hoc: get to know the people that you need for a specific deal. It was short-term and focused.Version 2.0 is ad infinitum–maybe even ad nauseum. It’s taken me twenty years, but I’ve figured out that it’s much easier to make a sale, build partnerships, create joint ventures–you name it–with people that you already know than with people you just met.”