We had a wiki at my last company. We also had a rule that people had to post or update their posts every week. We had to have a rule or noone would do it. At one of my previous employers, one of the world’s largest consulting companies, there was a Knowledge Management initiative. It […]
Posts for September 2007
Can Corporate VCs Compete?
Techcrunch just reported that Google will be investing $10 million in ‘green’ startups. This set me on a whole train of thought about corporate VC and under what conditions it can compete with standalone VCs. I was once a corporate VC, so this was a subject dear to my heart. The best research I could […]
Some Data to Chew On
Why am I asking you to do my dirty work? Here’s some data on the US new car market: cars sold and dealer advertising dollars. Why cars? I wanted an industry subject to cyclical downturns resulting from exogenous effects, like the current mortgage downturn. Also, I wanted an industry where I already had a whole […]
I Can’t Argue with That
A few weeks ago the Silicon Alley Insider predicted that the implosion in the subprime market would drastically cut online ad spending by mortgage purveyors, thus hurting the earnings of the online media folk. I don’t agree. Now it seems that, on the one hand, they think I might be right, but, on the other […]
Just Don’t Increase my Property Taxes, OK?
Free Exchange, the Economist’s blog, pointed me to this paper by Alan Krueger. The paper talks about one of my favorite subjects to while away my idle brain cycles with: is economic inequality in itself a bad thing? The negative answer (“why are you looking in my pocket?” as an old boss used to put […]
Intellectual Property is Not Property
I was reading an article in the Sunday New York Times about the fashion industry trying to get Congress to pass laws outlawing knock-offs and it started me thinking. And don’t worry, once I get this off my chest I’ll start thinking about lead gen again, I promise. I should note, first-off, that I think […]
Previous Mortgage Origination Readjustments
It’s a two post day because I’m out of town tomorrow and Thursday. I was digging through mortgage origination data and found this interesting paper co-authored by some guy named Alan Greenspan. The paper uses the available data to suss out mortgage originations. Purchase origination volume has been pretty steady over this time period (this […]
Whither Mortgage Lead Gen? More Thoughts.
I wrote about where mortgage lead gen was going last week and got quite a few responses from people I know in the industry. It’s an interesting question, and a complicated one. A few data points. In “Mortgage Originations in a Down Market” Booz Allen says that the average retail cost per loan (meaning, in […]