Posts from 2004

When I was thinking about what my blog was going to be about, I laid out five categories; venture capital and technology, politics, music, travel, and random posts. Those are my five categories on the nav bar on the left and every post I do gets put into one or more of them. I almost did a sixth category which was going to be wine.

But for various reasons, including the fact that I am not totally comfortable with broadcasting my love of wine, I chose to limit it to five.

I’ve been tempted to add wine at least four or five times since then and blog about a great bottle of Sagrantino di Montefalco, Gewurztraminer, Priorat, or some other unusual, but great, varietal. I love wine and love exploring and finding new and different wines, and even collecting them a bit.

I am not a wine snob. I am not even a wine connoisseur. But I love to drink wine and explore and learn.

So, it was with great pleasure that I found that Matt‘s wife Mariquita (who picked some great Greek wines for us about a month ago) and her friend Sharon have launched the Wine Blog.

I have added it my RSS feeds and the list of blogs I read. I am looking forward to blogging it and maybe even adding wine as a category on this blog.

Lists are a dangerous thing. You leave someone off and you pay the price.

So Jeff Jarvis has got guts to post his list of must reads in the blog world.

Thanks Jeff for putting me on the list!

That’s some great company.

Big news out of Clear Channel this morning.

They are going to convert 1000 stations to HD Radio.

That’s big news for Clear Channel, big news for the Radio industry, and very big news for my portfolio company iBiquity, who is the developer of HD Radio.

The Radio business needs HD Radio. They need the additional programming that HD will bring. They need the data broadcasting capabilities that HD will bring. They need the better sound quality (surround sound in the FM band and near stereo in the AM band) that HD will bring.

It’s about time. Now we’ll see if the rest of the industry hops on the HD bandwagon. I’m hoping they will.

Mark Cuban has a nice post on Microsoft’s dividend and stock buyback.

He loves the dividend and hates the stock buyback.

I don’t totally agree with Mark. I agree that the dividend is preferable, but if you are a shareholder and want to continue to own the stock long term, then the buyback is going to result in more ownership over time.

If Microsoft stock doesn’t go up over the four years of the buyback (as a shareholder I’d like it to), then they’ll buy back a bit more than 1bn shares over the next four years. Since Microsoft has a bit more than 10bn shares outstanding, that means they could buy back 10% of their stock.

That means every shareholder who holds on through the buyback could end up owning 10% more of the Company. I think that is a good reward for the long term shareholders.

We did this at TheStreet.com when I was Chairman of the Board. The stock was at $1/share and headed lower. I don’t recall the exact specifics, but I think we did a $10mm stock buyback and repurchased almost 1/3 of the company. The stock went to $5/share and has settled in between $3 and $4/share. That was a good move for the Company and the shareholders.

Jeff Jarvis also posted on this subject. In addition to linking to me and Mark (thanks Jeff), he says “I actually find it depressing that Microsoft could not find aggressive ways to invest and grow that money. It says to me that the era of tech hypergrowth is over. Microsoft is now officially the next IBM. And Google is no Microsoft.”

Wrong Jeff. The era of hypergrowth in core tech is over. Operating systems, databases, applications are a slow growth business. Applied tech like Google and Microsoft’s own MSN business remain very exciting areas of investment. As I said in my first post on this subject, Microsoft has places that they want to invest, but they couldn’t find $60bn of places. Who can? There isn’t enough growth opportunity inside any major corporation to satisfy that kind of demand these days. So they did the right thing. They gave it back.

And I like the way they did it.

If you bike a lot, you’ve probably done it. The Gotham Gal did it last weekend. Once I did it at Sixth Avenue and 19th Street in order to avoid getting hit by a van.

You slam on the brakes and its like slow motion. You know you are going over but you can’t stop it. And then thud! You’ve gone over the handle bars.

It’s never fun to go over the handle bars, but its even worse when you are clipped in as I normally am on the mountain bike I use to navigate the potholes and cobblestones here in NYC.

Today I was riding up the west side to the George Washington Bridge. It’s a route I’ve done at least a 100 times. The stretch along Riverside Park between 80th and 90th street is particularly beautiful. It’s a promenade that was probably built 50 years ago. It’s wide with two walkways and a grass divider in between. It’s a lovely stretch of the ride but I hate it because there’s a dog run there and the dog owners always leave their dogs off of their leashes on the way to and from the park.

I hadn’t done this ride in several weeks and had forgotten about the particular risks of that stretch today. I was in the zone and had just come up a big hill and was cruising. All of a sudden a little shetland sheepdog came running right in front of me headed over to make friends with some other dog.

I slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the dog. And there I went. Slow motion. Headed over the handlebars. But somehow I managed to clip out of my right pedal and I leaned back hard and was able to put my right leg down. I didn’t go over.

My heart had been racing from the hill I just went up, but it was racing twice as fast from the fear I had just experienced.

I clipped back in and started going north again. I felt like I had cheated fate.

One of the biggest challenges these days to building an engaged Board of Directors is everyone’s tendency to multitask.

I like Matt Blumberg’s advice on this and I think it should apply to all Board meetings.

Microsoft announced this evening that they were paying a $32bn dividend and also were initiating a $30bn stock buyback program.

I own shares in Mister Softee, as Jim Cramer calls the House That Gates Built.

But I sold about 1/3 of my position last week as I began to realize that the company was never going to generate the kinds of returns I want off the capital base they’d accumulated.

Am I sorry? Yes. I should have held on for the $3/share payout that all shareholders of record are going to get. But I still have 2/3 of my position so I am not terribly upset.

As we were headed back home from the airport tonight, the news came across my Blackberry.

My partner Brad and I talked about it. What does it mean?

For one, it means that Gates and Ballmer have realized that there is no way they can effectively invest the $60bn they have in the bank. They are going to give half of it back to the shareholders and invest the rest in buying back the stock over the next four years.

We decided its like Juian Robertson or George Soros recognizing that they can’t generate the returns they want to with the huge capital bases they’ve accumulated and so they give it back to their investors. Gates and Ballmer are not any different.

Can they invest $10bn in their business over the next four years at the rates of return they want. Probably.

Can they invest $60bn? No way. So they are giving it back.

I think its a good move.

I am not sure how Wall Street will react but I think it should help the stock get moving again.

Since I still own 2/3 of my position, I sure hope it will.

On the plane back from Denver today, I made a note to do a more thoughtful piece on Boards. I fired off my post on the subject fairly quickly last night after reading Brad’s post.

I’ve got some really strong feelings on this subject.

But Jerry beat me to it.

This is one of the most misunderstood issues in startups and possibly in all of business. There’s a lot more to say on this subject, but Brad and Jerry have done a good job of getting the conversation started.

Jackson, aka my brother Ted, points to one of the funnier gun control stories out there.