torstensson.com/blog

Primelabs raises 10 MSEK from Servisen

Henrik — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 16:36:20 +0000

Swedish-based Primelabs, operator of the popular Twingly ping and blog search service which connect blogs with media sites like Dagens Nyheter, SvD and IDG, has received a 10 million Swedish krona investment from Servisen.

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Henrik — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:55:43 +0000

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” - John Maynard Keynes

On trigger happy fingers

Henrik — Sun, 20 May 2007 22:04:38 +0000

Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick seems to have been the trigger of a lot of acquisition activity (Microsoft-Acquantive, WPP for 247/ Real Media, Yahoo for Right Media, AOL for AdTech). It seems like the prices are getting really rich (and I’m an apologist for eBay-Skype and Google-YouTube). Of course there is a fair amount of strategy behind each deal, one can at least hope, but the strategic rationales for the high prices Microsoft and WPP paid aren’t obvious to me.

Great people are sold on jobs

Henrik — Sat, 12 May 2007 14:13:02 +0000

It’s hard to identify talent, but great people don’t look for jobs, great people are sold on jobs. And if they’re sold they’re going to say no at first. You have to win them over. - Joe Kraus, co-founder of Excite (in Founders at Work)

Spotify - great music player

Henrik — Thu, 03 May 2007 17:04:02 +0000

Yesterday I got my hands on an early beta of the music player Spotify. Spotify aims to be an an ad-financed iTunes-like client connected to a large archive of songs that are streamed via encrypted P2P technology. The client and streaming technology is great and once/if the rights issues are solved Spotify is the program this side of Skype most likely to generate a 100 million downloads. See my Swedish blog for a longer post.

spotify

BitTorrent acquires uTorrent

Henrik — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 17:38:44 +0000

BitTorrent, Inc to acquire Swedish uTorrent AB. “Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and µTorrent AB have decided to join forces. BitTorrent has acquired µTorrent as it recognized the merits of µTorrent’s exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together µTorrent’s efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent’s expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client.”

The number 1 and number 3 torrent clients join forces. Maybe this is one of the reasons BitTorrent, Inc raised $20 million?

bittorrent, utorrent, torrent, p2p, merger & acquisition,

Chance favors the prepared mind

Henrik — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 21:28:49 +0000

“Chance favors the prepared mind” — Louis Pasteur

Success is really doing what you love and doing it well

Henrik — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 21:27:13 +0000

“Success is really doing what you love and doing it well.” - Warren Buffett

Oveture was not a bad acqusition

Henrik — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 17:53:14 +0000

Don Dodge thinks Yahoo’s 2003 acquisition of Overture was 8th worst billion dollar acquisition of an Internet company. I would probably put it at the top of my best billion dollar Internet acquisitions list (if I did keep such a list). Yahoo got Overture at a low valuation (about 2x revenue) and gave Yahoo major revenue from the get-go and a lot of customer relationships. Even with Yahoo’s investment in Panama (arguably Yahoo! has invested too little in improving Overture’s search monetization, see the gap between Google and Yahoo in search monetization) that is a major, major asset that will/have generated economic profit that justifies the purchase price.

SIME time

Henrik — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 22:08:31 +0000

I’m going to be at the SIME conference tomorrow and Thursday.