http://www.ymerfund.com/blog Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:33:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en China’s rent car war is heating up - in a big way. Ymer backed China Auto Rental which recently received US$150M from Legend Capital has a viable sparring partner in the billion dollar rental car ring on the back of Goldman Sachs reported US$70M investment into Shanghai based eHi Car Rental.If you are interested, ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=195 Foundry Group recently invested in Next Big Sound, an online music analytics and insight business based in Colorado. Jason from Foundry writes: As part of this future there will be new opportunities created to service these new direct-to-fan and Internet marketing models. We believe a key opportunity involves data. Currently, the industry-norm data report ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=184 I guess I'm being lazy these days and just borrowing content from other sites but so be it. This morning, I was reading the New York Times and came across an article titled "Investors Pay Business Plans Little Heed, Study Finds" by Brent Bowers. The article reads:Researchers found that venture ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=180 A new article about our portfolio company Feilio (Noank Media) in today's New York Times titled "Building the Tools to Legalize P2P Video-Sharing" by Janko Roettgers. Would you be willing to pay your ISP five bucks a month to be allowed to download as much as you want from torrent sites and other ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=179 Scratching our heads, trolling the universe, emailing friends, stopping people on the streets, yeah, that's how we (and Neil Ducray from TouchMedia) came up with 8 characteristics that define an experimental media. Media is trying to prove it can reach people and reach them in significant numbers usually taken to be ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=178 On Monday, Stacey Higginbotham from GigaOM interviewed Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Is it just us or did Zuckerberg completely pan Stacey’s monetization question. Have a read below (and try not to laugh):STACEY: Let’s talk about monetization. You said yesterday that you envision the social advertising landscape evolving over ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=175 I just finished breezing through a recent (28/2/08) Yankee Group Research report titled “From Gorillas to Guerillas, IPTV Changes Everything” that concludes IPTV will redefine pay TV in the United States (note: you can download the report for free but just register online). Okay, I can dig it. Sure, why not…localization ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=174 Today's New York Times ran an article titled "Studios Try to Save the DVD" which mirrors an earlier post we filed titled "Why Warner Bros. did Toshiba a massive favor by going with Blu-ray (Rock Lobster)" after Toshiba bowed out of the HD format race in early Jan '08. The ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=173 I received Morgan Stanley's Year-end 2007 Capital Markets Review from my friend Mark Pols the other day. Below are some of the more interesting factoids from the report. In 2007, U.S. IPO issuance volume of Chinese companies increased dramatically: 29 Chinese companies were listed in U.S., raising US$6.8bn in total; 2007 ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=172 (1) DISCOUNT, PLEASE! Keep the structure simple and offer your bridge investors a discount to Series A Preferred share price rather than a warrant: A real quick way to lose investors’ interest is to price your bridge financing at the same multiple as Series A Preferred shareholders are paying. ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=171 In late 2005, I happily connected with Hank and Steve, two of the three co-founders behind Shanghai based education service Chinesepod. I’ll be honest, Chinesepod was such a fresh service there weren’t many comps to look at, thus it was truly difficult to determine whether or not user acceptance and ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=168 Lots of good stuff coming out of this week's Midem Conference in Cannes, France - in particular, Kate Holton's Reuters article titled “Music industry tries carrot after years of stick” where U2 manager Paul McGuinness comments that music could be provided as part of a subscription service for an Internet ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=167 We've been mouthing off for a long time (okay, a couple years) that eventually the stars will align and content providers (music labels, studios, publishers) with wake up to the benefits (and inevitability) of blanket licensing (BL) for digital content over the Web - we believe 2008 is the year ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=165 What's missing from this excerpt of an article by Diane Garrett in Sunday's Variety? "...Warner Bros. will throw all its weight behind Blu-ray later this year, a decision that could serve as a death blow to the rival HD DVD format..." I think something along the lines of "...Warner is doing Toshiba ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=164 Over the next couple of days, I'm sure the wires will be burning with chit chat from pundits, portals and web jockeys about a regulation that has been re-approved by State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) and the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) that will ban (effective 31 ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=162 2008 Game Developers Conference (GDC) organizers have announced that renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil (pioneer in speech recognition technology) will give the GDC's keynote speech in February titled "The Next 20 Years of Gaming" - a look at the next two decades of video games and what the landscape may ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=161 Last week, Martin Soong, host of CNBC Asia Squawk Box, chatted Feilio CEO, Eric Priest, about why Feilio is one of China's most innovative digital content services and how it could very well play an important role in resolving the ongoing screenwriter's strike in America.You have the option to ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=158 This year, we traded in our kite boarding gear and plane tickets to Boracay for Wellington boots and plane tickets to the United Kingdom in order to spend hols with Lara’s family in Lightwater, Surrey. Other than the fact that Lightwater’s only Chinese food restaurant was closed all week we had ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=159 Yesterday, we were in Beijing at the Great Hall of the People attending the kick-off party for UAA's new rental car business called China Auto Rental (CAR) - it was a very impressive turnout and a fantastic event. Attending the ceremony was a generous helping of government officials, VC types (e.g. ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=156 A friend of mine, we’ll call him Abe, successfully sold his web portal a week ago – I’m very happy for him considering he’s been at it for over 6 years and had just about wrote the damn thing off – he didn’t make all his money back but it ... http://www.ymerfund.com/blog/?p=155