Republican Senators Have Courage

Fred Wilson beat me to a GM post that I wanted to write over the weekend.  If only I had watched less football.  Fred nails it so read his post, but here are my thoughts.   General Motors is a disaster and we send the wrong message to everybody in this country and around the [...]

Pray for Newspapers

The WSJ reports that Tribune has retained Lazard to help restructure its debt and that Tribune may seek Chapter 11 Protection.  A month ago I met Bruce Toll (Toll Brothers) at a cocktail party.  Toll is the Chairman of Philadelphia Media Holdings and had helped lead the deal to buy the Philadelphia newspapers from McClatchy.  [...]

Better Place Yes. Detroit No.

I still loathe the BIG 3 Auto CEOs today. I know that’s strong, but these guys are the Larry, Moe, and Curly of the Fortune 500.
Meanwhile John Markoff at the NYT reports that Better Place is moving into Hawaii with another sweet deal in the worst financial climate in two generations.  Because Electric cars make [...]

GM, Ford Management Must Go

The current Venture Capital Road Trip (literally Wagoner and Mullaly are driving from Detroit to Washington in hybrids; Nardelli reserves the right to fly) reeks of prepackaged public relations.   These guys presided over huge destruction in shareholder value and been very well compensated for it.   The WSJ now reports that Ford will speed up production [...]

Obama’s Internet Use Will Change World

One need look no further than changedotgov to understand how Obama and future presidents will use the Internet to communicate in a completely unfiltered way with citizens and the world’s population.  Obama uploaded his weekly radio address earlier today.  Already a 155,000 people on YouTube  have seen it on by Saturday at 5PM EST.   Remeber [...]

Obama’s domestic Agenda

Today’s radio address begins the beginning of a progressive political era in Washington.  Obama has said that he will create a sustained economic stimulus plan focused on improving the country’s infrastructure and investing in the still amorphous alternative energy economy.
The Republicans held the line this week with the automotive industry and with Waxman replacing Dingell [...]

Coolest Company in the World

This week, Better Place cut a $1bn dollar deal to bring electric car charging stations to the San Francisco area.  Better Place is without question, the most ambitious startup to ever come out of Israel and perhaps the company that has the best chance of restructuring the automobile industry in the next 5 years.

Better Place [...]

Credit Crisis for Dummies

Thanks to Fred Wilson, I was turned on to these great slides at Slideshare.
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These slides will help many people understand our current financial predicament.
Moreover, it’s very exciting to see people are bringing great innovations and creativity to presentations.  If you are an entrepreneur who presents material with dozens of slides, hundreds of bullet points, and [...]

NYT Sticks a Fork in GM

The New York Times has published the definitive piece on the General Motors situation this morning.  In it, Andrew Ross Sorkin has laid out the case for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding and, in my opinion, laid the foundation for the bridge President-elect Obama referenced in his 60 Minutes interview.   No constituency including shareholders, management, [...]

We need less ideology, more flexibility

Earlier this week, I wrote that I questioned the GM bailout.  For me, it was ideological.  Does anybody really believe they can ever compete again effectively? But perhaps, ideology needs to be softened and pragmatism needs to take center stage.
I had lunch yesterday with a close friend and former Goldman Sachs executive who is quite [...]