Great comments on Groupon's IPO today - comparing it with a fertilizer company that had its IPO today as well. Who has the stronger fertilizer?

Groupon's IPO may have surged today, but like most other big tech IPOs, the chances of it staying at that price are slim.

Rentech Nitrogen Partners L.P., a nitrogen fertilizer company, also launched its IPO at today at $20 per share. It probably has a better chance at sustaining its model than Groupon and subsequent daily deal copycats ever will. Says The Wall Street Journal:

Rentech has a lot of alluring attributes. Its chief competitors' stocks are up 50% for 2011. It's riding a wave of positive cyclical attributes such as high product pricing and low feedstock costs. And it plans to pay out a dividend that could yield between 11% and 12% over its next fiscal year, based on the midpoint of its expected $19 to $21 price range, a great draw for income-starved investors.
Groupon's bling is fake. Says the New Yorker, eloquently:

Most big tech I.P.O.s surge and then drop. And, with its decreasing profit margins, fishy accounting, massive marketing expenses, floundering innovations, massive insider payouts, and surging competitors, Groupon is surely not worth thirteen billion dollars, or whatever its market cap is at this very moment.
If merchants start pulling out of the daily deals space because they're losing money on Groupons, the gold will start chipping away, revealing nothing but a cheap trick, a flimsy tin.

- ReadWrite

Build Your Own Productivity Style by Remixing the Best [Productivity]

Build Your Own Productivity Style by Remixing the Best [Productivity]: "

You've tried everything: asked around, played with a few theories about 'how you work best', and downloaded app after app promising to make you more efficient. If you feel like nothing's working, this crash course examines some of the most lauded productivity systems, then walks you through how to can cherry pick the methods that work for you to create your own productivity style. More »

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Before you get locked into Lync, consider open source options | Open Source Software - InfoWorld

Before you get locked into Lync, consider open source options | Open Source Software - InfoWorld

9 Steps to Consider When Valuing Your Startup

9 Steps to Consider When Valuing Your Startup

Determining your startup’s worth is one of the hardest parts of the fundraising process. There is no magic formula that will spit out a valuation, namely because the number is highly subjective. The entrepreneur, for example, anticipates huge potential and may therefore put a high valuation on his company. The investor, on the other hand sees a company that needs capital to grow and may fail without it, so he may set a low valuation. To help the process, we’ve devised a few considerations to help value your company.

Keep an eye on Google Chrome OS, making some major noise at the Google conference this week.  Including new edge devices (Chromebooks) and services supporting the offline use of Google core applications coming this summer.  Some major issues addressed on cost and security from a corporate standpoint as well as another option for a low cost consumer device to stroke the cloud.

Facebook is Great, But Does It Make Businesses Any Money?

Facebook is Great, But Does It Make Businesses Any Money?

Some thoughts on social networking and revenue creation...

Social networking is nothing more then another visibility tool for an initial dialog. The ability to to be available and engage an individual when and how they choose to engage is the issue. Opt in community (another word for social networking) to qualify who and why they should be in dialog with you to solve a problem is really no different then asking a neighbor about a lawn care service or a friend at the Chamber of Commerce meeting about a business attorney recommendation. The question of monetization for the business is really no different then evaluating that effort (hard/soft costs) for social activity vs. conversion - resulting revenue. Revenue for most is not a click through event, what I am referring to is the actual generation of core service or product revenue. Advertising and product placement in social sites is the same as yellow pages or search engine marketing. If that is where the buyer is, then engage them in the way they want to dialog. For customer support, social networking just provides another portal to engage and support, mainstreaming into all other forms of contact - i.e., call, email, chat...I would really look closely at both hard and soft costs as well as competitive position in use of social networking before investing a substantial amount of resources.

Sentenc.es - A Disciplined Way To Deal With Email

A new movement to deal with email in a manner similar to SMS...more compressed and iterative. Three sentence responses to all email. Think you can play? I am going to try.

Sentenc.es - A Disciplined Way To Deal With Email