Dave McClure: http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/07/moneyball-for-startups.html In summary, you should be thinking about stages for risk-reduction & company value creation that look like this: 1) Product: $0-100K, 3-6 months to develop basic MVP that’s functional & useful for at least a few customers. Get to small product/market fit. 2) Market: $100K-$2M, 6-12 months to...

Jermey Liew http://mashable.com/2010/08/17/social-games-business/ These are interesting times in the social gaming industry. Two weeks ago Disney acquired Playdom, and last week Google acquired Slide. Just like that, two of the largest social game publishers have become part of larger companies. This activity all comes on the heels of EA’s acquisition of Playfish late last year. Social...

Google is widely expected to soon announce a new social network service to compete with Facebook’s runaway growth. But CEO Eric Schmidt says Google’s social effort, widely rumored to be dubbed “Google Me,” won’t be a Facebook knock-off. Instead, Schmidt has described Google’s evolving social strategy as more about using games and other social features to make...