The Yahoo! Board Who Couldn't - Just Did

Don't listen to the Business Insider worry-warts: Cash-rich split, here we come. Good news for Yahoo! longs.

Read the full post on Forbes

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Will MSN Be Yahoo!'s "Other Asset" in a Cash-Rich Split?

Microsoft might give up MSN to get a piece of Alibaba Group and/or Yahoo!, as part of a cash-rich split

Read the full post on Forbes

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Next Yahoo! Question: What's the Core Worth?

Wednesday's news that Yahoo!'s (YHOO_) board is considering two separate "cash-rich splits" of their stakes in Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Japan is great news for Yahoo! longs.

Read the full post in TheStreet

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What If Yahoo! Fired 75% of Its Workforce - Starting With The Board?

Many private equity firms sizing up Yahoo!'s core business believe they could fire 50 - 75% of the headcount with no material impact on revenues. Yet, they are not willing to pay Yahoo! long shareholders the proper multiple based on that "go forward" EBITDA number.

Read the whole post on Forbes

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Where are the Huge Cost Savings Yahoo! Promised Its Shareholders in 2009?

I have a long memory and I remember exactly what Yahoo!'s board promised in 2009 with the Microsoft search deal and how they've failed to deliver. Why should they be trusted now?

Read the full post in Forbes

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RIMM's Collapse Was Predicted in 1993

Best Jim Balsillie quote ever contained within....

Read the full Forbes post

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Top Ten Keys to Building a Talent Firewall In Your Organization

It's hard to keep your best talent in your organization.  Here are some suggestions on how to do it.

Read the full Forbes post

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What if Mary Meeker is Wrong and Mobile Ads Never Really Take Off?

We assume that Madison Avenue will eventually spend more on Internet and Mobile ads to match the time we spend online. What if they don't and they have their reasons?

Read the full post in Forbes

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The Best Advice I've Ever Received About Hiring Talent

Read the whole post on Forbes

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Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent

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Top Ten Reasons Why VC-Backed Companies Fail

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Jackson Says Blackstone, Bain in Lead for Yahoo

My appearance from earlier today on Bloomberg TV

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Reading Marc Andreessen's Tea Leaves About Yahoo!

Marc Andreessen's blog post today, likely means that Blackstone and Bain Capital are in the lead for Yahoo!

Read the full post at Forbes

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What Will Happen Next at Yahoo!

Here is one critical aspect of a Yahoo! cash-rich split that could unlock $20 billion in value that has been overlooked in all the coverage of Yahoo!

Read the full Forbes post

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Google Still Does $640 Million In Annual Revenue In China

Google left China 18 months ago.  It's still the country's 3rd biggest ad revenue generator.

Read full post at Forbes

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How Yahoo! Could Trip Up Facebook's Grand IPO Plans

Will Yahoo! get a do-over to extract maximum value from Facebook prior to its IPO, as it should have down with Google 7 years ago?

Read the full Forbes post

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What Mickey Drexler Learned from Steve Jobs

Over the years, the greatest merchant ever has revealed a few things he's learned from Apple by serving on its board since 1999.

Read the full Forbes post

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Zynga's Market Valuation Has Dropped $13 Billion This Week

Zynga's valuation has dropped 65% in 4 days.  It deserves to keep dropping.

Read the full Forbes post

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Research In Motion's Co-CEOs are Brutal at Fortune Telling

RIM says it won't make its previously lowered full-year guidance. That's not a shocker but it just shows how bad these co-CEOs are at predicting the future.

Read the full post on Forbes

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How A Leveraged Recap of Yahoo! Could Actually Work

It's more complex, but there many ways to create value for Yahoo! shareholders should they go down the minority stake leveraged recap path.

Read the full Forbes post

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Yahoo!'s Board Can Run But They Can't Hide from Shareholders

The Silver Lake low-ball offer is making many Yahoo! investors despair. This isn't over yet though.

Read the full post in Forbes.

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Microsoft, Silver Lake, THL: Where to Yahoo!?

By Eric Jackson11/29/11 - 12:00 PM EST
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Last night, we learned that Microsoft(MSFT_) is likely to team up with Silver Lake on a leveraged recapitalization bid for 20% of Yahoo!(YHOO_). Also, THL(formerly known as TH Lee) is thinking of making an outright bid for the company.

There have been a lot of rumors floating around regarding what will happen with Yahoo! Let's review the key players and the possible outcomes.

The key stakeholders in this drama are:

Jerry Yang and David Filo. The two co-founders of Yahoo! still own about 9% of the company. Although Yang is the public face of the pair, Filo actually has a much bigger stake in Yahoo! But they typically vote together. They don't want to see their baby dismembered. So their optimal outcome would be to see Yahoo!'s core business undergo a renaissance in the years ahead and returned to its place of prominence in the Silicon Valley hierarchy. Many have guessed that Jerry didn't want to sell the company to Microsoft and wants to be aligned with private equity in order to retain control of his baby.

Capital Research. This big mutual fund headed up by famed media investor Gordy Crawford has been a large investor in Yahoo! for a while. They've also been a public critic at times. Remember when Gordy called for a recount of the 2008 shareholders' vote and we learned that the votes cast against Chairman Roy Bostock and other directors was much higher than what was initially reported. They own 6.8% of the company and would like to see the highest price possible -- even if they have to wait six months instead of two months.

Third Point. Dan Loeb is the newest large shareholder in Yahoo! He's now the second largest shareholder giving him a big voice with the board. He's also gone "activist" with Yahoo!, telling them he intends to push for change if he doesn't see the board acting in his (and other shareholders') best interests. He's already asked for two board seats. It's likely he'd launch a proxy contest in the spring if he didn't think the board was moving fast enough.

...

Read the full post in TheStreet here

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Should You Buy Zynga? No Way

Zynga starts its IPO Roadshow Monday. The company's not worth more than $5 billion fair value - nowhere near $20 billion.

Read the full Forbes Post

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The Story Behind Today's Earlier Bogus Sina Rumor

Today's wild false rumor about Sina and Muddy Waters sent the stock into a tailspin.

Read the full post on Forbes

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I'm Sick of Single or Childless People Complaining About Kids On Planes

Childless people who complain insufferably about having to travel with kids on planes would have their heads explode if they ever had to babysit a kid for more than 24 hours.

Read the full Forbes post

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Did Jeff Jordan Know Something When He Quit OpenTable?

The stock is down 72% since Jordan left.

Read the full post in Forbes

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We've Become a Nation of Bubbleheads

Why We've Become a Nation of Bubbleheads

Read the Forbes post

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What's Craig Mundie Been Smoking?

Microsoft thinks Siri is just a function of good Apple Marketing.

Read the full Forbes post

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What If Facebook's IPO Dreams Are Built On As Much Hype As Groupon's?

Bankers hyped up Groupon to get the deal done fast. Beware Facebook's banker who do the same for their IPO. Test the key assumptions built into the business model.

Read the full Forbes Post

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Why Yahoo!'s Board Wants A Deal Before January 7th

Why Yahoo!'s board is working hard to ensure they do something with the company before January 7th.

Read the full Forbes Post

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The Difference Between a Tech "Greenfield Gorilla" and a "Nichey Nancy"

Is Your Tech Company a Greenfield Gorilla or a Nichey Nancy?

Read the full Forbes Post

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Asking Al Gore About Apple's Board & How They Pick Talent

My two-part question to Al Gore from last month in Hong Kong.

Read the full Forbes Post

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Good News: Even When They're Given Inside Information, Politicians Are Hapless Traders

Frustrated that politicians can trade on inside information and you can't? Take heart: they're so hapless, they can't make money from it.

Read the full post in Forbes

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The Worst Tech Decision in the Last 10 years: Selling PayPal

While it's easy to take the money when it's flashed in front of you, PayPal's decision to not stay independent is the dumbest one in tech from the last 10 years.

Read the full post on Forbes

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6 Things Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla

If you're building a company today, here are 6 things Jeff Bezos knew back in 1997 that made Amazon (and will make you) so successful.

Read the full post in Forbes

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How to Get More Technical Graduates in the U.S.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- I was watching the season finale of Bill Maher's Real-Time last Friday, when he threw out a statistic that shocked me: in 2009, the U.S. graduated 39,000 people with computer science and engineering degrees and 82,000 with visual arts degrees.

Maher argued that this is a big problem for us as a country. He suggested we're not being tough enough with kids pursuing a visual arts education. We need to tell them to be more realistic and we need more technically qualified people to fill those jobs if our country is going to compete with China and others.

He's right.

But his panel flatly disagreed with him. It seemed to unite those on the right and the left that the government should try and steer how individuals decide to pursue their educational goals.

Many on the right want the government to have less influence on education -- not more. Rick Perry -- if you believe him -- even wants the Department of Education disbanded. If these conservatives had their way, as many students could pursue degrees in visual arts as wanted. They could find a good private institution that would give them a degree, in exchange for a costly amount of tuition.

For those of the left, most would believe the government should be able to provide an education but it's up to individuals to have the free choice to select their education.

The power of the individual is sacrosanct in America. We have an innate belief that the guy next to us on the subway could be the next Steve Jobs from Apple(AAPL_). Jobs was a hippie. He dropped out of Reed College after freshman year. How can we try and restrict the next individual genius that might bubble up from the bottom of our system.

Look, I happen to be a guy who was an English major in college. I should probably be living in my mother's basement by now, but I actually think a liberal arts training is a great foundation for anyone in life pursuing a variety of later technical professions. So, I'm sympathetic to those who say let the kids decide if they want to be dance, philosophy or social studies' majors.

Read the full post on TheStreet.com here

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What Is Next For Apple's iAd?

Apple has to decide whether it wants to play in the ad world or not.  Eddy Cue will now make that decision.

Read the full Forbes post.

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How a "Cash-Rich Split" Could Take Yahoo! to $41/Share

The best option for Yahoo! shareholders is the company disposing of its Asian assets in a structure called a "cash-rich split."  Here's how it could work and turn Yahoo! into a $41/share stock.

Read the Forbes post

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Steve Jobs Had No Business Being Successful When He Returned to Apple

Steve Jobs -- according to his track record to that point in his life -- had no business making Apple successful when he came back in 1997. That he did makes him all the more remarkable.

Read the full post in Forbes

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Key Apple Executive Off Stock Grant List

By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor11/09/11 - 06:00 AM EST


NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Last week, Apple(AAPL_) granted several key executives -- including Phil Schiller, Scott Forstall, Peter Oppenheimer, and Bob Mansfield -- large Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) grants that vest over five years.

They are essentially golden handcuffs that highly motivate these men to stick around in this post-Steve Jobs era.

One senior executive notably absent from the list is Jony Ive. I hope it doesn't portend Ive's departure. We'll see some SEC filing in the coming days or weeks about a similar grant to him.

Jony Ive is the key product and design person at Apple.

In Walter Isaacson's book on Steve Jobs, it's clear how important Jony is at Apple. Jobs' wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, said of the special bond between Steve and Jony: "A lot of people in Steve's are replaceable. Not Jony."

Jobs held Jony in very high regard. He rescued Jony from the old Apple and convinced him to stay after Jobs came back to the company in 1997. Even though no one outside of Apple had heard of Jony then, the two men formed a special bond and collaborated together on the iMacs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads.

Jony's design lab in Apple's Cupertino headquarters is under lockdown from outside visitors. It's likely that today, in that lab, there are the products that will amaze us from Apple (in some form) for the next 15 years.

At the recent company-wide memorial for Jobs at Apple, Jony gave -- in my view -- the best speech about Steve.

Jony found it hard when Steve left the company before on his medical leaves. There's a story in Isaacson's book about how Jony met Steve at the airport in Silicon Valley after Steve returned from his liver transplant in Memphis. It's clear that Jony missed him, but was also bothered by the fact that many outside of Apple wondered if the company could be as "innovative" without Steve. Jony took it as a slight.

I hope that Jony now has his time to shine in the sun over the next several years at Apple -- along with all the other talented Apple executives.

Read the rest of the post on TheStreet

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The Owner of Yahoo!'s Patents Could Cripple Facebook's IPO Aspirations

With 1,100 granted US patents, Yahoo! could choose at any moment to offensively go after Facebook, Microsoft, and other large Internet companies.  This IP portfolio could become one of the most hotly sought after jewels in the Yahoo! empire in the next two months.

Read the full post in Forbes

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Eric Schmidt Doesn't Believe For A Second That Siri Is A Threat To Google

Despite making a big deal about it on Friday in his answers to the US Senate, you shouldn't think Eric Schmidt or any Google exec is fretting yet about Siri as a threat - even though they should.

Read the full post in Forbes

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Daniel Loeb Wants Jerry Yang Off Yahoo! Board

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Daniel Loeb has been silent since announcing his $1 billion stake in Yahoo!(YHOO_) two months ago. That changed this afternoon.


Read the full post in TheStreet

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More Proof That Siri Is Intended to Be A Google Killer

More details on why Siri is a Google Killer.

Read the full post on Forbes.

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Why Apple Wants to Make TVs

Jobs' biography makes it clear why Apple wants to make its own TV sets

Read the full post in Forbes

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Jackson Says Groupon Share Offering Has `Too Much Risk'

My take on the Groupon IPO: Too much risk

See the video on Forbes here

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My Question For Jerry Yang

My question for Jerry Yang about Yahoo!'s new/old mission statement.

See the video on Forbes

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Thanks For Reading in October

I started writing in TheStreet on finance and technology back in 2008.  It's fun and helps me formulate my thinking on different topics.

In October, I had my biggest month yet in terms of readers of my Forbes posts since I started contributing there in March:

- 383k unique visitors
- 725k page views

Thanks for reading.

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Yahoo!: Digging Into So-Called Scoops

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Along with the broader market, Yahoo!(YHOO_) has been sacked this week.

It is now back to where it was trading in early October. Last week, Yahoo! was up more than 25% in the last month. It's now only up 13% for the last month. (Nasdaq is still up 7.6% for the last month.)

Don't get me wrong, I don't like that. It stinks, in fact.

However, let's take a step back from the ledge.

There were five things that were reported on with certainty last month that were not necessarily certain at all.

1. A couple of weeks ago, many media reports said that Jerry Yang told the AsiaD conference in Hong Kong that he wasn't going to sell the company. That was odd, as I was in the audience and don't recall him saying that at all. I forget his wording.

He might have said they weren't going to be a forced seller or they didn't have to sell if they didn't want to. He was saying they are playing from a strong hand. Maybe it was a bluff. Later on in the discussion, he said very clearly that they (the board) were going to do what was right for the shareholders. I took that to mean that -- just as everyone suspects -- this thing is still in the middle of a sales process.

2. A Wall Street Journal article a couple of weeks ago quoted some private equity bidders as saying they thought Yahoo! was only worth $16 to $18 a share in a buyout and was already over-priced at $15 as the stock was at $11 in August. Really? I think Apple(AAPL_) has a fair value of $25 a share. It's all hype and I'd really rather buy it at that price than $400.

3. A Bloomberg report on Friday night interrupted an otherwise pleasant dinner I was having. It quoted -- in its "scoop" - "5 unnamed sources" who said that Yahoo! was going to separate their Asian assets in a tax-free manner that would lead to a stock buyback or a dividend.

Read full post in TheStreet

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2 Big Misconceptions About Yahoo!

An update from Eric Jackson: The Wall Street Journal reported a "scoop" overnight that Yahoo! could potentially save billions on disposing of its Asian assets through something called a "cash-rich split." I first reported on this structure for TheStreet six weeks ago, as it had been actively pushed as a viable option by shareholders (including me) to the intransigent board since the summer.


Read the full post in TheStreet here.

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Why Siri Is a Google Killer

Siri seemed like a minor feature introduction as part of the iPhone 4S. It might just kill Google in 4 years time.

Read the full Forbes Post.

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David Kenny Won't Be the Next CEO of Yahoo!

Chatter that Kenny might be the next CEO of Yahoo! now that he's left Akamai is way off base.

Read the full Forbes post

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Stop Bitching About Apple's Board

Why do we constantly hear complaints about Apple's board when Google's goes whistling past the graveyard? Seen their 5 year stock returns?

Read the full Forbes post

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Sorry Justin... The Steve Jobs Effect Trumps Bieber Fever

Steve Jobs' reality distortion field is twice as strong as Justin Bieber's.

Link to the Forbes post

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Google-Yahoo! Deal Not So Far-Fetched

By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor10/25/11 - 06:00 AM EDT


NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Over the weekend, it was leaked out that Google(GOOG_) was interested in helping at least a couple of private equity players to finance a purchase ofYahoo!(YHOO_).

Most folks have protested loudly against this possibility by concluding that such a deal would never get past the U.S. government. Google, with already two-thirds of the market share of the search space, would significantly increase that by taking over Yahoo!'s share and leaving the rest of the market to Bing, Ask Jeeves, and whoever else is left.

Of course, that is right. Google previously tried to strike a deal with Yahoo! after the 2008Microsoft(MSFT_) buyout was pulled and before Carol Bartz signed up to outsource its search to Bing. That potential tie-up between Google and Yahoo! was discouraged by the government.

So why is Google leaking out this information now? These are smart guys. They know that search is a non-starter.

One cynical theory is that they have no interest in Yahoo! at all. They're merely trying to seem interested so that Microsoft will be forced to more aggressively bid for Yahoo!

With a company that bid "pi" for the Nortel patents before Apple(AAPL_) and a consortium of others won them, I suppose anything is possible. However, I just don't see what the point is for Google to do this.

Will leaking something cause Microsoft to bid $25 instead of $20 for Yahoo!? That would be the equivalent to an extra $4 billion to Yahoo! shareholders that Microsoft would have to pay out. That's not chump change, but is that really going to hurt Microsoft? And why would Microsoft really take such action based on one leak?

Which leads me to conclude that there is real interest by Google in Yahoo! However, I don't think it's for its search business.

I think the jewel for Google in the Yahoo! empire is its display ad business. That's a $2 billion a year business for Yahoo! and many believe that Yahoo! is dramatically under-monetizing it. What could it be worth under Google using DoubleClick's technology? $3 billion? $4 billion? Google knows better than us.

Read the full post on TheStreet

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Why Apple Won't Buy Nuance

BY Eric Jackson , On Monday October 24, 2011, 1:00 pm EDT

Siri is a hit with the Apple (AAPL) iPhone 4S. It's now the star of mainstream TV commercials. It works better than any voice recognition system I've seen in the past 11 years ... and I used to work for a start-up in the industry 10 years ago.

What's been an even bigger hit since Siri was announced is Nuance's (NUAN) stock: It's up 37% in the past month vs. 7% for the Nasdaq. Nuance is the voice rec technology behind Siri.

Many have speculated that Apple (AAPL) will now buy Nuance, because Siri has shown itself to be a hit and Apple would want to keep Nuance's speech rec technology out of Google's (GOOG) hands.

I disagree.

I don't think Apple will buy Nuance. Why?

Apple bought Siri in April 2010. The company has likely known since then that Siri would be a hit. Until the last month, Nuance's stock has traded between $20 and $15. In July 2010, Nuance's stock traded below $15, making it worth a little over $4 billion instead of its current market cap close to $8 billion.

If Apple was convinced Siri would be a game-changer, why not buy Nuance back then? Yet Apple was instead entering into licensing agreements with Nuance, with the plans to bring Siri to market in a future iPhone.

I suspect that Apple negotiated strict covenants into any licensing deal with Nuance. Think of it: The deal was a huge coup for Nuance. Not only that, with Apple bringing Siri to market in a future iPhone, Nuance would know that this would be the biggest marketing initiative for the voice recognition industry ever. It will sell a lot of voice rec licenses in the next decade because of Siri.

So what would Apple have gotten in exchange from Nuance by partnering with it? Likely patent licenses and strict protections if Nuance is ever acquired. No way Apple is going to leave itself vulnerable if Google buys Nuance.

If you're Nuance, you sign whatever deal Apple puts in front of you because ... it's Apple.

What about the people who say Google might buy Nuance and replicate Siri? Sorry -- the magic behind Siri doesn't live at Nuance, it lives in Siri, the AI piece behind the technology. Nuance is the speech rec part. There are a lot of smart people at Nuance, but this is the commodity part of the application.

Siri is a perfect example of what Apple calls its place sitting at the intersection of the humanities and technology.

I know the folks at Nuance. They're nice. But they don't live at this intersection (except for maybe a few apps people). The company is a roll-up of basically every speech rec company that's existed in the past 10 years.

I'm not sure if I will short Nuance, but I do plan on selling some premium on this recent move up.

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How Do Apple and Google Think of Talent Differently?

Being a hiring manager for Senior Talent at Google seems to be a much easier job than at Apple.  How would you known that Phil Schiller, Tim Cook, Jony Ive or any of the other managers were going to be so successful prior to them joining Apple?

Read the full Forbes post here.

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It's Official: Eric Schmidt Is Pathological

Eric Schmidt has some explaining to do over his attempt to portray a great relationship with Steve Jobs, given what Jobs just said in his book.

Read the Full Post here in Forbes

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12 Ways Obama Could Make "Occupy Wall Street" Happier

Here are 12 specific actions Obama could take that would make many within the Occupy Wall Street movement happier.

Read the full Forbes post here.

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What Is Up With Eric Schmidt's Revisionist History of His Relationship With Steve Jobs?

Eric Schmidt has been doing the talk show circuit since Steve Jobs died insisting the two men were close friends. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Read the full post on Forbes

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Time to Apologize to Apple's Board

By Eric Jackson10/13/11 - 02:37 PM EDT


NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- It's now been a week since Steve Jobs died. Tim Cook is nowApple's (AAPL_) CEO. Since Apple closed on Oct. 5 at $378, the stock is up 7.4% -- which is about 1.5% better than the Nasdaq. The company has announced its 4S version of the iPhone and rolled out its latest iOS 5.

Obviously, we won't know the true long-term ramifications of the loss of Steve Jobs to Apple for a long time -- maybe seven years. However, it's obvious that the company has managed the transition from Jobs to Cook rather successfully.

Shouldn't Apple's board of directors get some creditfor this successful transition?

A few months ago, there was a steady drumbeat of criticism directed toward the board from what Conrad Black would probably call the "corporate governance zealots." Readers know that I'm one of the bigger proponents of strong corporate governance. But I must admit, it's been puzzling to me some of the governance criticism directed to Apple in the last year. A few days ago, Reuters ran a story with the headline: "Apple's board needs to step up to new era." Here are some of quotes from several "experts" about how Apple's board needs to be changed in the wake of Jobs' death.

Read the full post on TheStreet

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Thoughts on Yahoo! Buyers and Why Mike Lazaridis Needs to Be Put In a Room

My appearance on Bloomberg West last night

See the video here

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Bob Galvin - The Man Who Built Motorola - Dies at 89

All CEOs should study what made Galvin a great leader

Read the full Forbes Post

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I Am The Zero Percent

I don't fit with either political party.  No one speaks for me. So here's my manifesto. What's yours?

Read the full post on Forbes

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Why Does America Keep Re-Electing Bone-Headed Boards Like HP's and Yahoo!'s?

Corporate CEOs get to pick their boards of directors to monitor them, then pay a lot of money (from shareholders) to maintain the status quo.

Read/watch the full post on Forbes

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Chrystia Freeland on the Death of the Middle Class and the Rise of the Global Elites

Excerpts from my Interview with Chrystia Freeland earlier this year and her thoughts on the Middle Class and the Global Elites.

From full Forbes article here

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Someone Should Just Go Ahead and Buy Yahoo!

What Jerry Yang's interest in Yahoo! really means.

Read the full post in TheStreet

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What's Netflix Hiding?

Why it's a red flag that Netflix (NFLX) doesn't answer analyst questions directly.

Read the full post in TheStreet

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Steve Jobs Showed It's Not Indulgent to Follow Your Bliss, It's Required

Last week, Megan McCardle called Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford speech urging graduates to follow their passion "unsettling" and impractical. Here's why she's completely wrong.

Read the full Forbes post here

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Erin Burnett's Asinine Apple Analysis

Erin Burnett has a history of making snap uninformed judgments and then inviting on guests or telling a narrative seeking to confirm her bias. She did it for years in her former business anchor role about the biggest company in the world: Apple. What will she do for "real news"?

Read the full post here on Forbes

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14 Ways for Occupy Wall Street to Legitimize Itself in Week Four

Occupy Wall Street has been all over the map in its messaging.  As a result, it's drawn the ire of some.  Here are 14 ways to do a better job next week.

Read the full post in Forbes

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Thoughts on What Made Steve Jobs Great

From Mickey Drexler, CEO of J. Crew and Apple (AAPL) board member and me


See video here on Forbes

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Still Waiting For Andrew Ross Sorkin's Apology to Steve Jobs' Family

It's time to make a past wrong right. Andrew Ross Sorkin should apologize publicly or privately to Steve Jobs' family.

Read the full post on Forbes

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Steve Jobs' Own Words From His Last Earnings Call

Steve Jobs' comments from last October's earnings call - his last.

Read the full Forbes Post

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The Top Ten Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Us

Let's honor him, by remembering these lessons Steve taught us.

Full post here on Forbes

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Erin Burnett Is Vapid, Occupy Wall Street Matters

Erin Burnett condescension at Occupy Wall Street is embarrassing for her.  This group's feelings and motives come from a real place of pain which should be addressed.

Read the full Forbes post

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Caught in the Chinese Web

By Eric Jackson10/04/11 - 07:45 AM EDT
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- A few months ago Facebook was rumored to be close to a deal with Baidu (BIDU_) about setting up a joint venture.

At the time, I said I thought that it was a smart move on the part of Facebook (although the rumors of the day then said it was something that Mark Zuckerberg was insisting on over objections by Sheryl Sandberg). I remember a friend of mine, Bill Bishop, an American venture investor based in Beijing, was very skeptical at the time of such a deal working out. Bill pointed out then on his blog how many American Internet JVs had driven on the rocks of China over the last 5 years.

I was reminded of Bill's thoughts last week when I watched an interview of Qunar co-founder, Fritz Demopoulos, who recently sold his Chinese travel business to Baidu.

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Fritz is a German, who got his MBA in the U.S., and then promptly went to China. He started two companies over there in the last 10 years. He has a uniqueperspective on the country and what it takes to succeed there.

Fritz says flat out in the interview that he doesn't think that any U.S. internet company will ever be successful in China through a JV.

His reasoning was pretty simple. Even six years ago, China's infrastructure was pretty immature vs. the U.S. Remember that was the time when Jack Ma sold 40% of his company for $1 billion to Yahoo! (YHOO_). Baidu and Tencent were early days. Sina (SINA_) was a boring AOL(AOL_)-type company.

When big U.S. brands came to China -- whether MySpace or Google (GOOG_) -- they brought capital, know-how and coolness.

That Was Then

Today, things are much different in China. The market is flooded with capital. Any private company with a decent business plan can come up with some money.

There is tremendous technical talent available and it is much cheaper than in the U.S. It is getting a little competitive for the best talent in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen but the costs are still far lower than the U.S. and the supply is very high.

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