Dow Jones’ VentureOne published a nice report today, outlining how technology IPOs are back. 7 of the 13 IPOs from Q1/2007 were in the IT/tech space:

As pointed out by others, if this pace continues, it will easily be the best year for tech IPOs since 2000. Not bad.

I think another observation is warranted here. Most of the firms represented above are either in the network infrastructure or mobility sectors. These are both established markets that are resting firmly on solid ground. Contrast that to the IPO scene leading up to the shakeout in 2000, where you had a large number of companies going through an IPO that really should have never even been funded to begin with.

This is good.

Cheers.

The term “Web 2.0″ is (and has been for a while) one of the most over-used and misunderstood phrases in business. I always get a chuckle when someone says they are “all about web 2.0″, when in actuality, they have no clue what it even means. They often use it to represent the “generic comeback” of the tech startup. To some people, any company started after the bubble is a “web 2.0″ company. Funny.

For those who really still don’t get the movement, you owe it to yourself to watch this video. It is a bit long, but be patient – the payoff is worth it. This is done in the style of Lessig and Dick Hardt. Click the video clip below to play it.

Thanks to Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University for putting this gem together.

Cheers.

I have been advising a local entrepreneur who is building a really interesting new web play. A great guy, but doesn’t have a deep background in technology. He is starting to see some traction with his service, and is beginning to run into those early scalability hurdles that so many young startups eventually run into.

Our informal discussions around scalability inspired me to jot down some of my thoughts on this issue, and how early-stage entrepreneurs can scale their technology platform from 5 users to millions.

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Inspired again by this post from Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures, I began thinking of the differences in the capital required to launch something these days. Much ado has been made over Web 2.0, and how much cheaper it is to build technology solutions these todays.

I came across an old proposal that I received from a vendor years ago (in the 1.0 days), and got a good laugh out of it.

We all know that things are cheaper to build these days, but I thought it might be interesting to put together a post illustrating the actual dollar differences in hardware, software, services, and labor costs. And yes, this is my last official post for 2006 – so happy new year in advance (4 hours from now!).

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The other evening I was down at the MIT Enterprise Forum’s Angel investing event, hanging out with Michael Blake of Adams Capital. He and I had a great time reminiscing about the early days of the micro-computing industry. Our discussion inspired me to put this list together. It isn’t really a “quiz”, per se. More like a fun walk down memory lane. Enjoy!

These were all taken from my own experiences. I’m sure that other folks have some good ones, too. Feel free to pile on by adding a comment down below.

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While doing some surfing the other night, I came across a really neat site called the “Uptime Project”, where members “compete” by basically seeing who can keep their servers running the longest without a reboot.

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While not a complete surprise, Sun Microsystems let loose with an interesting development today. At its JavaOne conference, Sun announced that it would open-source its Java platform.

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