VENTURE CAPITAL AS CHINESE MENU

“We’ll have plenty of time to figure out the business model and there are many options to choose from.”

Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, on his decision to fund Evan Williams’s profitless, pointless, and planless startup Twitter, unionsquareventures.com, 25 July 2007

HELL IN AN AD BASKET

“We are hell-bent and determined to allocate the talent, the resources, the money, the innovation to absolutely become a powerhouse in the ad business.”

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, getting the first part right, anyway, News.com, 26 July 2007

DOWNTIME, WHERE ALL THE LIGHTS AREN’T BRIGHT

“365 Main has fulfilled its brand promise of ‘world’s finest datacenters’ by delivering the reliability and uptime that attracted us in the first place.”

Dale Emel, RedEnvelope’s director of technology services, in a press release issued hours before an outage at its 365 Main datacenter took the e-commerce site offline, PR Newswire, 24 July 2007

ADVERTISER-GENERATED CONTENT

“We were running on fumes.”

Lonelygirl15 cocreator Greg Goodfried, explaining why the YouTube video series sold out and accepted an Icebreaker Sours gum product placement, NewTeeVee Pier Screenings, 24 July 2007

REDEFINING “GROWTH STOCK”

“In the past, slow growth meant a 5% to 10% sequential increase in subscribers. This quarter, due to increased competition, it meant a 1% decline in subscribers.”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, on his company growing so slowly that it’s actually shrinking, SeekingAlpha, 23 July 2007