Crocmedia's Craig Hutchison has emerged as a major player in the AFL's new radio rights deal.

Hutchy and Croc Media have signed a deal with the AFL to become the umbrella rights-holder for regional radio - immediately at least doubling the value of this  key asset of AFL! 

In addition they will provide a national Afl radio call across metro markets! 

A real win win

 Croc will now oversee various programming and match-day calling agreements with all AFL broadcasters across Australia, producing five games on its own each round into all capital cities.

Some examples 

Croc will oversee a new programming agreement with 3AW and take over the production of the week night program Sports Today.

In a negotiation with SEN, Crocmedia will provide broadcasts for that station's two weekend twilight games, along with providing game coverage for 5AA in Adelaide and 6PR in Perth and extending the AFL coverage into Sydney and Brisbane through the Macquarie and Southern Cross networks.

Crocmedia will produce extended football and program coverage for AFL.com.au.

Says Hutchy

" I am really lucky. Get to work each day with smart, talented, dedicated people who run shotgun each day and combat my deficiencies with great ideas and drive. We are blessed to work in sport, little own AFL the best of all. And with great brand and media partners. Today our team turned a probable tough spot into an opportunity for us. Such an honour to work in AFL radio and TV and to get a new chance for six years is super exciting. Quick moment to reflect on the quality of our people who made it possible at a time when we could have easily been swept away. Feels like the starting line all over again but with sensational partners and people this time around."

A real rockstar of a human - proud to call him my friend and be part of the Croc Media journey! 

Stuff happenning in VC in September according to Crunchbase

Recent Investments

CTERA Networks $25M/Venture CTERA Networks is a cloud storage services platform provider. The Israel and NYC-based company claims to have 25K customers, including Santander, T-Mobile, and The Carlyle Group. Categories: New York · Cloud Data Services · Enterprise Software · Data Storage · File Sharing Founders: Liran Eshel, Zohar Kaufman Investors: Bessemer Venture Partners (Lead), Venrock, + 1 more GitLab $20M/Series B GitLab is an open-source code collaboration platform. The SF-based company announced its $4M Series A round about one year ago. Categories: San Francisco · Information Technology · Open Source · Software Founders: Dmitriy Zaporozhets, Sytse Sijbrandij Investors: August Capital (Lead), Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures Quandl $12M/Series B Quandl is a search engine portal for numerical data. The Toronto-based company’s platform is used by over 100K people including analysts from hedge funds, asset managers, and investment banks. Categories: Toronto · Internet · Search Engine · Developer APIs · Cloud Data Services · FinTech · Analytics Founders: Tammer Kamel, Abraham Thomas Investors: Nexus Venture Partners (Lead), August Capital More Investments Company Amount / Round Lead Investor Viking Cruises $500M / Private Equity – SolarCity $305M / Post IPO Equity Quantum Strategic Partners Guazi.com $250M / Private Equity – Defy Media $70M / Series B Wellington Management GreenSky $50M / Venture Fifth Third Bancorp Datorama $32M / Series C Lightspeed Venture Partners Phononic Devices $30M / Series E GGV Capital oTMS $25M / Series B Chen Weixing Praetura Asset Finance 18M GBP / Venture British Business Bank Investments project44 $10M / Series A Emergence Capital Partners, Chicago Ventures Sarcos $10M /  – ZCOOL $10M / Series B EMC Ventures RackWare $10M / Series B Signal Peak Ventures Point $8.4M / Series A Andreessen Horowitz Business Talent Group $8.0M / Series B NextEquity Partners TVTY $6.7M / Series B Serena Capital Portfolium $6.6M / Series A SJF Ventures Arbor $6.5M / Series A Canaan Partners Fusebill $6.0M / Series A – PubNub $6.0M /  Ericsson, Cisco Investments Sourcery Technologies $5.0M / Series A Marker Visit Philadelphia $2.0M / Venture – InstaVR $2.0M / Series A The Venture Reality Fund Trade Machines FI GmbH 1.0M EUR / Venture – Check I'm Here $1.0M / Series A Jeffrey Vinik EpiVax $600K / Grant National Institutes of Health UCHANGE $500K / Seed – Purple Style Labs 30M INR / Seed – DashTag 250K EUR / Seed – Meadow Foods unknown /  Paine & Partners Eyewitness Surveillance unknown / Venture – Lucideus unknown / Seed Amit Choudhary Meetrics unknown / Series C – Paperclip unknown / Seed Finance Wales Glory kick boxing unknown / Series B Yao Capital TradeCloud.nl unknown / Venture – All Recent Funding Activity

Recent Acquisitions

Untangle Acquired by Providence Equity Partners More Acquisitions Company Acquired by Amount Intersil Renesas Electronics (Japan) $3.2B WisdomGroup 8th Light – All Recent Acquisition Activity

Upcoming Tech Events

TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2016 September 12-14, 2016 7:30am in San Francisco TC Disrupt is the world’s leading authority in debuting revolutionary startups, introducing game-changing technologies, and discussion. More Events Start Date Event Location Sep 22, 2016 NEXT16 Hamburg Sep 24, 2016 Indie Games Festival San Francisco Sep 27, 2016 GMIC Silicon Valley 2016 San Francisco More Upcoming Events Accelerator Deadlines Date Accelerator Location Sep 18, 2016 Microsoft Accelerator Tel Aviv Tel Aviv Sep 19, 2016 Startupbootcamp FoodTech Rome Rome Sep 19, 2016 ProSiebenSat.1 Accelerator Munich

Virtual reality and venture capital in China

SHANGHAI, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- China is leading the tech race with advances in virtual reality and investments from venture capitalists, plus a new generation of rising stars. 

Silicon Dragon is hosting a well-timed tech innovation and venture capital forum in Shanghai, September 22. This program will explore the latest trends in how China is getting ahead with brands that are going global, raising huge financing sums, merging and acquiring, and inventing the future of tech with such leaders as Didi, Xiaomi, Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent.

This 6th annual Silicon Dragon forum takes place at the JW Marriott Tomorrow Square in the heart of Shanghai, a leading hub for venture capital.

Silicon Dragon's Shanghai program features panels with leading venture capitalists from DraperDragon, Lightspeed China, Fidelity and more. 

They will discuss unicorns, financings, M&A deals and the future of China's technology landscape.

A special talk by Alvin Wang Graylin, who leads China VR at HTC, is a highlight of the program.

The Silicon Dragon forum in Shanghai also features a panel of rising stars -- female founders and investors who are making it in China. They include venture investors from 500 Startups and Cherubic Ventures.

Expecting to draw up to 200 participants, the Silicon Dragon conference brings together business leaders in China, well-known Chinese entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors and the startup ecosystem for discussions on what's next for China's up and coming companies. Participants will gain insights on how to raise financing and develop strategies to succeed in China.  

Main Sponsors
KPMG Sidley Austin

Event Partners
AngelVest MobileMonday Shanghai Chinaccelerator DayDayUp YooPay WeWork SoGal NakedHub

Why Atlassian raised $60m

AtlassianAtlassian cofounders Mike Cannon-Brookes (left) and Scott Farquhar (right)

Business software company Atlassian, now a $6 billion publicly-traded company on the Nasdaq took a $60m investment from Accel partners even though it had $55m in the bank. 

Why? Mike and Scott wanted to build up their board for a listing, new they wanted Richard Wong from Accel Partners and negotiated a deal! 

Flickr/JD LasicaAccel Partners’ Rich Wong

They tried keeping the round small, around $5 million, says MikeCannon-Brookes, but Accel wanted more equity in the company and Atlassian ended up accepting $60 million from Accel. 

Where did the money go? 

the lion’s share of that investment ended up being used for employee liquidity. In other words, Atlassian brokered the sale of stock options from its employees directly to Accel, with the cash going straight into its employees’ pockets.

Accel got the equity it wanted; Atlassian’s leadership didn’t give up control; Atlassian employees got to cash out their shares almost 5 years before the 2015 IPO; everybody was happy.  A win - win . 

Read more here http://www.businessinsider.com.au/atlassian-ceo-mike-cannon-brookes-accel-partners-2016-9

You can read Cannon-Brookes’ full interview with Recode/Decode here>> http://www.recode.net/2016/9/8/12854474/atlassian-mike-cannon-brookes-australia-recode-decode-podcast-transcript

10 rules for equity investing

Great tips from John Cleese and Aberdeen

http://thinkingaloud.aberdeenasset.com.au/en/thinkingaloudau/investment-clarity/ten-golden-rules-of-equity-investing?utm_medium=content&utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=10rules_australia_english&utm_content=sponsored%20jobs#rule10

10 rules of equity investing - great video clips by Aberdeen and John  Cleese

1. Who controls the company - are they aligned with shareholders - do you trust them 

2. The most important asset is its people - what is quality of people and culture 

3. Strong Balance sheet is key - a company has to sustain and overcome issues 

4. Understand what you are buying - if something is too good to be true - and you don't understand it -  it probably is 

5. Think long term - avoid getting involved in daily noise of market fluctuations - gray investments need time to grow 

6. Benchmarks are for measuring - don't just follow the crowd - think different to  the benchmark 

7. Be wary of over-ambition and companies delving into something that's not in their area of expertise

8. Do your own research - don't only rely on brokers - visit the company - make your own assessment

9. Take advantage of irrational Behavior - arbitrage - markets are driven by humans - humans are irrational - buy low sell high

10. Make sure that the competitive advantage of the company is sustainable 

State of Plat from Nab

 

1. ‘World Population Ageing 2015: Highlights’, ESA, UN. 2. Facebook and Worldometers.info. 3. ‘Go on guess: The global rate-cut tally since 2008’, Financial Times. Note: As at 25 March 2016. The total covers central banks in developed economies, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, South Africa and Asia. Some smaller economies may not be captured. 4.‘Transforming World Atlas, 2015’, Bank of America Merrill Lynch. 5. ‘Negative-yield debt breaks $10 trillion level for first time’, Financial Times, https://next.ft.com/content/37eb6964-2908-11e6-8ba3-cdd781d02d89, as at 4 July 2016. 6. FactSet and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. 7. ‘China GDP growth slips to 6.7% as stimulus eases down’, Financial Times, https://next.ft.com/content/faa4576c-0203-11e6-9cc4-27926f2b110c, as at 4 July 2016. 8. ‘Private equity 2016 forecast and deskbook’, Probitas Partners. 9. Crude oil prices: West Texas Intermediate (WTI) – Cushing Oklahoma, Economic Research, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. 10. Quarterly Perspectives Australia 2Q 2016, JP Morgan Asset Management. 11. ‘HM Treasury analysis: the immediate economic impact of leaving the EU’, HM Government, May 2016, www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/524967/hm_treasury_analysis_the_immediate_economic_impact_of_leaving_the_eu_web.pdf, as at 12 July 2016. 12. OECD calculations. http://www.oecd.org/economy/the-economic-consequences-of-brexit-a-taxing-decision.htm 13.www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/negotiating-the-economic-cross-currents-20160311-gngezp.html, as at 5 July 2016. 14. Statement by Glenn Stevens, Governor: Monetary Policy Decision, 3 May 2016, RBA. 15. Catalogue number 6401.0 – Consumer Price Index, Australia, March 2016, Australian Bureau of Statistics and RBA. 16. ‘F4 - Retail deposit and investment rates’, June 2016, RBA. 17. 2016 Long-term investing report’, Russell Investments and ASX, May 2016.

Working crazy hours impresses no one . It helps no one

It really pisses me off when people can't seem to stop talking about the crazy hours they work.

Donald Trump has been endlessly knocking Hillary Clinton for sleeping  calling out her lack of stamina, as he brags about not needing much sleep!

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer ( now ex) , said in a recent Bloomberg BusinessWeek interview that she regularly pulls all nighters, and can judge a startup's chances for success by whether people are working on the weekends and 130 hours in a week, referring to the value hard work played in Google's success. 

Working more than 55 hours a week is bad for you– in many ways  This has got to stop. The idea that being well-rested could be a black mark against a leader is preposterous. And even if a super early wake-up time works for some people -- if you're having to get up at 4 a.m. to avoid distractions in your day, there's probably something wrong with how we're working.

4 in 10 Americans don't use all the vacation time allotted and a Gallup poll found that 50 percent of people work more than 40 hours a week, and the average, nearly 47 hours a week in 2014, and has been creeping up for years.

The expectation of crazy hours is strong enough that one researcher found some men pretend to work an 80-hour week, even when they don't.

Research, time and time again, shows  negative effects on people's health, on turnover, on absenteeism, on productivity. 

Studies have shown that after about 50 hours a week, productivity actually decreases 

Amazon.will soon launch an experiment that sets up technical teams made up solely of part-time workers, earning benefits and salaries - naturally at lesser pay - and outputs will probably increase! 

Pip Marlow's keynote saying that Microsoft is changing from Activity based focus to outcomes based focus really resonated with me . If you can achieve your outcome in 5 minutes while sitting on the toilet.... In my view .... Happy Days 

People don't buy what you do .... They buy why you do it!

Article inspired from Washington post article  by Jane McGregor https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/09/01/stop-touting-the-crazy-hours-you-work-it-helps-no-one-2/