Red Herring was THE tech startup industry rag about 10 years ago.  Particularly for East Coast based, telecom or content plays.  In the Gobi days (my first startup experience), it was de riguer for us and our ISP competitors to be mentioned in the Herring, and we loved it. With the Industry Standard and the Herring, we had a good shot of coverage every week. There seemed to be a quota of under-35 CEO cover stories and the writing was a bit more hard hitting than other new entrants such as Business 2.0 or Wired.  Also, it seemed that RH adopted the NYC Silicon Alley startup scene with a bit of needed skepticism.
So as you can imagine, it was my pleasure to speak with senior editor at Red Herring, Cassimir Medford about Mobile Money Ventures.  I hope we can stay on the RH radar in what in undoubtedly be an interesting period for our company and the mobile industry at large.

Citi, SK Telecom Bank on Mobile [redherring.com]

“SK Telecom has a real desire to come into the U.S. with some of the expertise it has developed, and with Citi’s desire to enter the mobile space, we felt it was a perfect match for us,” said Jayastu Bhattacharya, senior vice president, strategy and business development for MMV.

One of the issues that’s cropped up with our “perma-lead” investor model is that discussions with VCs on funding have taken on a shape that I’m not as used to.  In my previous startup experience timing has been everything with VCs where the remaining runway is as much a source of pressure for the VCs as it is for us.  Given where we are in the cycle and who our initial investors are, runway is not an issue. So the discussions with VCs, strategics and opportunistic funding sources have all turned a bit casual.

Also, the change in the mentality of the VC who typically leads a round to what will definitely be a co-investor is another twist.  I will be interested to see how due diligence is approached given the scrutiny that our parent companies give us.