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No, I am not working for, have a $ interest in, or related to the owners or store owners of Cafepress.com I am writing this short blog in praise of it just because I like the site and I think it is a lot of fun.

Why is it so much fun? Because I can get very creative on it. I made my daughter's picture into post cards for her and my son's drawing on a mug. I am currently working on creating my own postage stamps which given the uniqueness of sending out mail with my own pictures is worth the price. A U.S. postage stamp for an 8 ounce letter is $0.39 so for a book of 20 it costs $7.80 and to order my own postage stamps from cafepress.com it will cost me about $21.00 and few cents or about $1.05 per stamp. More expensive? Yes! But worth the fun of designing my own stamp. Or, you can create postage pals to use next to a regular stamp to sort of send a message.

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Here's a quick post to mull over on the weekend..

The latest reports from the VC community(courtesy: PE week wire, April 3) continue to show a non-flattering picture for VC backed exits in the U.S

IPO: The number of Venture-backed IPO's in the U.S declined from 93 in 2004 to 56 in 2005 to 10 in Q1 of 2006.

M&A: Total value of exit was $15.4 billion in 2004; $15.8 billion in 2005 and $4.8 billion in Q1 of 2006. The number of deals fell from 186 in 2004 to 167 in 2005; and 43 in Q1 of 2006.

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The Sarbanes Oxley, passed by both Houses in 2002 is bound to have a profound impact on the VC community in the U.S.

Put simply, the act imposes many stringent regulations on companies that wish to file for a public offering(IPO). For VC's this means that far fewer of their portfolio companies will go public, and an acquisition by a bigger company is the most viable 'exit'. These acquisitions typically do not fetch as much as a firm going public, and hence VC's find it harder to earn returns manadated by their LP'S.

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Recently, there has been a spate of investments in Indian companies that provide online travel services. This is probably one of the earliest forays by VC's into an an entire Internet sector in India.

Kleiner Perkins in Cleartrip
WestBrige in Travel Guru

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