SMB

Venture investing plunged nearly 50 percent in 2002, dipping to levels last seen in 1998, according to the latest MoneyTree Survey from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). During the year, venture financiers invested just $21.2 billion, comp...

The National Venture Capital Association has made official what most observers already knew: 2002 was a dismal year for initial public offerings, with just 22 venture-backed companies debuting in U.S. stock markets. Those firms raised a collective $1.9 billion. In comparison, 35 companies held IPOs ...

The world's most-trafficked Web site has announced it will begin offering Web hosting packages aimed at small businesses. For between $11.95 and $39.95 per month, small businesses will receive 10 to 35 e-mail accounts, 50 to 350 megabytes of storage and 20 to 35 gigabytes of data transfer. "We see t...

With more people adopting broadband, and larger national ISPs swallowing up smaller regional ones, some industry observers think independent ISPs are on the ropes. But executives at small ISPs see a bright future for those that survived the industry consolidation of recent years. Although giant ISPs...

Apple has made it a priority to lure small businesses to the Mac OS platform, reasoning that they will be willing to abandon Windows in favor of a network that is easier to maintain without tremendous IT resources. Brian Croll, Apple's senior director of software for worldwide product marketing, tol...

Eighty-one percent of small businesses that maintained an online presence during last year's holiday season reached new customers, leading to an increase in sales and profitability, according to a new Harris Interactive survey released by Yahoo! That seems like a compelling figure, but most small bu...

Venture capital investments tumbled another 26 percent in the third quarter, with quarterly funding levels falling below $5 billion for the first time since 1998, according to a new report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association. The number ...

It may be an overused phrase, but it is still a fact that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and this rule certainly has held true in e-commerce. But there is still abundant opportunity for less-established e-commerce sites to trumpet their existence to the world -- or at least the part of the worl...

Many online retailers have spent considerable time and money trying to duplicate the success of Amazon.com, but the market conditions that spawned Amazon no longer exist, according to Giga Information Group analyst Andrew Bartels. "It is unlikely that any existing retailer would let you take over a ...

The stock market and the dot-com world may be down for now, but that does not mean launching a new e-business is out of the question. New York University business professor Christopher Tucci pointed out that many of today's technology and commerce giants began life at a time when startup capital was...

In the early days of e-commerce, small businesses flocked to the Web with grandiose visions of transforming mom-and-pop shops into mega retailers. Those visions turned out to be pipe dreams for most merchants, and the dawn of reality convinced many early adopters to retreat to the brick-and-mortar w...

Although innovation can be wonderful, there is something to be said for sticking to the basics. In fact, that is how venture capitalists seemingly have come to feel about high-tech companies as they contemplate which to fund with now-limited resources. Those who remember the manic days of VC funding...

Numerous venture capitalists are nursing wounds sustained when companies collapsed and stopped going public at a record clip. But most of the VC firms that can trace their roots back to the pre-boom era are still hanging on, if not thriving. "Those who came late to the party and tried to grab all...

Venture funding dropped 11 percent last quarter to $5.7 billion, a level not seen since late 1998, as venture capitalists continued to nurse their wounds and stayed on the sidelines in large numbers, according to the latest quarterly survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Venture Economics a...

IBM's personal computing division has introduced several new ThinkPad notebook and NetVista desktop models, featuring Intel Pentium 4 processors and IBM e-business solutions, such as wireless networking, advanced security and application management. The new products can be taken as a sign that th...