Saying that moving quickly is imperative, President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday offered an outline of his economic recovery plan to create 2.5 million jobs by 2011, saying American workers will rebuild the nation's roads and bridges, modernize its schools and create more sources of alternative energy.img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rss/money_latest/~4/HEwkVheif1E" height="1" width="1"/

While attending an economic summit in Peru, President George W. Bush called for an end to the repressive actions and violence attributed to the government of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, and said a legitimate government must be formed there.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=mXkMn"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=mXkMn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=HZ7MN"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=HZ7MN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=e6sBn"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=e6sBn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=8F47n"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=8F47n" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=sAr9N"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=sAr9N" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?a=bAqQN"img src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~f/CBSNewsMain?i=bAqQN" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsMain/~4/461890175" height="1" width="1"/

LONDON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama said on Saturday he was crafting a two-year plan to fight an economic crisis of "historic proportions" and Chinese leader Hu Jintao said his country was ready to play a big role in the global effort.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=v73Ha0b8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=IhDZAQEm"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=IhDZAQEm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=7pCHuawK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=7pCHuawK" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reuters/topNews/~4/J9QT8LzkTGM" height="1" width="1"/

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=48dc617714b9b9a3003f777dmaxX=224maxY=224" border="0" alt="clouds_320.jpg" title="clouds_320.jpg" width="224" height="224" /A new feature for the Amazon's (AMZN) EC2? The cloud computing community is abuzz today over a href="http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/"Public Data Sets/a coming soon to Amazon's cloud./p pHere's how it works: a href="http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/faqs1.shtml"The human genome is about 3 GB/a in size, not counting annotations. Rather than have every scientist on the EC2 working with it upload (and pay for) their own copy, Amazon hosts the genome itself, which any EC2 customer can access. Other data sets Amazon will be making public: The U.S. Census, economic databases from the U.S. Labor department, and 80 GB of conformers from the ChemInformatics toolkit, whatever that is (we got a C- in chemistry)./p pMakes a lot of sense to us. For very little cost, Amazon could be generating a lot of goodwill among scientists and academics, important customers in the utlity computing market. And if Amazon can make its own public data sets a common reference point for researchers, network effects will make academics prefer the EC2 to other clouds./p pstrongSee Also:/strongbr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/amazon-s-cdn-won-t-hurt-akamai-or-limelight-not-yet-at-least"Amazon's CDN Won't Hurt Akamai Or Limelight -- Not Yet, At Least/abr /a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/larry-ellison-someone-explain-to-me-this-cloud-computing-thing-my-company-is-committing-to-orcl-"Larry Ellison: Someone Explain To Me This "Cloud Computing" Thing My Company Is Committing To/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/K9hFajn3tZfv_fzu2sMkRolvuY0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/K9hFajn3tZfv_fzu2sMkRolvuY0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=x6NsAGAw"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=x6NsAGAw" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=j0Nxvcol"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=BuzGHpIE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=tR30C5gK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=tR30C5gK" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=8JHuCbJo"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=SeyVRfVj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=wKzRK02u"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=NbGZIzjP"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/1f4MI0yJzTA" height="1" width="1"/

psource: a href=http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto112120080527333483amp;page=2Financialnbsp; Timesbr //a/p p style=text-align: justify;The results provide further evidence that the massive blow to economic confidence that followed the collapse of a class=ticker onclick=javascript:urchinTracker(/Gateway/BodyLink/Company); href=http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?criteria_name=textamp;criteria_value=%22Lehman+Brothers%22Lehman Brothers/a has led to a vicious circle as companies slash investment plans and cut jobs, further intensifying the economic gloom. quot;Employers are reacting quickly to the downturn, shedding staff at a pace not seen for over five years,quot; said Mr Williamson.br //p

President-elect plans to create 2.5 million jobs in coming years, says U.S. is facing a 'crisis of historic proportions'
• Geithner Would Bring Experience to Treasury Post
• Obama to Unveil Members of Economic Team
• Number of U.S. Bank Failures This Year Hits 22
• FOXBusiness: The Next Steps at Citigroup

US President-elect Barack Obama says he wants an economic plan in place to create 2.5m new jobs over two years.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US president-elect Barack Obama announced Saturday that he had ordered his economic advisers to produce an economic recovery plan to create 2.5 million new jobs over the next two years.

psource: a href=http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1861105,00.htmlTime Magazinebr //a/p p style=text-align: justify; David Roche, president of Independent Strategy, an economic consultancy in London, notes that throughout most of this decade quot;he world economy has been used to using $4 to $5 of credit for every $1 of GDP growth.quot; Even if this quot;profligate use of capital is halved,quot; Roche argues, quot;it still means credit expansion of 10% to 15% is needed to achieve real growth of 2% to 3%.quot; The problem: credit, far from expanding, is still contracting around the world — despite governments efforts to salvage the financial system. /p p style=text-align: justify; The result — a deflationary bust — is evident everywhere. On Thursday morning crude-oil prices — as good a barometer as any for global economic activity — plunged below $50 a barrel...../p

In an audacious new paper, "Homes With Tails," Tim Wu and Derek Slater argue that there's no good technical or economic reason why homeowners couldn't supply their own fiber-optic internet connections that run hundreds of times faster than today's connections: We call this property model “Homes with Tails,” for the fiber would form part of the property right in the home. Key facets of our approach include: 1. A “condominium” model for fiber ownership, in which individual strands of fiber are sold to consumers, while maintenance and other collective needs are managed jointly. 2. Private firms and municipalities could consider selling fiber connections based on this model; and 3. Governments could consider using various mechanisms to support consumer purchases, including a tax credit to homeowners or renters who purchase a broadband connection. Summary: Homes With Tails, PDF: Homes With Tails...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=bdf350670d344b8ba23dce7fdf1931cfp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=bdf350670d344b8ba23dce7fdf1931cfp=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=bdf350670d344b8ba23dce7fdf1931cf" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

div class="center"div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/26/d1/0009d126.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/26/d1/0009d126_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_643366"//a/divbr/ bFinancial Accounting in an Economic Context/bbr/ South-Western Pub | ISBN: 0324003374 |1999-07-30 | PDF | 890 pages | 17 Mb /div

LIMA (AFP) - Oil-rich states and companies that reaped unprecedented gains when prices skyrocketed have a moral duty to ease the world's economic crisis, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has said.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The International Monetary Fund is "ready to rapidly assist" Latvia deal with its economic crisis, in close cooperation with the European Union, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said Friday in a statement.

My, my -- how's this for truth in advertising? Palm InfoCenter has confirmed with a Palm spokesperson that the flagging outfit will be laying off an undisclosed amount of employees as the economy worsens and the firm attempts to keep that final nail from being slammed down on its coffin. According to the spokesperson, the company will undergo a certain amount of restructuring (sound familiar?) that will "result in company reductions in the US and internationally." Incredulously, the statement also included this gem: "The global economic downturn continues to dampen demand for consumer goods around the world, and the impact on the economic environment is worsened by our maturing Centro line and the length of time it is taking to ramp our new Windows Mobile products." We won't say for sure that it's actually taking some of the blame here, but it sure sounds like it. Now, if only it would take charge of its future...

[Image courtesy of DayLife]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Palm axes an undisclosed amount of employees, sort of blames itself originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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div align="center"a href="http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/7257/a-round-of-layoffs-at-palm/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadgetmobile.com/media/2008/11/11-21-08-palm-building.jpg" //abr //div My, my -- how's this for truth in advertising? emPalm InfoCenter/em has confirmed with a Palm spokesperson that the flagging outfit will be laying off an undisclosed amount of employees as the a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/tag/economy/"economy/a worsens and the firm attempts to keep that final nail from being slammed down on its coffin. According to the spokesperson, the company will undergo a certain amount of restructuring (a href="http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/13/wsj-confirms-palm-layoffs-amidst-rubenstein-reorg/"sound familiar/a?) that will "result in company reductions in the US and internationally." Incredulously, the statement also included this gem: "The global economic downturn continues to dampen demand for consumer goods around the world, and the impact on the economic environment is worsened by our maturing Centro line and the length of time it is taking to ramp our new Windows Mobile products." We won't say for sure that it's actually taking some of the blame here, but it sure sounds like it. Now, if only it would a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/05/analyst-says-palm-burning-through-cash-like-its-going-out-of-st"take charge/a of its future...br /br /[Image courtesy of a href="http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0bu9gEecUBc6U/610x.jpg"DayLife/a]pFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/cellphones/" rel="tag"Cellphones/a, a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/handhelds/" rel="tag"Handhelds/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/21/palm-axes-an-undisclosed-amount-of-employees-sort-of-blames-its/"Palm axes an undisclosed amount of employees, sort of blames itself/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.engadget.com"Engadget/a on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:03:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/7257/a-round-of-layoffs-at-palm/Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/21/palm-axes-an-undisclosed-amount-of-employees-sort-of-blames-its/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1380058/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/21/palm-axes-an-undisclosed-amount-of-employees-sort-of-blames-its/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/BBEYVW9KK8wwpOyR8-zdi2Wo8IU/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/BBEYVW9KK8wwpOyR8-zdi2Wo8IU/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=6d97yA7H"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=6d97yA7H" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=pBsLlVNX"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=pBsLlVNX" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~4/Lg-zARXTOgA" height="1" width="1"/

We've been among those who think that the government shouldn't be forcing cable providers to a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080713/1735351664.shtml"offer a la carte channels/a. While people ialways/i insist that if they got a la carte cable, it would be cheaper, the facts are quite different. The economics of providing a la carte through existing systems would greatly increase overhead, and make it difficult to make things work. Most people would end up paying the same or more -- but for fewer channels. Those who are complaining might be better off recognizing that when they pay for cable they're a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080530/0449231268.shtml"effectively/a just paying for what they want -- and the other channels are freebies. br /br / Or, they can just realize that a la carte TV is coming iwithout/i the need for government interference. Adam Thierer notes that there's a growing movement of folks realizing that you can a href="http://techliberation.com/2008/11/16/we-dont-need-to-mandate-a-la-carte-it-already-exists/" target="_new"get an awful lot of television programming (legally) online these days/a. It's reaching the point where we're finally moving towards a world that we predicted a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050603/0231201_F.shtml"years ago/a that shows are independent of channels or TV providers, and you can just get them directly online. That's already leading some people to ditch TV service entirely, knowing they can get plenty of shows they want online -- and all of this is happening without the government getting involved at all. So, can anyone explain why it still makes sense for the government to get involved here?br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081117/0118352846.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081117/0118352846.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081117/0118352846op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=2e23d26cc71ea71c304dca8e0d2ce126p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=2e23d26cc71ea71c304dca8e0d2ce126p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=2e23d26cc71ea71c304dca8e0d2ce126" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=6ysNn"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=6ysNn" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/461466644" height="1" width="1"/

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President-elect Barack Obama intends to name Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, as his treasury secretary to confront the nation's intense economic turmoil, senior Democratic officials said Friday. The stock market soared on the news. Word of Geithner's likely selection emerged as New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in line to become secretary of state, said through a spokesman that discussions were on track for her appointment but no final...

SINGAPORE (AFP) - Singapore's Temasek Holdings, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, says it will cut staff salaries in the face of a global economic slowdown.

Timothy Geithner, Obama's likely choice for Treasury, thrives on challenges — as secretary, he'll have his hands full
• Obama to Unveil Members of Economic Team
• Dow Surges Hour After News of Obama Cabinet Picks

In these perilous economic times, the layoff memos often follow a familiar refrain: “We have cut costs by 20 percent. That gives us an additional year’s runway. Or two.” But while yes, companies can cut costs and prolong their survival, when it comes to startups, just because they can doesn’t mean they should.

I’m speaking here of venture-backed startups, which represent a small minority of companies. The sole purpose of most companies is to create a steady income stream for their owners and operators — in other words, survival. Venture-backed startups, on the other hand, are created with the sole purpose of a successful exit.

Why growth is crucial

Whether that exit comes in the form of an acquisition or an IPO, in the meantime, the lifeblood of any startup is growth, be it in terms of customers, usage, revenues or profits. Under most economic conditions, an IPO is impossible without revenue and profit growth, and we are unlikely to see that change any time soon. From an acquisition point of view, stagnant companies are valued at low multiples of revenue, say 1x-2x. And while popular meme suggests that flat is the new growth — given the downturn in the economy, the argument goes, even keeping revenues flat is sufficient — this argument does not apply to startups.

By definition, startups are supposed to be attacking nascent market opportunities and unsaturated markets, and as such should be able to grow even during a downturn. If a startup cannot find growth in this environment, it’s a clear message that the market opportunity might be better served by an established company. Of course, growth in profits or revenues are far better than just growth in usage, but even growth in usage is better than stagnation on all three fronts. There is at least the possibility that a company with strong usage growth might one day be attractive to an acquirer with a good monetization engine.

It’s no fun to work at a startup that isn’t growing. Stagnation leads to low morale, with people sitting around waiting for the axe to fall. Rather than let the company become a zombie, management would be doing their investors and employees a favor by pulling the plug and returning the remaining capital to investors.

Why VCs often don’t put companies out of their misery

Founders and executives have a lot of emotional capital invested in their companies, so when it comes to making the ultimate decision, their reluctance is understandable. What’s surprising is how often VCs let companies turn into zombies. The reason for this is a subtle misalignment of interests between VCs and their investors. As long as a startup still appears to be, on some level, alive, VCs can carry the company on their books at the valuation set by the last round of financing. Once they pull the plug, the fund will receive pennies on the dollar, a loss that has to be recorded on the books and doesn’t look good when the firm goes to raise their next fund. Every VC portfolio, therefore, has its fair share of zombies.

Another contributing factor is excessive preference overhangs. Investors receive preferred stock with the right to get back their invested capital ahead of common shareholders in an exit; in some cases they have the right to receive a multiple of their invested capital ahead of common shareholders. The total amount that investors need to receive before common shareholders can participate in an exit is called the “preference overhang.”

If a company has raised so much capital that any realistic acquisition will be below the overhang, then common shareholders stand to receive nothing from the sale — and company management has no incentive to look for such an exit. In such cases, it’s important for the VCs and management to agree to restructure the preference overhangs to make such exits attractive to management. Otherwise the company is destined to become a zombie.

Every startup founder and employee has to consider three possible outcomes: success, failure and zombiehood. Success is much better than failure, but quick failure beats wasting years of your life on a zombie. If you are a company founder, and you are considering layoffs to extend the runway (perhaps on the advice of your venture investor), you should look in the mirror and ask yourself whether you are cutting away your growth opportunity and just choosing a lingering death over a quick one.

Anand Rajaraman is a co-founder of Kosmix and Founding Partner of Cambrian Ventures. Disclosure: He is also an investor in Giga Omni Media, parent company of GigaOM.

In these perilous economic times, the layoff memos often follow a familiar refrain: “We have cut costs by 20 percent. That gives us an additional year’s runway. Or two.” But while yes, companies can cut costs and prolong their survival, when it comes to startups, just because they can doesn’t mean they should.

I’m speaking here of venture-backed startups, which represent a small minority of companies. The sole purpose of most companies is to create a steady income stream for their owners and operators — in other words, survival. Venture-backed startups, on the other hand, are created with the sole purpose of a successful exit.

Why growth is crucial

Whether that exit comes in the form of an acquisition or an IPO, in the meantime, the lifeblood of any startup is growth, be it in terms of customers, usage, revenues or profits. Under most economic conditions, an IPO is impossible without revenue and profit growth, and we are unlikely to see that change any time soon. From an acquisition point of view, stagnant companies are valued at low multiples of revenue, say 1x-2x. And while popular meme suggests that flat is the new growth — given the downturn in the economy, the argument goes, even keeping revenues flat is sufficient — this argument does not apply to startups.

By definition, startups are supposed to be attacking nascent market opportunities and unsaturated markets, and as such should be able to grow even during a downturn. If a startup cannot find growth in this environment, it’s a clear message that the market opportunity might be better served by an established company. Of course, growth in profits or revenues are far better than just growth in usage, but even growth in usage is better than stagnation on all three fronts. There is at least the possibility that a company with strong usage growth might one day be attractive to an acquirer with a good monetization engine.

It’s no fun to work at a startup that isn’t growing. Stagnation leads to low morale, with people sitting around waiting for the axe to fall. Rather than let the company become a zombie, management would be doing their investors and employees a favor by pulling the plug and returning the remaining capital to investors.

Why VCs often don’t put companies out of their misery

Founders and executives have a lot of emotional capital invested in their companies, so when it comes to making the ultimate decision, their reluctance is understandable. What’s surprising is how often VCs let companies turn into zombies. The reason for this is a subtle misalignment of interests between VCs and their investors. As long as a startup still appears to be, on some level, alive, VCs can carry the company on their books at the valuation set by the last round of financing. Once they pull the plug, the fund will receive pennies on the dollar, a loss that has to be recorded on the books and doesn’t look good when the firm goes to raise their next fund. Every VC portfolio, therefore, has its fair share of zombies.

Another contributing factor is excessive preference overhangs. Investors receive preferred stock with the right to get back their invested capital ahead of common shareholders in an exit; in some cases they have the right to receive a multiple of their invested capital ahead of common shareholders. The total amount that investors need to receive before common shareholders can participate in an exit is called the “preference overhang.”

If a company has raised so much capital that any realistic acquisition will be below the overhang, then common shareholders stand to receive nothing from the sale — and company management has no incentive to look for such an exit. In such cases, it’s important for the VCs and management to agree to restructure the preference overhangs to make such exits attractive to management. Otherwise the company is destined to become a zombie.

Every startup founder and employee has to consider three possible outcomes: success, failure and zombiehood. Success is much better than failure, but quick failure beats wasting years of your life on a zombie. If you are a company founder, and you are considering layoffs to extend the runway (perhaps on the advice of your venture investor), you should look in the mirror and ask yourself whether you are cutting away your growth opportunity and just choosing a lingering death over a quick one.

Anand Rajaraman is a co-founder of Kosmix and Founding Partner of Cambrian Ventures. Disclosure: He is also an investor in Giga Omni Media, parent company of GigaOM.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The economic team of US president-elect Barack Obama came into view as fears mounted on the global financial crisis and more mass job cuts loomed worldwide.