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The valuation for funded startups in Q4 2008 fell by 25% when compared to Q3 of the same year. From October through December groups reported investing in 128 deals with a median pre-money valuation of $3 million. That is a 25% drop from the median pre-money valuation of $3.9 million for the 123 deals that received investment from July through September. This represents the largest quarter-to-quarter drop in the 4 years that Angelsoft has been tracking company valuations through their software.

Ryan Janssen, Angelsoft’s COO, warned against reading too much into these numbers, “Listen, when the price investors are willing to pay for a few guys and an idea, drops less than the price they’re willing to pay for companies on the S&P 500, we’re in pretty good shape.” He added, that in contrast to the dire predictions about the startup economy, the fact that Angel Investors and VCs actually did more deals in Q4 than Q3 using Angelsoft was “damn near a miracle.”

In the second half of 2008 Angelsoft processed over 10,000 entrepreneur applications for the 450 Angel Groups and VCs that use their system. Although valuations for funded companies were down, their site shows valuations across all applications actually increased in Q4. Janssen cautioned reading too much into this, “The valuations that entrepreneurs are seeking is interesting to judge the overall confidence of startups, but those numbers have little connection with reality. We’re really interested in the invested numbers.” When asked about other trends in the last quarter, Janssen responded that investors were looking for companies who had a plan to reach break-even without needing additional funding, “Angels in particular aren’t making investments that require follow-on rounds. They want to know you can survive with the money they put in.”

When asked about other trends in the last quarter, Janssen responded that investors were looking for companies who had a plan to reach break-even without needing additional funding, “Angels in particular aren’t making investments that require follow-on rounds. They want to know you can survive with the money they put in.”

Companies seeking to improve business performance in the midst of the current global economic crisis should focus on three strategic objectives in 2009, according to Accenture:

• create new geographic options that enable them to go to multiple markets to find what they need, be it new customers, talented workers, capital and raw materials;
• focus on building authentically local businesses in each of the markets they serve; and
• build or adapt global networks to enable them to move people and information across their organizations quickly, efficiently and effectively.

These are among the conclusions Accenture has drawn from two studies that address critical issues in both the public and private sectors. The studies, which will be unveiled at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, focus on what Accenture calls the “multi-polar world,” characterized by multiple centers of economic power and business activity – in newly emerging markets and the more well established markets of the United States, Western Europe and Japan.

“Strategies for Achieving High Performance in a Multi-polar World – Global Choices for Global Challenges,” is Accenture’s third report on the evolving multi-polar global economy. The report is based on a survey of business executives in all major industries in 53 developed and emerging markets. It details how high-performance businesses — companies that consistently outperform their peers across business and economic cycles — from both developed and emerging economies are achieving their success through differentiated goals, strategies and beliefs in today’s multi-polar world.

MUTUALdecision announced it has launched the Judging Fund Managers Model – the site’s third online tool enabling investors and financial advisors to rank U.S. mutual funds based on leading academic research.

The Judging Fund Managers Model is based on a highly respected academic paper that finds fund managers who use similar techniques are likely to make similar investment decisions and deliver similar performance in the future. The risk-adjusted returns of top decile funds in this model outperform the bottom decile by at least 5.9 percent. By utilizing MUTUALdecision’s easy-to-use online tool, investors and professional advisors can rate mutual funds based on this powerful and predictive academic model.

“On the heels of 2008’s market performance – where no mutual fund category was spared from significant, across the board percentage declines – traditional methods for evaluating top funds based on past performance become less reliable,” said George Comer, chief academic officer at MUTUALdecision and Associate Professor of Finance, Georgetown University. “The Judging Fund Managers Model is unique in that it evaluates each fund manager’s skill by the extent to which his or her investment decisions resemble those of other managers with distinguished past performance records, arming investors with predictive information about future fund returns.”

Judging Fund Managers by the Company they Keep, published in the Journal of Finance and authored by Randolph Cohen (Harvard Business School), Joshua Coval (Harvard Business School), and Lubos Pastor (University of Chicago), introduces two new performance evaluation measures to judge a fund manager’s skill compared to top performing funds: 1) the extent to which a manager’s portfolio holdings overlap with holdings of other managers, and 2) the overlap of changes to portfolio holdings.

“MUTUALdecision places the power of leading mutual fund academic research in the hands of investors so that they can make superior investment decisions, and the launch of the site’s third model builds upon that mission,” added William G. Byrnes, founder and chief executive officer at MUTUALdecision.

Global purchases of IT goods and services by businesses and governments will decline by 3 percent in 2009 to $1.66 trillion, according to a new forecast from Forrester Research. The 2009 drop measured in US dollars is a distinct shift from 2008, when global IT purchases increased by 8 percent. The 2009 decline ends seven years of growth in global IT purchases; technology purchases fell by 6 percent in both 2001 and 2002.

“Our forecast for 2009 rests on the assumptions that the economic recession in the US and other major economies will start to end in the second half of 2009,” said Andrew Bartels, Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst. “For IT vendor strategists, the global IT market will be a gloomy one in 2009, with prospects of improvement in 2010. Unlike in past years, there are no significant growth markets to offset the weak ones.”

When measured using a mix of local currencies, the picture is a bit better, with global growth of 2.5 percent projected for 2009. Regionally in the relevant local currencies, US purchases of IT goods and services will grow by 1.6 percent in 2009; purchases in Western and Central Europe will be 1.3 percent higher than in 2008; Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa will see 5 percent growth; and Asia Pacific purchases will rise by 3 percent. However, when all of the regional numbers are equated to US dollars, there is a sharper slowdown in IT spending globally.

The report highlights currency fluctuations as another key factor driving the global IT market and having a negative effect on US vendors in particular. Bartels noted, “The fact that 2009 IT purchases growth is so much weaker in US dollars than in local currencies means US vendors with significant overseas business will feel a double dose of pain, as both the economic environment and currency market will work against them for much of 2009.”

Forrester uses several metrics to determine the health and size of the IT market. The data in the Forrester report focuses on IT purchasing — how much computer and communications equipment, software, IT consulting and integration services, and IT outsourcing businesses and governments buy from technology vendors. It is one of the most important metrics for evaluating the health of technology vendors.

2009 Global IT Spending Outlook By Sector

• Software investment will do better than the average. Forrester projects global purchases of software products will be $388 billion in 2009, the same as in 2008, which is better than the declines forecast for other IT goods and services.
• Communications equipment investment will shrink. Purchases of routers, switches, private branch exchanges (PBXs), videoconferencing equipment, and unified communications equipment will fall to $353 billion in 2009, a 3 percent decline from $364 billion in 2008.
• Computer equipment investment will see the biggest slowdown in growth. Purchases of personal computers, servers, storage devices, and peripherals will slip by 4 percent to $434 billion in 2009, from $450 billion in 2008.
• Global IT services and outsourcing will decline. Governments and businesses will buy $484 billion of IT consulting, systems integration, and outsourcing services in 2009, 3 percent less than in 2008. IT outsourcing services will do a bit better than IT consulting and systems integration services, with the latter vulnerable to the slowdown in purchases of software to be implemented and integrated.

Boost eLearning announced results of a new survey that indicate employees are not leveraging Google’s basic search functionality for business research. The online survey reports that most employees are unfamiliar with such basic search techniques as synonym finder, site search, or even how to limit by timeframe or file type. As a result, Google business research queries either fail to provide the desired results or waste valuable employee time by burying key information. Boost eLearning has released a new course, Boost eLearning Google Search Training Quick Lessons, that focuses exclusively on these and other key business research techniques, saving companies valuable employee time and materially improving search results.

“With this survey, it’s apparent that many of Google’s basic search functions are simply unknown among a vast number of workers,” said Victor D. Alhadeff, CEO of Boost eLearning. “Hundreds of millions of Google searches are performed each day, creating a critical need to address this universal problem in the workplace. We’re excited to launch Boost eLearning Google Search Training Quick Lessons. This course includes 15 skills-based lessons that average three minutes per lesson. These lessons help employees become proficient in a wide array of search practices, including queries they didn’t know were possible.”

In 2008, a similar Boost eLearning study reported that 39 percent of all Google searches fail, leading to more than 40 hours of lost productivity per user per year. The current survey sought to identify the reasons behind these statistics, and it indicates that 61 percent of employees don’t know how to return results that include synonyms of search terms and 56 percent of respondents are unable to search within a single Web site. Fifty-four percent do not know how to search within a specific timeframe and 50 percent can’t search by a specific file type (i.e. doc, ppt, etc.). In fact, more than a quarter of respondents are unable to even search for a basic phrase, a powerful query that limits search results to words in a particular order.

As Detroit struggles with a disappointing year-end, market research firm Mintel has uncovered another problem for automakers: consumer dissatisfaction with small cars. In a new consumer study, Mintel found that only half of small car-buying respondents (51%) say they feel “extremely happy” with their small car purchases. This pales when considering that 80% of all respondents report feeling just as happy with their vehicle purchases.

“Our survey revealed a surprisingly high number of small car drivers who aren’t fully satisfied by their vehicles, suggesting that today’s small cars may not have the amenities people want. This is a key insight for Detroit manufacturers as they revisit business and development plans for 2009,” comments Mark Guarino, senior analyst at Mintel.

Mark Guarino notes that “small cars offer many benefits, including lower purchase costs and better fuel efficiency than larger models.” Indeed, Mintel research shows that most small car buyers choose to go compact because of fuel economy. Across income groups, 79% of respondents who purchased small cars say they selected their current vehicle because of gas mileage.

Moreover, 42% of small car owners bought their vehicle to replace a similar-sized vehicle in the same category, according to Mintel. “There is great potential for growth in the small car market,” states Mark Guarino. “Automakers just need to figure out how to best package and sell the benefits of small cars to consumers.”

Mark Guarino believes making luxury features such as surround sound stereo and heated seats standard in small cars could help lure drivers to the market. “The transition from expensive, gas-hogging SUV to cheaper, fuel-efficient compact will feel like less of a sacrifice if the smaller car offers similar luxury features,” he says. “Automakers need these innovative strategies to show consumers they are committed to change.”

As we enter the new year with an economy in the midst of a recession and unemployment at its highest level in more than a decade, Americans are understandably concerned about their job security, with one in three feeling anxious or very anxious about losing their jobs, according to HotJobs’ annual December survey. However, these daunting prospects aren’t causing concern among the other two-thirds of the workforce, who are actually entering the new year intending to seek out a new job. Only 6% of those surveyed think that the Obama presidency will improve the job market immediately, with 25% of respondents unsure how the administration will impact employment opportunities.

Anxiety levels lower for older / “wiser” workers

Respondents to the Yahoo! HotJobs survey who are 55 and over were found to be the least anxious people in the workforce about job security, while workers between the ages of 26 and 54 had the highest levels of anxiety about the future of their jobs. These older workers are also 2.5 times more satisfied with their jobs than those younger than 45 years of age.

“The job market, not unlike the economy, ebbs and flows, and older members of the workforce are relying on that wisdom to bring them comfort during a particularly challenging time,” said Tom Musbach, managing editor of Yahoo! HotJobs. “Their experience can benefit job seekers everywhere as they face a market that is contracting now but will rebound over time. Meanwhile, staying focused on job-search basics — such as nurturing one’s professional network and keeping an updated resume – can help stem anxiety and prevent a career from stalling in 2009.”

Younger workers searching for jobs in the New Year

Among workers 54 and younger who indicated they are slightly to very anxious about their job security, 73% of them say they are doing something about it, which may include networking, updating their resumes, applying for jobs and exploring a career switch. While nearly 30% of them are broadening their skill sets, just over 10% are posting their resumes on job boards.

“There is no silver bullet for people who are concerned about their job security so they should be employing a broad range of job-search best practices to ensure finding the right next job,” said Musbach. “A successful job seeker will do more than just apply for jobs found online. It’s important to talk to people in your personal and professional network about opportunities that may not be found online and to post an updated resume on job boards so recruiters can find the candidates they are looking for. After all, what was once a job seeker’s market is now an employer’s market, so it’s best to play both offense and defense.”

The “Obama Effect” on jobs

As we near the inauguration of Barack Obama as our country’s next president, expectations are high for change overall. As far as his impact on the economy and the resulting job market are concerned, respondents to our survey are realistic as to how quickly change will come. Of all respondents, 21% believe that President-elect Obama will lead us out of the difficult economic situation but it may take time; 29% believe it will take many months for the economy to recover, regardless of who’s in the White House; 15% believe Obama’s policies will put us into a deeper recession; 6% believe Obama will help improve the job market immediately and 25% say they don’t know what impact the new president will have on the economy or the job situation.

Workers in manufacturing/operations are most anxious about job security while healthcare workers have the lowest anxiety levels

Healthcare workers among the respondents to the survey were found to be among the least anxious about the future of their careers, with 6% of respondents indicating they are anxious and no respondents indicating they are very anxious about their job security. Slightly more anxious than healthcare workers are those in government and military jobs, with 8% saying they feel anxious, and education/training workers, with 2% saying they feel anxious and 5% indicating they feel very anxious about the security of their jobs.

Workers with higher levels of anxiety, according to the survey, are workers in manufacturing and operations jobs, with 27% indicating they are anxious or very anxious about their job security. They were joined by people in the construction and facilities (23%), retail (21%) and technology (20%) sectors as the most anxious groups of workers in the country.

“Healthcare is a recession-proof sector, and one that is growing, making workers more confident in their futures,” Musbach said. “Positions in this strong section of our economy are not limited to those requiring professional medical degrees, so people with all types of work experience should investigate the jobs that are available within the healthcare industry.”

Facing a global economic crisis that’s projected to continue through 2009, entrepreneurs are concerned about financing, healthcare costs and the impact of the U.S. presidential election, according to the “2009 Entrepreneurs’ Organization Global Economic Forecast Survey” released today. Despite these concerns, entrepreneurs are confident in their ability to survive the economic downturn and their contribution to economic recovery. They also remain committed to staying “green” and continuing corporate philanthropy efforts.

In its second annual survey, the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) – a global network of more than 7,000 successful entrepreneurs – sought to gauge business owners’ outlook and assemble an entrepreneurial forecast for 2009. Nearly 900 members representing EO’s global membership completed the survey, providing an analysis of the most significant business issues for the 2009 calendar year.

“Our annual survey reveals the business perspective of some of the world’s most successful small business owners, and the outlook for this year rings with a tone of optimism in the face of economic hardship,” said Dave Galbenski, Chairman of the Global Board of Directors for the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. “Not only does this data help us provide maximum value to our members by allowing us to better customize our programs and resources to their needs, it serves as an outstanding global barometer for entrepreneurial concerns and priorities in the coming year.”

Major findings include:

• Nearly nine out of ten global entrepreneurs are concerned about the current economic climate
• More than half of all entrepreneurs are very concerned or concerned about obtaining funding
• Seventy percent of U.S.-based entrepreneurs are concerned or very concerned about the rising cost of providing healthcare in 2009
• Seventy percent of surveyed entrepreneurs are highly confident or confident about surviving the economic crisis
• More than 80 percent of those surveyed believe that entrepreneurs will play a significant role in economic recovery
• One in five entrepreneurs is more likely to start a business now than they were last year, and more than half are equally as likely
• Almost half of respondents anticipate an increase in revenues in 2009, and a quarter expect revenue levels to remain the same as 2008
• Globally, more than a third of entrepreneurs surveyed will increase “green” initiatives, while 45 percent will maintain their current commitment level
• Nearly 60 percent of entrepreneurs surveyed will maintain their current commitment level and nearly a quarter will increase the priority of corporate social responsibility
• Forty four percent of global respondents anticipated that the Obama administration would have a positive effect on their businesses
• U.S.-based entrepreneurs are split regarding the new administration’s impact on their business: 39 percent expect a positive impact and 40 percent expect a negative impact

Intelliden today outlined five key strategies to help network and IT managers both navigate the current downturn and also ensure their companies are best placed for the economic upturn.

“There is a tendency for companies to simply cut costs and then hibernate to ride out economic recessions,” said Alan Black, CEO of Intelliden. “However, as history has shown, by taking smart, pro-active steps during a downturn, technology managers can help their companies be much better placed when the upturn arrives. The current economic downturn will undoubtedly end at some point and those companies that are leaner, fitter and more innovative will likely have the most to gain from the upturn.”

Intelliden has outlined five key strategies for network and IT managers that address these points. These include:

1. Control Cost without Compromising the Business

Technology managers need to harness technology that tackles the most obvious and easiest cost savings, especially if they find themselves resource constrained. Greater automation, and recovering stranded or lost network assets are two easy ways of cutting costs and controlling expenses. Network automation is of particular value in resource constrained environments, particularly for companies with a hiring freeze. Automation of key network configuration management, compliance and provisioning processes enables companies to do more with less. Likewise, recovering stranded and/or lost network assets enables companies to extract ROI from past investments. For example, according to a recent study by the Yankee Group, up to 35% of tier one communication service providers’ network assets and resources are stranded, which can translate to a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Rationalizing technology infrastructure through initiatives such as virtualization and data center consolidation will also help to reduce operational costs.

2. Simplify Your Technology Environment

Recessions can actually be a great time to simplify IT architectures, systems and processes. Fewer systems are easier to manage especially with fewer people. One way to achieve this is through migration to commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions. For companies with a mixture of COTS, proprietary and legacy solutions with overlapping / duplicate functionality, now is a great time to simplify that technology environment by migrating on COTS solutions. This means that staff has to be trained on fewer applications. More disciplined adoption of industry and technology standards, such as SOA and web services, can also improve time to completion and longer term cost of support. Technology managers should also require strategic vendors to collaborate with each other to help drive down costs and to better leverage their respective strengths.

3. Look for Shorter Payback Period on your Investments

All new investments – including technology – will understandably be very closely scrutinized in this economic climate. A recession dictates new expectations for better and faster return on investment periods. New investments with payback periods of more than 12 months or more will be extremely difficult to get funded. This means that existing investments that seemed attractive a few months ago but had longer payback period will become harder to justify. Look for a payback period of 12 months of less on any new technology investments that will make an accelerated impact on the business.

4. Secure Your Network and IT Assets

As the economy swings into a downturn, fraud and crime swing into an upturn. This means the threat of cybercrime, data breaches, hacking, malware, phishing or knowledge theft will peak in activity. Without the proper protection in place, this can result in unnecessary cost when companies can least afford it. Implement higher levels of network security compliance, network authentication, deterministic traffic routing and system access, and increased audit tracking and logging processes to ensure corporate assets are properly protected.

5. Don’t Stop Innovating

Companies still need to be creative and innovative, even in a downturn. There is a tendency for many organizations to hibernate with IT paralysis in a recession. However, it is in times of uncertainty that the best initiatives often come to light. Don’t stop planning or looking at new ways of addressing key issues. Innovative solutions that can enable organizations to retain and satisfy customers, show rapid time to revenue or become more efficient will get executive attention. For example, Unified Communications, Telepresence, VoIP are all solutions that help reduce costs. Think creatively and revisit the business model to harness the company’s core strengths. This could also be a great time to outsource non core activities to managed service providers to help streamline the business.

Via Licensing Corporation today announced a joint patent licensing program for MPEG-4 SLS (Scalable to Lossless Coding). SLS is an audio compression technology which extends MPEG-4 AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) from perceptually transparent playback to true lossless audio quality, in a scalable fashion. This means that losslessly-compressed audio files can be played through an SLS decoder with results that are bit-for-bit identical to the original source material. The same SLS files can also be played back through a standard AAC decoder, such as an iPod, and will deliver the same listening experience as if the source material were encoded in AAC.

SLS (which is also known as HD AAC), will be presented by Fraunhofer IIS during the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at booth 3219.

SLS is particularly suited for use in broadcast and music production environments where its lossless performance allows multiple phases of the recording and editing process to be managed without signal loss. SLS can also ensure that the final production delivers a faithful and complete rendering of the uncompressed source material. The scalability of SLS gives users the ability to maximize sound quality during distribution, by matching the bit-rate to the available bandwidth.

SLS is implemented as an enhancement layer to the AAC codec. Upward scalability (towards full lossless performance and quality) is achieved by dedicating varying amounts of data to the SLS enhancement.

The average compression ratio of SLS equals or is superior to many existing lossless audio compression schemes that do not offer the key feature of backward-compatibility. In addition, SLS features multi-channel capabilities.

SLS gives consumers the ability to manage and store a music library which can deliver lossless playback on high-quality audio equipment as well as playback on standard AAC devices. In the event that consumers would elect to use a future audio coding technology, re-encoding of material stored in a lossless format such as SLS may help guarantee optimum results.

The SLS patent licensing program launches with an “early adopter incentive.” Parties that execute the SLS license by March 31, 2009 will not owe any SLS license fees on products sold prior to January 1, 2010. In addition, Via Licensing’s customary initial fee will be reduced during the period prior to April 1, 2009.