http://disqus.com/by/asagy/enSat, 28 Mar 2009 17:35:12 -0000http://www.techaviv.com/2009/03/25/open-letter-to-techcrunchs-sarah-lacy/#comment-7588971<p>Well she responded today in another post. <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/28/risk-aversion-and-the-perils-of-selling-too-early-israeli-startups-part-ii/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" title="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/28/risk-aversion-and-the-perils-of-selling-too-early-israeli-startups-part-ii/">http://www.techcrunch.com/2...</a></p><p>She claims that her numbers are Dow Jones based. I never saw such a lame argument in the tech media. Shame on Techcrunch.</p><p>See for yourselves: (From her piece)</p><p>"...Since 2001, according to Dow Jones, $10 billion in venture investments have yielded only $860 million in IPO and M&amp;A exits. The study of venture economics is at best imperfect, so it’s quite likely there are several big Israeli exits the numbers are missing. It’s like measuring Web traffic. Most Internet companies will tell you their traffic logs report higher numbers than measurement agencies like Hitwise or comScore.</p><p>But the Dow Jones numbers aren’t likely to be off by, say, a factor of 50 or 100. And since the same sources—usually venture firms—give firms like Dow Jones the investment data and the liquidity data, the relationship between the money going in and the money going out is pretty reliable, even if the absolute numbers are not. Put another way, if Dow Jones is missing some exits, they’re likely also missing some investments going into the country. In any case, the returns are down dramatically from the 1990s—period. Be mad at me all you want; those are still the numbers..." </p>asagySat, 28 Mar 2009 17:35:12 -0000http://www.techaviv.com/2009/03/25/open-letter-to-techcrunchs-sarah-lacy/#comment-7530787<p>Yaron,</p><p>Sarah should have known better that the devil was in the details. Being off by more than $39B shows that she picked her data of a very lame source or just misinterpreted what she read. My guess is that she looked at start-ups which were incorporated in Israel.</p><p>On any case, this was a very unprofessional article. Why wouldn't you ask Michael Arrington to promote your post? I'm sure that TechCrunch will be open to receiving data backed critique.</p><p>Assaf Sagy</p>asagyThu, 26 Mar 2009 13:36:54 -0000