The primary reason is that there are two typical investors: angels and VCs. Angels are just wealthy people who typically sums of between $10 and $100k, with $50k probably being a good average.

VCs are institutional investors who raise funds often totaling in the hundreds of millions, and are paid in such a way that they are incentivized to deploy the entire amount into investments. So, VCs like to make bigger investments because then they can make fewer. That means less due diligence, fewer board meetings, etc.

Not many VCs make it their business to invest amounts of money that small. It happens, but it’s often just something they do to lock up right of first refusal on future rounds. A lot of companies would much rather raise $500k than $5m, so they’ll do it if they like you enough, but it’s relatively uncommon.

Raising $500k from angels means convincing somewhere between 5 and 20 different people, all with their own habits and goals, to invest in you at the same valuation and terms. That happens too actually, even outside of the few syndicates that exist, but again, it’s hard to pull off.

Full Article

Traditional browsers such as Internet Explorer from Microsoft (MSFT) and Firefox from Mozilla are designed primarily to display Web pages accessed from remote servers. But thanks to the Java language from Sun Microsystems (JAVA), there are now a growing number of full-fledged software applications available via the Net—and browsers are increasingly assuming responsibility for running them.

When Google dreamed up Chrome, its aim was to create a browser capable of running those applications dramatically faster than any previous alternative (BusinessWeek.com, 9/3/08). If the product succeeds as planned, it could upend the traditional computing model—typified by Microsoft Windows and Office—where software loads and runs locally on a PC, replacing it instead with an approach known as “cloud computing,” where programs run over the Internet.

That’s where the Danish farmhouse comes in. Its occupant, Lars Bak, is one of the world’s foremost experts in JavaScript engines—programs that run Java code on a variety of local computers. A slim, 45-year-old Danish computer scientist with close-cropped hair, Bak has spent the last two decades working on so-called “virtual machines” that, like the JavaScript engine in Chrome, execute one program inside another. He holds 18 U.S. patents in the field and spent seven years at Sun, where he developed a high-performance virtual machine that is still used by Sun, Apple (AAPL), and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

Bak had moved back to Denmark in 2000 so that his two daughters, now 13 and 15, could be educated in his native country. Two years later he left Sun to start a new company with a pair of students from Aarhus University, called OOVM, that was bought in 2004 by Switzerland’s Esmertec (ESMN.F). After a two-year stint as chief architect and engineering manager for Esmertec, which specializes in Java software for mobile phones, Bak was ready for a break.

Two weeks later, he got a call from Google asking him to work on Chrome. Bak says he was intrigued by the project because “the goal was to raise the bar for the whole industry.” But he and his family didn’t want to leave the 1860 farmhouse on eight acres of land near Aarhus where they live. Google agreed to hire him anyway—and Bak set up shop in an old stable on the property and began hiring local talent.

The engineering team soon outgrew the stable and moved to office space at Aarhus University. There, Bak and a dozen other engineers worked in stealth mode to build a new JavaScript engine for Chrome, code-named V8, that was based on open-source software and designed from the ground up for speedy performance.

“Lars’ experience in this area made him the ideal person to work on this ambitious, significant project,” says Nelson Mattos, Google’s vice-president of engineering for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. “V8 is the key to Chrome’s remarkable speed, and because it’s open source, it’s also a contribution to browser technology in general.”

Experts agree that the speed of the engine that Bak and his team designed is one of Chrome’s key differentiators. In the short term, according to tech consultancy Gartner (IT), the new browser’s success will be measured by whether it delivers a superior user experience for JavaScript-intensive applications, such as Google’s Gmail. But the ultimate test is whether Chrome’s appeal will extend beyond early adopters to mainstream enterprise customers—a chasm that other challengers such as Firefox and Apple’s Safari haven’t yet crossed in dominant numbers.

One thing is for sure. Chrome is expected to achieve what Bak set out to do: raise the bar for the whole industry. Press reports have estimated Chrome to be as much as 56 times faster than Internet Explorer at running Java programs. Bak is cagey about Chrome’s performance compared with rivals because it depends on which benchmarks are used. Plus, competing browsers are also evolving rapidly; indeed, some reports already claim that a new JavaScript engine in Firefox outperforms V8. “Competitors will catch up,” says Sheri McLeish, an analyst at technology consultancy Forrester Research (FORR). “Whenever there are new entrants it ups the ante.”

As for Bak, he is still at work in Denmark, continuing to tinker with Chrome’s engine to make it better. The office at Aarhus University doesn’t offer any of the perks that Google is famous for, such as free haircuts and gourmet meals. But living in the Danish countryside and commuting on his bike to a job with one of Silicon Valley’s most successful companies is all the reward he needs, Bak says. That, and potentially changing the whole way people use computers and the Internet.

Busienss Week original article

http://www.cio.com/article/460014/Nine_Web_._Startups_Beating_The_Odds_in_Down_Economy_?page=1

http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

Update includes:

Reading this article, I’m not surprised to find Denmark at #5. This a little but amazing country!

Here the linked paragraphs:

2009 rank: #5
2008 rank: #5

Denmark is the only economy in the world where it costs nothing to start a business, although entrepreneurs do have to show that they have some money in the bank before they can set up shop. Registration requires only four procedures and takes just six days.

With relatively strong legal rights for borrowers and lenders, laws that make it fairly easy to hire and fire employees, and some of the lowest export and import costs, this is the second year Denmark has the No. 5 position in the “Doing Business” ranking.

Danish reforms in 2007 and 2008 include a reduction in the corporate tax rate, which dropped from 28% to 25%, and changes to the court system to allow for some contract-enforcement cases to be sent to mediation.

Registering property, however, isn’t exactly speedy, with an average duration of 42 days, - and while applying for a construction permit may appear easy, requiring a world-record of just six procedures, it still takes a total of 69 days to process.