Be vewy quiet, Yahoo is hunting wabbits: It may come as a shock to the blogosphere and the few gazillion posts that have accompanied each purchase, but according to way Business Week reports it, Yahoo is on a “quiet acquisitions tear.” Shhh.

It will star Robert Scoble: As I bask here in the free wi-fi of Bradley Airport (serving Springfield, Ma. and Hartford, Ct.), I am letting a river of news flow past me. I’m making a scene, I fear, by laughing out loud at the first sentence of this news story from Saturday:

“Microsoft Corp., the world’s biggest software maker, will spend $120 million a year on an advertising campaign to fight its image as “a huge American company.”

Of course, it may be funny to me because I spend my days publishing a magazine for small American companies and my evenings and weekends working on a small project called Smallbusiness.com (which, by the way, has a directory of airports with free wi-fi).

How entrepreneurship in Japan is not like entrepreneurship in the U.S.: Joi Ito explains the common practice by Japanese lenders (and even early-stage investors) of requiring a personal guarantee by everyone associated with the startup — and others. In the U.S., the “veil” between corporate and personal obligations is quite rigid by comparison. Personal guarantees in the U.S. are rather common with small business bank loans, however, the system which Joi explains seems to be an attempt to wring out all risk from those who finance the startup. Most tragic: As Joi explains, the system not only chokes off entrepreneurship, it leads to a high suicide rate among those who start businesses and fail.

If such a practice were instituted in the U.S., that sound you hear would be the screeching halt of business startups.

Technorati Tags: smallbusiness

Snowed: I’m currently in western Massachusetts in about half-a-foot of fresh snow. I’ve posted some photos on Flickr.

Do acqhire strategies need VCs? The WSJ’s Startup Journal has a story about a new VC firm that is raising a fund to invest in acqhire candidates (although they don’t say it quite that way).

Quote:

“Most early-stage venture-capital funds are basically stepping stones for later-stage VCs,” said John Waller, one of the company’s three managing directors. “We intend to be the last money in. We will invest in companies that will likely get acquired by the Yahoos or Googles of the world.”

Technorati Tags: acqhire, smallbusiness