This is what Air Ship Ventures has achieved literally:

Airship Ventures, a privately held corporation formed to bring Zeppelin NT airship operations to the USA, today announced that it had closed its Series A Preferred Stock financing on Monday with investments from six individuals. Terms of the financing were not disclosed.

Brian Hall, President of Airship Ventures, commented "Achieving this significant milestone allows us complete our acquisition of the Zeppelin NT and to finalize preparations for commencing airship operations in the fall."

I remember Cargolifter from the last bubble. The company raised 100+ million with teh promise to build airships that could be used us ultra heavy lifters for construction projects (like pipelines). However the company had to shut down before the first commercial launch was ever done.

Airship Ventures seems more modest and 'down to earth' (well, I hope that means no bad luck here). Moffett Field is just 5 minutes away from our offices so we'll certainly give you a live review if we can afford the flights.

Also interesting to be noted - Moffett Field has a long history as an airship base back into teh 1930's. Read this. Many major airships from around the world came here.

I found an email today from a WHDB representative. I subsequently checked out the homepage and found a very interesting business model. WHDB organizes learning and strategic expeditions for executives. It's not the 'we-all-go-in-the-woods-for-some-days-team-building' expedition - rather WHDB helps managers to learn about their business in other countries or refine their own vision.

The company helps to organize a complete field trip including contacts to 'potential' targets.

The company seems to be coming from a French/ Canadian background and has expanded into many regions. Pretty interesting business.

I finally had the chance today to meet with Ralf Schmelter, one of the PhD students behind "Venture Road Trip". Ralf and his fellow colleagues have interviewed many serial entrepreneurs and and VCs in the US in the last weeks. There are some real interesting names and stories on their blog. Check it out.

So finally a Web 2.0 startup we really need! Bizak.com is providing a valuation tool for entrepreneurs and investors. Simply input your visitors per month and earnings/ costs and teh site compute a handy enterprise value for you.

Cool.

Jajah is taking yet another milestone - 10 Mio users (that is downloads I guess) and integration into Yahoo messenger. The Jajah guys are really pushing the already impressive success story.

Yahoo's PhoneIn/PhoneOut was never a real hit but with Jajah it may only get better:

The partnership leverages JAJAH's open, next-generation communications platform to support the existing Yahoo! Messenger voice offering beginning in the third quarter of this year. Through this collaboration and managed service offerings, JAJAH will provide Yahoo! Messenger users with an instant Internet telephony network, merging the best of traditional and IP telephony.

Since 2006, Yahoo! Messenger users have been able to use "Phone In" and
"Phone Out" to make and receive voice calls on their PC to and from landline
and mobile phones. With low rates and premium voice quality, users can talk
for hours and save on their phone bill. This deal means JAJAH will take
over the provision of the telephony infrastructure, payment processing, and
customer care for Yahoo!'s premium voice users who make and receive voice
calls through Yahoo! Messenger.

For me Jajah is the best one out there because it simply has great connections. Most other VOIP services offer pretty much the same service but suck in call quality. Jajah is usually better even compared to mobile-mobile direct connections.

However Jajah should invest a bit more in it's existing user base. Somehow there is little going on in my eyes to increase ARPU (average revenue per user). Here is my top wish list:

- full call history (web and mobile) that syncs automatically
- more stable mobile app (mine works but only soso on Nokia N80)
- a better and faster web interface (the new release has no 'connect' button!
- more call back numbers (just three in web and one mobile)
- a working credit card payment system (and support for paypal/ moneybookers) -> my account became unusable after changing the credit card
- good support for all subscriber with decent revenue (i consider myself so)

### Update:

Frederik got back to me with comments and suggestions on my wish list :)

1) JAJAH is download-free - 10 million users not downloads is what the company is referring to

2) Mobile apps are being phased out - http://mobile.jajah.com

3) The call button should work by now again

4) The credit card system is heavy on fraud prevention an produces some weird bugs - they are fixing that.

5) Support is being shifted and not yet up and running but he promises improvements there soon as well.

I have been spending the last 6 weeks with book after book about value investing and it seems I have caught the value bug. I admit I'm a little late to this party (Ben Graham 'invented' Value Investing back in the 30s) and many investors have been making their luck over the years.

Roger Lowensteins book about Warren Buffet paints a great picture about the most successful investor of modern times. Just to make sure if you have not heard it but Warren Buffet transformed $10k of his self earned money when in his late teens into the 52 billion + nowadays. All this just be the help of compounding interest. Warren never issued Junk Bonds or engaged in 'green mailing' companies. He achieved all this with an investing frame work he found and 50 years ago and while refining it over the years stuck to it forever. He even says many of his investments he makes forever. While this sounds foolish in the beginning after reading through this book you will understand the philosophy and why Warren was able to find such cash generating jewel over and over again over such a long time period.

There are many investors who have adjusted the value approach to other sectors/ industries or situations of companies (i.e. turn-around or even IPOs) but Warren has managed to bring in 22% of portfolio growth on average with hardly any year looing money managing nearly 100 billion now. All this with a head quarter of a dozen or less people, sitting in his chair in Omaha, NE using no tools beside a phone and a mail box.

It sounds too special and too good to be true but when you dive into the world of value investing the interesting point is that less is more. Less (but focused) information extracted from the daily noise is actually what counts.

If you are an open-minded and serious investor give the many books about Value Investing a try - they will surprise you and help to shuffle your picture of the world. That's what they did for me.