Entrepreneurship is an emotional and economic roller coaster, says venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur Mark Suster. In this candid and informative lecture, Suster defies some of Silicon Valley's conventional wisdom. Based on his extensive experience with multiple companies, Suster shares his thoughts on the real day-to-day life of startups, smart ways to raise the right kind of funds, and offers honest advice in making your way as an entrepreneur.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Nature vs. Nurture in Entrepreneurship
Can entrepreneurs be made? This question is incredibly important for aspiring entrepreneurs, investors, and educational organizations like BASES. For some, the answer is straightforward; if you inherently possess a certain set of qualities, then, at the very least, you have the potential to become a successful entrepreneur. Otherwise, you're out of luck. For others, there is a relatively distinct manner in which entrepreneurs can be developed, through both intentional circumstances and otherwise, such as family background and education
Funding Thunder Lizard Entrepreneurs
Stanford Engineering lecturer and FLOODGATE partner Ann Miura-Ko offers insight into the democratization of innovation in the Internet age, and its affect on investment cycles. Additionally, Miura-Ko speaks candidly about the need to test business models, her firm's desire to be an advocate for "thunder lizard" entrepreneurs, and the challenges of achieving true work/life balance.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
6th Microsoft BizSpark European Summit on growth and entrepreneurship 30 April 2010 Paris Moderator Guy Kawasaki
Hosted by Guy Kawasaki, Silicon Valley entrepreneur
Follow the highlights of the event on Microsoft.eu
What?
A one-day event in Paris on May 25th hosted by Microsoft and broadcast LIVE online. Bringing together key entrepreneurs in Europe for a start-up investment pitch. Followed by presentations and a debate on the scope and challenges of entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe as we together seek to reach the goals of the Europe 2020 strategy.
Who?
Silicon Valley entrepreneurial superstar Guy Kawasaki, famed for bringing evangelism to the tech industry and ongoing success as a serial entrepreneur since his Apple days back in the 80s, was hosting and presenting. The stars of the show were the entrepreneurs themselves - 18 in total from across Europe - who actively pitched for investment opportunities. Keynote speakers included Jean-Philippe Courtois, President, Microsoft International, and Jan Muehlfeit, Chairman Europe, Microsoft. Click here to view a full list of speakers.
Why?
We’re at a watershed moment in European history. As identified in the EU 2020 strategy, the greatest economic crisis in 80 years, the perils of climate change, and the complexities of an increasingly globalised world combine to make this a moment for decisive action. Together, Europeans - whether private or public sector, east or west, big business or small - need to broach the challenge of HOW we ensure that our future is fair, secure and prosperous. We believe that the answer lies in innovation and unleashing the full spectrum of human potential, which requires that entrepreneurship is aggressively encouraged and fostered. That’s the bottom line of why we’ve made the summit happen. We really hope you enjoyed it.
Where?
The BizSpark European Summit took place on Tuesday, May 25th 2010 at Microsoft’s European headquarters in Paris.
Couldn't make the event? The highlights will be soon available here.
Microsoft's commitment to Entrepreneurialism with Jean-Philippe Courtois
Part 1
Building a virtuous ecosystem in EUrope Panel discussion with Gearoid Mooney
Part 1
Investing in the Cloud
Part 1
Follow the highlights of the event on Microsoft.eu
What?
A one-day event in Paris on May 25th hosted by Microsoft and broadcast LIVE online. Bringing together key entrepreneurs in Europe for a start-up investment pitch. Followed by presentations and a debate on the scope and challenges of entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe as we together seek to reach the goals of the Europe 2020 strategy.
Who?
Silicon Valley entrepreneurial superstar Guy Kawasaki, famed for bringing evangelism to the tech industry and ongoing success as a serial entrepreneur since his Apple days back in the 80s, was hosting and presenting. The stars of the show were the entrepreneurs themselves - 18 in total from across Europe - who actively pitched for investment opportunities. Keynote speakers included Jean-Philippe Courtois, President, Microsoft International, and Jan Muehlfeit, Chairman Europe, Microsoft. Click here to view a full list of speakers.
Why?
We’re at a watershed moment in European history. As identified in the EU 2020 strategy, the greatest economic crisis in 80 years, the perils of climate change, and the complexities of an increasingly globalised world combine to make this a moment for decisive action. Together, Europeans - whether private or public sector, east or west, big business or small - need to broach the challenge of HOW we ensure that our future is fair, secure and prosperous. We believe that the answer lies in innovation and unleashing the full spectrum of human potential, which requires that entrepreneurship is aggressively encouraged and fostered. That’s the bottom line of why we’ve made the summit happen. We really hope you enjoyed it.
Where?
The BizSpark European Summit took place on Tuesday, May 25th 2010 at Microsoft’s European headquarters in Paris.
Couldn't make the event? The highlights will be soon available here.
Microsoft's commitment to Entrepreneurialism with Jean-Philippe Courtois
Part 1
Building a virtuous ecosystem in EUrope Panel discussion with Gearoid Mooney
Part 1
Investing in the Cloud
Part 1
Monday, May 31, 2010
Guy Kawasaki and the art of innovation
6th Microsoft BizSpark European Summit on growth and entrepreneurship 30 april 2010
1. make meaning
2. mantra
3. jump to next curve
4. roll the D.I.C.E.
5. dont worry be crappy ship
6. let 100 flowers bloom
7. polarize people
8. churn baby churn
9. unique value
10. 10, 20,30
11. dont let the bozos grind you down
1. make meaning
2. mantra
3. jump to next curve
4. roll the D.I.C.E.
5. dont worry be crappy ship
6. let 100 flowers bloom
7. polarize people
8. churn baby churn
9. unique value
10. 10, 20,30
11. dont let the bozos grind you down
Thursday, May 6, 2010
people buy why not what you do ...apple
Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers -- and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling
Monday, April 26, 2010
The Uniform Project
http://vimeo.com/uniformproject
When I found out about Sheena Matheiken’s Uniform Project, I was astounded. She decided to wear the exact same dress for an entire year, mixing in only thrifted or donated accessories, in order to raise money for the Akanksha Foundation for less fortunate children. One dress. 365 days. I can’t wear the same thing twice in a row and this girl was going to do it for a whole year! I wondered how in the world would she creatively find new and different outfits for 365 days based on one dress? But she did it, and did it well. Sheena even edited together a little video to show off her style choices throughout the entire year. I promise, you’ll be more than impressed. With a basic black dress, Sheena invented an entire collection of characters—honoring The King of Pop, certain holidays, and the seasons with her style choices while sticking to that same black dress. This girl not only has more style and creative juices than a ton of people, but more importantly, Sheena raised $74,522 for her efforts, meaning that 207 children now have the chance to go to school! There are a few days left—the entire project culminates on May 1—so if you’re inspired make sure to donate.
When I found out about Sheena Matheiken’s Uniform Project, I was astounded. She decided to wear the exact same dress for an entire year, mixing in only thrifted or donated accessories, in order to raise money for the Akanksha Foundation for less fortunate children. One dress. 365 days. I can’t wear the same thing twice in a row and this girl was going to do it for a whole year! I wondered how in the world would she creatively find new and different outfits for 365 days based on one dress? But she did it, and did it well. Sheena even edited together a little video to show off her style choices throughout the entire year. I promise, you’ll be more than impressed. With a basic black dress, Sheena invented an entire collection of characters—honoring The King of Pop, certain holidays, and the seasons with her style choices while sticking to that same black dress. This girl not only has more style and creative juices than a ton of people, but more importantly, Sheena raised $74,522 for her efforts, meaning that 207 children now have the chance to go to school! There are a few days left—the entire project culminates on May 1—so if you’re inspired make sure to donate.
The Uniform Project (on Daily Candy) from The Uniform Project on Vimeo.
Uniform Project Picture Book from The Uniform Project on Vimeo.
Jane McGonigal
Gaming can make the world a better place. Just ask Jane McGonigal, a game designer, games researcher, and future forecaster who creates alternative-reality games that solve real-world problems through collaboration. In A World Without Oil, for instance, she envisioned a post-oil world asked players to document their fictional lives through videos, images, and blog entries. The alternative-reality game Evoke encouraged young people to come up with solutions to the world's social problems. The Director of Games Research & Development at the Institute for the Future (coolest job title ever!), McGonigal taps the masses through videos and online posts and partners with companies ranging from McDonald's and Kraft to Nike, Microsoft, and AKQA. The response from both sides is massive and some games racking up as many as 5 million participants. --Ariel Schwartz
Friday, April 16, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
robert scoble interview of eric ries ...the lean start-up
In my view these two videos about the lean start-up methodology is so important and insightful that you should watch again and again untill it gets stuck in your brain.
MSNBC video on ipad sales 4th april 2010
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Friday, April 2, 2010
From twwtr to twitter
Pyra Labs is the company that coined the word Blogger, and made the service a big success.
The co-founders were Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan, and the company's first product, also named 'Pyra', was a web application which would combine a project manager, contact manager, and to-do list. In 1999, while still in beta, the rudiments of Pyra were repurposed into an in-house tool which became Blogger. The service was made available to the public in August 1999. Much of this coding was done by Paul Bausch and Matthew Haughey.
2000. Initially, Blogger was completely free and there was no revenue model. When the company's seed money dried up, the employees continued without pay for weeks or, in some cases, months; but this could not last, and eventually Williams faced a mass walk-out by everyone including co-founder Hourihan. Williams ran the company virtually alone until he was able to secure an investment by Trellix after its founder Dan Bricklin became aware of Pyra's situation. Eventually advertising-supported blogspot and Blogger Pro emerged.
In 2002, Blogger was completely re-written in order to license it to other companies, the first of which was Globo of Brazil.
The company was acquired by Google in 2003. The people at Pyra Labs at the time of acquisition were Evan Williams, Jason Shellen, Steve Jenson, Jason Sutter, and Rudy Winnacker and jason goldman.
In 2004, Williams left Google, later going on to form obvious corp . In 2006, goldman also left Google. Hourihan was associated with Kinja and some other sites.
Obvious became odeo and twitter was created by jack dorsey of odeo. Odeo lost out to itunes and williams dorsey and stone bought obvious and twitter
Tuesday 18 February 2003
Google, the world's most-used internet search engine, yesterday announced the acquisition of Blogger, a web service which has fuelled the rapid rise of the web journals popularly known as weblogs.
Pyra Labs, the company behind Blogger, was sold to Google for an undisclosed sum on Saturday after four months of negotiations.
Weblogs, once the preserve of a technologically savvy elite, have gained popularity since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001. The websites, which mostly serve niche audiences, typically contain frequently updated opinion and links to material around the internet. Blogger is behind more than 1m weblogs, 200,000 of which are active.
The sale is being seen by many in the online community as a sign weblogs have become a mainstream medium. Evan Williams, Pyra's chief executive, said last night he was very happy about the deal which has transferred him and Blogger's six staff to Google.
He said: "There is not a great deal I can talk about at the moment.We are all still trying to figure it out." Earlier, on his Evhead.com weblog, he described the purchase as "an awesome opportunity".
The sale is a dramatic turnaround for San Francisco-based Blogger, which rode the high and subsequent low of the dotcom boom. The company was founded in 1999, and Mr Williams had to lay off the company's entire staff in late 2000. He continued to maintain the service by himself from his home until last year, when he increased revenues by starting a premium version.
A blueprint sketch, circa 2006, by Jack Dorsey, envisioning an SMS-based social network
Now $160m invested
Google and Bing deals $25m …real time news
Twttr is a new mobile service that helps groups of friends bounce random thoughts around with SMS. When we showed it to Jason Goldman (product manager of Blogger) he called it "present tense blogging." That's a great way to describe it. It's fun to use because it strips social blogging down to it's essence and makes it immediate.
Jack Dorsey is one of Odeo's brightest stars so when he told us about this idea that has been haunting him for six years we had to listen. It's not even remotely related to audio but it's an awesome idea so we told him to go for it. Jack put this thing together very quickly but it took a few months to get a short code.
Anywhoo, there are two ways to use twttr: on the phone and on the web. The phone part is entirely text based like an adventure game. In addition to posting to 40404 you can "follow biz" "nudge jack" or "get noah" and other stuff. On the web you can browse through your timeline, post, and do lots of other stuff. I find myself switching between the two interfaces when it suits me. It's good stuff.
As pioneer web publishing tool Blogger turns 8 years, I thought it was appropriate to put this thing I did some years ago in YouTube. I recorded this on march 2000, during a brief conference visit to San Francisco. How different things were back then. And how difficult was to realize what was next to come.
Maybe this could be considered a piece of weblogs history and the internet at large, but I'd rather let you decide that.
promo video draft.
dont wait to be anointed ...keys to the building...its up to you
Don't think of a job as just getting a desk and a job description. Tina Seelig, Executive Director of Stanford Technology Ventures Program, points out that landing a job means getting a key to the building. And what that key unlocks is entirely up to you. The endless possibilities of creating work, new projects, and developing ideas that cater to your passions are available to any employee in any office. Seelig urges entrepreneurial thinking in the workplace, and tells students that they should build the ladder below themselves, rather than waiting for someone else to put it before them.
do bands ...an entrepreneurial adventure
The Do-Band project sets out to create positive social change through self-empowerment. One of the greatest obstacles facing "Causes" is that you often must convince the person to support your cause—but this creates a paralyzing chasm between acknowledgement and action. Signatures and pledges mean very little without true commitment. Do-Bands combine this insight with the realization that everyone has their own causes that they care about. Everyone has something on his/her To-Do list that they want to do, they ought to do, but they just never get to it (calling your mom, registering to vote, or donating blood). These are powerful to-do items that have a lot of potential...if only they were completed. Do-Bands overcome this block. Here is how they work: We labeled and handed out hundreds of Do-Bands. By accepting a Do-Band, you are pledging to wear the Do-Band until you fulfill your promise. Then, you record your success, and pass the Do-Band to someone else! However, each Do-Band has a unique number on it, so the value and journey of the individual band can be tracked online (dobands.blogspot.com). In this way, participants are given the opportunity to see how other stories have branched out from theirs, creating a social web of success stories that empowers people to take action. In addition, we created Virtual Do-Bands that allowed us to reach beyond the Stanford campus and actually go international. Do-Bands were able to capture the spirit of E-Week by promoting creativity, risk taking, and innovation by encouraging individuals to follow through with a commitment to themselves or others.
But this is where it all started......one of the original ideas from the Stanford creativity class
But this is where it all started......one of the original ideas from the Stanford creativity class
Thursday, April 1, 2010
larry page on using science as source of business ideas
Larry Page, co-founder of Google, reveals that basic research and good ideas are the key components to creating a tremendous opportunity in the tech market. A lot of new knowledge is being created all the time and much of it can be used as the foundation for innovation.
Tina Seelig of the STVP on teaching entrepreneurship
Stanford Technology Ventures Program's Executive Director Tina Seelig shares rich insights in creative thinking and the entrepreneurial mindset. Her talk, based on her 2009 book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, cites numerous classroom successes of applied problem-solving and the lessons of failure.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
BBC programme on the WWW...audio files
Twenty years on from the invention of the World Wide Web, Dr Aleks Krotoski looks at how it is reshaping almost every aspect of our lives.
Joined by some of the web's biggest names - including the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, and the web's inventor - she explores how far the web has lived up to its early promise.
For the complete website dedicated to The Virtual Revolution, http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution
Part One: The Great Levelling
In the first in this four-part series, Aleks charts the extraordinary rise of blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube.
She also traces an ongoing clash between the freedom the technology offers us, and our innate human desire to control and profit.
Part Two: Enemy Of The State
Aleks charts how the Web is forging a new brand of politics, both in democracies and authoritarian regimes.
With contributions from Al Gore, Martha Lane Fox, Stephen Fry and Bill Gates, the programme explores how interactive, unmediated sites like Twitter and YouTube have encouraged direct action and politicised young people in unprecedented numbers.
Yet, at the same time, the Web's openness enables hardline states to spy and censor, and extremists to threaten with networks of hate and crippling cyber attacks.
Part Three: The Cost Of Free
Aleks gives the lowdown on how, for better and for worse, commerce has colonised the web - and reveals how web users are paying for what appear to be 'free' sites and services in hidden ways.
Joined by some of the most influential business leaders of today's web - including Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon), Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google), Chad Hurley (CEO of YouTube) and Bill Gates, the programme traces how business - with varying degrees of success - has attempted to make money on the web.
She tells the inside story of the gold rush years of the dotcom bubble, and reveals how retailers such as Amazon learned the lessons.
The programme also charts how, out of the ashes, Google forged the business model that has come to dominate today's web, offering a plethora of highly attractive, overtly free web services - including search, maps and video - that are in fact funded through a sophisticated and highly lucrative advertising system which trades on what we users look for.
Part Four: Homo Interneticus?
Dr Aleks Krotoski concludes her investigation of how the World Wide Web is transforming almost every aspect of our lives.
Joined by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Al Gore and the neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, the programme examines the popularity of social networks such as Facebook and asks how they are changing our relationships.
And, in a ground-breaking test at University College London, Aleks investigates how the Web may be distracting and overloading our brains.
Joined by some of the web's biggest names - including the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, and the web's inventor - she explores how far the web has lived up to its early promise.
For the complete website dedicated to The Virtual Revolution, http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution
Part One: The Great Levelling
In the first in this four-part series, Aleks charts the extraordinary rise of blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube.
She also traces an ongoing clash between the freedom the technology offers us, and our innate human desire to control and profit.
Part Two: Enemy Of The State
Aleks charts how the Web is forging a new brand of politics, both in democracies and authoritarian regimes.
With contributions from Al Gore, Martha Lane Fox, Stephen Fry and Bill Gates, the programme explores how interactive, unmediated sites like Twitter and YouTube have encouraged direct action and politicised young people in unprecedented numbers.
Yet, at the same time, the Web's openness enables hardline states to spy and censor, and extremists to threaten with networks of hate and crippling cyber attacks.
Part Three: The Cost Of Free
Aleks gives the lowdown on how, for better and for worse, commerce has colonised the web - and reveals how web users are paying for what appear to be 'free' sites and services in hidden ways.
Joined by some of the most influential business leaders of today's web - including Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon), Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google), Chad Hurley (CEO of YouTube) and Bill Gates, the programme traces how business - with varying degrees of success - has attempted to make money on the web.
She tells the inside story of the gold rush years of the dotcom bubble, and reveals how retailers such as Amazon learned the lessons.
The programme also charts how, out of the ashes, Google forged the business model that has come to dominate today's web, offering a plethora of highly attractive, overtly free web services - including search, maps and video - that are in fact funded through a sophisticated and highly lucrative advertising system which trades on what we users look for.
Part Four: Homo Interneticus?
Dr Aleks Krotoski concludes her investigation of how the World Wide Web is transforming almost every aspect of our lives.
Joined by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Al Gore and the neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, the programme examines the popularity of social networks such as Facebook and asks how they are changing our relationships.
And, in a ground-breaking test at University College London, Aleks investigates how the Web may be distracting and overloading our brains.
the future of digital magazines
From Mashable http://mashable.com/2010/03/17/awesome-ipad-digital-magazine-demo-video
We’ve witnessed publishers drooling over the Apple iPad’s form factor before the darn thing was even announced, with Time Inc. showing off a concept for Sports Illustrated and Condé Nast prepping a version of Wired for a tablet as early as November of last year.
First came Wired’s official iPad demo, and now there’s a new inspirational vision of the future of digital magazines, courtesy of the following video.
Alexx Henry Photography collaborated with co-directors Cory Strassburger and Ming Hsiung to produce the following cover and feature spread interactive animation for all-digital magazine Viv Mag.
The concept is to envision the interactive publishing potential allowed by the iPad and other tablets coming onto the market in the near, near future. You can check out a behind-the-scenes look at how the video was put together in the second clip below.
and now a behind the scenes look
We’ve witnessed publishers drooling over the Apple iPad’s form factor before the darn thing was even announced, with Time Inc. showing off a concept for Sports Illustrated and Condé Nast prepping a version of Wired for a tablet as early as November of last year.
First came Wired’s official iPad demo, and now there’s a new inspirational vision of the future of digital magazines, courtesy of the following video.
Alexx Henry Photography collaborated with co-directors Cory Strassburger and Ming Hsiung to produce the following cover and feature spread interactive animation for all-digital magazine Viv Mag.
The concept is to envision the interactive publishing potential allowed by the iPad and other tablets coming onto the market in the near, near future. You can check out a behind-the-scenes look at how the video was put together in the second clip below.
VIV Mag Interactive Feature Spread - iPad Demo from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.
and now a behind the scenes look
VIV Mag Featurette: A Digital Magazine Motion Cover and Feature for the iPad from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.
Creating an Effective Platform for gov 2.0
session at the Gov 2.0 conference in washington in nov 2009.the gov 2.0 conference is another special event from O'Reilly media (tim O'Reilly is from Cork)
Gov 2.0 is a fascinating idea in that the gov is responsible for creating the platform and then getting the hell out of the way and letting us do the innovation.
so in the case of investment in startups gov creates the environment tax rules etc and then lets us get on with it.
John Markoff (New York Times), Vinton Cerf (Google), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Tim Sparapani (Facebook)
What can we learn from the most successful platforms and apps creators in Silicon Valley? Joining us are the leaders from the gold standards of platform and app development to tell us how they do it. Our moderator for this exciting session is the dean of technology journalists, the New York Times’ John Markoff.
Gov 2.0 is a fascinating idea in that the gov is responsible for creating the platform and then getting the hell out of the way and letting us do the innovation.
so in the case of investment in startups gov creates the environment tax rules etc and then lets us get on with it.
John Markoff (New York Times), Vinton Cerf (Google), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Tim Sparapani (Facebook)
What can we learn from the most successful platforms and apps creators in Silicon Valley? Joining us are the leaders from the gold standards of platform and app development to tell us how they do it. Our moderator for this exciting session is the dean of technology journalists, the New York Times’ John Markoff.
Monday, March 22, 2010
be the first follower not the lone nut
transcript from derek sivers
If you've learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let's watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:
A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he's doing is so simple, it's almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!
Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it's not about the leader anymore - it's about them, plural. Notice he's calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.
The 2nd follower is a turning point: it's proof the first has done well. Now it's not a lone nut, and it's not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.
A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers - not the leader.
Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we've got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we've got a movement!
As more people jump in, it's no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there's no reason not to join now. They won't be ridiculed, they won't stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you'll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they'd be ridiculed for not joining.
And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made! Let's recap what we learned:
If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.
Be public. Be easy to follow!
But the biggest lesson here - did you catch it?
Leadership is over-glorified.
Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he'll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:
It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.
There is no movement without the first follower.
We're told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.
The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.
When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in. © 2010 Derek Sivers
If you've learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let's watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:
A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he's doing is so simple, it's almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!
Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it's not about the leader anymore - it's about them, plural. Notice he's calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.
The 2nd follower is a turning point: it's proof the first has done well. Now it's not a lone nut, and it's not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.
A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers - not the leader.
Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we've got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we've got a movement!
As more people jump in, it's no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there's no reason not to join now. They won't be ridiculed, they won't stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you'll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they'd be ridiculed for not joining.
And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made! Let's recap what we learned:
If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.
Be public. Be easy to follow!
But the biggest lesson here - did you catch it?
Leadership is over-glorified.
Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he'll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:
It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.
There is no movement without the first follower.
We're told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.
The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.
When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in. © 2010 Derek Sivers
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
why start-ups fail
Without doubt the attrition rate for start-ups is very high.
And the riskier the project the more likely it is to fail.
The graph below is some of the best data I have come across.It is taken from Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths that Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By Scott Shane. The data comes from a special tabulation by the Bureau of the Census produced for the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration.
While these data look at the 1992 cohort of new single-establishment businesses, the failure rate percentages are almost identical for all the cohorts that researchers have looked at. So, these are pretty much the one through ten year survival rates of new firms
Scott Shane is A. Malachi Mixon III, Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of eight books, including Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths that Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By; Finding Fertile Ground: Identifying Extraordinary Opportunities for New Ventures; Technology Strategy for Managers and Entrepreneurs; and From Ice Cream to the Internet: Using Franchising to Drive the Growth and Profits of Your Company.
Doing a start-up is all about the management of risk. risk such as technology risk, market/customer risk etc. According to stephen Blank, a silicon valley serial entrepreneur, most start-ups fail because of market/customer risk.
the old model of doing a start-up of raising finance, building the product and then launching is particularily susceptible to failure because insufficient effort is spent on identifying/ developing the customer and establishing the market that is addressable for your product.
in the following three videos Stephen Blank goes through these issues and outlines a process for managing this type of risk. Guy Kawasaki said it best when he said that if he finds a project where (in marketing speak) the dogs are already eating the dogfood ie you can demonstrate traction in the marketplace then he is a happy man.
These videos are from the Eric Ries Startup2Starup event posted on youtube
stephen fry interview from the BBC programme Virtual Revolution
Stephen Fry is a writer, comedian, actor and technology enthusiast - and a man very much online. Aleks Krotoski and the Digital Revolution team met and interviewed Stephen to discuss the web, the changes it has brought to the world, its benefits and its possible dangers.So, Stephen seems greatly optimistic of the web's power to connect people, and of its standing as yet another great invention in human history that both enables, overthrows and terrifies in equal measure. Would you agree with his belief that the reward / risk ratio of the web mirrors that of the car, or the mobile? And (to extrapolate slightly) that perhaps our concerns for privacy are, as Bill Thompson would agree, based on outdated ideas - as Fry says that Trollope's were, with respect to the post box's liberation of women.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/2009/10/rushes-sequences-stephen-fry.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/2009/10/rushes-sequences-stephen-fry.shtml
the BBC ran a competition for short films using freely available video from the virtual revolution series
the BBC programme Virtual revolution (on the impact of the web) ran a short film competition during the production of The Virtual Revolution to see who could produce the best short film or trailer, using footage downloaded for free from their site.http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution
they had a range of creative, entertaining and sometimes bizarre entries. 12 were shortlisted by the Virtual Revolution production team, and these were then judged by BBC Factual Executive Producers Nick Mirsky and Dominic Crossley-Holland, and BBC Multiplatform Executive Producer Julian Phillips.
this is the winning entry
'Digital De-evolution' by Edward Sludden suggests that the real internet revolution will be controlled by a secret, global cabal of simian overlords. They already own 98 percent of our DNA, and it's only a matter of time before they get the rest.
this is the runner up entry
In 'Craving communication' by Tero Hiltunen, two men sit in a room facing each other. Finding this situation both awkward and unusual, they begin to acknowledge each other through facial expressions and body language. They finally realise that they have been struggling to sit in silence, because what humans crave most is the power to communicate.
they had a range of creative, entertaining and sometimes bizarre entries. 12 were shortlisted by the Virtual Revolution production team, and these were then judged by BBC Factual Executive Producers Nick Mirsky and Dominic Crossley-Holland, and BBC Multiplatform Executive Producer Julian Phillips.
this is the winning entry
'Digital De-evolution' by Edward Sludden suggests that the real internet revolution will be controlled by a secret, global cabal of simian overlords. They already own 98 percent of our DNA, and it's only a matter of time before they get the rest.
this is the runner up entry
In 'Craving communication' by Tero Hiltunen, two men sit in a room facing each other. Finding this situation both awkward and unusual, they begin to acknowledge each other through facial expressions and body language. They finally realise that they have been struggling to sit in silence, because what humans crave most is the power to communicate.
Richard St John 8 secrets of success
this is a faboulous video on the nature of success by richard st john at TED 2005
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
guy Kawasaki on VC funding
A fundable proposition?
Don’t confuse viable with fundable
In 3-4 years do you believe you can be doing 75m in revenue
Hot or not
You have 10-15 secs to make the right impression
Not your background
Present a clean deal
No relatives, IP infringements,
Standing out from the crowd
If you have to, come clean at 2nd meeting
Powerpoint is the standard
10, 20, 30
Reading your slides means you are a bozo
Drill a lot of holes
All money is green
Something that trumps all this…..the dogs are already eating the dogfood …we need money because we are scaling too fast
Don’t confuse viable with fundable
In 3-4 years do you believe you can be doing 75m in revenue
Hot or not
You have 10-15 secs to make the right impression
Not your background
Present a clean deal
No relatives, IP infringements,
Standing out from the crowd
If you have to, come clean at 2nd meeting
Powerpoint is the standard
10, 20, 30
Reading your slides means you are a bozo
Drill a lot of holes
All money is green
Something that trumps all this…..the dogs are already eating the dogfood …we need money because we are scaling too fast
Friday, March 5, 2010
never forget the exit
when you do your start-up and you are focussed on building value you more than likely will need investment from outside sources. you must always keep in mind that such investors are investing in your company so that they will get an enhanced return at some stage in the future. this is achieved either through an IPO (very rare these days ) or through being acquired.
in this post i have put together some of the latest thinking from the valley, gleaned from http://www.vator.tv/
http://bit.ly/aSZ9FZ ( go to original web sites for the videos) Net giants predicted to go on buying spree
Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo have north of $50 billion in cash
With the recession behind us, the big, deep-pocketed Internet giants are expected to be actively snapping up companies this year. Indeed, Google already kicked off the year in a buying mood with its $50 million acquisition of social Q&A site, Aardvark.
"A year ago they stopped all acquisitions," said Mark Mahaney, Internet analyst at Citi Investment Research, referring to the publicly-traded Internet companies, Google, Yahoo, eBay and Amazon. "Now that we're out of the recession.. and now that they're looking for new growth opportunities, you bet there's going to be a pick-up in M&A activity, and those are the four obvious."
Mark points out that Google has $14 bln to $15 billion in cash, eBay has $5 billion, Amazon has $2 bln to $3 bln and Yahoo has $3 bln to $4 billion. Add in Microsoft and Apple's stockpile and there's north of $50 billion in cash looking for secular growth opportunities.
Already we've seen some major acquisitions happening in the last several months, a good indicator of activity in the new year. Amazon's acquisition of Zappos closed in November 2009. (Note: Watch for my interview with Zappos Alfred Lin - coming soon). Google bought AdMob for $750 million in stock in November, and was reportedly interested in buying Yelp, in mid-December. Apple bought Quattro Wireless for $275 million in January.
Mark predicts we'll see more consolidation in these areas - smart phone, ecommerce, mobile advertising and local.
http://bit.ly/94oVmR What the Apple-Google War means for startups
Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partner’s mobile guru, says the giants are hungry for cloud technology.
If you’re a mobile entrepreneur and haven’t yet met Tim Chang, you’re not going to enough conferences. Ever since his firm, Norwest Venture Partners, raised a whopping $1.2 billion fund last year, Chang has been active on the speaking circuit (he even sported a bass guitar on the bandstand at Vator Splash this month). Chang focuses on mobile, gaming, and digital media investments for Norwest and leads NVP's investment practice in China and Asia-Pacific. He previously spent 5 years living in Japan where the gaming and mobile markets are lightyears ahead of the U.S. in many respects. All of that means Chang knows his stuff when it comes to the future of mobile. I got him on the phone on January 25 (ie, before the iPad launch) to talk about Apple’s newfound appetite for startups (Quattro Wireless and Lala being the most notable acquisitions in recent months), and how the Apple-Android wars are affecting his investment strategy. Chang says that Apple, Google, handset makers and carriers are all hungry for cloud technology that is not currently in their DNA, including ad networks, geolocation and social graph analytics. His insights on how much Google will actually be able to penetrate the Chinese mobile market are also worth a read…MB: It seems Apple is becoming more acquisitive. What kind of companies do you think they’ll go after? What’s their strategy?TC: I think it’s pretty clear we’re seeing two new giants go head-to-head: Apple and Google. The way I see it, we’re starting to see large companies engage in cloud warfare. Every company needs a piece of the cloud. There are several strategic assets within cloud warfare: there’s the address book, the public relations with the customer, there’s the digital locker in the sky.... There’s a variety of assets and it’s pretty clear all of these large companies will need to play in these spaces, whether it’s carriers—and you’re going to see carriers being acquisitive—whether it’s Google, which starts from more of the search and data side, or Apple that starts from the device side and realizes we are no longer in a age of just selling consumer electronics. That’s a pretty dead market. It’s all about what I call the device-as-a-service. IPhone is a device built for cloud connectivity out of the box. Kindle is the same. I think one of the clear messages from CES this year is that going forward, most devices will be architected for a device-as-a-service type of experience.The hardware was commoditized long long ago and while design is differentiating some new products, in general, it’s the connection to the platform—the app store, the cloud, all those kinds of services—that really makes the difference, so every hardware company needs to figure out how to be very good at being a cloud service and software company as well. That’s not normally in their DNA, so you can expect a lot of acquisitions. Apple is the first, but it’s not surprising that guys like Nokia a couple years ago acquired Navtec on the map side, and if Samsung, Motorola and all these other guys are smart, they’re going to be acquiring similar assets to become ready to be software-as-a-service companies just as much as they are hardware companies. MB: We’ve seen mobile ad neworks and a couple geo-location companies get bought up. Any other types you expect the corporate buyers to target?TC: I think social graph is a huge important part. I think companies that have data-mining, analytics, or own the social graph itself will be very important. Arguably, Facebook’s already locked up the social graph, so it’ll be hard to replicate that. However, any other startups that have been able to scrape that or get pieces of other social graphs from other companies will be very important. I think companies that scan and can analyze social graphs, scan news feeds and social feeds will be pretty important. You’ve already started to see some of this. Carriers are starting to some acquisitions of connected cloud address books types of things. You know, Apple tried the Mobile Me service that at first launch didn’t work so well, and in my opinion, Apple’s never really understood the social net well, so that can be an area that they bulk up in, just like they purchased advertising so they can have ad infrastructure going forward.MB: Does acquisition in the social graph space mean buying media companies like social networks?TC: Nah, probably not. My guess is it’s going to be more social graph analytics and data companies: companies that have metadata around the social graph. That’s probably more important than buying some would-be runner-up to Facebook or something.MB: Does the battle between Apple and Android affect how you invest in games, or does that not really matter?TC: I think it’ll be pretty important, because 2008-2009 was really the year of the app store taking off and then 2010 I think will be the year of Android really taking off, especially overseas. What’s really important is that companies that want to play in smartphone gaming 2.0 have to be ready for three things: the first is expansion beyond just the iPhone platforms, so prioritizing the Android platform and potentially also RIM and others. I think they’re de-prioritizing Microsoft and Palm right now. I think it’s clear, every developer needs iPhone, needs Android and maybe RIM—those have become the top three.Second, it’s going to be a global market; it’s not just the U.S. As Android spreads into China and other regions, companies should be looking at internationalizing.Third, these companies have to be ready for the shift to free-to-play with in-game microtransactions. Mobile smartphone gaming is going to mirror what’s happened with online social games like Zynga and Playdom. The natural pricepoint for most of these should be free. It should all go to free and be monetized through in-game transactions as well as potential upsell to premium, whether that’s subscription, or something else.MB: Google recently had a run-in with China. Will that hurt their ability to tap the mobile and gaming market there?TC: It’s interesting, China Mobile rolled out their Ophone platform, which was their answer to iPhone, and the whole thing’s built on Android. That said, Android is a weird variant because it’s built for customization. It’s meant to be tweaked and skinned however you want it, almost like an opne-source kind of thing, so I think you’re going to see the fragmentation of Android in 2010. Every carrier, every handset maker wants their own flavored custom version of Android. One of our portfolio companies called Borqs in China is the leader in this area—they’re almost the de facto Red Hat of Android now doing all these custom integrations for the system rollouts. You know, it’s interesting to see—after you customize to a certain point, is it still Google anymore, or is it a kind of successor to Linux Mobile as the true open-source framework. The Google question will be an interesting one. I think it could potentially hinder vanilla Android launches in China where Google is the default search, but I think we’ll continue to see customize Android rollouts, where they’re heavily reskinned and it doesn’t feel like generic Android.MB: In these reskinned offshoots of Android, how much access and monetization capability does Google have?TC: The Google Search experience and other Google apps are heavily integrated into Android, but carriers have the ability to replace big chunks of those things or pick preferred solutions or pieces and modules in their customized Android rollouts, so that’ll be an interesting battle to see. At some point some of the Chinese folks could say, you know, I don’t want Google Search to be the default search engine; I want something else. But the best hook for Google into China is search, not just online where Baidu is number one, but especially in mobile. Mobile’s always been a potential Trojan horse for Google to really win a lot of market share on search in China.
Can ngmoco become the Zynga of iPhone games? The two look surprisingly similar. Game maker ngmoco raises $25M, buys Freeverse
Technology trends and news by Matt BowmanFebruary 23, 2010 Comments (0) Short URL: http://vator.tv/n/dfa
Can ngmoco become the Zynga of iPhone games? $25 million says yes. That’s how much the company just raised in a round led by Institutional Venture Partners, with existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Norwest Venture Partners and Maples Investments also participating. Ngmoco is the creator of popular iPhone games like Eliminate, We Rule and Touch Pets.The company also announced the acquisition of rival iPhone game developer Freeverse, another leader in the space that produces Parachute Ninja, Top Gun, NBA Hotshots, and the ever-popular Skee-ball.CEO Neil Young (not the still-kickin’ 60s rocker) told TechCrunch he wants to “amass enough scale” to accelerate “away from the pack.” That approach—gobble competitors, grow like crazy on a new rapidly expanding platform (Facebook / App Store) all the while amassing a braintrust for making games addictive and profitable—sounds a lot like Zynga. In fact, ngmoco looks very similar to Zynga circa early 2009: two years old, $40 million in funding, one acquisition under its belt, and a steady stream of gaming hits. The companies also share IVP and Kleiner Perkins as investors.Zynga now has raised a total of $219 million, just made its third acquisition and is valued at around $3 billion by SharesPost. Since only true predictions are remembered, I’ll go ahead and bet that ngmoco will be the next wunderstartup of Silicon Valley.Last year, Young transitioned all of ngmoco’s games to a free-to-play model, hoping to monetize with in-app purchases. That's consistent with what Tim Chang, an investor in the company, told us last month: "These companies have to be ready for the shift to free-to-play with in-game microtransactions." All of Freeverse’s games are paid apps, and Young plans to switch them all to free-to-play. A bold move, for sure. Then again, that model has certainly worked well for Zynga, which, according to most speculators, generates hundreds of millions in revenues a year.
http://bit.ly/1mNWbO Tim Chang wants to fund the future of gaming
The up-and-coming Norwest Partner also predicts VC consolidation and the rise of super angels
In the not-too-distant future, Tim Chang sees a brave new world of online “gaming-as-a-service”: cloud-based, free-to-play, frictionless distribution, all monetized through advertising, virtual goods and premium subscriptions. And to help build it, he's looking to fund everything from a vertical gaming cloud to "Paypal 2.0" microtransaction processing, next-gen publishers, new platforms, service layers, and technology enablers.
I spoke with Chang last week outside the Norwest offices on University Ave in Palo Alto. Below are his thoughts on the coming consolidation in the VC world, why he thinks gaming is a bright spot on an otherwise cloudy horizon, and what the new online entertainment utopia will look like.
MB: The recession has hit the VC industry hard. People are saying either the VC model is broken or it’s going to re-emerge completely changed. What’s your take?
TC: Well, there is some truth to the fact that it may be broken today, but like all financial markets, they self-correct, so it’s not that VC as a category goes away, but it will evolve and it is right sizing, so it is true that we may have a smaller venture capital industry than what we’ve had in the last five years. While it doesn’t go away, you could say that at worst you could say that maybe half the funds will be in existence five years from now, and maybe it’ll be half the size of what it has been, and maybe that’s the right size for the market.
At the same time, you’ll see the venture model evolve. You’ll have a bifurcation of venture funds that are growing larger and larger and becoming global players on a multi-stage type of model, and you’ll also see smaller, more boutique, focused funds probably specializing in a sector, a region, a particular stage, maybe smaller outcomes. You will see for example the rise of the super angels, who have smaller funds but operate like very early-stage VC models focused on a particular sector or a particular size of investment.
MB: Let’s talk specifically about your sector of expertise, digital media. What’s happening in that industry right now?
TC: Digital media’s particularly interesting because there are two tectonic plate shifts that are happening. One is the traditional business model of advertising is under pressure due to the recession, and so a lot of people come to the conclusion that pure-play ad business models don’t work any more for content and destination type of plays. On the other hand, distribution has become exceedingly fragmented with the Internet, with mobile, with Web 2.0 social media, and so traditional outlets and how you publish to a mass audience are disappearing. For me it’s a very interesting time because both media and the advertising industry have to reinvent themselves.
One of the brightest spots of hope on the horizon is in the gaming and interactive online entertainment areas. It’s kind of funny—I joke that virtual goods is becoming the advertising of 2009. So whereas last year all the business plans I saw had business models that would say “We’re ads-based,” today it’s all “We’re virtual-goods-based!” You’ve seen a lot of Web 2.0 entrepreneurs shift to try to be social gaming or free-to-play online games. It is true we’re seeing gaming rise, and I think it’s because gaming can monetize in multiple ways beyond just advertising, so we’re seeing a lot of people flock towards gaming as a potential safe spot.
MB: The virtual goods model is based on micropayments—the notion that people are going to be willing to open there purse strings to put up just a few bucks. A few year’s ago, the “penny barrier” was seen as a huge obstacle—people just weren’t willing to pay for small online goods. Do you think the consumer mentality is changing?
TC: I think it is, and young people are being trained from Day One on new services like Club Penguin, which is still subscription-based, but subscription as an offshoot of these virtual currencies that they’re racking up by playing and engaging with the online world. So I think you’re going to have a lot of young users being educated on how to interact an pay with these virtual gods systems from games and websites early on and it’ll be a very natural fit for them to then move over to microtransactions for things like mobile payments, first for online digital goods and then eventually for retail goods in the physical world as well.
MB: So given this new playing field what kind of companies are you looking to invest in?
TC: Having grown up playing games since age 10 on Apple, gaming is a big passion area of mine personally, and I’m very happy that it’s become a robust investment area. That said, I don’t typically invest in pure game companies that are just studios. Instead, we’re looking for next-gen publishers, platforms, and also gaming technologies and enablers. What I mean by that is even gaming itself is shifting from packaged media to really gaming-as-a-service, and that’s really just a template for the shift of the media industry overall towards what I call media-as-a-service, or entertainment-as-a-service. It’s going cloud-based. It’s going free-to-play with frictionless distribution, monetized through advertisements, virtual goods and premium subscriptions. We’re looking at all the pieces that enable that. We’re going to see vertical cloud solutions just for the gaming cloud. We’re going to see next-gen, “PayPal 2.0” for microtransactions payment processing, We’re going to see a whole lot of new service layers around gaming as well, in addition to the equivalent of a publisher 2.0, on new platforms like social networks and iPhones.
MB: Last question: What makes Tim Chang want to get up in the morning?
TC: I’m very lucky that I get to invest in what I’m passionate about personally. I’ve always been about gadgets and games, and I’m a big guitarist so music and media have been close to my heart. Those are things I do naturally, and to be able to weave that into my day job is something I’m very grateful for. These are things that I think and dream and talk about all the time anyway—it’s not really work, it’s sort of play. Working at Norwest, being able to investigate these areas to invest in, to make money and also to back really smart entrepreneurs and thought leaders in this area is an incredible experience. I’m lucky to have that.
http://bit.ly/b2F6Ag How to get Norwest's Tim Chang to listen to your idea ($0.5m - $15m) vertical ad plays, analytics (tim led venture investment in PCH int’l Liam Casey http://www.nvp.com/ )
Advertising is the lazy entrepreneur’s answer to a poorly, thought-out business plan,” said Tim Chang, Principal at Norwest Venture Partners, in a recent interview with me. Gulp. If you’re an entrepreneur with an ad-supported model, and no traffic, and you’re thinking of getting Tim to be your champion, or much of Silicon Valley for that matter, think again. Advertising-based businesses require significant traffic, as Don Dodge, director of business development at Microsoft, made clear in his recent piece, “Does Web 2.0 = Bubble 2.0?” recently.
Indeed, despite the dominance of both MySpace, with 118 million users worldwide, and Facebook, these two sites are only estimated to generate about $1 billion in sales combined this year, according to eMarketer. In this environment, the best thing a startup can do is to think about non-advertising models. “I’m so relieved when an entrepreneur says, ‘Yeah, there’s some ads to this; but I want to sell stuff,'” said Tim. Such non-ad models include virtual good sales, subscriptions, lead generation and e-commerce. As for the type of companies Tim is looking for, they include vertical social media sites and vertical ad networks.
Norwest invests anywhere between $500,000 and $15 million to $20 million. What does a team have to look like to get that half a million? I asked. Tim said that he bets a lot on serial entrepreneurs who are tried and true, and more predictable. He’ll bet on new entrepreneurs if their idea is getting “grass-roots” traction.
Hollywood and Silicon Valley
Tim, who’s been spending a lot of time down in LA these days, also talked about how Hollywood talent agencies and Silicon Valley venture capitalists are starting to work with one another to fund celebrities that want to take ownership in their future. Since the writers’ strike, VCs have been receiving inbound calls from Hollywood agents and artists looking to leverage Facebook, YouTube and social media, said Tim. The challenge is that Hollywood and Silicon Valley still speak different languages, he said. In the Valley, VCs talk about equity and delayed gratification while Hollywood cares only about what’s in it for them today, he added. Which model will prevail? I asked.
Everyone is learning from each other, he said. “Silicon Valley entrepreneurs realize they need high-quality, expert and premium content to inject into the long tail,” Tim said. “Hollywood is learning to build a community around their content."
(Note: There's obviously more to this interview. But you'll have to watch to get all of Tim's insights.)
in this post i have put together some of the latest thinking from the valley, gleaned from http://www.vator.tv/
http://bit.ly/aSZ9FZ ( go to original web sites for the videos) Net giants predicted to go on buying spree
Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo have north of $50 billion in cash
With the recession behind us, the big, deep-pocketed Internet giants are expected to be actively snapping up companies this year. Indeed, Google already kicked off the year in a buying mood with its $50 million acquisition of social Q&A site, Aardvark.
"A year ago they stopped all acquisitions," said Mark Mahaney, Internet analyst at Citi Investment Research, referring to the publicly-traded Internet companies, Google, Yahoo, eBay and Amazon. "Now that we're out of the recession.. and now that they're looking for new growth opportunities, you bet there's going to be a pick-up in M&A activity, and those are the four obvious."
Mark points out that Google has $14 bln to $15 billion in cash, eBay has $5 billion, Amazon has $2 bln to $3 bln and Yahoo has $3 bln to $4 billion. Add in Microsoft and Apple's stockpile and there's north of $50 billion in cash looking for secular growth opportunities.
Already we've seen some major acquisitions happening in the last several months, a good indicator of activity in the new year. Amazon's acquisition of Zappos closed in November 2009. (Note: Watch for my interview with Zappos Alfred Lin - coming soon). Google bought AdMob for $750 million in stock in November, and was reportedly interested in buying Yelp, in mid-December. Apple bought Quattro Wireless for $275 million in January.
Mark predicts we'll see more consolidation in these areas - smart phone, ecommerce, mobile advertising and local.
http://bit.ly/94oVmR What the Apple-Google War means for startups
Tim Chang, Norwest Venture Partner’s mobile guru, says the giants are hungry for cloud technology.
If you’re a mobile entrepreneur and haven’t yet met Tim Chang, you’re not going to enough conferences. Ever since his firm, Norwest Venture Partners, raised a whopping $1.2 billion fund last year, Chang has been active on the speaking circuit (he even sported a bass guitar on the bandstand at Vator Splash this month). Chang focuses on mobile, gaming, and digital media investments for Norwest and leads NVP's investment practice in China and Asia-Pacific. He previously spent 5 years living in Japan where the gaming and mobile markets are lightyears ahead of the U.S. in many respects. All of that means Chang knows his stuff when it comes to the future of mobile. I got him on the phone on January 25 (ie, before the iPad launch) to talk about Apple’s newfound appetite for startups (Quattro Wireless and Lala being the most notable acquisitions in recent months), and how the Apple-Android wars are affecting his investment strategy. Chang says that Apple, Google, handset makers and carriers are all hungry for cloud technology that is not currently in their DNA, including ad networks, geolocation and social graph analytics. His insights on how much Google will actually be able to penetrate the Chinese mobile market are also worth a read…MB: It seems Apple is becoming more acquisitive. What kind of companies do you think they’ll go after? What’s their strategy?TC: I think it’s pretty clear we’re seeing two new giants go head-to-head: Apple and Google. The way I see it, we’re starting to see large companies engage in cloud warfare. Every company needs a piece of the cloud. There are several strategic assets within cloud warfare: there’s the address book, the public relations with the customer, there’s the digital locker in the sky.... There’s a variety of assets and it’s pretty clear all of these large companies will need to play in these spaces, whether it’s carriers—and you’re going to see carriers being acquisitive—whether it’s Google, which starts from more of the search and data side, or Apple that starts from the device side and realizes we are no longer in a age of just selling consumer electronics. That’s a pretty dead market. It’s all about what I call the device-as-a-service. IPhone is a device built for cloud connectivity out of the box. Kindle is the same. I think one of the clear messages from CES this year is that going forward, most devices will be architected for a device-as-a-service type of experience.The hardware was commoditized long long ago and while design is differentiating some new products, in general, it’s the connection to the platform—the app store, the cloud, all those kinds of services—that really makes the difference, so every hardware company needs to figure out how to be very good at being a cloud service and software company as well. That’s not normally in their DNA, so you can expect a lot of acquisitions. Apple is the first, but it’s not surprising that guys like Nokia a couple years ago acquired Navtec on the map side, and if Samsung, Motorola and all these other guys are smart, they’re going to be acquiring similar assets to become ready to be software-as-a-service companies just as much as they are hardware companies. MB: We’ve seen mobile ad neworks and a couple geo-location companies get bought up. Any other types you expect the corporate buyers to target?TC: I think social graph is a huge important part. I think companies that have data-mining, analytics, or own the social graph itself will be very important. Arguably, Facebook’s already locked up the social graph, so it’ll be hard to replicate that. However, any other startups that have been able to scrape that or get pieces of other social graphs from other companies will be very important. I think companies that scan and can analyze social graphs, scan news feeds and social feeds will be pretty important. You’ve already started to see some of this. Carriers are starting to some acquisitions of connected cloud address books types of things. You know, Apple tried the Mobile Me service that at first launch didn’t work so well, and in my opinion, Apple’s never really understood the social net well, so that can be an area that they bulk up in, just like they purchased advertising so they can have ad infrastructure going forward.MB: Does acquisition in the social graph space mean buying media companies like social networks?TC: Nah, probably not. My guess is it’s going to be more social graph analytics and data companies: companies that have metadata around the social graph. That’s probably more important than buying some would-be runner-up to Facebook or something.MB: Does the battle between Apple and Android affect how you invest in games, or does that not really matter?TC: I think it’ll be pretty important, because 2008-2009 was really the year of the app store taking off and then 2010 I think will be the year of Android really taking off, especially overseas. What’s really important is that companies that want to play in smartphone gaming 2.0 have to be ready for three things: the first is expansion beyond just the iPhone platforms, so prioritizing the Android platform and potentially also RIM and others. I think they’re de-prioritizing Microsoft and Palm right now. I think it’s clear, every developer needs iPhone, needs Android and maybe RIM—those have become the top three.Second, it’s going to be a global market; it’s not just the U.S. As Android spreads into China and other regions, companies should be looking at internationalizing.Third, these companies have to be ready for the shift to free-to-play with in-game microtransactions. Mobile smartphone gaming is going to mirror what’s happened with online social games like Zynga and Playdom. The natural pricepoint for most of these should be free. It should all go to free and be monetized through in-game transactions as well as potential upsell to premium, whether that’s subscription, or something else.MB: Google recently had a run-in with China. Will that hurt their ability to tap the mobile and gaming market there?TC: It’s interesting, China Mobile rolled out their Ophone platform, which was their answer to iPhone, and the whole thing’s built on Android. That said, Android is a weird variant because it’s built for customization. It’s meant to be tweaked and skinned however you want it, almost like an opne-source kind of thing, so I think you’re going to see the fragmentation of Android in 2010. Every carrier, every handset maker wants their own flavored custom version of Android. One of our portfolio companies called Borqs in China is the leader in this area—they’re almost the de facto Red Hat of Android now doing all these custom integrations for the system rollouts. You know, it’s interesting to see—after you customize to a certain point, is it still Google anymore, or is it a kind of successor to Linux Mobile as the true open-source framework. The Google question will be an interesting one. I think it could potentially hinder vanilla Android launches in China where Google is the default search, but I think we’ll continue to see customize Android rollouts, where they’re heavily reskinned and it doesn’t feel like generic Android.MB: In these reskinned offshoots of Android, how much access and monetization capability does Google have?TC: The Google Search experience and other Google apps are heavily integrated into Android, but carriers have the ability to replace big chunks of those things or pick preferred solutions or pieces and modules in their customized Android rollouts, so that’ll be an interesting battle to see. At some point some of the Chinese folks could say, you know, I don’t want Google Search to be the default search engine; I want something else. But the best hook for Google into China is search, not just online where Baidu is number one, but especially in mobile. Mobile’s always been a potential Trojan horse for Google to really win a lot of market share on search in China.
Can ngmoco become the Zynga of iPhone games? The two look surprisingly similar. Game maker ngmoco raises $25M, buys Freeverse
Technology trends and news by Matt BowmanFebruary 23, 2010 Comments (0) Short URL: http://vator.tv/n/dfa
Can ngmoco become the Zynga of iPhone games? $25 million says yes. That’s how much the company just raised in a round led by Institutional Venture Partners, with existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Norwest Venture Partners and Maples Investments also participating. Ngmoco is the creator of popular iPhone games like Eliminate, We Rule and Touch Pets.The company also announced the acquisition of rival iPhone game developer Freeverse, another leader in the space that produces Parachute Ninja, Top Gun, NBA Hotshots, and the ever-popular Skee-ball.CEO Neil Young (not the still-kickin’ 60s rocker) told TechCrunch he wants to “amass enough scale” to accelerate “away from the pack.” That approach—gobble competitors, grow like crazy on a new rapidly expanding platform (Facebook / App Store) all the while amassing a braintrust for making games addictive and profitable—sounds a lot like Zynga. In fact, ngmoco looks very similar to Zynga circa early 2009: two years old, $40 million in funding, one acquisition under its belt, and a steady stream of gaming hits. The companies also share IVP and Kleiner Perkins as investors.Zynga now has raised a total of $219 million, just made its third acquisition and is valued at around $3 billion by SharesPost. Since only true predictions are remembered, I’ll go ahead and bet that ngmoco will be the next wunderstartup of Silicon Valley.Last year, Young transitioned all of ngmoco’s games to a free-to-play model, hoping to monetize with in-app purchases. That's consistent with what Tim Chang, an investor in the company, told us last month: "These companies have to be ready for the shift to free-to-play with in-game microtransactions." All of Freeverse’s games are paid apps, and Young plans to switch them all to free-to-play. A bold move, for sure. Then again, that model has certainly worked well for Zynga, which, according to most speculators, generates hundreds of millions in revenues a year.
http://bit.ly/1mNWbO Tim Chang wants to fund the future of gaming
The up-and-coming Norwest Partner also predicts VC consolidation and the rise of super angels
In the not-too-distant future, Tim Chang sees a brave new world of online “gaming-as-a-service”: cloud-based, free-to-play, frictionless distribution, all monetized through advertising, virtual goods and premium subscriptions. And to help build it, he's looking to fund everything from a vertical gaming cloud to "Paypal 2.0" microtransaction processing, next-gen publishers, new platforms, service layers, and technology enablers.
I spoke with Chang last week outside the Norwest offices on University Ave in Palo Alto. Below are his thoughts on the coming consolidation in the VC world, why he thinks gaming is a bright spot on an otherwise cloudy horizon, and what the new online entertainment utopia will look like.
MB: The recession has hit the VC industry hard. People are saying either the VC model is broken or it’s going to re-emerge completely changed. What’s your take?
TC: Well, there is some truth to the fact that it may be broken today, but like all financial markets, they self-correct, so it’s not that VC as a category goes away, but it will evolve and it is right sizing, so it is true that we may have a smaller venture capital industry than what we’ve had in the last five years. While it doesn’t go away, you could say that at worst you could say that maybe half the funds will be in existence five years from now, and maybe it’ll be half the size of what it has been, and maybe that’s the right size for the market.
At the same time, you’ll see the venture model evolve. You’ll have a bifurcation of venture funds that are growing larger and larger and becoming global players on a multi-stage type of model, and you’ll also see smaller, more boutique, focused funds probably specializing in a sector, a region, a particular stage, maybe smaller outcomes. You will see for example the rise of the super angels, who have smaller funds but operate like very early-stage VC models focused on a particular sector or a particular size of investment.
MB: Let’s talk specifically about your sector of expertise, digital media. What’s happening in that industry right now?
TC: Digital media’s particularly interesting because there are two tectonic plate shifts that are happening. One is the traditional business model of advertising is under pressure due to the recession, and so a lot of people come to the conclusion that pure-play ad business models don’t work any more for content and destination type of plays. On the other hand, distribution has become exceedingly fragmented with the Internet, with mobile, with Web 2.0 social media, and so traditional outlets and how you publish to a mass audience are disappearing. For me it’s a very interesting time because both media and the advertising industry have to reinvent themselves.
One of the brightest spots of hope on the horizon is in the gaming and interactive online entertainment areas. It’s kind of funny—I joke that virtual goods is becoming the advertising of 2009. So whereas last year all the business plans I saw had business models that would say “We’re ads-based,” today it’s all “We’re virtual-goods-based!” You’ve seen a lot of Web 2.0 entrepreneurs shift to try to be social gaming or free-to-play online games. It is true we’re seeing gaming rise, and I think it’s because gaming can monetize in multiple ways beyond just advertising, so we’re seeing a lot of people flock towards gaming as a potential safe spot.
MB: The virtual goods model is based on micropayments—the notion that people are going to be willing to open there purse strings to put up just a few bucks. A few year’s ago, the “penny barrier” was seen as a huge obstacle—people just weren’t willing to pay for small online goods. Do you think the consumer mentality is changing?
TC: I think it is, and young people are being trained from Day One on new services like Club Penguin, which is still subscription-based, but subscription as an offshoot of these virtual currencies that they’re racking up by playing and engaging with the online world. So I think you’re going to have a lot of young users being educated on how to interact an pay with these virtual gods systems from games and websites early on and it’ll be a very natural fit for them to then move over to microtransactions for things like mobile payments, first for online digital goods and then eventually for retail goods in the physical world as well.
MB: So given this new playing field what kind of companies are you looking to invest in?
TC: Having grown up playing games since age 10 on Apple, gaming is a big passion area of mine personally, and I’m very happy that it’s become a robust investment area. That said, I don’t typically invest in pure game companies that are just studios. Instead, we’re looking for next-gen publishers, platforms, and also gaming technologies and enablers. What I mean by that is even gaming itself is shifting from packaged media to really gaming-as-a-service, and that’s really just a template for the shift of the media industry overall towards what I call media-as-a-service, or entertainment-as-a-service. It’s going cloud-based. It’s going free-to-play with frictionless distribution, monetized through advertisements, virtual goods and premium subscriptions. We’re looking at all the pieces that enable that. We’re going to see vertical cloud solutions just for the gaming cloud. We’re going to see next-gen, “PayPal 2.0” for microtransactions payment processing, We’re going to see a whole lot of new service layers around gaming as well, in addition to the equivalent of a publisher 2.0, on new platforms like social networks and iPhones.
MB: Last question: What makes Tim Chang want to get up in the morning?
TC: I’m very lucky that I get to invest in what I’m passionate about personally. I’ve always been about gadgets and games, and I’m a big guitarist so music and media have been close to my heart. Those are things I do naturally, and to be able to weave that into my day job is something I’m very grateful for. These are things that I think and dream and talk about all the time anyway—it’s not really work, it’s sort of play. Working at Norwest, being able to investigate these areas to invest in, to make money and also to back really smart entrepreneurs and thought leaders in this area is an incredible experience. I’m lucky to have that.
http://bit.ly/b2F6Ag How to get Norwest's Tim Chang to listen to your idea ($0.5m - $15m) vertical ad plays, analytics (tim led venture investment in PCH int’l Liam Casey http://www.nvp.com/ )
Advertising is the lazy entrepreneur’s answer to a poorly, thought-out business plan,” said Tim Chang, Principal at Norwest Venture Partners, in a recent interview with me. Gulp. If you’re an entrepreneur with an ad-supported model, and no traffic, and you’re thinking of getting Tim to be your champion, or much of Silicon Valley for that matter, think again. Advertising-based businesses require significant traffic, as Don Dodge, director of business development at Microsoft, made clear in his recent piece, “Does Web 2.0 = Bubble 2.0?” recently.
Indeed, despite the dominance of both MySpace, with 118 million users worldwide, and Facebook, these two sites are only estimated to generate about $1 billion in sales combined this year, according to eMarketer. In this environment, the best thing a startup can do is to think about non-advertising models. “I’m so relieved when an entrepreneur says, ‘Yeah, there’s some ads to this; but I want to sell stuff,'” said Tim. Such non-ad models include virtual good sales, subscriptions, lead generation and e-commerce. As for the type of companies Tim is looking for, they include vertical social media sites and vertical ad networks.
Norwest invests anywhere between $500,000 and $15 million to $20 million. What does a team have to look like to get that half a million? I asked. Tim said that he bets a lot on serial entrepreneurs who are tried and true, and more predictable. He’ll bet on new entrepreneurs if their idea is getting “grass-roots” traction.
Hollywood and Silicon Valley
Tim, who’s been spending a lot of time down in LA these days, also talked about how Hollywood talent agencies and Silicon Valley venture capitalists are starting to work with one another to fund celebrities that want to take ownership in their future. Since the writers’ strike, VCs have been receiving inbound calls from Hollywood agents and artists looking to leverage Facebook, YouTube and social media, said Tim. The challenge is that Hollywood and Silicon Valley still speak different languages, he said. In the Valley, VCs talk about equity and delayed gratification while Hollywood cares only about what’s in it for them today, he added. Which model will prevail? I asked.
Everyone is learning from each other, he said. “Silicon Valley entrepreneurs realize they need high-quality, expert and premium content to inject into the long tail,” Tim said. “Hollywood is learning to build a community around their content."
(Note: There's obviously more to this interview. But you'll have to watch to get all of Tim's insights.)
sources about start-ups in the valley
two of the best sources for keeping tabs on what is happening with start ups in the valley are
www.vator.tv
www.techcrunch.com
in both cases sign up for the ezine which sends you info on a regular basis
www.vator.tv
www.techcrunch.com
in both cases sign up for the ezine which sends you info on a regular basis
entrepreneurship and the question of value
we as individuals all understand value as consumers whether we are buying a car or whatever.
somehow in startup mode we can lose sight of the question of value, for all sorts of reasons such as the busy nature of a startup, the focus on minimising risk, raising finance and the attractiveness of your idea.
And so for me this is a good starting point
Value = size of the problem you are are addressing [x] implication of not fixing the problem
somehow in startup mode we can lose sight of the question of value, for all sorts of reasons such as the busy nature of a startup, the focus on minimising risk, raising finance and the attractiveness of your idea.
And so for me this is a good starting point
Value = size of the problem you are are addressing [x] implication of not fixing the problem
you should be able to answer this question from day 1
In today’s world (and maybe always) the driving force is value
- Customers want to know how your offering is going to add value to their business and help their careers. How will it reduce their company’s costs or generate additional revenues? –Translation: “What’s my incentive to change?”
- They also want to be assured that your solution will deliver as promised. They just don’t want value-added, they want value assurance. Translation: “Show me how this dream will become reality and give me the confidence to invest.”
getting started blogging
in this forum I plan to post information, comment and resources from time to time on the very much related topics of entrepreneurship and innovation.
to my mind they are like two sides of the same coin. this is very much my personal take on these issues.
The question of success
I think one of the most insightful and fun things i have seen on the topic of what constitutes success is Richard St Johns video talk on www.ted.com entitled Secrets of success. It is well worth viewing and understandind deeply. this is the link to the actual talk. http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eted%2Ecom%2Findex%2Ephp%2Ftalks%2Frichard_st_john_s_8_secrets_of_success%2Ehtml&urlhash=rt-n&_t=tracking_disc
to my mind they are like two sides of the same coin. this is very much my personal take on these issues.
The question of success
I think one of the most insightful and fun things i have seen on the topic of what constitutes success is Richard St Johns video talk on www.ted.com entitled Secrets of success. It is well worth viewing and understandind deeply. this is the link to the actual talk. http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eted%2Ecom%2Findex%2Ephp%2Ftalks%2Frichard_st_john_s_8_secrets_of_success%2Ehtml&urlhash=rt-n&_t=tracking_disc
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