Under the Radar: Commercializing the Cloud – Apply to Present / Discount Tix Here
Bay Area, Startups March 5th, 2010
Under the Radar is Silicon Valleyâs most established startup debut platform: a conference series organized by Dealmaker Media, covering business applications, social media, entertainment, mobility..etc.
This yearâs conference in Mountain View, CA on April 16th will focus on Commercializing the Cloud â thatâs a fairly wide definition, and one that perfectly mashes with our focus over @ CloudAve, so weâre proud to be Media Partners at this event. That means weâll be covering it before, during and after, and if you decide the attend, weâll get you in at a discount rate.
In this American Idol of startups typically 32 finalists are selected, who are grouped in categories of 4 each and each has about 15 minutes to present in two parallel tracks. They get grilled by the judges and audience, and at the end of the conference the winners of each category are announced. A few years ago I participated in the pre-selection of startups, and I remember having checked out hundreds of companies to come down to the finalist set. At the moment 19 finalists are announced:
AppDynamics, AppFirst, Aprigo, Cloudant, CloudShare, CloudSwitch, Conformity, CubeTree, Fonolo, GoodData, Layerboom Systems, Makara, MaxiScale, Neo Technology, NorthScale, Reductive Labs, RiverMuse, SaaSure and SendGrid.
This means two things:
- A dozen or so slots are still open
- The Selection Committee will likely sift through another 100+ applications to fill those slots.
So if you consider your startup a (future) leader in Saas | Collaboration | Business Apps | Development Tools | Compliance |Â (and more!), donât waste time, apply here to be a presenter.
A personal note: the roster so far is quite infrastructure-heavy, which Iâm sure makes Krish happy⊠but as the dumb non-techie business guy, Iâd love to see more Business Apps, too
Past presenters include: Heroku, Get Satisfaction, Marketo, Eucalyptus, Zuora, Box.net, Ribbit, Hubspot, Twilio, New Relic, CloudKick, Jive Software, and many more. Many (54%) of the UtR participant received funding, some grew to fame, others disappeared⊠but disappearance is not always bad – as is the case of 2008 Under the Radar graduate 3Tera, which just got acquired by Computer Associates.
And if youâre not presenting, you sure would like to attend
CloudAve readers get $100 off their tickets here!
Under the Radar is not only a great startup showcase, itâs perfect good networking and and deal-making forum in Silicon Valley. Stay above the clouds – see innovation in its earliest stages – and get deals done; one handshake at a time. Mingle with 350 VCâs, journalists and C-level executives seeking to find, connect and partner with startups whoâs products, technology and teams fit strategically into their road maps.
Remember to use our discount â and see you there!

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )
Tags: cloud computing, CloudAve, Dealmaker Media, entrepreneurship, marketing, SaaS, silicon valley, Startups, vc Funding, venture Capital
Two recent posts by Enterprise Social Software vendors Jive and Atlassian set up a huge debate amongst my fellow Enterprise Irregulars. Hereâs the money-quote from Jive:
Itâs not so long ago that it felt embarrassing to say the words "SaaS" and " single-tenant" in the same sentence. For years, it’s been an industry mantra that it’s simply impossible to have a scalable SaaS business without multi-tenancy.
Both Jive and Atlassian went single-tenant. Thatâs a red flag with many SaaS purists. But thereâs more then just tenancy. What if customer data stays behind the firewall, while the application is still provided over the web? Is that still considered SaaS? Do customers really care about such issues, or do they look for innovation in features and services?
And a bonus: the #1 SaaS icon supposedly delivers on-premise, if the deal is big enoughâŠ
Tags: atlassian, cloud computing, CloudAve, data security, Enterprise Software, infrastructure, jive, multi-tenant, On-Demand, on-premise, private cloud, readwriteweb, SaaS, salesforce.com, sharepoint, single-tenant, software architecture, software as a service, tenancy, zoho
Under the Radar: Call for Startups in Cloud Computing & Business Applications
Business, Collaboration, SaaS, Startups January 12th, 2009
Under the Radar is the Silicon Valleyâs most established startup debut platform: a conference series organized by Dealmaker Media, covering business applications, social media, entertainment, mobility..etc.
The 11th Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, CA on April 24, 2009 will focus on Cloud Computing and Business Applications and the organizers have issued a CALL FOR COMPANIES to present.
The general criteria for all UTR events:
- Unique value proposition
- Ability to monetize product/business
- Large market opportunity
- Must still be considered "under the radar" – launched in 2008
- Company must be an actual startup – not a new product from a large company
Typically 32 finalists are selected, who will present in a rapid-fire format – they are grouped in categories of 4 each, in two parallel tracks and each presenter has about 15 minutes. They get grilled by the judges and audience, and at the end of the conference the winners of each category are announced. Categories for the April event are:
- Cloud Infrastructure
- Platforms
- Virtualization
- Saas
- Mashups
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Business Apps
- Development Tools (Utilities, OS, etc…)
- Mobile Office
- Semantics
- Commerce
- Social software/ networks
- Sync (online/offline)
If youâre building a startup, meet the criteria above, will have a real product / service out by April, donât hesitate: APPLY.
See you in April!
(Cross-posted from CloudAve – to stay on top of Cloud Computing news, analysis and just our opinion, grab the CloudAve Feed here)
Tags: cloud computing, Collaboration, DealMakerMedia, entrepreneurship, glue, IBDNetwork, marketing, mashups, networking, SaaS, startup pitch, Startups, Under the Radar, UtR, vc Funding, venture Capital
Your Digital Data My Not Be Accessible Soon
Personal Productivity, Technology December 12th, 2008
So youâre doing the right thing, backing up everything on CDs or DVDs. Too bad they may not be readable in a few years⊠and even if they are, you still have to worry about data formats.
Data sitting on your hard disk may not be much better: in fact files you created with the very apps youâve just upgraded to the most recent version my no longer be readable by the current version anymore.
Read the details hereâŠ
Tags: archives, cloud computing, compatibility, data continuity, data conversion, data formats, digital continuity, hard-disk, legacy data, microsoft, ms office, netbooks, solid state drive, ssd, storage
Cloud Computing and Open Source are Not Enemies
SaaS September 29th, 2008
Image via Wikipedia
Are Open Source and Cloud Computing anachronistic enemies? Youâd think so, if you read GNU creator Richard Stallmanâs interview in The Guardian:
Cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time.
"It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign,"
Sure, thereâs a lot of marketing hype as it is typical with any major technological advancement, especially as it reaches the peak of its hype cycle. But I think Stallman loses sight of who the âenemyâ is.
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Tags: cloud computing, deki wiki, gnu, netsuite, Open Source, oracle, proprietary software, SaaS, wordpress
Cloudy Fusion
Enterprise Software, Humor, SaaS September 28th, 2008
Image by wicho via Flickr
The Enterprise Irregulars took over CloudAve⊠well, sort of, forcing us to release an article early. Eran Kampf had a post lined up for Monday morning about Larry Ellisonâs Cloud Envy, when all of a sudden fellow Irregular Anshu Sharma had a humor attack and came out with a hilarious post. All he did was replace Cloud Computing with Fusion in Larryâs famous rant, and voila!:
"The interesting thing about Fusion is that we’ve redefined Fusion to include everything that we already do. I can’t think of anything that isn’t Fusion with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?"
"We’ll make Fusion announcements. I’m not going to fight this thing. But I don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of Fusion other than change the wording of some of our ads. That’s my view."
Wow. This variant of Ellisonâs speech makes a lot of sense, referring to his own elusive Fusion applications. Even Vinnie Agrees. 
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Tags: buzzwords, cloud computing, Enterprise Software, fusion, Humor, hype, larry ellison, oracle
“SaaS as Recession-proofing Software” Theme Picking Up
Business, SaaS September 27th, 2008
It looks like I may have started ( actually, just re-started) a trend discussing How Software Can Be Resilient to Recession.
Sramana Mitra @ Forbes talks about ‘SaaS-ing’ Back At The Economy:
Some of the robustness of SaaS companies comes from the fact that the sector caters heavily to small businesses….
Fellow Enterprise Irregular Ismael Ghalimi makes the case that:
Some will gain, but most will lose, and some to be really affected by the downturn are enterprise software vendors selling expensive perpetual licenses for their products…
He than takes the oppurtunity to turn the analysis into a cocky offer to his competitors.
Tags: bpm, cloud computing, forbes, intalio, On-Demand, recession, recession-proof, SaaS, smb, sme, software as a service, software market
How Software Can Be Resilient to Recession
Business, SaaS, Software September 23rd, 2008
Are we heading into Recession? The âBig Râ talk of early this year quickly subsided, economic growth returned, the markets appeared to vindicate the optimists. US Presidential Candidate John McCain repeatedly said the economy was fundamentally strong⊠until just days ago, when he quickly switched to declaring a crisis. The Wall Street Journal says weâre in the Worst Crisis Since ’30s, With No End Yet in Sight.
I donât claim to be an expert economist, so whether the Big R is looming is not my call â but if you believe weâre in a strong economy, I have a bridge to sell you. Letâs just focus this discussion on how Software businesses can survive in a financial crisis, which is undeniably here.
Not all will survive, and itâs probably healthy they wonât. Tim OâReilly, Father-of-all-things-Web-2.0, asked the question at the Web 2.0 Expo last week:
Global warming. The U.S. losing its edge in science and technology. A growing income gap. “And what are the best and the brightest working on?” O’Reilly asked, displaying a slide of the popular Facebook application SuperPoke, which invites you to, among other things, “throw sheep” at your friends.
“Do you see a problem here?” he posed, showing another slide of the popular iPhone app “iBeer,” which simulates chugging a pint. “You have to ask yourself, are we working on the right things?”
The poster-child of the Web 2.0 boom may very well become the symbol of what went wrong:
- useless
- consumer-only
- ad-driven
Actually, the problem is not what they do, but how seriously they were taken. Will Price, a very smart VC said long ago:
It may well be that Slide raising $55m from mutual fund companies at $500m+ pre-money will be the âwhat were we thinkingâ moment of the current cycle.
Iâm glad they did not go public, at least not a lot of people will get hurt holding the bag.  But enough of whatâs wrong, hereâs what works:
- go where the money is, and thatâs businesses (âEnterpriseâ vs. consumer, even if it means small business)
- deliver value â useful functionality that improves business
- charge for it â companies actually prefer to pay for reliable, good service.
The last point brings up the price issue. Credit will dry up. Whether weâll officially declare Recession or not, the fear of the Big R is enough for corporate budget cuts, the disappearance of any CAPEX spending. Even worse, an entire sector almost disappeared as IT buyers. Did you know that Lehman Brothers spent over $300M on IT in just the last quarter, right before declaring bankruptcy?  How do you sell in this environment?
The after-bubble nuclear period of âno IT spending at allâ found me at a startup in 2001-2003. We did not exactly hit it big, but did not go under, either, and thatâs because our model allowed us to get in the door way below the threshold that would have required higher authorization. Not classic SaaS, rather SES (Software Enabled Service), we were essentially data providers and often got into an âenterpriseâ account at $3k for the first month ⊠eventually ramping up to annual $60-$100K.  Anyone familiar with Enterprise Sales knows the term Economic Buyer: typically getting involved later at the sales cycle, approving or nuking the deal. Well, we saw no Economic Buyer: being under the threshold, we sold to the User directly.
Of course my little business is not the only proof: Salesforce.com & WebEx thrived during the last recession. The secret is the business model: pay-as-you-go. SaaS offers lower risk to enter, no initial cash layout, the subscription fees come out of OPEX vs. CAPEX, and is often approved by the User, not the mysterious Economic Buyer. The barrier of entry is much lower: once youâre in, itâs up to you to grow.
In fact I suspect the looming downturn will accelerate the structural changes in the software industry: SaaS players will thrive, traditional on-premise vendors will shrink, many will disappear.
That leaves a final point to discuss: financial solvency. For startups, it will be increasingly hard to find investors. For larger businesses the lack of late-stage investment, the credit crunch may be a serious impediment to expansion.  Discover the beauty of bootstrapping â you actually get to do what you believe is right for your business, not what your Board tells you. Do less, take small steps. Frugality is key to survival. Small is beautiful will get a new meaning.
In summary, Software businesses that combine good old business sense: frugality, spending wisely, delivering value to businesses and getting paid for it, with a new business model, SaaS are likely winners in the downturn. The rest are playing musical chairs. (Oh, and the bridge is still available)
(This post originally appeared on CloudAve. Keep informed by grabbing our feed here.)
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Tags: bubble, business model, cloud computing, enterprise sales, Enterprise Software, entrepreneurship, On-Demand, recession, SaaS, salesforce.com, Software, Startups, webex

. Other than the presentations, these events are also an excellent networking opportunity amongst the 400 or so attendees, so letâs look at the previous yearsâ attendance statistics by provided by Dealmaker Media:
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