Startups Archives - Page 23 of 29

Blogging is a Body Business :-)

Posted on April 17, 2006 ·

OK, let’s just all come clean. Blogging is a hoax. It’s just a cover to hide our primary business: selling our bodies. First Robert and Shel got got naked…

Then came Chris Pirillo, renting out his chest for 20 bucks… I have not seen his complete price list for other body parts, but check out his pix at Rentmychest.com.

You don’t have to get naked though to sell your body: Stowe Boyd is putting himself up for auction on eBay and he promises to wear only startup-branded T-shirts for the rest of the year. Sorry, no pix yet, his “launching the new venture” May 1st.

Now, I appreciate all the entrepreneurial effort from all these guys, but blogging is not a “male thing”… so perhaps we’ll see more variety when it comes to… let’s say, startup-logo’ed swimwear?

If that happens, I promise I’ll put myself up for wearing logo’ed …socks.

Update (6/16): I told you …

Update (7/2): Here’s another Classic, via Robert Scoble

Tags: blogs, blogging, advertising, marketing, logos, banners, t-shirt, body business, swimwear, Scoble, Stowe Boyd, startups, humor

Filed Under: Blogging, Humor, Marketing / PR, Startups ·

Enterprise SaaS Startups from an Investor’s Point of View

Posted on April 12, 2006 ·

(Updated)
“It takes 70% to 100% more capital to fund a SaaS company to break-even than a traditional perpetual license company. It also takes 2 to 3 times longer to get there.” said Michael Skok of North Bridge Venture Partners at a Mass Technology Leadership Council session yesterday. Don Dodge reports in a detailed post, which is well worth reading in full.

SaaS companies need an average of $35M in VC capital, versus $20M for a similar perpetual license company.
It takes 6 to 7 years to get to break even
Public equity markets pay a 10% to 20% premium for predictable revenue streams
SaaS companies move faster than big companies. They can introduce new features instantly versus waiting for the next major release. Think years.
SaaS requires an architecture that supports end user customization
Industry standards are critical for interoperability
Steady state business models require 15-18% for engineering and 30-35% for Sales and Marketing.

Obviously this comparison is about Enterprise Software, Consumer applications are faster to develop, startups often don’t even take VC investment and get to market or get acquired after limited Angel investment – if any at all.

The above points are fact-based, learned from NBVP’s investment in 8 SaaS companies. Yet I feel comparing enterprise software startups with the SaaS (Software as a Service) model vs. the traditional perpetual license model is an academic exercise, since it does not represent a real choice. I’m meeting VC Partners weekly at various SVASE and other events, and I’m hearing a consensus: no software VC in the Valley invest in the traditional enterprise license model.
There are estimates that about 10% of all software sold is SaaS today, but investors have look out years ahead, and the writing is clearly on the wall: only SaaS gets funded today.

Where to for SaaS acceptance?

Update (5/23): Hello “On Demand” hype machine by SiliconBeat’s Matt Marshall list some of the lates On-demand investments, at ever-increasing valuations.

Tags: SaaS, On-Demand, Enterprise Software, Venture Funding, VC funding, VC Investment, startup, startups, SVASE

Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, SaaS, Software, Startups ·

SVASE VC Breakfast Club with Cardinal Venture Capital

Posted on April 10, 2006 ·

I’ll be moderating another SVASE VC Breakfast Club session on Thursday, April 13th in San Jose. It’s an informal round-table where up to 10 entrepreneurs get to deliver a pitch, then answer questions and get critiqued by a VC Partner. We’ve had VC’s from Draper Fisher, Hummer Winblad, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Mohr Davidow, Emergence Capital …etc.

Thursday’s featured VC is Joyce Chung, General Partner, Cardinal Venture Capital. The Zvents post has all the info and a map, but please remember to click through to register either from zvents or directly here.

These sessions are an incredible opportunity for Entrepreneurs, most of whom would probably have a hard time getting through the door to a VC Partners. Since I’ve been through quite a few of these sessions, both as Entrepreneur and Moderator, let me share a few thoughts:

It’s a pressure-free environment, with no Powerpoint presentations, Business Plans…etc, just casual conversation, but it does not mean you should come unprepared!
Bring an Executive Summary, some VC’s like it, others don’t.
Follow a structure, don’t just talk freely about what you would like to do, or even worse, spend all your time describing the problem, without addressing what your solution is.
Don’t forget “small things” like the Team, Product, Market..etc.
It would not hurt to mention how much you are looking for, and how you would use the funds…
Write down and practice your pitch, be ready to deliver a compelling story in 5 minutes. You will have more time, but believe me, whatever your practice time was, when you are on the spot, you will likely take twice as long to deliver your story.
Last, but not least, please be on time! I am not kidding… some of you know why I have to even bring this up.

See you on Thursday!

Tags: Venture Capital, VC Breakfast, Funding, VC Funding, Startups, Entrepreneurship, SVASE

Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Social Networking, Startups ·

Software 2006: Wikis Win

Posted on April 6, 2006 ·

(Updated)
Wikis and blogs -social software in general – were the “latent” subject at Software 2006, popping up at several sessions throughout the conference.

In his opening keynote Ray Lane talked about the inter-personal enterprise: collaboration, increased participation through friendlier, better user experience; the user as an individual, “consumer” has to like the software, then will use it, and usage spreads within the company: a pull process, rather than push – the traditional enterprise sales model. This is exactly the model wikis are “sold”, as we discussed earlier. Ray specifically mentioned how useful they found using a wiki at Kleiner Perkins.

Then during the last panel, Toby Redshaw, CIO of Motorola talked about how he installed wikis and blogs: turned it on, decidedly not telling anyone “above” or laterally until it was too late for anyone worried about “control” to interfere. People discovered the new tools, started to use them, and before he knew there were 1900 blogs and 2000 wikis used in Motorola. Grassroots action at it’s best, just like Ray explained. Joe (JotSpot) and Ross (SocialText) could not have asked for a better plug of wikis, just minutes prior to their software showcase.

On the way from this session to the showcase room Ross was showing me his latest baby, Miki, the mobile wiki. One of the conference attendees (Director at a major organization) walked alongside us, overheard the conversation, and jumped in: “where can I get it?” Wow, I think Ross just closed a 30–second sale

There is something funny about these product names, though. Ross just found out that Miki in Irish slang means male genitalia… hm… close .. here’s the Urban Dictionary definition. Never mind, it didn’t hurt Jobby, won’t hurt Miki either. Incidentally, Miki in Hungarian is nickname form for Nicholas, and in Japanese a female name meaning “flower stalk.” Not bad.

The Miki launch was the last announcement of the day, then we headed off for some “Open Source” cocktails and appetizers.

Related posts – Miki seems to enjoy a warm welcome:

Update (4/8): It was fun to see JotSpot and SocialText together – would have been even more fun to see the third (and by the number of enterprise customers definitely not last) product: Confluence by Atlassian.

Filed Under: Bay Area, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Social Networking, Software, Startups · Tagged: atlassian, confluence, Jotspot, miki, Social Software, socialtext, software2006, wiki, wikis

SVASE Event: Angel Investors – Alive, Kicking & Investing!

Posted on April 6, 2006 ·

It’s a good time to be an Entrepreneur – Is it also a good time to be an investor? Jason Wood says: “I spoke to several colleagues in the industry today and there was a consensus of disappointment in the current landscape. I’m hardly the only one who’s been saying there’s excess capital in the VC industry for some time [in fact, there’s excess capital everywhere], but with entrepreneurs more willing [and able] to bootstrap their way to product launch and with GoogleYahooMicrosoft unafraid to throw fractional portions of their cash hoard at interesting startups, I’m not sure I see the light at the end of the 2005-2006 vintage VC tunnel.”

At the Software 2006 Conference yesterday I found myself in the middle of an interesting conversation betwen 2 VC Partners and an Angel Investor – they basically shared the above view, adding that startups either bootstrap their way to acquision, or take Angel funding, than the GYM jumps in before an A-round.

Angel investment is back big time, and this is the subject of the SVASE event tonight at 6pm in Palo Alto.

How have the dynamics and metrics of Angel investing changed during this time? Is becoming an Angel still an attractive investing option? What are the metrics Angels look for in their investments today? What technologies & deals are most attractive to Angel investors right now? And what types of people are becoming Angels Investors, and why?

Seeking Angel Funding, want to become an Angel?

This lively panel discussion will explore current trends and panelist opinions on topics including:
• How have the dynamics of Angel investing changed in recent years?
• What are the current trends in Angel investing?
• Is Angel Investing still interesting for High Net Worth Individuals?
• What type of people are becoming Angel Investors, and why?
• What are the metrics Angels look for in their investments today?
• How are Angels working with Venture Capitalists?
• What technologies and deals are most attractive to Angel investors right now?

The Panel:
• Stewart Sonnenfeldt, Managing Director, Sand Hill Angels
• Laura Roden, Managing Director, The Angels Forum
• Randy Williams, Founder & CEO, Keiretsu Forum
• Antonio Salerno, Deal Selection Committee, Band of Angels
Moderator: David Frazee, corporate/IP shareholder, Greenberg Traurig

Thursday, April 6
6.00-7.00 pm: Networking and Dinner
7.00-8:30 pm: Panel discussion and Q/A

To reserve an Exhibit Table
Contact Info@svase.org, $500 Members, $1,000 Non-members.

Location:
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR Campus), 950 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, 94304

PRE-REGISTERED RATES (All Rates Include Hors D’oeuvres)
Members – $20; Affiliates who advertise this event – $29;General Public – $49

WALK-IN RATES: Add $10.00 to the listed price

Click HERE to Register NOW!

Tags: svase, startups, entrepreneurship, angels, angel investing, angel investors

Filed Under: Bay Area, Social Networking, Startups ·

How to Pitch Your Idea – Coaching for Entrepreneurs

Posted on April 1, 2006 ·

Hilarious. (hat tip: Paul Kedrosky)
Should the embedded video not work in feeds, watch it here.

Tags: Entrepreneurs, VC Funding, Venture Funding, Startup, Presentation, Pitch, Elevator Pitch, Humor

Filed Under: Humor, Startups ·

Why Preaching the “Art of …” is Easier than Doing It

Posted on March 30, 2006 ·

(Updated)
I enjoy reading Guy Kawasaki’s blog, the “Art of..” series as well as other posts. I find myself agreeing with him most of the time, including his most recent post, The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy. That said, let’s look at some of his examples:

Apple coolness factor vs. CIO safe bet
Turning enemies into allies: The Knight and the dragon are “mashingly unsuccessful at doing battle and eventually decide to go into business together. Using the dragon’s firebreathing ability and the knight’s salesmanship, they create the K & D Bar-B-Q.”
Mindgames, or “size matters”: “During the Korean War, the U. S. Army Office of Strategic Services left a supply of condoms for the Communist Chinese to find. The condoms were specially manufactured in an extra-large size. The label on the boxes, however, said, “Made in the USA Size Medium.”
Mindgames, a’la Hannibal: make the enemy believe the hords of cattle are all soldiers… etc…etc.

Update: some more examples from Guy’s post, see our comment exchange below:

Small hardware store offering refill service of the gas tanks that new behemoth Home Depot sells
The even wiser hardware store owner who displays “Main Entrance” on his portal, right next to Home Depot
Pizza company incentivising customers to tear out competitor ads..etc.

These illustrations make it a fascinating piece to read…and that’s exactly my issue with so many management books: the author has the freedom to quote the most interesting stories from the entire world to make their point.

Business reality is not that fascinating, if you are an Executive or business owner, you live within the confines of your own everyday business, you can’t perform the condom– or cattle-trick. You have a more limited set of options, no matter how creative you are. The stories belong in books, or – if yo can afford – motivational, skill-development training sessions, but most of them are hard to map to your business reality. I guess that’s also the difference between celebrity story tellers and management consultants, who have to recharge and boost real businesses every day.

P.S. Guy, I still love reading your blog.

Tags: Art of series, Guy Kawasaki, competition, creativity, coaching, celebrity authors, management consulting, consulting, business training, evangelism

Filed Under: Business, Marketing / PR, Startups ·

How a Good Name Turns out to be Crap – Literally

Posted on March 29, 2006 ·

(Updated)
TechCrunch gave a pretty positivie review of Jobby:
“Unlike other web 2.0 job sites like Indeed and Simply Hired (which aggregate job listings from around the web), Jobby takes information directly from job seekers, and then focuses on helping recruiters filter through job qualifications fast via tagging and tag filtering. The results are quite stunning”

A good review by Mike always helps, so all is fine for the beta-service … except … hm… apperently the name has a special meaning in Scottish slang:
“A Scots term for the brownish substance excreted from ones anus when the bowels are full or after a spicy cuisine.
Also the term for something that is disapproved of/ rubbish.” (source: Urban Dicitionary).

Yuck. That’s pretty bad. The Jobb(y)ers are lamenting the right course of action:
“So what’s the solution? The way I see it, we have three options.
1. Change our name.
2. Keep our name. Grin and bear it. After all, we showed the site to hundreds of people before anyone actually pointed this out. It’s pretty obscure… Right?
3. Change our logo to a little amorphous brown man in a lively plaid kilt.”