Startups Archives - Page 6 of 29

SVASE Green VC Panel in the East Bay

Posted on June 17, 2008 ·

Venture capitalists have been pouring money into “clean technology” companies – $2.2 billion in 2007, an increase of 46% over 2006. Why are VCs making so many long-term, capital-intensive bets? Which technologies will be world-changing, and which will be duds?

In living proof that there is life outside the Palo Alto / Menlo Park proximity, SVASE will host a VC Panel on investing in Green Tech tomorrow at the Crow Canyon Country Club, in Danville, CA. (A very green venue for a Green Event).

The panelists are:

Marianne Wu, Partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures
J. Christopher Moran, Vice President, General Manager, Applied Ventures
Paul Chau, Partner, WI Harper
Peter Henig, Managing Partner, Greenhouse Capital Partners
Mark Harris, Relationship Manager, Silicon Valley Bank

Agenda:
6-6:30 pm: Networking and Hors D’oeuvres
6:30-8 pm: Panel discussion and Q/A

For details see the SVASE site, or head straight to registration.

See you there!

Filed Under: Bay Area, Startups · Tagged: entrepreneurship, Startups, SVASE, vc investment, venture Capital

When Your Technology Fails, Hire More Sales…

Posted on June 17, 2008 ·

That seems to be the Technorati recipe: TechCrunch reports they have a new Sales VP with a 7-person sales team, and a new marketing lead. This build-up was likely in preparation for the new business, Technorati Media, a newly launched blog advertising network.

Technorati indeed needs a business model, so if this is it, fine. It’s just frustrating that they’ve spent the past two years in search of business models, while their service gradually fell apart. Anyway, in the spirit of the new-new business, I suggest they sell advertising on the Technorati page we see most frequently:

This was the rant – for details see: CNET News.com, Maple Leaf 2.0, Web Strategy, Trends in the Living Networks, A Media Circus, Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Filed Under: Marketing / PR, Startups · Tagged: advertising, blog advertising, business models, Sales, technorati, technorati monster, technoratty

DocSyncer Dead. Too Bad.

Posted on June 16, 2008 ·

Cliff Shaw is a serial SaaS entrepreneur who keeps on coming up with really useful services that just don’t make it as a business.

ProtectMyPhotos was my favorite photo backup and synchronization service. Unlike Flickr, Photobucket, Zooomr and just about all the photo site focusing on sharing your photos, this one did not require manual uploads. In fact the best feature was that after initial setup, you could completely forgot about it. Just like Mozy, the general-purpose online backup service, ProtectMyPhotos worked away in the background, non-intrusively, throttling back at times of heavier computer use. With added bells & whistles (online view & edit, sync between online and several offline versions..etc) it was a perfect service – for free, that is. Apparently it failed to attract enough paying customers, so eventually it shut down.

It did not completely die though: Cliff Shaw’s next startup, DocSyncer clearly showed signs of it’s “parent”: the UI was quite similar to ProtectMyPhotos, and they leveraged a lot from the core synchronization engine of the previous product. It looked like a perfectly executed turnaround: the existing technology found new purpose. DocSyncer filled a void left by the web-office providers: it synchronized desktop documents with Google Apps. I was quite certain they would have a short life-span, but this time with a happy ending, Google taking them out. Since the acquisition did not materialize, I can only assume either they could not come to terms or Google is already working on their own solution.

DocSyncer is about to shut down. Quote from the website:

We’ve figured out in a very short amount of time that DocSyncer is a cool tool – but not a business.

I really hate to see it go. No transition to web-based applications is complete unless we can bring our old baggage, i.e. transfer existing desktop documents to the online service. I see evidence of interest day by day, in the 100K or so hits my two “import your history to gmail” guides received. DocSyncer did better then import, it offered true synchronization, but I’d be quite satisfied just to see one-way batch import tools to Google Docs and Zoho, the two leading service providers.

The DocSyncer site says:

Until we meet again, good luck and thank you for the support!

“Meet again”: Cliff does not talk about his next gig yet, but his LinkedIn profile lists him as CEO of Picstreem. His profile also reveals four startup gigs in the past, two of which getting sold. He is a comeback guy, I am looking forward to seeing Picstreem.

In the meantime let’s hope that Google and Zoho will soon offer mass migration, perhaps synchronization.

Update (6/17/08): Wow, it’s amazing how many blogs picked up the story, all without a single bit of accreditation. Thanks, gals and guys!

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, SaaS, Startups · Tagged: docsyncer, Google, google apps, google docs, picstreem, protectmyphotos, SaaS, web office, zoho

One Day Left for Early Bird Rate to Launch: Silicon Valley 2008

Posted on May 25, 2008 ·

I’ve pretty much said everything there is to say about Launch: Silicon Valley 2008, a joint event of SVASE and Garage Technology Ventures.

The presenting startup applications are in, being evaluated, and thirty of them will debut on June 10th @ the Microsoft Mountain View Campus.

There is another important deadline now: Monday is the last day you can register at the Early Bird rate, which represents a $50 discount.

See you there in June!

Filed Under: Bay Area, Social Networking, Startups · Tagged: Art of the Start, business events, DealMakerMedia, Demo, entrepreneurship, Garage.com, guy kawasaki, IBDNetwork, launch silicon valley, microsoft, product showcase, SDForum, silicon valley, Social Networking, startup pitch, Startups, SVASE, Under the Radar, UtR, vc, vc Funding, venture Capital

We Don’t Know What We’re Doing But We’ve Got the Money to Fix It

Posted on May 22, 2008 ·

In case you’re wondering, I’m talking about Twitter. Their blog-post addressing system failures is outright shocking.

We’ve gone through our various databases, caches, web servers, daemons, and despite some increased traffic activity across the board, all systems are running nominally. The truth is we’re not sure what’s happening.

Translation: sorry everyone, we have a popular service and have no clue why it’s constantly crashing. It’s bad. really-really bad. But hey, at least they are honest. And the $15 million they’ve just picked up should be enough to hire someone who actually knows how to get out of this mess. (Update: they just did)

Update: On second thought, I am less optimistic forgiving. Twitter already raised $5M before this round, that should have allowed them to bring in expertise they clearly lack. If only their priorities were on fixing the service instead of chasing more money.

I keep on re-reading the blog post:

I have this graph up on my screen all the time.

So what? Here’s the chart I often check, provided by Zoho’s Site24x7 service:

I have no idea where the spikes (performance degradation) come from. I’m just as clueless as the twitter team. The difference: I’m not providing a service people became dependent on.

Filed Under: SaaS, Startups · Tagged: downtime, failure, site24x7, statups, Twitter, vc Funding, zoho

Why Cambrian House Failed – it’s All in the Pizzaz

Posted on May 12, 2008 ·

Cambrian House, the poster-boys of Crowdsourcing are essentially dead – assets being sold in a garage sale for a fraction of what investors put in. TechCrunch and Mark Evans speculate the House collapsed due to poor execution.

Of course.. in fact they were doomed to fail, and it was obvious ever since the 1000 pizzas episode. This is what I wrote back then:

They are not afraid of unusual publicity stunts, although frankly Feeding Google was more about noise than being smart: followed by cameras, completely unannounced, they descended on the Google campus with 1000 pizzas at 3pm.
Did you get that? Google, as in Google the company famous for it’s free gourmet food, at 3pm, as in just after lunch, before dinner – no wonder they were soon escorted off campus.
Cambrian guys, I have a free idea for you: next time set up camp with your 1000 pizzaz at Stanford, you’ll be heroes and won’t leave without 100’s of new ideas…and I don’t even want 75 points, just invite me for the pizza-fest.

OK, I admit I am being sarcastic. And I liked the concept, too bad it did not work.

Filed Under: Collaboration, Marketing / PR, Startups · Tagged: business model, cambrian house, canadian startups, crowdsourcing, digg, Google, Outsourcing, royalty points, Startups

DemoCrunch 2008

Posted on April 2, 2008 ·

This year’s TechCrunch 50 Conference is planned to coincide with DemoFall, the (other) premium startup Launch event.

VentureBeat attempts to (well, sort of) explain it with scheduling, but make no mistake, this is a fairly open move against DemoFall, to establish TechCrunch50 as the premier startup launch event. There’s no question that TechCrunch can pull in just about the entire VC community – in fact given the audience pricing, $2000 early bird, and $3000 regular, it’s hard to believe anyone but VCs can afford to attend. Well, VCs and students, as those with a student ID can get in for $149.

The presenting companies will not be charged – that’s a huge differentiate vs. Demo. As I said before, you almost have to be already funded to be able to afford Demo’s fees. I leave it to you to decide which one is more startup-friendly.

Of course they want a real launch show, so the one hard condition is that your product /service will have to be new (unseen) at the Conference. Several commenters are already complaining that they are launching before September, which automatically disqualifies them.

I have a solution for you “early birds”: come join us at Launch: Silicon Valley 2008 jointly presented by SVASE and Garage Technology Ventures. Five of last year’s 29 presenters received venture funding, in aggregate of $30M. That’s not $140M, but not too shabby, either.

How to participate? If by June 10th, 2008 (the day of the event) you will have a product or service available, but have not been out in the marketplace for more than a few months, then send an Executive Summary of no more than 2 pages to Launchsv@svase.org. Submission deadline: May 9th, 2008. (Garage Technology offers a useful Writing a Compelling Executive Summary guide.) Last year’s 30 (actually, 29) presenting startups were selected from 170 submissions. For details – and attendee registration – check out http://www.launchsiliconvalley.org/.

See you there!

Filed Under: Bay Area, Social Networking, Startups · Tagged: Art of the Start, auto repair, business events, DealMakerMedia, Demo, demofall, entrepreneurship, Garage.com, guy kawasaki, IBDNetwork, launch silicon valley, microsoft, Pleasanton, product showcase, SDForum, silicon valley, Social Networking, startup pitch, Startups, SVASE, techcrunch, techcrunch40, techcrunch50, Under the Radar, UtR, vc, vc Funding, venture Capital

SVASE VC Breakfast with Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

Posted on March 28, 2008 ·

After a long break I’ll be moderating another SVASE VC Breakfast Club meeting next Thursday, April 3rd in San Francisco. As usual, it’s an informal round-table where 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, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Mohr Davidow, Emergence Capital …etc. This time we”ll have the honor of welcoming Ann Winblad, Partner, co-Founder of the first exclusively software-focused venture firm, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.

These breakfast meetings are a valuable opportunity for Entrepreneurs, most of whom would probably have a hard time getting through the door to 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, live demos, Business Plans…etc, just casual conversation; but it does not mean you should come unprepared!
Follow a structure, don’t just roam 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, and prepare to deliver a compelling story in 2-3 minutes. You will have about 8-10 minutes, the first half of which is your pitch, 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. The second half of your time-slot is Q&A with the VC.
Bring an Executive Summary; some VC’s like it, others don’t.
Last, but not least, please be on time! I am not kidding… some of you know why I even have to bring this up. Arriving an hour late to a one-and-a-half-hour meeting is NOT acceptable, but we’ve had too many such incidents, so here’s a new rule: if you’re late by more than 20 minutes, you will not be allowed to join the session.

Here’s the event info page, and remember to register – the previous event with Hummer Winblad sold out in advance.

See you in San Francisco!

Filed Under: Bay Area, Software, Startups · Tagged: entrepreneurship, startup pitch, Startups, SVASE, vc Funding, venture Capital

Launch: Silicon Valley 2008 – Call for Startups

Posted on March 21, 2008 ·

Startup Entrepreneurs who did not make it to the recent Under the Radar event, here’s your second chance: join us at Launch: Silicon Valley 2008, co-presented by SVASE and Garage Technology Ventures and Microsoft.

In fact it will be more than a second chance: while the UtR event focused specifically on the business-oriented web applications, Launch 2008 is designed to uncover and showcase products and services from the most exciting of the newest startups in information technology, mobility, security, digital media next generation internet, life sciences and clean energy. The inaugural Launch event was in 2006, combined with Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the Start conference.

Are these events worth attending? It’s your call … all I can say is 5 of last year’s presenters received venture funding, in aggregate of $30M.

So if you are building the Next Great Business in the areas mentioned above, are (almost) ready for launch, meaning that by June 10th, 2008 you will have a product or service available, but have not been out in the marketplace for more than a few months, then by all means send an Executive Summary of no more than 2 pages to Launchsv@svase.org. Submission deadline: May 9th, 2008. (Garage Technology offers a useful Writing a Compelling Executive Summary guide.)

Last year over 170 companies from all around the country and even overseas applied, so clearly the presentation spots are in high demand. Based on the submissions up to 30 companies will be invited to present at the Launch: Silicon Valley 2008 event on June10th at the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, California. Presentations slots are 10 minutes, running in 6 sessions of 5 companies each. Each presenting team will also be assigned a cocktail table in the Networking Room where they can meet with interested audience members one-on-one to answer questions and explore possibilities.

Guy Kawasaki will deliver the opening Keynote, while the closing keynote will be by Tim Draper, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

The evening before, on June 9th the presenting companies, registered audience and selected bloggers and media will be invited to a Pre-Event Party at a prestigious location in Palo Alto, providing a further opportunity for networking with Silicon Valley’s movers and shakers.

Here’s a list of companies that launched new products/ services at last year’s Launch Silicon Valley event:
BooRah, Catalog Data Solutions, ClearlyBest.com, Connectance, Datamash Corp., Data Robotics ($10MM venture financing, Q3 ’07), DivinR, d.light design, Eyejot, fix8, Fog Screen,GroupScope, H3.com, Industrial Origami, Jaxtr ($9MM venture financing, Q3 ’07), Kongregate ($5MM venture financing, Q3, ’07), LogSavvy, MyShape (Undisclosed venture financing, Q3, ’07), Nuvora, Ready Solar, Redwood Renewables, Sensl, Shapewriter, Smaato, SnapJot, Spresent, TelId, Truemors, Wrike, and Yodio.

So if you are a qualifying startup Founder, remember the deadline: May 9th. Registration fee (incl. Networking Table + 2 tix) for the invited finalists is $695 if SVASE members, $850 otherwise. For audience members, Early Bird registration is available at $145 / $195 until May 19th, after which only full price registration will be possible. For additional details and later for updates check http://www.launchsiliconvalley.org/.

Guy Kawasaki called Launch: Silicon Valley “the poor man’s Demo”. SVASE proudly wears that badge, since we’re bringing this event at a price that won’t keep any startups away. It’s your turn now: send in the Executive Summary and launch with us in June.

Update (3/21): I was just informed that the SVASE site as well as launchsiliconvalley.org is down, and will likely be so for the next 48 hours. Bummer, apologies for the inconvenience. In the meantime, Executive Summaries can still be sent to Launchsv@svase.org, and the , Early Bird registration works, too.

Under the Radar Conference in Two Days – Save $100 Here.

Posted on March 18, 2008 ·

Under the Radar is the Silicon Valley’s most established startup debut platform: a conference series organized by Dealmaker Media, covering business applications, social media, entertainment, mobility..etc. The next conference, focusing on The Business of Web Apps: Where the Web Goes to Work is only two days away and Dealmaker Media allowed me to announce a few discounted tickets. Enjoy the $100 blogger discount by registering at this link only.

32 startups will present in a rapid-fire format (correction: American Idol format) they are grouped in categories of 4 each, in two parallel tracks (yes, you do have to pick one, but can switch back and forth), 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.

The categories and the selected startups are:

Track 1

Track 2

Business Calls

Virtualization

Get Aggregated

Manage Up

Happy Customers

Virtual Worker

Work Together

Marketing and Measurement

Last year I was on the Selection Committee to the Under the Radar Office 2.0 event, and as such reviewed over a hundred companies / products. Obviously not all could make it, so I am especially pleased to see some of them on this year’s list. Of course the real measure of success is that several presenters have since received funding, gained significant brand recognition and customers. Some are back this year as Graduate Circle sponsors:

Other than the presentations, these events are also an excellent networking opportunity amongst the 400 or so attendees, so let’s look at the attendance statistics by provided by Dealmaker Media:

Concluding the Conference, Robert Scoble will be hosting a fireside chat with Amazon’s VP & CTO, Werner Vogels to discuss the future of apps in the cloud…where its heading, who will dominate and what you should be doing now to get ahead.

The event ends with a cocktail reception, and – here’s the bonus – participants are also invited to the Opening Reception the night before at Palo Alto’s Zibibbo.

So what are you waiting for? Grab a discounted ticked while they last.

Last, but not least, this year’s Selection Committee:

Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Social Networking, Startups · Tagged: DealMakerMedia, entrepreneurship, IBDNetwork, marketing, networking, startup pitch, Startups, Under the Radar, UtR, vc Funding, venture Capital, zoho sheet