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SVASE VC Breakfast with Walden VC in San Francisco – Sold Out

Posted on November 28, 2006 ·

I’ll be moderating another SVASE VC Breakfast Club meeting this Thursday, Nov 30th 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, Hummer Winblad, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Mohr Davidow, Emergence Capital …etc.

Thursday’s featured VC is Larry Marcus,  Managing Director, Walden Venture Capital. The Zvents post has all the info and a map; and normally I would link to registration but this event has sold out. thumbs_up (here’s a list of future events, 2 in December, so you could sign up in time)

These sessions 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, 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, and prepare to deliver a compelling story in 3 minutes. You will have about 5, 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.
  • Last, but not least, please be on time! I am not kidding… some of you know why I even have to bring this up.

Here’s a participating Entrepreneur’s feedback about a previous event.

See you in San Francisco!Zbutton

 

Filed Under: Bay Area, Social Networking, Startups ·
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Gmail’s Spam Filter Threw Up Today

Posted on November 28, 2006 ·

So far I’ve found Gmail’s spam filter robust, reliable: catches 99% of spam without false positives.  In fact I liked it so much that I recommended using Gmail’s services even for non-gmail accounts.

Today is a bad day: Gmail threw up on me, dumping hundreds of spam items in my inbox.  Interestingly enough, it only happened to one of my gmail accounts.

Anybody having similar experience?

Update (11/28): How timely .. this Reuters piece on spam, via Techmeme.

Update (1/14): Mine is OJ now, but now it’s Marshall’s turn… 

 

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, Software ·
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Laptops are "Safer" than Desktops :-)

Posted on November 27, 2006 ·

Laptops are “safer” in certain situations smile_shades

 

…although they can be harmful in other ways smile_sad

 

Filed Under: Humor ·
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ProtectMyPhotos Protects More than Just Photos

Posted on November 27, 2006 ·

Update: This service is no longer available.

I’ve been a happy user of ProtectMyPhotos for over a month now. The best thing about it is that I’m barely aware it’s working: after installing the client one can completely forget about it. Now, this is exactly what I said about Mozy a little while ago, so what is different here?

First of all, let’s define what ProtectMyPhotos is: an online photo data backup/restore service with quite a few bells and whistles added. As usual, TechCrunch has the detailed review, so I will focus on positioning and some comparative analysis here, which is not quite easy, for it resembles/competes with several other services, yet does not fully replace either.

When it comes to online photo storage, we tend to think of Flickr, Zooomr and the like – but those services are primarily focused on sharing, and you have to manually upload photos. This is the part that’s fully automated by ProtectMyPhotos: just like with Mozy, you download a client application, set your preferences on what you want to back up (let it find photos or manually select directories), then leave it alone. From now on all your photos are synchronized with the online version, non-intrusively, as the program runs in idle time and throttles back when you start using your computer. The system keeps multiple versions of your photos online, so you get to pick which version to restore from (“userproof system” in case you mess up your current versionsmile_tongue) .

Unlike Mozy and other backup/storage services, ProtectMyPhotos allows easy access to your online pictures: your original directory structure is preserved, you can browse and display, even do basic photo manipulation online that is synchronized back to your PC.

When I first looked at the pre-launch service, it clearly focused on photos only; since then they added support for several office document types (doc, xls, pdf …etc.), as well as financial documents like Quicken and MS Money files. This is of course great, but why the restriction? Without the file type limitation this would be a full-featured online backup / storage service. Of course then it should be called ProtectMyFiles, but that domain name is taken. smile_sad

A mobile edition, publishing to Flickr, opening files locally (not just photos, Word, Excel ..etc also) and automatic synchronization of multiple computers are amongst a host of new features recently announced.

The last one is a (potential) biggie for me: it could replace useful but unreliable FolderShare – if it wasn’t for the file type restriction.

In summary, I’m somewhat puzzled: ProtectMyPhotos definitely does more than just protect my photos, overlaps with several other services but the file-type limitation forces me to run redundant applications: Mozy, FolderShare and ProtectMyPhotos. I certainly wouldn’t mind reducing the clutter in my systray…

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, SaaS, Software, Startups, Technology ·
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The New York Times’s Foolproof Way of Alienating Readers

Posted on November 27, 2006 ·

Nobody likes surveys, but sometimes we care enough to do them.  But who in their right mind wants to be interrupted in the middle of an an article, flipping between pages?   That’s what the NYT is forcing, rather aggressively: articles are broken up to small pages, then clicking on “Next” brings up the survey, instead of page 2 of my story.

How many times do I have to say no? Apparently the NYT decided to ignore readers’ wish to opt out:

Click the “Yes, I’ll take the Survey” button at right to begin — you will not be recruited for this survey again after that. If you opt not to participate, click the “No Thanks, Take Me to My Destination” button. You won’t be recruited for the survey again for 24 hours.

The ONLY way to get rid of the annoyance is to say YES, otherwise they will keep on bothering you every single day.  That’s ridiculously aggressive.  The New York Times sure knows how to alienate readers.smile_angry

 

Filed Under: Customer Service, Marketing / PR, Misc ·
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Speed Bandits in Denmark

Posted on November 25, 2006 ·

But what do they do in winter?

 

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Filed Under: Humor, Misc ·
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The Wikipedia Enterprise 2.0 Debate – Epilogue

Posted on November 25, 2006 ·

The heated debate over the fate of the Enterprise 2.0 entry in Wikipedia ended in a compromise – it would stay under Enterprise Social Software. Back than I said the debate was largely irrelevant:

Enterprise 2.0 as a term my be relatively knew, but it’s not some theoretical concept a bored professor is trying to sell the world. It’s a disruptive change, a confluence of technological, social and business changes in how corporations conduct business using new IT tools. No Wikipedia gatekeepers can prevent this seismic shift. Let’s move on, do our work, and in less than 6 months Enterprise 2.0 will find its way back to Wikipedia.

Enterprise 2.0 Panel: Prof. Andy McAfee, Jeff Nolan, Ismael Ghalimi, Zoli Erdos, Rod BoothbyNot in 6 months, but in 3 a lot has changed and the term is gaining de facto acceptance. Case studies on Enterprise 2.0 penetration, panel discussions, analyst writeups, (thanks, Susan, for spotting it), and now a full-blown conference. CMP Technology announced the renaming of the Collaborative Technologies Conference to ‘Enterprise 2.0 Conference’. If this is not full vindication of Enterprise 2.0, then I don’t know what is (well, actually, I do – more penetration into business day by day…). On a sidenote, it’s worth observing how as the term becomes “fashionable”, new players claim ownership. The current Wikipedia entry barely resembles to the original, Harvard Prof. Andy McAfee is mentioned in a footnote only, and the most prominent entry is about a US Service Mark filed on May 25, 2006 by Alvin K Chang. I have no clue if he is related to CMP Media, or just the opposite, he tried to prevent assimilation by them (for good reason), all I know is that if “Enterprise 2.0” can be “owned” by anyone, it should be Prof. McAfee. Of course, knowing Andy I think he cares more about practical adoption in business then about turf-wars. smile_wink

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Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Enterprise Software ·
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Cool Intro to Inkscape and the Enterprise Irregulars

Posted on November 25, 2006 ·

Rod posted this cool video introduction to the Enterprise Irregulars, and to an open source drawing tool called Inkscape.

 

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Enterprise Software, Software, Technology ·
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Wal-Mart is Off-Mart Today

Posted on November 24, 2006 ·

“SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The Web site of leading retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was offline or otherwise “unusable” for much of Friday, which is the busiest shopping day of the year, according to an Internet performance-tracking company.

Those that managed to gain access to the site had to wait up to 30 seconds for search results and even longer to complete a purchase, according to Ben Rushlo, a senior director at Keynote Systems, which monitors Web-site performance.

A message on the company’s site blamed the problems on “high traffic volume.”

Not expecting hight traffic volume on Black Friday?  Give me a break … this is pathetic.

Update (11/26):  News.com’s report just hit Techmeme.

 

Filed Under: Customer Service, Misc ·
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Turkey Exit Strategy

Posted on November 23, 2006 ·

While they are just planning their exit strategy:

Talking Turkey

… they’ve already executed it  (oops, bad choice of wordssmile_wink):

NJ Transit officials reported seeing a dozen or so wild turkeys waiting on a Ramsey train station platform. Dan Stessel, a spokesman for NJ Transit, said “… it looked like the turkeys were waiting for the next outbound train,” he said “Clearly, they’re trying to catch a train and escape their fate.”

 

Filed Under: Humor ·
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