entrepreneurship Archives - Page 4 of 5

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

Why Startups Shouldn’t Bother About NDA’s

Posted on March 17, 2008 ·

OMG, this must be Recurring Themes Day. Just done with the Your Blog is Your Resume theme (this one pops up about once a year with almost predictable regularity), and am now worried about Alexander Muse’s health. He’s a healthy strong man, but wants to shoot himself if he receives another NDA. He quotes Rick Segal (sorry, Rick for taking it verbatim, it’s just too entertaining…):

VC firms typically do not sign NDAs for first looks/meetings.

VC firms typically do not sign NDAs with promises not to evaluate the same or similar businesses included.

VC firms typically do not sign NDAs with 5 year no contact clauses included.

VC firms typically do not sign NDAs with promises to report any contact with competitive businesses included.

Rick is a Canadian VC, and his firm has received 35 NDA’s so far this year. But here’s the best part from his post:

Repeat this 10 times before you go to bed tonight:

I will not send an unsolicited beautiful leather bound binder with 600 hundred pages of detailed business, marketing, competitive, and financial information about my business along with an unsigned NDA and a request for it to be signed and returned to any VC.

It arrived in my office on Thursday and the binder was off the charts nice.

Don’t ever do it. Really. Just send the nice leather binder without all the crap. Unless you’ve discovered a new Conspiracy Theory (but you wouldn’t send that to a VC, would you?) don’t send hundreds of pages. Your page limit for first contact is one, perhaps two.

Back to the NDA theme, now that we’ve seen how VC’s hate them, let’s look at why startups shouldn’t bother about them anyway:

As an Entrepreneur it is often in your interest to share WHAT you do, as a way to solicit feedback, concept validation
If there is a “secret sauce” of HOW you will do it, you should not share it anyway, NDA or not – not until further down the road as part of due diligence with a committed investor
Since it’s commonly known that investors do not sign NDA’s, asking for it is akin to displaying a banner: “Newbie Here”

These were originally Dharmesh Shah’s points, and my addition:

If the information you reveal during the presentation is enough for a competitor to jeopardize your position, than you really don’t have anything substantial to justify an investment. Your time would be better spent on product development.

Finally, a side-note to Alex (and all): RFP’s are also a waste of time. Extraordinary effort on formalities, and most RFP’s are issued as CYA, to cover up the fact that the prospective Customer already has a preferred vendor / solution provider. If you’re in the public sector, there’s no way around them, otherwise avoid RFP’s – there’s always other business to go after.

Filed Under: Business, Startups · Tagged: Angel Funding, Confidentiality, entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, IP, Market Validation, NDA, Non-Disclosure, RFP, Startups, vc Funding, venture Capital

Oops, They Fired All Their Workaholics

Posted on March 8, 2008 ·

Wow, quite a firestorm on a weekend over whether startups should hire only workaholics or not. It’s tip #11 on Jason Calacanis’s How to save money running a startup list that ticked off many readers:

Fire people who are not workaholics. don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or starbucks if you’re not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.

The edits show how Jason re-wrote this point after harsh criticism like Calacanis Fires People Who Have A Life on TechCrunch and Fire the workaholics by 37Signals. I don’t think he had to edit it, anyone who had been at a startup, who understands startup dynamics should “get it”.

He is talking about the need to have highly passionate team members, who at a certain stage of their life and the startup’s life are willing to – and happy to – shift their priorities. You can’t force people to be workaholics, all you get is slaves in a sweatshop, and that not only causes burnout, it does not produce quality results anyway. David at 37Signals is right:

If your start-up can only succeed by being a sweatshop, your idea is simply not good enough. Go back to the drawing board and come up with something better that can be implemented by whole people, not cogs.

Agree. But great founding teams are often made up of workaholics – it has to come from the fire within, not forced. These guys locked up in a live-and-work apartment probably did not have 8-hour workdays, yet didn’t look too unhappy. A year later they are growing, picked up two rounds of funding, have 20 employees and even put TechCrunch in the toilet. I don’t expect their 20th employee to be just as passionate as the Founders, but it can’t be a 9-5 type person either. At this stage they still need driven Team Members, not simply employees.

Most startups that grow to a certain point will lose this team atmosphere at some point. They will start to hire more “regular employees”, many of whom are opportunity seekers, in for quick ride, ready to jump ship any time. Too bad, but it’s a fact of life.

Not everywhere, though. 37Signals is still a small team (by choice) but not really a startup anymore. They seem to have found the golden balance between work and life, having introduced 4-day workweeks, funding team members’ passions, be it flight lessons, cooking classes…whatever. I don’t think they whine if (when) the occasional crunch comes. Another “startup” (not really, anymore) I often write about is Atlassian: at $30M revenue and 130 employees they still preserve a unique culture, do a lot of programs together, and generally working there is a lifestyle, not just employment.

The above two have something in common, other than having good products: they did not take VC investment. They can pretty much do whatever they like. Maintaining a great team is no just a means to business, it’s part of their ultimate purpose.

The weekend firestorm comes completes a full circle: in a second TechCrunch article Mike Arrington comes to Calacanis’s defense: Startups Must Hire The Right People And Watch Every Penny. Or Fail. This is a very good article, I wholeheartedly agree with it. And while at it, let me also refer you to Startups: Executive Hiring Challenges or Beware of the Suits.

On a lighter note, the CEO of another self-funded former startup, Zoho apparently heeded 37Signals advice, and fired all his workaholics.

(Not really… Watch out for a major product announcement next week.)

Update: This quick rant by Bob Warfield is worth reading: Startups Need Starters

Filed Under: Startups · Tagged: 37signals, atlassian, box.net, calacanis, entrepreneurship, startup hiring, Startups, toondoo, Venture Funding, work-life balance, workaholics, zoho

Matt Mullenweg and other Celebs on the SVASE Panel: Funding 2.0, How To Build A High Growth Startup Fast And Cheap.

Posted on February 6, 2008 ·

For all my love and support of SVASE, I sometimes complain that the monthly “Main Events” are a bit cut-and-dry. Well, that will certainly not be the case tomorrow: star-power, money, frugality are all well represented on the panel discussing Funding 2.0 – How To Build A High Growth Startup Fast And Cheap.

Matt Mullenweg started Automattic on a shoestring, and his product, WordPress became the most popular blog platform before he and his company accepted major funding.

Peter Yared, ActiveGrid’s Founder isn’t exactly unknown, either, although he is no listed as Founder & CEO, wdgtbldr. WTF? – you might ask, but that’s a company name. His website says: ps: pls snd vwls. We don’t get a lot smarter from this… but his LinkedIn profile reveals the company name as iWidgets, and his motto is:

The first rule of iWidgets is you don’t talk about iWidgets.

Naval Ravikant has been called a lot of names: Venturebeat labeled him: Crazy Man, his website is StartupBoy, and he is a Partner, at The Hit Forge:

The Hit Forge is a group of entrepreneurial engineers building mass-market web properties. We are owners of our companies, share common tools and code, and have enough money to fund dozens of attempts to find the next big hit. We don’t get locked into failed projects, we replace pointy-haired MBAs with modern web marketing, and we share stock so that if one of us wins, everybody wins.

Oh, and since I am a SaaS fanboy, here’s another acronym: CaaS, as in Capital as a Service (although Shai Agassi would disagree) .

Mike Cassidy has co-founded and sold three companies: Stylus Innovation, Direct Hit and Xfire. He is currently Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital, one of the Big Brand Names on venture capital. Traditional VC firms have to change: the capital efficiency of software startups means they cannot easily invest tens of millions in one startup anymore, and their traditional model is does not allow them to participate in much larger portfolios. But Mike is not a Partner: the Entrepreneur-in-Residence title means he is there fishing for his next Big Hit, and will jump back as entrepreneur quite soon.

If you’d like to hear these four superstars discuss issues like:

• Can any fundable startup really get to breakeven on less than $1M venture capital?
• What does a “Capital Efficient” startup look like?
• Where do you find the people & resources for next to nothing?
• How can you generate revenue straight out of the gate?
• If I can generate revenue, and I have minimal expense, why do I need Venture Capital?
• If $1M “hardly moves the needle,” what returns are VCs now looking for?

– hurry, register here, before the event sells out. See you tomorrow, at 6pm in Palo Alto.

Filed Under: Bay Area, Software, Startups, Technology · Tagged: automattic, entrepreneurship, funding, SDForum, Startups, SVASE, Technology, TiE, vc Funding, venture Capital, wordpress

Israel Web Tour in the Silicon Valley

Posted on January 29, 2008 ·

Israel is a hotbed of technology startups – in 2007 alone they raised $1.76 billion of Venture Funding2007, the highest amount in six years. The California Israel Chamber of Commerce is organizing an event, where 90 companies applied to take part in the Israel Web Tour, 4 days of intense meetings with investors, strategic partners, customers, entrepreneurs and industry leaders.

The 15 winning startups, whose Founders/CEO’s will participate are: 5min.com, PLYmedia.com , AllofMe, NuConomy , ClickTale, blogTV.com , Sportingo, PicScout , Qoof, 8hands, Velingo , Innovid, Semingo, PageOnce, and Journeys – the event site has a short synopsis on all of them.

The highlight of the tour will be a public showcase on February 6th, 8:00AM – 2:00PM 2008 @ the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View. Tickets are available here. Ticket holders are also invited free to the closing night party in San Francisco at Slide on February 7th.

The Tour is sponsored by Google, Yahoo, Adobe, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Lehman Brothers, USVP, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosatti, Elron and Gemini Israel Funds and the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco.

Filed Under: Bay Area, Startups · Tagged: California Israel Chamber of Commerce, CICC, entrepreneurship, IsraelWebTour, microsoft, Startups, Venture Funding

Can the Software Sector be Resilient to Recession?

Posted on January 26, 2008 ·

I was very lucky in the early 90’s being in an industry that was not only shielded from recession, in fact it was thriving. Corporate America was taught to fight their way out of the slump by Business Process Reengineering, and what better way to execute it than by implementing new integrated business information systems. The slump for the rest of the country was a major boom for SAP, and the entire ERP industry born in their footsteps.

Today we’re amidst another technology change, one that may just ensure relatively smooth sailing through a recession for the Software sector – at least those who are on the right side of the change. The belts will be tightened, says the New York Times, but technology will still grow, just at a slower rate:

Overall growth in technology spending may fall from 7 percent last year to 4 percent or less this year, according to estimates by IDC, a research firm.

But that won’t be nice 4% growth for the entire industry; I strongly believe pioneers of Software as a Service (SaaS) will be amongst coming out of a slow-down as winners, leaving others in the dust.

TechCrunch is optimistic for the entire Web 2.0 business:

All of those Enterprise 2.0 startups out there, or even Amazon trying to sell Web-based computing infrastructure, are actually at an advantage. Customers are more likely to try cheap cloud computing when they can no longer afford the alternatives.

ZDNet’s Dan Farber disagrees:

Most of the Web/Enterprise 2.0 startups can’t get a hearing with CIOs and tech buyers at corporations. While consumer applications are influencing corporate applications and coming in through the back door, Enterprise 2.0 apps (blogs, wikis, predictions markets, social networking, mashups, collaborative cloud-based apps and technologies such as RSS and tags) are just beginning to reach the radar of larger corporations, and they are not considered mission critical, which is where the money is funneled first

I think they are both right – and wrong. I don’t agree that the entire Web 2.0 sector is immune to a down-turn: the advertising market will shrink, the “lets-grow-insanely-who-needs-a-business-model” types will suffer. As Software VC Will Price says:

It may well be that Slide raising $55m from mutual fund companies at $500m+ pre-money will be the “what were we thinking” moment of the current cycle.

I also agree with Will, that a movie we’ve all seen will be playing again:

The last downturn saw the valley swing violently away from consumers to the enterprise – bastions of value, hard ROI, tangible value propositions, enterprise pain points and budgets, etc became the mainstay of investment decisions and the consumer, I kid you not, was literally a bad word…
The valley became all enterprise, all the time.

It will not be all, and not only Enterprise, but Business Software, whether for the Enterprise or small businesses will come back with a classic, “old-fashioned” business model of actually charging for value (product or service) delivered. Of course there is still the dilemma of selling business software – much better if you don’t have to, it is getting bought instead. Yes, Dan is right, “Web/Enterprise 2.0 startups can’t get a hearing with CIOs and tech buyers at corporations” and their apps are not considered mission critical, but the whole point is that a lot of these Enterprise 2.0 tools are not sold at the CIO level.

The after-bubble nuclear period of “no IT spending at all” found me at a startup. We did not exactly hit it big, but did not go under, either, and that’s 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 “enterprise” account at $3k for the first month … ramping up to $60-$100K annually. 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.

As Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu adds to the discussion:

It is useful to remember that both Salesforce & WebEx thrived during the last recession – in fact they were relatively unknown during the last boom. Cost was a major part of the reason they thrived in the bust.

Indeed. Software as a Service and the typically associated pay-as-you-go model allows businesses – enterprise and SMB – to use software without the typical upfront investment the traditional model would require, therefore SaaS providers have a good chance of withering a Recession. Another noteworthy idea in Sridhar’s response is that they really don’t have to have a “massive win”, a total move from the desktop to the cloud: a “marginal” business is good enough.

Of course this “marginal business” is not as attractive to many startup entrepreneurs as fast forwarding to the IPO, preferably over $1.5B. In fact it’s really boring… building a business gradually; no IPO thrill; serving millions of customers, helping them actually conduct business. Oh, and making millions of dollars of real revenue in the process – not bad, if you ask me. And it’s quite bubble-proof.

Related posts: Vinnie Mirchandani – Why it will be very different this time, Fred Wilson- This Time Will Be Different.

Update (1/28): Forrester Research predicts gains for Enterprise Web 2.0 apps in 2008. Also read: Between the Lines, ReadWriteWeb.

Filed Under: Enterprise Software, SaaS, Startups · Tagged: bubble, business model, cloud computing, enterprise sales, Enterprise Software, entrepreneurship, On-Demand, recession, SaaS, salesforce.com, Software, Startups, webex, zoho

SVASE Event: Clean Tech – What Corporate & Venture Investors Really Want to See

Posted on January 23, 2008 ·

Clean-tech investing is at an all time high and is expected to flourish in a range of sectors, including renewable and distributed energy, advanced materials, transportation, and water purification and management. Many clean technologies are experiencing double-digit annual growth rates.
With the demand for cleaner technologies on the rise, Clean Tech is fast becoming one of the hottest areas of investment and technology development to be embraced by the corporate and venture capital communities.

But what technologies and business models are they looking for?

The panel discussion at this SVASE event will explore this topic to provide answers to the following questions and more:
• What are realistic financing strategies for Clean Tech companies?
• What sort of returns are investors expecting from Clean Tech, and over how long?
• What are the emerging hot technologies in this sector?
• What opportunities are there for entrepreneurs?

The Panel:
• Steve Eichenlaub, Managing Director, Intel Capital
• James F. Fulton, Jr., Partner, Cooley Godward Kronish LLP
• Steve Goldby, Partner, Venrock
• Susanne Zechiel, Director of Business Development, MMA Renewable Ventures
Moderator: Ed Ring, Editor, EcoWorld

WHEN: Thursday, January 24th, 6-8:30pm in Palo Alto.

I can give away a few complimentary tickets only via this URL. When they are gone, you can still register at the standard rate of $20 for SVASE members, $49 for the general public.

Filed Under: Bay Area, Startups, Technology · Tagged: CleanTech, entrepreneurship, SDForum, Startups, SVASE, Technology, TiE, vc Funding, venture Capital, Venture Funding

Morsels from the Crunchies, or Whatever Happened to Business Software?

Posted on January 21, 2008 ·

Now that The Crunchies, the Internet Startup world’s equivalent of the Oscars are over, the winners announced, a lot of champagne consumed, let me go back to a few thoughts that have been on my mind throughout the whole show.

First of all, it was nice to see so many startups recognized, meet familiar faces again, and I join the chorus in thanking TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat and GigaOm for putting the show together. Special kudos to Om Malik for coming only three weeks after his heart attack.

Second, I can’t help but think that some of the categories were .. well, almost deterministic, leaving zero chance of winning for the “little guys” lumped together with a giant. Right out of the gate, the first category, Best gadget/device: iPhone, Kindle, Ooma, Pleo, Wii. C’mon, did anyone doubt for a minute the iPhone would win? Or look at the Best mobile startup, where the finalist were AdMob, Fring, Loopt, Shozu, Twitter. Oh, please, 3 relatively unknown names against Twitter, a mega-phenomenon…

The other thought I’ve been pondering ever since the show is whatever happened to business software? The Crunchies were yet another proof that “enterprise isn’t sexy“: this was all about consumer-glitz, with a few startups who cater to businesses. That said, at least there was an Enterprise startup category, and I was really glad to see my friends at Zoho win it. Although I wholeheartedly believe they deserve it, this was by far not a slam-dunk category, with Zoho and 37signals, which has a religious cult-like fan-base being the two chief contestants.

Perhaps the Zoho team felt a bit of extra satisfaction, given that 37signals originally questioned their viability, and called them copycats rather than innovators. Well, the innovation debate definitely ended a few weeks ago, when PC World picked Zoho’s Notebook as one of the 25 Most Innovative Products of the Year. While the Crunchies were clearly a popularity contest (with over 100,000 votes) PC World’s list was compiled by professionals. This list was notably full of gadgets, and the only other software products preceding Zoho were Google Gears and the Facebook API.

Back to the Crunchies, Enterprise category, 37signals and Zoho are diametric opposites in many ways: 37signals product philosophy is all about simplicity, “products that do just what you need and nothing you don’t” while Zoho believes in functional richness, and their customer service attitude is quite different, too. Yet I believe they are both good companies, and there’s a clear demand for their products, which is well proven by the hundreds of thousands of loyal customers. Neither of them are really Enterprise software companies though. 37signals caters for what they call the “Fortune 5,000,000” and Zoho clearly stated their mission to be the “IT for Small Business” – not that a subset of their portfolio, the Office Suite could not become Enterprise-ready, but for now it’s not their primary focus. And focused they are …

I think the Crunchies used the term Enterprise quite liberally – I would have called this category Business Software. Now, if the names IBM, HP, SAP, Citigroup, Boeing, BMW, Shell, McDonalds, Pfizer sound familiar, I’m sure you agree that the company who claims these and others customers is truly an Enterprise Software company. Yet Atlassian ended up in the International category, to their bad luck, as they got paired up with Netvibes. The two are apples and oranges. Atlassian is a very successful company, but the people who buy enterprise software are not the types who hang out at the Web 2.0 tech blogs or vote for the Crunchies; Atlassian stood no chance against Netvibes, with their tens of millions of individual users, all potential voters in this popularity contest.

What do three so different companies, Atlassian, 37signals and Zoho have in common? All three are bootstrapped, fast growing, financially successful and follow the “old-fashioned” business model of making good products and charging for it. I could not help but think of these guys while listen to the announcement of the Best Bootstrapped startup category, decided between FriendFeed, PoliticalBase, ProductWiki, Techmeme, UpNext. Or while listening to the panel discussion moderated by Dan Farber, where Matt Marshall expressed his astonishment how far the ad-based business model propelled us, and was wondering if advertising as the only business model would work in the downturn (no R-word!). If we had to pick the survivors of a potential downturn, these three companies are certainly safe candidates. The good old business model of charging for your product, which, incidentally, your customers love works wonders.

Of course there was a lot more to the Crunchies, but it’s been all more then adequately covered, and I wanted to focus on business software now. But…well, I am a guy and guys love cars… so I have to mention the Cleantech category, won by Tesla, makers of this beautiful electric sports car. The only problem is, the car does not exist yet, release date has been pushed out repeatedly, the company had to go back for repeat funding, just fired a bunch of people, including the VP Manufacturing, Lead Engineer if the motor team… but hey, why not give them the Award and keep on dreaming (about the car).

Update: Apparently I am not the only one questioning the rationale of some category assignments at the Crunchies; read CenterNetworks on user-generated content.

Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Software, Startups · Tagged: 37signals, atlassian, business software, crunchies, Enterprise Software, entrepreneurship, internet, oscars, SaaS, Startups, techcrunch, tesla, web 2.0, zoho

Dream Job for a Software Marketing VP @ Atlassian

Posted on January 18, 2008 ·

Atlassian, a fast-growing, successful enterprise software company is looking for a VP of Marketing. I don’t normally broadcast job searches here, but am breaking that rule now for I believe this is a truly exceptional opportunity with a truly exceptional company. (Disclaimer: I have no business affiliation with Atlassian, but admit to being positively biased, as the company exemplifies a lot that I stand for.)

They are best known for two products: Jira, the issue tracking & software project management application was their first hit, putting the company on the fast growth track and establishing a loyal fan-base in the IT community. Their existing reputation in the IT community certainly helped the second product, Confluence, the enterprise wiki gain traction: it is now equally popular in the IT and business community. Wikis in general have become more commonly known in the past two years; once a tiny market niche, today a growing field where new entrants pop up left and right, claiming to be best in this and that…. But numbers talk, and the verdict is clear: Confluence is the undisputed enterprise wiki market leader.
Atlassian is not sitting on their laurels: in the past year they diversified, acquiring several companies and launching new products on their own. Frankly, I lost track, but I believe their portfolio currently includes 8 products, all part of an “IT toolkit”, with the exception of Confluence, which is seeing fast adoption amongst business users, too.

The customer list is impressive: IBM, HP, SAP, Citigroup, Boeing, BMW, Shell, McDonalds, Pfizer … just about all the Fortune 1000, as well as non-profits, Universities, Government Agencies, totaling over 9000 customers worldwide. (The chart is a bit misleading: Atlassian’s fiscal year starts in June, and the FY08 bar shows the current figure only, excluding projections.)

How did they achieve this? They must have an excellent sales force. Wrong! Atlassian has no sales force at all. They don’t sell: customers simply buy their products on their own. I often talk about the pull-model that’s replacing the traditional, expensive enterprise sales process (6-9 months, high touch, flights, meetings, wine-and-dining, entertaining, in the end often nuked by politics) – but that’s typically in the context of Software as a Service, and in the SMB (small business) market. Atlassian’s products are mostly on-premise (although they now have a hosted version of Confluence) and their primary market is the large Enterprise. Yet they pulled off what amounts to a small miracle: essentially took the download.com, tucows style model we all know as consumers, and ported it to the enterprise space.

Of course having customers try-and-buy through the Internet is not as simple as firing your Sales team ( or not hiring one). It’s not a matter of a decision: it’ s a consistently applied philosophy, that you have to implement in every aspect of your business. The key components are:

lightweight software
- well-defined function set, meets specific user need, small user groups can get started
- ease of use (both easy to learn and easy to use)
- well documented, well supported
transparency
- features (what you’re getting, no surprises)
- issues (Atlassian’s bug tracker is open to the public)
- pricing (simple, upfront pricing, no fill-out-contact-form-wait-for-sales-to-call-back BS)
low price (“expensable, not approvable” – to quote a former competitor)

The “pull-model” means customers will need to find you- which is why Marketing is a critical function. With Sales gone, Marketing becomes sales (actually, Atlassian’s CEO proudly says everyone is in Sales, especially Support). So if you are a marketing superstar, or know one, want to be part of a successful team, work for celebrities , you owe it to yourself to apply.

Atlassian is not only about business – it’s about people. I know, old cliche.. but here it works. The unique culture this team maintained throughout their super-growth even now that they have 130 people is a large part of their success.

So what is this culture like? Tough. When he doesn’t make his numbers, Atlassian President Jeffrey Walker is forced to make up for it as ticket-scalper on the street. OK, joke apart, this photo was shot last August, when the entire San Francisco office went to see a Giants game together. (Incidentally, just a day before Jeffrey became cancer dude). This wasn’t a rare occasion, either: both the San Francisco and the Sydney teams have a lot of fun together: Cutlassian, Mission: Atlassian, theme-filled staff events, abound throughout the year. Their new office building in Sydney is right next to a pub (hint: when will you guys realize you’d be better off buying the entire pub? beer ) I wonder when the San Francisco office will move into a winery… Perhaps you get the picture by now: Working for Atlassian isn’t just a job – it’s a lifestyle. But don’t for a minute think it’s a bunch of rowdy kids having fun only: they bring in $30 million a year. And if you don’t perform, this is what awaits you.

So that’s the magic formula: combine business success with a fun, team-focused culture and you’ve got the makings of the ultimate job. (Are you still reading, or have you alerted your Marketing superstar friend yet?)

Now, if this is the ultimate job, there’s one question unanswered: How come it hasn’t been filled yet? I wanted to hear the answer straight from the horse’s mouse so to speak, so I asked Atlassian President Jeffrey Walker, who responded below:

We were inundated with resumes, and found a few excellent capable candidates. Unfortunately, one of the growing pains of companies like ours is we were not quite ready for the right candidate. Incorporating someone of the caliber we need takes preparation. Our search began prematurely. Lesson learned. After the founders and I took another few ‘long walks’, we came out aligned and ready. This time I fully expect to complete the search. Just need the right remarkable individual.

Well, I did not walk with Jeffrey and the Founders, but I certainly hope they will not change a lot:. I have a lot to say on the subject of hiring, but it’s not specific to Atlassian, so I’ll break it out to a separate post. In the meantime, if you are that “remarkable individual”, what are you waiting for?

Filed Under: Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Marketing / PR · Tagged: atlassian, confluence, enterprise sales, entrepreneurship, jira, lightweight software, marketing, pull-model, startup hiring, Startups

SVASE VC Breakfast: Hummer Winblad, Focus On Software

Posted on January 15, 2008 ·

After a long break I’ll be moderating another SVASE VC Breakfast Club meeting this Thursday, January 17th 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 week’s we’ll welcome Prashant Shah, Managing Director, 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 3 minutes. You will have about 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.)

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