Be aware, Net Boom, Act II is coming. Now the real break-through starts to happen. "Digital Rules" by Rich Karlgaard.
Some 50 VC funds are active in the security sector thanks to terrorism and 9/11. In Europe the security has not been such a big issue. At least VCs are not focused on the sector by new funds. Is the trend a bubble or has it lasting effects? Business2.0 wrote a piece.
"If you don't present well, it can break your company" . Sounds dramatic if the task is to present your company to VCs... Well, is it the story or the deeds? Washingtonpost tells you more.
If you don't bother travelling for a meeting how about being virtually present in the meeting room? Needleman covers an exciting technology under development at HP Labs.
Have you noticed the changes which tell that the web is yesterday's technology? Mosaic was created some ten years ago, IBM and other big giants have quietly removed the famous 'e' from their marketing material, the term 'computer' is being converted to 'digital' etc. Kevin Werbach explores the past history and prepares for the future.
Is the next bubble already about to blast? Wi-Fi. Lot's of talk and not so much deeds. Who is actually making money? Have you heard of roaming between different Wlan providers? Are you seriously willing to pay tens of dollars/euros for a few hours web-usage? Businessweek has probed the subject.
According to my knowledge Nokia and Qualcomm are not entering the Wi-Fi game. They stick strictly to their knitting of cellular networks. Still they have the knowhow to step into Wi-Fi radio chip market. Why are they voluntarily leaving out of the big pot of money? Or will the convergence make the 3G network providers the winners after all the buzz? I believe so. Cellular networks are reliable while on move and the roaming (&billing) is no issue. This is not the case with Wi-Fi and I don't see any clear paths to solve the issue in a near future. After all, who could bother making a big deal of the network technology from which the emails are pulled out as long as everything is working smoothly (and priced reasonably) ? I barely can wait the times of fixed priced global wireless connection...
Check the interview of Intel Capital's Les Vadasz about the current condition of the VC market.
Ever dreamed of a personal flying vehicle? Well, it might be closer than you have thought. Technologyreview has an excellent piece about aircars.
How to raise money and get publicity for your venture - reinvent the 'road show'. Mr. Emond is riding 450km with Segway in order to get some $1,5m...
Ventureblog has explained some VC jargon for deal makers. Ratchet antidilution, Pay to Play, Capped Participation...
Andrew Lippman from MIT Media Lab spoke yesterday about an old misunderstanding about radio frequences. Previosly it was thought that multiple or many radio transmitters intercept each other and thus this situation has to be avoided. You remember the days with a TV set and a portable antenna? More ghosts and shadow images than in Ghostbusters. The problem was not in the transmission side but of receivers. They could not handle the multiple signals. Today the technology has advantaged enough to turn this into an advantage.
Lippman was illustrating a concept where each cellular phone was also a base station. In other words you could roam via other people's connections (nodes) and thus reach the network via many nodes. An ideal solution for basements and other locations where there is no direct signal. In some occassions you might not even need the base station if the receiver is also in the same network neighbourhood.
Lippman explained how this approach would grow innovation and turn a limited capacity business into a growth model where more units increase the overall capacity and not vice versa like in today's case (too many phones per base stations calling the same time and no one get's through). This boosts innovation and enable totally new concepts and ideas on top of the infrastructure layer.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)Nicholas Negroponte's interview discusses about flower boxes among other. OK, the future of WiFi...
Are VCs useless for entrepreneurs in this economical situation? Well, read the both sides of the story.
Wired covered Nokia's showcase of N-Gate at Electronic Entertainment Expo.
Is your blog getting a lots of hits from search engines? Clogged by Blogs by Wired.
The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck. Ralph Waldo EmersonAlmost daily one gets mixed messages and signals about the economical situation. Are we going up, down or something between? My string theory is that if you wait for the aggregate 'go ahead' signal you've already missed the train. Currently some sectors and industries are showing stronger demand but those together are not enough to get the total feeling of the beginning of a bull market. In micro level things are moving up and down disregarding of the major stream. I believe that one should learn to surf with the positive strings in all the economical circumstances. Then it does not matter where the things are in total. Maybe the business world is getting so fragmented and global that every sector will never be going together upwards? Are you willing to take that risk and wait that train?
Champions know that success is inevitable; that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. They know that the best way to forecast the future is to create it. Michael J. GelbI have been keeping this weblog for a few months now and I should live how I preach. So I need your help. Tell me what you like and what kind of stuff can go. Sometimes I have been telling more personal stuff but usually just business related issues. Or should I just drop the whole thing? I'm totally in blind so I need you guys! Drop a few lines and comment - any feedback is welcome. Especially critical...
CalPERS has released the performance records of its $3bn venture invesment portfolio. For Sand Hill Road this may be the beginning for higher transparency other investors have been facing for a quite some time.
Every really new idea looks crazy at first. Alfred North WhiteheadAn inspiring coverage of Amazon's Jeff Bezos at Fortune. Even Warren Buffet has bought his vision (or at least the bonds).
"When you hire [McKinsey], you're going to get a senior director, a senior principal, a junior principal, a senior engagement manager, an engagement manager, and a project manager. And that's before you even get to the consultants that are doing the real work," and some people still wonder why consultancies are having hard times...
If Bezos' business model was something unique in the infancy of ecommerce so is Habbohotel. The idea is to provide a virtual environment where people can meet and hang around. The best part is that they are making money by selling virtual furniture and stuff by which users can make themselves individuals and 'feel' unique. Prices of Ikea without any manufacturing costs.... The company behing the concept is Sulake.
How VCs are valuating their target companies? Check the short version in BusinessWeek.
Running out of good excuses? Try this one: " I’ve got to do my Windows critical updates.".
Jack Grubman (SSM) made a two-fold investment strategies: the real ones and those which were told to the clients.
InfoWorld has listed the disruptive technologies for 2003: open source, self-service CRM, digital identity, and Weblogs.
"So the only way to make money in the technology business anymore is to understand a business problem deeply, and solve it using technology." by legendary Fred Wilson of Flatiron Partners. It's the verticals, babe!
"We're moving from an era of killer apps to an era of killer systems, killer business models, and killer businesses," says Bruce Harreld, chief strategist at IBM. Something positive happening in the Valley?
Have you heard of iLoo? Microsoft is leading the revolution...
Tornado-Insider has nominated the top 100 emerging technogy companies. Some familiar names and some strangers for me. Personally, I'm a bit sceptical about these lists. During the boom time I used to work for one of the most hyped future promises listed by Time Magazine, Tornado etc. I'm tired of these 'future promises'. How about companies that have been profitable since the beginning? Funnily enough there are also those ones that have VC backing just for leveraging the growth not to prove the case and find their biz model... Huge demand ever since the start and make money now and money in the future. The old way of growing companies. From my point of view those companies are the real winners. Obviously those are more difficult to find and they do not brag about their success. They are too busy to deliver and grow - pure deeds, not talk.
You feel sometimes to old to learn new tricks? Read this: 102 and emailing and reconsider.
Why big companies need small entreprises? For the innovation and growth, for example. Reinventing R&D Through Open Innovation by Henry Chesbrough.
High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation. Jack Kinder
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death Albert EinsteinWhy Is Growth So Hard? by Geoffrey Moore and Richard Moran. An excellent article which sets your mind towards the growth phase after cutting down almost to the bone. It's easier to cut down existing costs than get new ideas and new products flying. Moore suggests that each company should make a full time position just for creating growth. A bold place where one has to be able to question and resist existing working models and attitudes. But loads of fun if one likes to create something new and be on the top of the latest new, new thing.
By the way the Optimize looked like an interesting magazine. Another good piece worth checking from the same mag: A Formula For Sustained Success.
Are the heydays over for the software industry and is the maturity striking back for growth companies like Microsoft and Oracle? The debate is still on and at least two sides can been seen, Ellison vs. others (eg. Siebel).
Media industry is a good example of conservative and reluctant attitude towards change. They are spending tons of money and media publicity for protecting their old business model. Still, they have to gradually admit that the resistance will not make the reality vanish away. Digital media formats are coming and already popular around the world. The old profitable model of making highly priced physical containers for media and audio is breaking down. It's hard to convince consumers to buy cds & DVDs for serious bucks when those can be distributed and copied for nothing.
Paris might be catching up quickly with Wi-Fi. Could it become a single hot spot?
"When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations." - Joseph AddisonI had a lunch with a rather fresh ICT transaction boutique. A small niche player targeted for the ICT industry in strategic turnarounds and usually as a result also in transactions. Obviously this is the right time to do such things. Almost all the players are suffering with profitability or should I say with their survival. However, I started to wonder whether there is enough business left nowadays. Not just that many companies are done already but also because the whole industry has changed or vanished.
I have started to consider the traditional software business as an established and a mature state industry. Obviously there is still plenty of new startups but those are in some verticals not in horizontal markets. Old players are coming down to squeeze more pennies to their coffins from SME market that has been the safe bet for smaller growth companies. Microsoft, SAP, Oracle have done it. You just name the rest.
Mobile industry has lost its momentum for innovative and small companies. Big players are ruling the game and have shared the ecosystem among them. Operators and wireless device manufacturers are the major players in the market and dictating the pace and amount of innovation adopted by the consumer market. Innovative companies cannot tap easily into the revenue stream protected by operators.
Wireless industry has risen dramatically in the last few years, especially in the US. However it's still hard to see how one can make money out of Wi-Fi. The most obvious business is to sell the devices and hardware but beyond that. The integration and roaming between hot spots and mobile networks are negligble. This hinders the development of the service layer where the real innovation and small startups can blossom. Standards are coming gradually and meanwhile 3G networks are coming up. In the mobile side the service sector is developing gradually and my prediction is that most of the current infrastructure and models will be replicated for Wi-FI networks as well. The end user could not care less about the network access method under neath as long as there is enough bandwith.
We are still in a tough job situation according to comments around my sphere of influence: A friend of mine told that a domestic bank was opening four trainee positions and got 500 applications. A VC had trouble going through the recruitment process. The CEO apologised that he could not see me till the end of May. Over 200 applicants were looking for an analyst position. He had to spend an hour with the selected top people one at the time. That eats up nicely your working week... The range of people who applied tells the true story: real senior people in their 50's till just graduated and everything between.
Great for the companies since experienced people are around. Dull for so many talented people who cannot find anything reasonable to do. I read somewhere that 50% of all analysts are unemployed at the moment. I wonder whether there is more volatile business than financial industry. An industry that floats with the good times and hits so hard when the bear market arrives.
Some time ago (April 16) I was telling about a LP who was actually the biggest owner of a growth company via three GPs possibly without even knowing it. PrivateEquityWeekly is covering the same problem area when many GPs are joining their forces for a single buy-out case. Who's in charge and whom to blame when the investment goes down the drain?
Sorry for not keeping my weblog for a few days. I was enjoying the sunny days and driving with my bike. Now my latest record is 700km in 24 hours. I visited our summer house and drove back. It's funny how a journey becomes more important than the destination. Even with my ex-sports car I was discovering isolated curvy roads from my ordinary and familar routes. Still, the driving was boring compared to a bike ride. My best experience with a four-wheeler was definetely in the mountains. Nine o'clock in the evening, dry weather and no traffic. A 20% uphilll serpentine road and an intensive session very fast. After half an hour later the car smelt like rubber, the clutch and the driver was in ecstasy. Next time I would like to do it with a car speeding to 0-60mph around 4 seconds. The acceleration is the best thing - driving fast is dull.
Guess what's the latest record for a newbie running into a serious accident with a motor bike? 40 meters! Last year it was still 70 meters. Unbelievable.