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Contributor: Venator Partners - Venator Partners is a Boston-based executive search firm that specializes in recruiting senior-level executives in the software and communications industries.
Copyright: Copyright © 2004. Venator Partners, LLC.
Covered Categories: M&A, Start-ups, Personnel Changes
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Sun Acquires SeeBeyond, Releases New Java Integration Suite - informationweek
Piece "Sun Microsystems Inc. has acquired SeeBeyond Technology Corporation and announced the release of a new Java Integration Suite.
SeeBeyond Stockholders approved the acquisition and will receive $4.25 per share for an aggregate consideration of about $383 million. The SeeBeyond subsidiary will operate under Sun's software division. The move is expected to enhance the value of the Java Enterprise System platform.
Sun also announced the availability of Sun Java Integration Suite, the sixth suite in Sun's Java ES. The suite, combined with the operating system Solaris 10 makes the ES even more attractive for business and system integrator development, Jonathan Schwartz, president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems, said in a statement. "
Microsoft reveals its subtle services strategy - insight.zdnet.co.uk
Piece "Rather than compete with third-party consultants, Microsoft's services group is seeding demand for the company's products and helping customers manage existing systems better. Senior UK staff from Microsoft Services claim the company is creating a series of standardised service modules, known internally as SKUs — short for 'stock-keeping units'. These are basically a mix of software, services and Microsoft-developed intellectual property that deliver 'predictable results' for clients. Multiple SKUs can be combined to form a Service Delivery Solution (SDS) — essentially a pre-packaged services engagement aimed at solving a particular problem. Microsoft is considering whether to allow partners to license and sell SKUs, which seems likely — though probably with a snappier name."
The Perfect VC: Operator or Investor? - billburnham
Piece "Conventional wisdom has long held that the best background for a successful Venture Capitalist is that of a hardened industry “operator”. The reasoning behind this wisdom is that a VC with operating experience should be much better equipped to help portfolio investments deal with the day-to-day challenges of running a start-up and can therefore better help manage an investment to a successful outcome.
Indeed, when you ask someone to give you their impression of what a week in the life of a successful VC must be like, most people paint the picture of grizzled operator, sleeves rolled up, dispensing pearls of managerial wisdom as they make the rounds of their investments. Relying on their vast operating experience, these VC supermen are able to take fragile start-ups and through shear managerial brilliance mold them into the Ciscos, Ebays and Goggles of tomorrow."
Term Sheet Series Wrap Up - FeldThoughts
Piece "For ease of reference, following are the various sections (linked to their corresponding post) that we covered.
Price
Liquidation Preference
Board of Directors
Protective Provisions
Drag Along
Anti-Dilution
Pay-to-Play
Dividends
Redemption Rights
Conversion
Conditions Precedent to Financing
Vesting
Information Rights
Registration Rights
Right of First Refusal
Voting Rights
Employee Pool
Restriction on Sales
Proprietary Information and Inventions Agreement
Co-Sale Agreement
Founders Activities
Initial Public Offering Shares Purchase
No Shop Agreement (also Unilateral or Serial Monogamy)
Indemnification
Assignment
Is Google Talk a Skype Killer? - redherring
Piece "When Google Talk launched this week, its voice-chat feature drew comparisons not just to other instant messaging services, but also to VoIP companies like Skype.
Granted, a comparison between a one-day-old product with few users and an industry leader with a cult-like following might seem a little odd. Skype, a Luxembourg-based Internet telephony company, has more than 40 million users and adds 155,000 new users every day.
However, when the challenger is Google, which has managed to establish a leadership role in the search sector, comparisons are inevitable.
“This isn’t the final product,” said Will Stofega, an analyst with IDC. “There are a lot of options for them as they develop this product further. The other way to think about this is that it’s not just a chat product, it’s a search engine doing a lot of fantastic things.”
How to hire a product manager - heynorton.typepad
Piece "I'm looking to hire a product manager at JotSpot (more on that below). It's been a while since I was hiring at a startup, and recruiting at a startup is very different from hiring at a big company. At Yahoo! Search, it seemed like we were constantly hiring. I did an average of 5-8 interviews a week. It was a never-ending drumbeat of resumes, interviews, and offer letters. Now, I wasn't always the hiring manager. I only hired a handful of product managers in my time there. But somebody was always hiring a product manager and I was usually on the interview team. "
Larry Ellison and the "Living Dead" - dealarchitect.typepad
Piece "We would rather see the four of you become well behaved Tier 1 suppliers and work better with us Tier 2 and 3 suppliers - and even compete with some of us for Tier 1 business.
Respectfully,
"The Living Dead"
Accenture, Adobe, Ariba, Apache, BEA, BMC, CA, Cerner, Cognizant, Cognos, Compuware, Epicor, FiServ, Infosys, Intuit, Lawson, Mercury, Novell, Parametric Technology, Progress, RedHat, salesforce.com, SAS, Siebel, SSA, SunGard, Symantec, Tibco, TCS, Wipro and hundreds of other business software and services companies"
How to Predict Google’s Next Product - nivi
Piece "Google takes existing apps (mail, maps, IM, VoIP) and adds one incredible feature that changes the game and leaves the competition scrambling.
Google Maps had drag-able maps and integrated satellite images.
GMail was fast and acted like a client-side mail program.
Google Desktop Search is a file browser that makes “browsing” irrelevant.
Now we have Google Talk:
Google Talk lets you use any IM client that supports Jabber and/or SIP to connect to Google’s IM network. Google calls this Client Choice. (I have read that Apple’s iChat VoIP already works with Google’s IM network. I have also heard Google Talk’s voice quality is excellent.)
Google Talk will federate IM networks so someday folks on Yahoo IM may be able to talk to folks with AOL IM. Google calls this Service Choice. People with Verizon can talk to people with Sprint so why can’t we do the same on IM networks?
Google’s is implying that any IM network that doesn’t support Client Choice and Service Choice is giving a big middle finger to their customers.
So how do you predict Google’s next product?
Take any piece of software you use all day: e.g. address book, calendar, web browser, iTunes, MS Office, stock charts.
Ask yourself: “What do I really really really wish this product could do?”
Wait for Google to make your dream come true. Or develop the dream product yourself so you can sell it to AOL/Yahoo/IAC/MS when Google launches their version.
What do you think Google will do with Google Finance?"
Mayfeld raises new fund - siliconbeat
Piece "Mayfield Fund, a big player in the Silicon Valley venture capital scene, announced today it has finished raising a $375 million fund, its twelfth. That's down from Mayfield's most recent fund, raised in 2000, which was just under $1 billion. As partner Kevin Fong told us yesterday: "The environment changed."
Here's the release (downloads file). Dan Primack has done a great job in covering the ins and outs of the Mayfield fund-raising process, including more today. Much of what Fong told us yesterday is well-covered by Primack. We asked Fong about Mayfield's sub-par performance (bottom-quartile, according to Private Equity Intelligence) by on its most recent funds, relative to others firms in the venture industry. This was his response: "Judging performance has to be done in a relative sense," he said. "Clearly, a Kleiner or Sequoia that have a Google in their 1999 and 2000 funds are in a class all by themselves. The rest of us have to fight for positions behind them." However, this doesn't explain why Mayfield has performed below average, because most other venture capital firms didn't invest in Google either. Fong seemed to acknowledge that, but said that the firm's performance stands for all to see, and that 3/4 of this latest fund's money came from prior investors. "
Q&A: Rational exec explains app life-cycle management focus - computerworld
Piece "Lee Nackman, vice president of product development at Rational Software Corp., sat down with Computerworld to discuss the company's increasing focus on application life-cycle management and the IBM unit's future plans to more tightly link its development tools with IBM's Tivoli Software product line. "
IBM software continually backs up files - infoworld
Piece "The product will join an emerging field of so-called continuous data protection (CDP) products. Other vendors include Storactive Inc., of Marina del Rey, California, and startup Lasso Logic, in San Francisco. In addition, Veritas is currently beta-testing a CDP product called Backup Exec Panther.
Still, IBM claims its product is a novel one. Some other systems require a dedicated server to monitor and store file changes, the company said, while others back up files only periodically, every hour or so, rather than continually.
IBM is aiming its product at both large and small businesses. While IBM is marketing it primarily for laptops, it also works on desktop PCs and enterprise file servers. It will be available via Internet download from Sept. 16 and on CD the following month, priced at $35 per laptop or desktop and $995 per server processor, IBM said. "
Unix server market shares in Q2 2005: IBM - 31%, HP - 30%, Sun - 29.5% - blogs.zdnet
Cisco and Intel Team Up on Wi-Fi - wirelessnewsfactor
Piece "Intel and Cisco unveiled the new Business Class Wireless Suite to prioritize network traffic for Internet telephony and improve the quality of VoiP calls from laptop computers."
New Ideas from Software Investors - sandhill
Piece "Experienced VCs and private equity partners share their perspective on what’s “hot” with everything from ASPs to SOAs.
Given the dramatic changes going on in the software business today, it is no wonder that software investment is also rapidly evolving. Although venture capital investment is down from its peak, software continues to account for more funding than any other sector. At the same time, leverage buyouts, spinouts and strategic investments from corporate partners are on the rise.
At the Enterprise 2005 conference earlier this month, a panel of veteran investors discussed the very latest thinking on software funding trends.
* Aneel Bhusri, Greylock Partners, focused on traditional enterprise software VC
* David Golob, Francisco Partners, focused on buyouts
* David Helfrich, Garnett & Helfrich, focused on venture buyouts and spinouts "
US company Protegrity buys Kavado - globes
Piece "The acquisition will enable Protegrity, which deals in information security and management, to diversify its product line. The merged company will have 300 customers in diverse markets. Following the acquisition, Protegrity will be able to offer its customers a complete basket of security products, including central information management and monitoring capability. "
Radiance acquires open source intelligence provider - washingtontechnology
Piece "Defense contractor Radiance Technologies Inc. has acquired Open Source Publishing Inc., a provider of open source intelligence support services, said Radiance officials.
“Their corporate culture is very similar to ours,” Jardines said. “Having spent nine years developing and enhancing our unique approach to open source exploitation, I wanted to be sure that whatever firm acquired us would maintain our business model.” Jardines will remain with the company as director of the Open Source Intelligence Division. Open Source had 13 employees. Radiance has about 250 employees, Jardines said. Radiance revenue in 2004 was $35 million, according to Radiance’s Web site."
IBM sets up advisory panel of 7 venture capital firms - baltimoresun
Piece "International Business Machines Corp. has created an advisory panel of venture capitalists to help identify startup companies that may become suppliers, customers or acquisition targets.
Investors from seven firms, including Accel Partners, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and U.S. Venture Partners, will meet with IBM executives four times a year to suggest products and companies that may be of interest, IBM said yesterday.
IBM's venture unit has identified more than 850 startups around the world with the help of venture capitalists and provides the companies with sales prospects and advice, said Mark L. Hanny, an IBM vice president.
The panel is part of a plan by IBM Chief Executive Officer Samuel J. Palmisano to spend about $1 billion a year to build relationships with investors, professors and researchers that may lead to sales, Hanny said."
Google makes IM/VoIP play - zdnet.co.uk
Piece "Google has launched an instant-messaging (IM) program that allows text chat and computer-to-computer voice connections, a move that highlights the search giant's increasing competition with Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online.
Google's Web site in the early hours of Wednesday morning provided a link to download Google Talk and stated that the software "enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free — anytime, anywhere in the world." Google's messaging program is linked to Google's Web-based email, Gmail, and both projects are in beta."
Intuit's Bennett: Ready for Mr. Gates - businessweek
Piece "Fast-forward to today: QuickBooks accounts for some 40% of Intuit's revenues -- and Redmond is lurking, eager to peel off some of those customers. On Sept. 7, Microsoft is set to release its Small Business Accounting product, aimed at a core of the QuickBooks franchise. It's a slugfest Intuit CEO Stephen Bennett has been waiting for ever since he moved into the corner office in 2000 (see BW Online, 8/25/05, "How to Face Off Against Microsoft").
Intuit and Microsoft have a storied past. The two have gone head-to-head with competing financial software six times, yet the giant Microsoft has never been able to dislodge the scrappy Silicon Valley upstart -- which has grown into a $2 billion company. Yet, much rides on this latest clash. Win again or lose for the first time, "I will own a big piece of this outcome," says Bennett. "
Microsoft Posts Sample IM, Presence Code - informationweek
Piece "Microsoft is throwing more fuel on the instant-messaging fire.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company on Thursday released sample code and new controls to show how IM and presence can be integrated into everyday business applications. The releases aren’t new code or new products per se, but proof-of-concept tools for developers and VARs to show how line-of-business applications can be fortified with Microsoft Live Communication Server on the back end, said Marc Sanders, senior product manager for Microsoft's realtime collaboration group. "
Google Opens Gmail Service to Public - betanews
Piece "When Google unveiled its instant messaging client yesterday, there was only one problem: Google Talk requires a Gmail account, which has been invitation-only since its beta debut in 2004. This changed on Thursday, however, as Google opened Gmail to anyone in the United States with a mobile phone.
The mobile phone requirement was designed to prevent Gmail accounts from being created by robots and stop spammers from signing up multiple times. Google will send an invitation code via SMS, which can then be used to register with Gmail. Only one account may be created per phone number."
Microsoft Defends Its Turf, Diplomatically - linuxinsider
Piece "Microsoft has been criticized, of course, for its competitive tactics. It has settled many of the lawsuits stemming from a U.S. antitrust case and is still negotiating the terms of European antitrust penalties. Thus far, Microsoft has awakened to new threats in time to defend its turf."
Oracle/IBM battle beyond the database - javaworld
Piece "No longer satisfied with its role as the corporate database leader, Oracle has been building out its middleware portfolio through R&D and acquisitions and is increasingly going head-to-head with IBM.
"For years, the database has been an extremely vigorous competition between DB2 and Oracle database," says Joshua Greenbaum, principal analyst at Enterprise Applications Consulting. "The heat has gotten more intense because middleware has been added to the mix."
Others, including SAP and Microsoft, also see opportunity as corporate data centers move to environments where data and systems are shared and reused in so-called service-oriented architectures. Middleware—such as application servers, business integration software, and data management systems based on open standards and Web services—provides the foundation for this new IT environment."
Secure Computing to acquire CyberGuard - arnnet
Piece "Secure Computing announced it had reached an agreement to acquire CyberGuard for approximately US$295 million in a cash and stock transaction, with the merger expected to be completed in the November timeframe following the regulatory approval process.
In acquiring its rival in the firewall and content-filtering arena, Secure Computing expects to see revenue escalate from about US$110 million per year to US$200 million, said Mike Gallagher, senior vice president of product development. While specific product and staff consolidation plans have not been laid out, Secure Computing sees some re-alignments that could result in possible product change and layoffs. "
IBM's New Linux Strategy Pushes Solution Sets - eweek
Piece "After six months and some 300 customer engagements, trying out a new sales and services approach that concentrates on industry-specific solution sets, IBM has decided to realign its global Linux-related sales and marketing teams around this model.
The Linux teams are now concentrating on selling and marketing 17 solution sets that address IT and customer business problems, rather than focusing on selling specific products. The shift recognizes the growing demand from IBM customers that the company transform enterprise operations to become more responsive, "real time" and on demand, Scott Handy, the vice president for worldwide Linux at IBM in Somers, N.Y., told eWEEK. "
Microsoft demos RSS features in IE 7 - pcworld.idg
Piece "Whether the content streams are eventually called RSS ,Web feeds or some other name, a key design goal of the forthcoming Internet Explorer 7 is to let users easily subscribe to blogs and websites via Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
Attendees at the Blog Business Summit in San Francisco last week got a sneak peek of this functionality in IE 7 running on Windows Vista.
The new version of the browser will include support for RSS, a technology that alerts users to new content posted to blogs and websites. The goal is to make subscription activities more mainstream by allowing users to add an RSS feed as easily as creating a Web page bookmark.
To subscribe to an RSS feed in IE 7, a user simply clicks on a subscribe button in a toolbar that runs across the top of the browser. Users can then see a preview of the feed and add it to a list of favourites. "
New Forrester reports on RSS for marketers released - blogs.forrester.com/charleneli
Piece "One point that's sure to catch attention is the number of people using RSS -- our Technographics survey of 68,000 North American households showed that only 2% of all online households were "using RSS". Now here's the caveat -- that doesn't include all the people who may be using RSS (for example, through My Yahoo!) and don't realize it. Young consumers between the ages of 12-21 were more likely to be using RSS -- 5% of online young consumers say they use RSS.
The second report has detailed best practices on how marketers can create effective RSS feeds for marketing purposes. There are four steps I outline: 1) Determine what content to distribute via RSS; 2) Build the feeds; 3) Market the feeds; and 4) Measure the feeds -- and their impact. "
Updated Google has new tools, user monitoring - boston
Piece "Google Desktop 2, available today as a public beta test, is the company's latest volley against Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. as all three race to expand their presence on PC desktops.
The Google offering includes several twists. Beyond providing search results, it monitors the user's behavior and presents relevant information in a resizable and moveable vertical window called the Sidebar.
One module aggregates e-mail messages from a variety of accounts, including Google's Gmail service or the user's Internet provider. Others display stock prices, personalized news headlines, weather reports, and what's popular on the Web.
Another module pulls Really Simple Syndication feeds from websites that have been visited and offer that service. Unlike other feed aggregators, the user need not take any action for a feed to be added."
Sun has plan for digital rights - boston
Piece "Sun Microsystems Inc., weighing in on the fractious issue of protecting copyrighted digital content, yesterday unveiled a project it calls the Open Media Commons initiative that's designed to create an open-source, royalty-free digital-rights management standard.
The issue of digital-rights management, or DRM, has spurred a number of plans to protect content, ranging from standards for mobile phones, digital music players, CDs, DVDs and other media, available from InterTrust, Microsoft Corp., Apple Computer Inc., Sony Corp. and others.
Sun is now throwing its hat in the ring. Its chief operating officer, Jonathan Schwartz, argues that the growing number of rival DRM standards that are incompatible with one another could stifle innovation and economic growth."
Microsoft offers RFID system for postal services - infoworld
Piece "Microsoft is marketing an RFID (radio frequency identification device) package for postal services at a stamp exhibition in Taiwan, hoping to woo the government's post office and potentially forge a new line of business for the software maker. The technology Microsoft has on offer here allows a postal service, the package sender, and the receiver to view exactly where the package is at all times. It also notifies a receiver when the package will arrive and alerts senders via MSN Messenger or a mobile phone SMS (Short Message Service) after it has been signed for at its destination."
E-commerce sales up 26% in Q2 2005 - blogs.zdnet
Piece "Online retail sales were up 26% in Q2 2005 from Q2 2004, reaching $21.1 bln, the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce reported. Total retail sales for Q2 2005 were estimated at $940.8 bln, an increase of 8.4% from Q2 2004."
Skype as the Next Generation PBX - gigaom
Piece "Skype goes beyond the traditional PBX features with its support for IM and ability to share contact information with other applications. These features are exactly the selling points of the newest software based PBX systems. The IM thing especially, as it ties into something called “presence.” Guest Post by Jesse Kopelman
Let’s clear one thing up, right off the bat. I’m not here to tell you how much Skype is worth. That’s not the point, anyway. The point is that, if you are looking at things from the angle of what kind of margin can one make selling generic voice services by the minute, the world has passed you by. The per-minute price for voice is not going to stop going down. This is why there has been so much consolidation in both the fixed and mobile telephone business recently. The only way to grow the business is to keep adding customers and even this will become a losing game eventually. If you are using VoIP to set yourself up as a new player in the telephone business, you’ve come to the party way too late. The most you can hope for is to cut into the profits of the existing players enough to force them to buy you out."
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Contributor: Venator Partners - Venator Partners is a Boston-based executive search firm that specializes in recruiting senior-level executives in the software and communications industries.
Copyright: Copyright © 2004. Venator Partners, LLC.
Covered Categories: M&A, Start-ups, Personnel Changes
Subscribe to Venator Partners newsletter!
Google plans to raise $4B in stock sale - businessweek
Piece "Google Inc. plans to sell another 14.2 million shares, raising about $4 billion, but the famous search engine company isn't providing many clues as to how the money will be spent.
Some analysts speculated Mountain View-based Google might be devising a bid for the Chinese search firm Baidu.com or the digital video recorder pioneer TiVo Inc. Others suggested the money will help finance an Internet telephony service.
In its filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Google said it will use the proceeds for "general corporate purposes," including acquisitions. It added that it currently has no agreements to make a material purchase."
Bye-Bye RSS; Hello Web Feeds - internetweek
Piece "Consumers have spoken, so that geeky acronym RSS is on its way out. With most consumers having no idea what RSS means, Microsoft decided to replace the term with "web feeds" in Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1. After all, people are less likely to use something, if they don't know what it is.
Despite the sound logic behind the move, tossing RSS for a more consumer-friendly name sent some developers into a tizzy, accusing Microsoft of doing an evil thing. After all, RSS had served geeks quite well for a long time to describe technology for distributing content on the web, and there seemed no reason to change it."
IBM unveils business intelligence solution digitalmediaasia
Piece "Information technology company IBM has announced a business intelligence (BI) solution that combines servers, storage and software in a single integrated package for information management. BI is a process that companies use to help better understand their business issues by analysing data they receive as a result of ATM transactions, retail purchases and other similar transactions. "
Entering the Corposphere - internetnews
Piece "Businesses are learning they can't ignore bloggers. A positive mention in a well-read blog can spike sales and cred, while bloggers can be meaner than a middle-school clique if they disapprove of a company or product -- or its blog.
At the Blog Business Summit, held in San Francisco on Thursday and Friday, corporate communications pros and public relations account execs gathered to grok the rules of engagement with the blogosphere.
Blogger relations can be more critical than public relations, according to Robert Scoble, Microsoft's chief blogger. That's because bloggers tend to be influencers within their communities.
"You're not after me; you're after the bigger audience, the 98 percent," he said. "But to get to them, you have to get the connectors to link to you. If you treat the 2 percent of geeks using RSS badly, you're shooting yourself in the foot."
Google Pushes Deeper Into Microsoft Software - internetweek
Piece "Google Inc. has launched a tool that lets subscribers to its blog-hosting service write and post blogs directly from Microsoft Word, a move that reflects the search engine's determination to stake its claim on the software maker's Windows desktop.
Blogger for Word is a free add-in that lets a Google subscriber save a Word document as a post to the blog, without opening a web browser. The application appears as three buttons in the Word toolbar and requires Microsoft Windows 2000 and Word 2000 or more recent versions of the products.
The add-in's features include the ability to take the text from a Word document and publish it to a person's blog, open and edit the last 15 blog posts and save text in a Blogger account for later editing and posting.
Rivals Microsoft MSN, Google and Yahoo Inc. have been developing software that links their online services, particularly search, directly to the desktop. The reason is to entice people to one of the portals before they open a web browser. "
Managed services boom - itp.net
Piece "The concept of managed services is a growing discipline for a number of reasons, according to the Kelly IT Resources report. To begin with, there is a rapid rise in the number of organisations that provide services. As these companies acquire more corporate clients, they establish economies of scale that allow them to provide services at an extremely cost-competitive price. They also develop an expertise in a particular IT realm, which enables them to deliver more informed and increasingly reliable performance, the report states.
Competition intensified among IT services vendors in the UAE in 2004 and local players dominated the scene. The leading players included Mideast Data Systems, Emirates Computers, Computer Network Systems (CNS), Mercator and GBM. However, no one vendor controlled the market, with the top ten only accounting for 54.2% of total revenue. "Things have really heated up between the main IT services providers this last year and are going to get hotter this year," says Philip van Heerden, analyst at IDC. "Government-owned firms have entered the fray, often winning key government contracts and reducing the available business for private vendors,” he adds. "
Intel buys XML router company - zdnet
Piece "Chipmaker Intel signaled that it's once again interested in selling communications equipment with its purchase on Wednesday of Sarvega, which makes network routers that use the XML standard to improve Internet traffic.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Sarvega, based in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., posted $7 million in revenue in 2003 and lists Intel as one of the supporters that contributed to Sarvega's $20 million venture capital fund.
The 5-year-old Sarvega has developed what it calls an "XML router," a device that can look at the content of a message using Extensible Markup Language and send it to the appropriate point on a network.
An XML router is meant to complement the IP routers and switches that carry the streams of data traffic across the Internet, Sarvega said. "
VC Cliche of the Week - AVc
Piece "When a startup company needs to raise money, a rifle shot approach is always better than a shotgun approach. This is true of every raise, but it is particularly true of the second and third rounds, once there is already a VC firm or two in place. Raising money is time consuming and you must focus on a small set of highly likely prospects if you want the fundraising process to go quickly and end successfully.
I always tell the entrepreneurs and managers that we need to put together a "short list" before we start the fundraising process.
Building the short list is an iterative process. Someone starts it off, usually the company, but sometimes the investors. Then they pass it back and forth, usually in an excel file, and make modifications. The short list should be shared with everyone in and around the company who has relationships in the venture business, including your lawyers, advisory board if you have one, angel investors, and even employees and friends."
What is "Market"? - bostonvcblog
Piece "can only attempt to answer this question with the perspective of the Boston-area, venture-backed start-up market. Keeping that in mind, and recognizing that every number and opinion has an asterix next to it with a large footnote "it depends...", here goes.
CEO. $175-225K base, $40-80K bonus. 5-7% of the company, maybe 6-8% if they arrive shortly after the A round. Larger companies are at the high end of cash and lower end of equity.
COO. $150-200K base, $25-50K bonus. 1-2% of the company. This position is rare in companies of fewer than 100 employees.
"Top 3-4" VPs (3 most valuable VPS, for example, might be VP Eng., VP Sales, VP BD, CFO). $125-175K base, $25-50K bonus, 0.75-1.5% of the company. Sales VPs are typically at the top end of this range.
"Other VPs" (for example, VP Services, General Counsel, CFO). $125-175K base, $0-35K bonus, 0.4-0.8% of the company.
Outside Board Member. No cash or modest monthly cash stipend for consulting. 0.25-0.50% of the company."
Salesforce.com revenue grows as company tops 300k users - computerworld
Piece "Salesforce.com Inc. continued creeping toward the top tier of enterprise applications vendors in its most recent quarter, reporting subscription revenue of $65.6 million -- not far off the $78.3 million customer relationship management software leader Siebel Systems Inc. generated in its latest quarter. "
Startups' Divide-and-Conquer Strategy - businessweek
Piece "For small outfits, splitting off a flagging business unit may help the division regain the attention, focus, and resources it needs
It may be time to split your business into two. Or three. Over the past year, I have watched several of my clients spin off portions of their business as separate divisions -- and I've been amazed at the positive results. Each of these companies followed a similar progression, which got me thinking about the nature of startups and the lost art of spin-offs.
Most startups begin by taking business that nobody else wants. Entrepreneurs lack the capital to make big investments, the clout to garner attention, and the buying power to compete on price. So they get by on the scraps left behind by larger firms -- tiny, unexploited niches, customers with nonstandard needs, and other oddball opportunities. Startups that make it through this stage (and only a fraction do) survive largely on their relentlessness and flexibility. If a deal can be done, they'll find a way to do it. "
Web 2.0: Data, Metadata and Interface - rashmisinha
Piece "Amazon, in its early days, owned the data (the catalogs), the metadata (the associated keywords, where in the structure the item fit in), and the interface. Amazon has gradually evolved to the point where most of the metadata (e.g., ratings/reviews) comes from its users, developers can use API's to build their own interfaces, and it also shows data from other vendors (e.g., the second hand sellers).
Flickr is the quintessential Web 2.0 application. Its data and metadata is contributed by its users; while the interface is its own. Its API's are used by developers who tend to use its data, but not the interface (such as Mappr, Color Pickr).
HousingMaps marries data from two streams (Google Maps and Craigslist). Its interface is mostly that of Google Maps, but it adds in the housing information on top of the Google Maps interface.
Del.icio.us does not have any data of its own. It exists as a metadata aggregator, for data on various sites, tagged by users."
Registration-Required Feeds - globelogger
Piece "Publishers want to maximize their RSS advertising revenue and users want full-content feeds. Registration-required feeds may help them meet in the middle. I've had several requests from clients to create a service that would allow feed publishers to require users to register in order to get full-content feeds. Publishers want higher advertising rates and a better idea of their audience, and users want full-content feeds. (The publishers I'm working with plan to also provide summary-only feeds which won't require registration.)
This move comes in response to an issue described in a recent BusinessWeek article on The Future of the New York Times (registration, uh, required):
The New York Times, like all print publications, faces a quandary. A majority of the paper's readership now views the paper online, but the company still derives 90% of its revenues from newspapering. "The business model that seems to justify the expense of producing quality journalism is the one that isn't growing, and the one that is growing — the Internet — isn't producing enough revenue to produce journalism of the same quality," says John Battelle, a co-founder of Wired and other magazines and Web sites."
Piece "I stepped back from it all yesterday and did an inventory of the various data I’m measuring on a daily basis. Following is the list of the services I’m using:
FeedBurner: Core RSS feed and page view metrics
AWStats: Core page view metrics
Google AdSense: Page views by channel, ad click throughs
Amazon: Online purchase metrics
Bloglet: Email subscribers
MyBlogLog: Outbound link tracking
MeasureMap: Inbound / outbound link tracking (in alpha)
Technorati: More link tracking
Feedster: Even more link tracking
I’m also using a number of these services to enhance my blog, all which collect (or generate) other stats.
Amazon: Reading Now, Read Recently, Toy of the Month
Jinzora: Listening Now
Word of Blog: Promoting Now
MyBlogLog: Outbound link tooltip
FeedBurner: FeedCount (subscriber count), BuzzBoost (republish Mobius PR feed)
NewsGator: Subscribe button
Bloglet: Email subscribers
Google: Search on blog
Page Two: My random page where I play with stuff until I put it in production"
Microsoft’s Answer to Adobe - redherring
Piece "Edging into the competitive space dominated by publishing software giant Adobe, Microsoft has released the second preview of its graphic design tool, Acrylic.
Acrylic is the codename for Microsoft’s illustration and graphics design product that is currently under development.
The product is based on the software that Microsoft acquired in 2003 when it bought Creature House, a Hong Kong-based company that developed digital illustration and painting software. Creature House’s product, Expression, was in the market for nearly seven years before Microsoft acquired it and turned it into Acrylic.
Microsoft released the first preview of Acrylic to developers in June. The second release was announced Monday."
IBM’s Middleware Medley - redherring
Piece "IBM said Tuesday it is very much in the hunt for middleware companies, despite its acquisition of 25 software companies in the last four years, all of which it considers middleware vendors.
Big Blue’s appetite for middleware is shifting the industry’s focus to a segment of the software industry that was once a catchall for any software product not classified as an application or an operating system.
Today middleware, the layer of software that facilitates communications among other software components across a network, has become a highly competitive market dominated by IBM and a collection of smaller players.
In its information management unit alone, IBM has made 13 acquisitions in the past four years, including PureEdge Solutions, a company that markets electronic forms to assist users in the capture, storage, and display of business data.
Four months earlier, in March 2005, IBM acquired Ascential, a company that provides data integration software that helps build enterprise data warehouses, for $1.1 billion. The company’s mainframe systems management unit and its application development unit have also absorbed a number of acquisitions."
Now Microsoft has me wondering what their plans are with RSS! - geeknewscentral
Piece "Update: Talked to Robert Scoble on the phone, and it turns out many of my concerns are unwarranted. When I attended Gnomedx, and Microsoft announced their RSS initiative they also announced the elements that would be added to RSS, additionally we understood that RSS would be integrated into Vista heavily.
So today when I read the ComputerWorld article, from what is supposed to be a fact based news organization I immediately jumped all over the Mike Tores comments, and said to myself are we now seeing a classic bait and switch. Which resulted in the underlying article. It seems that their so called quote is not a quote at all but maybe more like creative writing on someones part."
Symantec to buy Sygate - itnetcentral
Piece "Symantec intends to integrate Sygate Enterprise Protection 5.0, the most recent version of Sygate's flapship software, into Symantec's current endpoint-protection products, which include Symantec Client Security, after the acquisition of Sygate has been completed.
"This will be the primary product area in which we intend to include SEP 5.0," said Brian Foster, Symantec's senior director of product, noting that after combining SEP 5.0 and Symantec Client Security, SEP 5.0 will eventually be phased out.
Foster said SEP 5.0 brings a mix of additional host intrusion-prevention and host control capabilities to the Symantec Client Security desktop software, which includes personal firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware support.
Fremont, Calif.-based Sygate, a privately held company, was originally founded under the name Sybergen Technologies by Chief Technology Officer Chris Guo with help from venture capital firms that included Trident Capital, Trinity Ventures and MVC Capital. The company name was changed to Sygate five years ago, at the time John DeSantis joined as CEO and president. "
Hewlett-Packard sparking profits - bbc.co.uk
US computer giant Hewlett-Packard posted strong profits despite taking a one-off charge on its foreign earnings.
Microsoft Virus Attacks SBC Communications, CNN, ABC Computers - bloomberg
Piece "A computer virus targeting Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software shut down machines at Time Warner Inc.'s Cable News Network and SBC Communications Inc., and may spread globally, according to antivirus software companies.
The destructive program is a strain of an existing virus known as Zotob affecting computers running the Windows 2000 operating system, according to Stephen Toulouse, security program manager at Microsoft. Trend Micro Inc., Japan's biggest antivirus software maker, and Symantec Corp., the world's biggest, raised their risk ratings on the virus. "
IDC sees healthy IT growth through 2009 - infoworld
Piece ""From an IT industry perspective it's quite good," she said. "There's no longer the double-digit growth they saw before 2000, but this growth rate, for a lot of quite mature technologies, is very healthy."
The government, manufacturing and banking sectors will continue to account for the lion's share of IT spending worldwide, she said. Government initiatives to put more services online for citizens, and efforts such as the U.K.'s costly national identity card initiative, will help to keep that sector buoyant."
Fastest-growing blogs: MSN Spaces, Fark, Blogger, Xanga - blogs.zdnet
Piece "Nielsen//NetRatings, using its Web audience data on US home and work Web users, created a list of top 10 growing blogs and blog networks. Between January 2005 and July 2005, MSN Spaces, Fark.com, Blogger.com and Xanga.com experienced the highest audience growth. The top 50 blogging and blog-related sites grew 31% to 29.3 mln unique visitors during July 2005 as compared to the beginning of this year, comprising nearly 20% of active Internet users.
Fastest growing blogs and blog networks
Unique audience, 000
Blog / Network January 2005 July 2005 Growth
MSN Spaces 311 3,257 947%
fark.com 488 795 63%
Blogger 8,684 12,599 45%
Xanga.com 4,810 6,862 43%
Daily Kos 348 476 37%
The Smoking Gun 1,706 2,243 31%
Gawker 411 531 29%
TypePad 3,557 4,555 28%
engadget 630 787 25%
Boing Boing 506 605 20%
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings"
5% of Web users use desktop RSS aggregators, 6% use Web aggregators - blogs.zdnet
Piece "Nielsen//NetRatings announced that 11% of Weblog readers, blog site visitors who claim to read blogs regularly or occasionally, use RSS to sort through the increasing number of blogs available. Nearly 5% of blog readers use feed aggregation software and more than 6% use a feed aggregating Web site to monitor RSS feeds from blogs. "
8 Tips for Bold Leadership cio
Piece "When Les Duncan was a bold lad of three, a backyard bee-catching expedition ended badly, with him sputtering, "Oh damn! Oh damn! Oh damn!" as he fled from the yard.
The importance of risk mitigation was not lost on Duncan, who developed stealthier bee-catching techniques and, before branching out into snake catching, made sure to find out which snakes were poisonous. Now that he's CIO of Bold 100 honoree Atmos Energy, an upstart utility in Dallas, Duncan has put those early lessons in risk mitigation to good use. When his company acquired a same-size competitor, he had plenty of risk to contend with as he led the integration effort.
Risk mitigation is just one of many strategies that increase the chances that bold gambles will, in fact, pay off. Here's a roundup of bold leadership secrets from five of this year's CIO 100 honorees. "
RSS Mystifies Most Blog Readers - mediaweek
Piece "Blog readers, thought of as a young and tech-savvy audience, by and large do not understand how RSS works, according to a study.
Nielsen//NetRatings polled 1,000 members of its research panel who read blogs. It found that nearly two-thirds of the respondents either never heard of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or did not know what the technology is used for. The study found only 11 percent of Web log readers use RSS to monitor blogs.
Web logs were early adopters of RSS technology, which routes headlines and content snippets from Web publishers to users' desktops. By using RSS aggregators or Web pages like My Yahoo, readers can monitor and access personalized content without visiting individual Web sites."
AOL continues wireless push with mobile user Web site - rcrnews
Piece "America Online Inc. continued its aggressive move toward wireless Monday, unveiling a new Web site for mobile users as well as a WAP version of its Web site.
The Internet giant launched AOLmobile.com, which allows users to manage cell-phone features and preferences including alerts and forwarding instant messages. Users can browse for cell phones and service providers, as well as shop for content including ringtones, images and games."
U.S. Visa Problems for Israel - redherring
Piece "Israel’s high-tech industry is expected to be hit hard by a U.S. Homeland Security Department announcement that the quota for professional visas for the 2006 fiscal year has already been used up.
The H1B category visa is the most common visa granted for foreign engineers and scientists working temporarily in the United States.
“This will have an impact on all companies, from U.S. multinationals with local offices to Israeli startups that need to send employees to the U.S.,” said Liam Schwartz, founding partner of the Kan-Tor & Schwartz law offices of Tel Aviv, Israel, which specialize in immigration issues. "
Taming the Wild Web - time
Piece "Consider: in July, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. spent $580 million to acquire Intermix Media, a U.S.-based company whose prime asset is MySpace, a site that lets members share their blogs, photos and favorite music. In March, Yahoo! bought Flickr, a photo-sharing website, for an undisclosed sum. All that activity makes sense, given the rapid growth and expansion of both personal blogs and networking sites like Friendster, LinkedIn and MySpace. Harnessing the power of social networking is viewed as a key component of the soon-to-explode local advertising market, which will be worth $10.9 billion globally by 2009, according to analysts Kelsey Group. The individual pages contained on any of these sites or their blogging cousins may appear trivial: minutiae about cats' feeding habits, or the favorite break-up songs of teenage girls. But companies are banking on the notion that, in the aggregate, these pages represent a gold mine of credible consumer information. "Whether you are referring someone to either a great restaurant or a local hairstylist, since the lead came from a trusted source, there's a good chance that the person will be much more qualified to react not just to the content on the page, but also to the advertising," says Andrew Shotland, vice president of business development at Insider Pages, a Pasadena, California-based company that aims to use people's opinions to create detailed local directories of businesses and services. "We are seeing these referrals convert into business at a much greater rate than leads from other forms of advertising." "
SAP: We'll do on-demand right - news.com
Piece "In most cases, hosted applications have been seen as a replacement or alternative for on-premise software. Vendors such as Siebel Systems and Oracle offer a mix of hosted and on-premise alternatives under what they classify as a "hybrid" model, but SAP appears confident that some customers using its hosted tools might be likely to move back to on-premise someday.
SAP hasn't yet said whether the launch of the hosted applications will coincide with the delivery of its latest on-premise CRM system, also due in the fall, or, if so, whether the company will market the products in tandem."
Gates' Microsoft Wins Browser Turf From Firefox - forbes
Piece "Firefox, which recently seemed like the mouse that roared, may be singing another tune.
Though relatively wee, the free Internet browser from software firm The Mozilla Organization was steadily gobbling up market share from Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Internet Explorer (IE).
By one account, from January to June of this year, Firefox had posted monthly market share gains of between 0.5% and 1%--at the expense of IE. "
Microsoft beats Apple on patent covering iPod technology - financialexpress
Piece "Apple Computer’s iconic iPod still has the huge advantage in the market — but rival Microsoft suddenly has some bragging rights in the patent office. Creating a surprise twist in the portable music wars, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has denied Apple’s application to patent its method of using hierarchical menus to navigate through the iPod’s contents. The basis for the denial: A similar method outlined in a Microsoft researcher’s patent application, filed after the iPod was introduced but before Apple sought its own patent. "
McAfee readies home Wi-Fi security tool - infoworld
Piece "McAfee's software is designed to keep intruders - either malicious "war drivers" or neighbors who just want to freeload on a broadband Internet connection - from getting on to wireless LANs and from deciphering the packets that travel over the network. Once on a wireless LAN, intruders can steal information, intercept messages and install harmful programs. As consumers rapidly embrace Wi-Fi for their home networks, many are not using any security, usually because they can't figure out how to set it up, according to industry analysts and other observers."
Microsoft exec defends RSS rebranding - infoworld
Piece "In a recent post on his Web log "Torres Talking," Mike Torres, MSN Spaces lead program manager, made a clear distinction between the branding of the RSS technology and the underlying technology itself. He also said that Microsoft is adding its own functionality to RSS in the version the company is implementing in Internet Explorer (IE) 7. Because of this, its renaming of RSS is not a sign the company is trying to remake the technology for its own purposes but rather a way to make a distinction between RSS and a feature of IE.
RSS is primarily used by Web loggers and Web-based news publishers to keep subscribers informed when new Web log entries or news articles have been posted to Web sites. Microsoft is adding RSS functionality to the next version of Windows, Windows Vista, primarily through the IE 7 version of its Web browser. Both Windows Vista and IE 7 betas are available now."
The Second Wave of RFID Technology - newsfactor
Piece "Sharp Escalation
That's also going to make the cash registers of RFID suppliers, including Intermec Technologies , Texas Instruments , Philips , Alien Technology, and Boeing vendor Symbol, start to ring with an ever-increasing frequency. The $1.7 billion RFID industry is expected to balloon to $5.9 billion by 2008, according to technology market researcher Venture Development. RFID suppliers should see a sharp escalation in demand in mid-2006. That's when manufacturers are expected to first start moving from pilot tests to large-scale RFID deployments as new, industry-standard RFID technology comes to market, says Tom Miller, president of RFID systems supplier Intermec, part of automation giant UNOVA. Called Gen 2 RFID, these new readers and tags will be cheaper, a lot more accurate, and work at distances up to 30 percent longer than their predecessors. "
Pat your head and rub your tummy - willprice.blogspot
Piece "In my experience as a VC and ex-startup CEO, young companies need to remember to develop and tell two stories. The first targets customers and explains specific, tangible, and focused value made possible via the currently available product. The second story targets the VCs and addresses the real concern with respect to scale, TAM, and a road map that supports the emergence of the company from a niche-product to a real company."
10 New Opportunities for Software Vendors - sandhill
Piece
"1) Consolidate or Be Consolidated
There is a perception in the industry that "Darwin's Law" applies: You must acquire or be acquired. This isn't quite the case. Oracle is almost done with its acquisition frenzy. The high valuations they caused are not going to apply to most other vendors.
If you want to be the acquirer, you need acquisition expertise. We all grew up building technology. No one ever gave us a course in executing M&As, post-acquisition integration or anything like that. Most vendors need to retool, and gain expertise to be acquire or be acquired at an attractive - and realistic - price.
2) "New" ERP is a Huge Opportunity
A unified enterprise platform continues to elude the industry. If you only look at SAP, MySAP has multiple code streams, CRM more, NetWeaver, another set. Through development and purchase, Oracle now has 10 to 20 enterprise platforms. Microsoft promised Longhorn in 2006. Then the company delayed the release to 2008, now 2009 or even later.
There is a game being played by major enterprise vendors. They keep baiting customers with a promise of a unified platform but the reality is that it will be many years before such a platform appears from any of the major providers.
This gap presents a giant window of opportunity for new vendors to provide an enterprise platform to customers of these vendors. The platform would need to be provided at 20 percent of the cost of ownership that the customer would have to pay to upgrade to the next version of their current vendor's product (which isn't ready yet anyway) in order to be compelling. Leveraging open source and on-demand applications would enable new vendors to move the larger vendors' installed base to a new platform.
3)The Sun Sets on "Packaged" Apps
Out of the 20 million lines of code in a typical enterprise application, only 2 to 3 million lines provide any meaningful value to the client. Said differently, 20 percent of a software product represents 80 percent of its business value.
Add the fact that customers much spend $5 to $10 on services for every $1 paid for an enterprise application and it is no wonder that customers complain about the price of software.
I feel that our industry created this notion of "packaged software applications" so that vendors could recognize revenue upfront and achieve bigger market valuations. It has also created the notion that maintenance revenue is a good thing to have.
These tactics have resulted in bad behavior by software makers. We end up including every "corner case" need that a client might possibly have in fear that said client will cut its maintenance contract. Before you know it, we have a product that is only worth 20 percent to most customers yet whose total cost of ownership is 100% for all clients.
Software is moving back to an age of semi-custom applications. The future belongs to these products which contain 80 percent of the value for common clients. These products could serve a vertical market, a horizontal process or any number of other niches. Various service providers can fill in the missing 20 percent on a client-by-client basis. This will lead to a sensible revenue recognition and maintenance model that won't force the bad behavior plaguing the industry today."
The Death of a Web Service - avc.blogs
Piece "have talked endlessly on this blog about the emerging world of web services where you can easily build really useful applications by patching together a bunch of open web services.
In fact this blog is a perfect example of that world. I started with Typepad, then got Feedburner, Adsense, Bloglet, del.icio.us, Flickr, Amazon, Indeed, Bitty Browser, LibSyn, and probably a few more web services. Together, they provide to me, and hopefully you, a really useful application.
But what happens when one of these web services dies?"
The Death of The Killer App - feld
Piece "They are:
Simply try things out: We are seeing this every day with all the web 2.0 stuff that’s being created. The new approach – being used by many of our favorite web services – is build, release, test, iterate. Google has popularized the notion of “beta services” - when everything is “beta”, you’ve got a new paradigm with a short (days / weeks / one month) release cycle that can be quickly iterated on rather than a monolithic 12 - 18 months (or more) release cycle.
Focus on the information context: This is a little harder to see in practice, but it’s all about “enabling the feedback loop between users and manufacturers.” Eric von Hippel has been talking about this since the late 1970’s – he’s now calling it “Democratizing Innovation” – if you get both sides deeply involved in the innovation context, better things get created. Tom Evslin’s been on a Typepad customization rampage – this is a great small example – and I hope our friends at Six Apart are watching."
Web 2.0: An opportunity for venture capital, or just a boom in lifestyle businesses? - vpfund
Piece "I wasn’t at OSCON this year but I was told that Tim O’Reilly referred to the Ruby programming language as “the Perl of the Web 2.0 era” – I agree. Furthermore, innovation is being driven by the excitement surrounding Ajax coupled with development of open source programming frameworks such as Ruby on Rails and Django. These frameworks are designed to accelerate programming, ease Ajax implementation and improve code by enforcing the DRY (don’t repeat yourself) principal.
By leveraging these platforms, a plethora of new Web 2.0 startups are bootstrapping and rapidly building focused WebApps such as Basecamp (web-based project management), Blinksale (web-based invoicing), Chalk.it and Writeboard (web-based white boarding), and many more that are fueling the creation of new businesses at a rapid clip (see TechCrunch for daily examples). Innovation at this level has not been seen for some time – It was ten years ago this month that Netscape had its wildly popular IPO. This was the tipping point that lead to the boom and eventual bust of the Web 1.0 era."
Link Experiment Results - Part III - j-walkblog
Piece "examined a number of blog search sites to see how many links to that specific blog entry they could find. I also did a general search for my blog URL for comparison. The table below shows the results for nine search sites.
Tool Links to specific entry URL General site links
MSN Search 136 19,712
Technorati 92 1,814
Feedster 91 2,152
Bloglines 73 6,156
BlogPulse 58 1,608
IceRocket 54 1,122
Blogdigger 24 58
Blogdex 5 25
Google 0 9,360
In terms of sheer number of links returned, MSN Search is the surprising winner. For the experimental URL, I don't think it found all of them, but it did better than any other single search site. Based on this little experiment, my opinion of MSN Search went up a notch or two."
Small Business Trends gives an excellent review on Laurence Haughton's book "It's Not What You Say...It's What You Do", one of the only books I am reading and enjoying at this time.
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