Exec Moves, Startups and Acquisitions - Wrap up for 24 Apr 2006
Posted on: April 24th, 2006
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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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CNN on Web 2.0: The boom is back
Posted on: April 23rd, 2006See CNN’s The boom is back .
Dudu
Web 2.0 - To Personalize or not to Personalize?
Posted on: April 19th, 2006One of the main decisions I am standing upon these days which is not totally clear to me is whether to personalize Strategic Board or not. By personalizing I mean adding a capability to save searches and every other feature possible following a user subscription.
On one hand everywhere Web 2.0 companies go through a similar path of creating a free service, adding a registration process with few free features luring users to get “hooked” on the service and then bringing the punch line of subscription based business model.
I personally do not feel it is the right way for Strategic Board for various reasons and not only on the personalization level.
I’ve listed the reasons on why should or shouldn’t I go through this path with Strategic Board (Maybe it can save some thinking time for someone out there)
Pros:
1) Everyone does that. Users know it (although not really used to it). Most of the times this is a sufficient enough reason to do something.
2) It is a business model. Unlike other vague and open options this one is a by the book business model. Having a business model at all again is a sufficient enough reason in many times to take the decision forward.
3) User’s love being served with personalized information.
4) VCs seems to like it? Not sure about this but it seems so.
Cons:
1) Everyone does that. The question is what will keep me distinct from the herd. I am sure it won’t be the unlimited marketing dollars I have to spend:)
2) Users don’t like to waste time on registration/login and other advanced features. If they can get what they are looking for without to much typing and clicking then it is better. The question here is whether the new features I want to present are that important for users to make me create a personalization mechanism for it and whether they can be served even partially in a public and not personalized manner.
3) I don’t believe people will pay me for in order to access publicly available information! Strategic Board as many other web 2.0 companies provide an aggregated or filtered view of publicly available information such as blogs. Putting the efforts to register and login in order to access the unique view or aspect of the information is something users already do, paying for it is a whole different story.
4) Google, the one and only company that has a lot of experience with users do not charge money on information. They had to create an almost non-relevant business model to sustain their growth. The contextual advertising concept is remote to the main concept of serving information via search engine and still it seems as the only way they could have found to do great money on the net.
5) VCs won’t save you when your business model will be flushed to the toilet. Actually no one will.
6) Narrowing down your focus - A bad thing that can happen from personalization is that your state of mind gets narrowed to the point you only think on advanced extensions of the product that are possible via the personalized mechanism and not on the general publicly available capabilities. A personalized product can be much richer and much more exciting then non personalized. The only problem here is that within time you serve only a narrowing part of your potential audience.
7) A con for web 2.0 search engines/aggregators - An identity dilemma arises for search engine providers with personalization. The line between a new aggregator and a classic search engine is getting blurred and future directions are getting mixed. This is no good for strategy unless you get the whole picture.
Dudu
P.S. An idea for a web 2.0 company that just popped: If there are many new subscription based web 2.0 services, wouldn’t a centralized billing company be something great for users who need to enter and track their billing info all over the place. PayPal presents something similar though non integrated. A centralized billing company would have an API for vendors to access billing information in order to answer each vendor specific needs while the control will remain centrally for the user. Just a thought:)
More and more blogs:)
Posted on: April 19th, 2006See Micro Persuasion: Sifry: Blog Growth Remains Strong
* The blogosphere is over 60 times bigger than it was only 3 years ago.
* 75,000 new weblogs created every day
* 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
* Original content greatly outweighs the fake or duplicate content listed on spam blogs
* Daily Posting Volume tracked by Technorati is now over 1.2 Million posts per day
Dudu
Why people don’t use websites
Posted on: April 18th, 2006Very nice list on Scott Heiferman’s Notes: 50 Reasons Why People Aren’t Using Your Website.
Dudu
Short sighted - An Israeli VC perspective on the Latest Investment Trends
Posted on: April 16th, 2006I encountered today an interesting post called Enterprise Software - 2006 by Daniel Cohen from Gemini Israel Funds, a prominent Israeli VC. Daniel presents the current lack of appetite VCs show for enterprise software investment opportunities vs. web 2.0 opportunities. I fully agree with the observations being made on the current mood but I am not agreeable with how they are rationalized and why they are rationalized.
Daniel says:
“ So, the question is obvious. Is 2006 in Enterprise software the comparable of 2003 in Consumer Internet? Will the Enterprise bounce back and become an attractive sector for investment. There are 3 main reasons why that won’t happen -
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The exit strategy for most enterprise software companies is through acquisition. The big players pay little money, so the overall potential is limited. (Check this interesting analysis on 2005 exits).
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I still can’t see the underlying activity at the enterprise level that will drive startups and innovation. Most CIOs are still looking to buy most of their products from SAP, Microsoft, and IBM.
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Difficult to find what will be the next driver for big companies & big returns. Open source is already a big thing going through consolidation (Jboss as a recent example).”
I’ll address it in a bullet by bullet manner:
1) Exit strategy - Venture capitalists invest in the future and if we go two to four years back to 2000/1 then the same rationale for not investing could have been applied to new web 2.0 companies with no problem. Three years ago web 2.0 companies were just a strange internet (god forbid) startups trying to raise their heads among internet giants such as Amazon and Google (and they still do). The opportunity in the enterprise software market I think is only a matter of sightseeing and vision. A company that receives seed investment today in 2006 is expected to exit within three to five years the earliest, which means 2009-2012, which means no way to predict what “mood” will be.
2) Same response as in bullet number one though if we consider the nature of the innovative lifecycle in web 2.0 companies then we see that the innovation comes from the developers and not from the users. Maybe if we can apply a similar innovative cultures in enterprise software startups it will eventually lead to a new and unexpected productivity tools. Having said that I am fully aware that enterprise customers are tough and unforgiving and innovation in the enterprise software world does not depend only on the vendor wishes.
3) As I see it, open source is just at the beginning. Today open source is still accumulating good faith both from developers, consumers and enterprises. When and if todays’ open source products/tools will reach critical market share point (in comparison to the market share of other competing giants such as Microsoft OS, IBM and others) a new massive wave of innovation will spree based on the newly accumulated market validation. Both investors and entrepreneurs will join the open source wagon as a viable opportunity. Most of the software we use today is still being paid for in full, a sign that also relates to the level of evolvement for open source. It can be the maturity of open source only in one case - open source is meant to be a small thing and not a big change (which I fully disagree on). Maturity of open source will be visible also in dramatic changes in the licensing concepts used today as well as in spending habits of CIOs.
I personally lead a web 2.0 innovation so I kind of need not worry about the moods described for enterprise software investments, or maybe even be happy:). Still I personally do not like the repetitive reflex VCs show again and again by following only what is very hot and creating rationales on why the investments in last week vogue is not reasonable anymore. Technology related industries are evolving always while always there is a portion that gets the focus and highlights. Still it is not a good reason as a long term investment strategy to track the lights always. Sometimes having a longtime specialty, deep domain expertise and longer term plans can be a bless and not a curse.
Dudu
P.S. I’ve encountered many similar state of minds from other VCs except for Daniel both in the US and in Israel.
Exec Moves, Startups and Acquisitions - Wrap up for 14 Apr 2006
Posted on: April 14th, 2006
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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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Exec Moves, Startups and Acquisitions - Wrap up for 10 Apr 2006
Posted on: April 10th, 2006
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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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Please update my new feed address
Posted on: April 4th, 2006Hi All,
I’ve changed my feed address to http://www.strategicboard.com/weblog/feeds/sb_rss.xml . Please update your feed/news reader.
Thanks,
Dudu
Executive Moves, Venture Funding and Mergers and Acquisitions - 2 apr 06
Posted on: April 2nd, 2006
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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!
