TechShup

3G for your new IPhone: Wanna see coverage in your area

Go here:

http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/

Make sure you select 3G option in the box below to show you the coverage for it in your area. 

Guy Kawasaki at SAP!!

This past Tuesday famous author of "The art of Start," former Apple evangelist and the current Venture Capitalist, Guy Kawasaki was invited to SAP campus by the Chinese Entrepreneur Organization. I was very excited and booked a spot as quickly as I could. I had read the book a while back so I made sure to polish up on it by skimming it again. On the day of the event, I scrambled at work to get back home to get a few things done before the evening session with Guy and forego a nice evening with the family in the process. For all that effort, the event turned out to be a disappointment.

First, Guy went through power point slides of stuff that was straight out of his book and other writings. Now, somebody should have informed him that he is speaking at a tech comany and mostly a technical audience was in attendance and the probability that most of the audience will have already read his work was high. In fact, when he tried to give away his book during the Q&A session, there were a couple of people who told him that they already have the book and have in fact, read it already.

The interesting bits about Mike's presentation were the anecdotes from all of the thousands of sessions he has had with entrepreneurs over the years as a VC. Those provided some good insight in how VCs think and his reactions to several of those elevator pitches were mostly in line with the book. 

After an hour of the presentation, the most painful part of the session began, namely Q&A. Guy, towards the end of his presentation had covered, what I thought was a useful site, using Cricket as an example where all the useful website with information on the game could be located. The website however, is not limited to Cricket and actually covers quite a bit. An Indian gentleman walked up to the microphone and brought up, what I thought, was an excellent point. How can Guy justify promoting the website when he stated that as a VC he is looking for game changing or new curve riding ideas. Clearly, while the website was useful and in fact, I had decided right then, that I would use it to keep track of my news, Guy could have simply said that this was not an example of what he or other VCs would necessarily fund or that it does not represent the leaning or trends followed by majority of his investments, but instead he started defending it. He started taking aim at the gentleman asking the question and got quite a few laughs from the audience at his expense. The problem was that those were, for the most part, cheap laughs. It was clear to me that Guy was stretching himself to entertain the crowd that had gathered to hear him. He really had no need to do that since the people were excited to see him there and were continuing to sit through his mostly cliche laden presentation with the prospect of personally meeting with a Silicon Valley tech celebrity. However, to my dismay, he continued to do that with everyone who had the courage to step up to the microphone. Most of his jokes targeted nationalities, ethnicities and were tacky at best. After a little while, I was not able to entertain a minute more of it and simply walked away without getting my book signed or shaking his hand. I rememberd another Garage Ventures VC, Bill Reichert, who spoke at OPEN Forum 2007 and who was a true gentleman when I met him. I could not believe that Guy worked with him day in and day out without getting infected by his attitude or perhaps I should be thankful that the infection did not go the other way. Guy also talked about Mike Moritz in the context of Mike's offer to Guy to lead Yahoo in 1995 when Sequoia funded Yahoo. Mike Moritz spoke to the OPEN gathering last Saturday via video conference about VC funding and while he was exceedingly funny he was also on his best and gentlemanly behaviour. His humor was most self-effacing and for the most part he inspired the audience to get their ideas out to as many people as possible. Guy, unfortunately, seemed to have the opposite effect. People probably run away from him fearing his dull wit would do more damage to thier ideas and confidence than anything else without really adding any feedback of value.

Microsoft getting Raw!!!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24760487/

This would make it all very interesting...!

IP V6 and Enterprise Applications...Match!??

In my earlier post about John Williams' talk at SAP there was some mention of "Internet of things" that I felt made for an important point about the future of IP provisioning.

Today, Gary Hemminger from Foundry Networks gave a presentation at SAP about IP V6 and its implications on Enterprise Applications that I felt was a continuation of discussion started by John earlier this year.

Some detailed history on IP V6 is available here. The summarized version is that in 1992 the end alls and be alls decided that IP addresses will run out at some point at the pace they were going.

IP V4 uses 32 bits for address while IP V6 uses 128 bits. Just to give you an idea, that means IP V4 gives you about 4 Billion nodes and IP V6 gives you about 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456.

The larger space is only one positive afteraffect. There is more good with Security and Network address simplicity. Current IP address allocation is pretty lopsided with US coroporations and organizations getting the lion's share. IP V6 provides a solution to that problem as well. This widget shows the clock running out on the IP addresses. 

Here are the problems though:

IP V6 will need some building blocks such as Operating Systems, the Networks and the applications. More on that in the next post.....

Interesting Article...on Google

Interesting Read!

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/09/technology/where_does_google_go.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008051205

Events around Silicon Valley in May

Droidmaker: George Lucas, Pixar, and the Digital Revolution

Date:  Wednesday, May 7
Time:  7pm - 8pm
Location:  Cubberley Community Center Theatre, 4000 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
Web Site: www.commonwealthclub.org

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Tour and Demo of Cisco's TelePresence

Date:  Wednesday, May 7
Time:  4:00pm-6:00pm
Location:  Cisco, 3750 Zanker Rd. Blg #8, San Jose
Web Site:  http://www.womenintelecom.org

Description:
Join us at Cisco's San Jose location for demos of their cool technology.

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Learning to create engaging apps for Facebook: What works & what does not

Date: Thursday, May 8
Time: 6:30pm-9:00pm
Location: Fenwick & West, 801 California Street, Mountain View
Web Site: http://www.hispanic-net.org

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Mobile Payments Deep Dive

Date: Friday, May 9
Time: 8:30am-1:00pm
Location: Visa International, 900 Metro Center Blvd, Foster City
Web Site:  http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Summary.aspx?e=541847db-e97b-47d3-8ae4-8465b7ce29df 

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Harness the Power of Personal Marketing

Date: Monday, May 12
Time: 5:45pm-8:30pm
Location: Embarcadero YMCA, 169 Steuart Street, San Francisco
Web Site: http://imcnorcal.org/Library/Meetings/flyer5-12-08.pdf

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Digital Media in Europe − time to make a move?

Date:  Thursday, May 15
Time:  8:00am (Registration/breakfast), 8:30am-9:30am (Program)
Location:  The Westin Palo Alto, 675 El Camino Real, Palo Alto
Web Site: www.ocalliance.com

Panellists will include:
Philip Dur, Vice President, Investor Growth Capital
Patrick McGill, Velocity Interactive Group
Scott Swanson, GM and Vice President, Glam Media Publisher Network

To register, please email sally.clifford-smith@osborneclarke.com or call Andy James on +1 650 462 4022.

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VCTaskforce: Capitalizing on VC and Strategic Investor Relationships

Date: Thursday, May 15
Time: 6:00pm-9:00pm
Location: Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, 2 Palo Alto Square, Palo Alto
Web Site: http://www.VCTaskForce.com

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How Election Outcomes Impact Capital Markets

Date:  Thursday, May 15
Time:  7pm - 8pm
Location:  Trader Vic′s Restaurant, 4261 El Camino Real, Palo Alto
Web Site: www.commonwealthclub.org

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Annual Excellence in Marketing Awards

Date:  Thursday, May 15, 2008
Time:  6pm - 9pm
Location:  Hilton San Francisco Financial District, 750 Kearny St, San Francisco
Web Site: www.sfama.org

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International Software Development Outsourcing Conference

Date: Tuesday, May 20
Time: 8:00am-10:00pm
Location: Computer History Museum, 1401 N Shoreline Blvd, Mountain View
Web Site: http://www.intlsdoc.com

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Valley Talk: Make It or Break It - Preparing Your Startup for Fast Growth

Date:  Wednesday, May 21
Time:  8:15 am−2 pm
Location:  Microsoft, 1065 La Avenida Street, Building 1, Mountain View
Web Site: : http://valleytalk.eventbrite.com/

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How to Increase Your Sales by Selling to the Government

Date: Thursday, 22 May 2008
Time: 7am−10am
Location: Silicon Valley Capital Club, Pacific Rim North Room, 50 W. San Fernando Street, Suite 1700, San Jose, CA  95113
Web Site: www.governmentsalesforce.com

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Lunch with Michael Dobbs

Date: Saturday, May 24, 2008
Time: 11:30 AM to 3:30 PM
Location: Epsilon Fine Greek Restaurant, 422 Tyler Street, Monterey, CA, Phone 831-655-8108
Reservations to:  Mr. Harwood Beville, by email:  hbeville@redshift.com

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Guerilla PR Technology Practices & Working With Social Media

Date: Friday, May 30, 2008
Time: 11:30 a.m.−1:30 p.m. PST (lunch included)
Location: Microsoft, 1065 La Avenida, Mountain View, CA 94043
Registration Website: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaID=153305
Website: http://www.siliconprsa.org/

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Om Malik′s Structure ′08

Date:  25th, June 2008
Time:  8am - 8pm
Location:  Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco
Web Site: http://events.gigaom.com/structure/08/

Ex-CTO of Amazon asks: Are you "paying" Attention in an Att-ention Economy?

Andreas Weigend was at SAP asking a phenomenally simple question:

Are you getting paid for "paying" attention?

He took the 'paying attention' portion apparently literally and emphasized how he saw the next data revolution.

Dr. Andreas Weigend is passionate about people and data. Until 2004, he was the chief scientist of Amazon.com where he helped create a customer-centric, measurement-focused culture and focused on understanding customer behavior. He now works as an independent consultant with exciting firms including Alibaba, Lufthansa, MySpace, and Nokia. He helps them leverage the principles of the new consumer data revolution for innovating products and business models. He also serves on boards and advisory boards of startups in the US, Europe and Asia. He is also a limited partner at Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. He also teaches courses at Stanford (Data Mining and Electronic Business), UC Berkeley (Marketing in Web 2.0), and Tsinghua/INSEAD (The Digital Networked Economy).

According to Dr. Weigend, the production, aggregation, distribution, and consumption of data is changing. Traditionally, paid specialists actively collected data for a specific purpose. You had Mapquest with its thousands of employees traversing the streets in all kinds of places around the world sending out GPS signals of their locations, helping create maps. Now, all of us have that facility in our cars and mobiles.

We are flooded with data streams of intention, attention, situation, and location of individuals, plus data about relationships between individuals, ala Linkedin, Facebook, myspace.com etc. There are implicit traces of behavior as well as people contributing data explicitly.

Most firms believe in internal transparency, basing decisions on data they collect. Where the next revolution enters the fray is where companies get that they can benefit by extending this transparency to the outside. Today, a solid data strategy is central to most firms, and includes answers to questions such as: What data should the firm share with its customers so some of them can actually help the firm make the right moves and decisions?

With Infrastructure (A big barrier in the past) commodotized, the relevant questions in today’s marketplace include:

How can we set up a system (including incentives) so that people actually do contribute useful and truthful data?

What value can the firm create for the contributors?

It is their perception of this value that will decide whether they demand to be paid to contribute, or whether they are willing to pay themselves for the privilege? And what should be the currency of the payments: money, attention, or even more data?

The classic questions were raised during discussions around the presentation about privacy and the extent of the usefulness in this respect for Enterprise companies.

Dr. Weigend countered with real anecdotes and examples such as Nokia on one end, who in his opinion gets it more than most and United Airlines who does not. I will try and relate them in a later post.

The Great Debate: Hasso and Marc

Churchill Club proudly hosted SAP Founder Hasso Plattner and Salesforce CEO Marc Russell Benioff about a week and a half ago moderated by Quentin Hardy from Fortune Magazine.

The SaaS model (Software as a Service) model was going to be the focus of the attention here and it was a great match on stage.

Marc appears to be a very typical and smooth CEO who seems to impress upon his audiences the urgency of his ideas. Hasso was always going to be on the defensive just because SaaS is the new and exciting thing challenging what appears to be status quo.

During the conversation, Hasso did make some excellent points though.

1. There are big customers with big liabilities and big volumes who will continue to have trouble with SaaS of reliability and security. They will always be much more comfortable having in house software.

2. SAP realizes the importance of the Market movement towards SaaS and the Business by Design effort is in that vein.

3. Continuous improvements in the infrastructure will be key for SaaS' success.

Marc was passionate about his opinions which he outlined very succinctly:

1. SaaS is not the future. SaaS is the present

2. Organizations that don't adapt as quickly as possible to this model will find their ROIs diminishing against their competitors who will change their outlook.

Both Marc and Hasso took some potshots at each other but were very congeniel for the most part throughout the conversation. Apparently Marc had never met Hasso before and this was his first meeting with him. One of the better questions from the audience was about what did they admire about the other and Marc cited Tenure in market while Hasso referred to the model and execution that is employed by Salesforce.com as the features that they admired about the other.

The funny thing was that The Great Debate did not turn out to be much of a debate in light of the fact that both agreed with the premise that SaaS is here to stay. They seem to differ only on the impact as of that day and while Hasso felt that it will take some time and some form of hybrid model to make things work for SaaS, Marc seemed to disagree and felt that SaaS was proven and ready to go, in fact was already going strong.

Some forecasting seems to indicate that SaaS will be the majority of Software deployment model by 2013. Something to ponder about in times to come!

Lots happening in and around the Valley as April blooms

April will be busy in the Valley with some marquee events:

Wanna learn how to SAY it:
Media Training − Hone Your Skills!

A PRSA Silicon Valley event

Date: Friday, March 28, 2008
Time: 11:30 a.m.−1:30 p.m. PST (lunch included)
Location:  The Cooley Café, Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, 3175 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, CA 94304
Website: http://www.siliconprsa.org/
Registration site: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=153305
Pricing: $49 for PRSA Silicon Valley members ($69 non-members), $59 for PRSA Silicon Valley partners (IABC, AMA, BMA, PRSA-SF, PRSA-EB)

Description:
A must-attend workshop for executive spokespeople; includes how-to practice and video-taped sessions.

Sharpen your media and presentation skills with the best in the business. Learn how to control an interview, handle tough questions, stay on message, be quotable, and become a valuable resource. Then put your skills to the test and hone them further!

Special Guest Speaker: Steve Yoder, Bureau Chief, Wall Street Journal
Trainer: Jeff Braun, Principal, Crucial Communications Group and former broadcast journalist with CBS News
Trainer: Jon Greer, Principal, Jon Greer Consulting and former print journalist San Francisco Chronicle and The Mercury News

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Wanna know what you make is what you should or if you are overpaid:

Workshop: High-Tech Compensation Trends & Equity Program Best Practice

A Northern California Human Resources Association Event

Date: Tuesday, Apr 1
Time: 9:00am-12:00pm
Location: The Domain Hotel, 1085 El Camino Real, Sunnyvale
Web Site: http://www.nchra.org
Pricing: NCHRA Members: $125 / General: $165.

Description:
3 CPE Credits
Silicon Valley remains the world's center for new technologies. Gain a better understanding of the current compensation landscape in the high-technology industry, and learn best practices to ensure your equity program is competitive with current market practices.

Topics include:
•An in-depth focus of the Bay Area labor market hiring rates and new-hire bonus practices
•Examination into the relationship between new hire and ongoing grant levels
•Addressing equity grants to international employees
•Communicating equity programs to employees

Speakers: John Radford and David Knopping, Radford Surveys + Consulting

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Wanna get some money:

The Elevator Pitch Roundtable

A VC Task Force Event

Date: Wednesday, Apr 2
Time: 6:00pm-8:30pm
Location: Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, 2475 Hanover Street, Palo Alto
Web Site: http://www.VCTaskForce.com
Pricing: $35 VC Taskforce, $45 Non-Taskforce member.

Description:
The VC Taskforce Elevator Pitch Roundtable is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to network with investors and other CXOs, present their company and idea, and hear first-hand what it takes to raise early-stage capital in 2008. Each of our events has consistently drawn an excellent entrepreneur-to-investor ratio.

If you are an entrepreneur in a startup and currently seeking capital, come prepared with your best 60-second elevator pitch.

If you wish to give your pitch, please register and then email Rich Weingart, Partner, Sweet & Baker Insurance Brokers, Direct Phone (415) 512-2122, who will provide you with further instructions and advice.

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A one line Definition of Web 2.0 is the password to entry for this event otherwise the door will slam shut on you pretty quick:
FountainBlue's High Tech Entrepreneurs' Forum: Web 2.0

A FountainBlue Event

Date: Monday, Apr 14
Time: 5:30pm-7:30pm
Location: Pillsbury Winthrop Pittman & Shaw LLP, 2475 Hanover Street, Palo Alto
Website: http://www.SVEntrepreneurs.com
Pricing: $18-$30 pre-registered by noon on Friday, April 11, $40 on-site.

Description:
Entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and investors are cordially invited to attend FountainBlue's High Tech Entrepreneurs' Forum, Web 2.0 - from Consumer to Enterprise Opportunities and Business Models.

Web 2.0 solutions are evolving and business professionals are now investigatigating enterprise opportunities and business models. Join panel

includes:
Gary Benton, Partner, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
Dr. Cheemin Bo-Linn, CEO & President, Peritus Partners
Lyle Fong, CEO and Co-Founder, Lithium
Lars Leckie, Partner, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Eugene Lee, CEO , Socialtext
Bryan Stolle, Partner, Mohr Davidow Venture Partners

NO SERVICE PROVIDERS PLEASE.

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Economy of Abundance Vs. Economy of Scarcity

Matt Asay visited the SAP campus today and had a good number of SAP employees attend his presentation. For the folks who don't know Matt, he is the General Manager of the Americas for Alfresco, one of the leading open source Enterprise Content Management solution. Prior to Alfresco, Matt was a founding member of Novell's Linux Business Office, founded the Open Source Business Conference, and ran embedded Linux vendor Lineo's Network & Communications division. Matt earned a JD from Stanford Law School, where he studied open-source software licensing under Larry Lessig, his thesis advisor. He serves on the board of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and is an advisor to SugarCRM, MuleSource, Loopfuse, Openbravo, JasperSoft, Volantis, and other open-source companies. Matt writes CNET¹s open source blog. Matt was recently named one of the top open source business leaders for 2008 (LinuxWorld).

The basic message in Matt's presentation was that the last century saw the rise of scarcity-based business models for software, as the software industry sought to replicate the tangible world of "real property" in an intangible, online world of digital property. The new model on the other hand is based on Abundance and a Non-Zero Sum game.

So, in short, the equation is Old Economy vs New Economy which equals two models against each other, Scarcity vs Abundance. In the Old Economy, Money was made by creating a product and assuming its scarcity by controlling its access. The New Model is where the value is going to be driven from Abundance as opposed to Scarcity.

Google, Red Hat, and others have shown, that the new models going forward aren't based on scarcity, but rather around abundance. The future belongs to those companies who can figure out ways to make money from the abundance that free software provides. Google is changing the game where they are making all their softwares and services are available for free.

Matt cited Red hat as another Google like example where they succeed while giving away their software where Redhat charges for certified version of their software, patches and service packs.

On the other hand Matt pointed to Facebook as an example of how not to take advantage of the Economy of Abundance. Facebook fails to get the trust factor where you don't know if your friends are really your friends. Facebook as a community has the same problem as E-bay where trust is an issue. Matt pointed out that a model such as that of a Craigslist is more useful where trust is key and allows the community to develop. Facebook created abundance but trust is where it fails.

While talking about Opensource, Matt pointed out the usual model that is used by Opensource which is the model of software for free and cash for support is useful and will have to be adopted in its current form or some changed shape by big size companies.

A very important point he made was about Charging for proprietry extensions that are delivered to TARGETED Customers and not at random. This was a very important point and is worth considering further. Matt pointed out in response to a question from the audience, that Adoption led market or Adoption led Economy is the way to go instead of expensive sales and marketing focus on early adoption through traditional sales model.

The Abundant adoption however has certain demands where for instance,

1. Building exceptional software is much more of a priority.

2. Modularity is important.

3. Great initial code base and an open and transparent Governance structure for the code is going to be paramount.

4. The more open the code is the more successful it can be.

5. Documentation for code has to be rock solid

A very interesting discussion on Open Source with very vibrant questions about the base and customers of Opensource.