BeyondVC

Nokia-an Internet company???

As I have mentioned before, Nokia is one of the few handset manufacturers to get it (See my post from 2/07 on this).  Nokia understands that hardware margins are eroding and like in many technology businesses the value is in the software and monthly service revenue.  In addition, as time goes by, more and more people will be using their phones and data services to get information and communicate with friends.  Therefore it is no surprise that Nokia announced yesterday that it wants to be more like an Internet company and less like a manufacturing company. 

Our new structure is helping  Nokia to be more integrated as we focus more attention on developing new businesses around Internet services. Over time, it will allow us to be faster and more agile in bringing out new products and services, in serving our operator customers better, and in meeting our customers' needs in different parts of the world.

Our goal is to act less like a traditional manufacturer, and more like an Internet company.

The other piece that Nokia gets is that if they don't start offering services on their devices, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo will.  The delicate dance that Nokia is playing is how to fend off the traditional Internet guys while also adding value to its carrier partners.  Despite the fact that Nokia is one of the few companies that sells a significant number of phones direct to the consumer, carriers still matter.  To that end, it will be interesting to see how VOIP plays into this delicate balance.  For more on this, take a look at Michael Robertson's latest blog post (full disclosure-Dawntreader is an investor in GIzmo5 and I am on the board) on the world's smallest dual mode wifi phone.  Yes, dual mode wifi means the phone can make VOIP calls over wifi networks.  As MIchael says:

"This is not Nokia's first wifi phone, but it is significant for several reasons:         

It has a street price of $200-300 (vs $400-900 for previous phones)

Power utilization has improved so it can do ~3 hrs VoIP calls and ~4 days WLAN standby (historically wifi phones have had awful battery life) It's Nokia's first s40 wifi phone (the majority of Nokia's phones are built with s40 parts so it will be very easy to create many more wifi models)

From my perspective, what is great is that the price point is falling quickly for dual-mode handsets, the battery usage/life is getting better, and manufacturers like Nokia are willing to offer innovative services on them through partners like Gizmo5.  2008 will surely shape up to be an interesting year in the wireless industry.

Developing your way to success or failure...

During the last month, I have been in board meetings and thinking to myself about what was going well and what wasn't.  And when the discussion came to revenue, one common theme that always seemed to surface was a focus on the next product.  What I mean is that when discussing why our current product wasn't selling as well as it should have or getting as many users as projected, the answer was always focused on the next product or feature.  Granted, I have always believed that one needs an insanely great product or service to generate sustainable revenue and that constant iteration is key to success.  However, it is also important to understand why a current product or service is or isn't doing as well as you thought.  In addition, entrepreneurs must also think about how they are going to get the product to the market and come up with the right messaging.  I have seen a number of situations where entrepreneurs can get too focused about developing and releasing the next product or feature without spending as much or even more time and resources in getting it out to the market.  Then when management and the board sit down to evaluate what went wrong, the answer seems to be that people clearly didn't care.  That can be a huge failing because the product or service may actually be phenomenal but just may have had no marketing or support in reaching potential customers.

So my advice is that before you place all of your bets on the next product or feature, make sure you put enough effort into crafting the right message and value proposition and that you put just as many resources into getting it out to the market.  In other words, give your product a chance to succeed and don't starve it to death.  Constantly developing new technology without having a well-thought out plan to get it to market can spell doom!  Developing your way to success can work only if you realize that it is only part of the battle.   

Direct ad sales and startups

I have recently met a number of startups with interesting consumer applications or services.  As expected, many of these startups have a vision to rely on advertising to pay the bills.  And like many startups, a number of these companies have plans to add a direct ad sales staff over time.  That makes a ton of sense, but what I believe is that many entrepreneurs underestimate the direct capital and management costs necessary to build such a team.  In many ways, building a direct ad sales team is similar to building an enterprise sales team.  These thoughts may seem quite basic to you but here they are nevertheless.  First, don't ramp up your sales team too quickly until you have a product to sell.  That means if you don't have scale or enough eyeballs you are better off using Google Adsense.  If you don't heed this advice you may quickly burn yourself out of business.  Secondly, I know that many startups may not know what kind of ad units to sell but be careful of not having a standard product list or rate sheet when you go out to the market.  Yes, I know you have to be creative if you have a new service and listen to your customers, but at the same time don't base your business on selling one-off ad units for each advertiser because this can be a huge drain on your technical resources over time.  Next, make sure you never forget that what is right for your users is right for your business.  Many times I have seen companies that are trying to meet the advertiser's inventory requirement make the ads much too prominent and sacrifice usability in the long run.  While this may drive some initial short-term results, it may come to bite you in the ass in the future. 

The bottom line is that Google Adsense works well for a reason-it has scale-it has tons of eyeballs, it has a huge customer list of advertisers, and is therefore more likely to get you great pricing and ad targeting.  Yes, I don't disagree that over time you want your own sales team and don't want to solely rely on one partner for your revenue, but just go into this with your eyes wide open and don't ramp up before its time.  The direct costs, management costs, and hidden strains on your infrastructure may be more than you can handle if you ramp up too quickly.  Start slowly, figure out what it is that advertisers love about your service or product, figure out what kind of units deliver the best results, and then ramp.  Here is an earlier post on ramping up an enterprise sales team as there are many similarities to direct ad sales and direct enterprise sales.

The economic headwinds are getting stonger

I was waiting for this day to happen.  Each day I go online and also glance at the newspaper, and there is nothing but bad news.  And yes, it is true that some of the best technology companies were built when the economy was at its worst.  And I always like to think that it takes a little longer for some of these negative effects to trickle down to smaller companies and startups.  Just the other day, I got the call from one of my portfolio companies which had won a huge deal last month.  We were waiting for the purchase order and the dreaded call came: "You still have the deal but our CFO needs us to cost justify every dollar we spend on IT - the deal will have to wait until next quarter."  That definitely put a kink in our plans and also caused us to adjust our Q1 forecast.  Fortunately, many of us had been through this before and management had prepared alternative plans based on various growth rates at our last board meeting.  We had a base case model which we were running our expenses on, an upside model which we had hoped we would achieve, and a lower growth scenario which we would have to implement if bookings did not materialize.  I know that this is one data point but all I can say is that if you have not done so already, prepare a few different models to make sure you can make appropriate changes to your business to conserve cash.  I won't say that we are in a recession but if we get more data points on spending freezes, layoffs, and the like, it is only prudent to be prepared.  And yes, as I stated above, while some of the best technology companies were built when the economy was at its worst, they would not be here today if they weren't standing when the markets rebounded.  That means that you have to rationalize your business and put more resources behind what is working and not spread yourself too thin.  That means if you are raising another round of funding try to raise more capital rather than less - focus on having about 18 months of fresh dollars to see through the other side.  Finally, stay strong and keep your head up because if you follow the above advice you will have a much stronger business when the markets rebound.

The "free" business model

Chris Anderson does a nice job of summarizing the rise of the "free" business model starting with the Razor/razor blade to the world of the web where he argues that all services eventually get priced at their marginal cost. And as Chris rightly describes, that price is quickly going to zero in a world of technology where Moore's Law continues to hold and where storage costs are declining rapidly. 

Among the many great examples in Chris' article, the one paragraph that stood out most for me follows:

There is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention in the world at any point in time. These are the new scarcities — and the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets for the sake of a business model to be identified later. Free shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today.

In a world where everything is free, what is the most valuable asset?  I couldn't agree more that "attention" and "time" are two scarcities that every company offering "free" services has to overcome.  There is only so much time in the day for all of us to join another social network, add a new widget, and try out a new web service. And this fight is not only for a consumer's web time but for their overall leisure time - time to spend with their family, time for sports, and time for entertainment.  Given this competition for such a finite resource, you better have something incredible for me to try which will either provide awesome entertainment or provide an awesome utility that gives me a 10x improvement over existing ways of doing things.  Without that, I am sure you will get people to sign up and try your service, but I doubt you will have many active users 6-12 months down the line.

And my final point is that "free" is great and what consumers expect many times, but at some point in time dollars do have to come from somewhere whether it be venture capitalists (who will surely expect a big return on their investment), advertisers who will expect the same, or some other source of capital to sustain the business.  So in concept I agree with the notion that the world is getting cheaper by the second, but on the other hand don't forget Chris' points that free only means that dollars do eventually have to come from somewhere to pay the bills.  Oh yeah, one other point-as we move to this world of free, there will be lots of carnage and the road will be littered with many dead companies, as only a small percentage in a growing pie will be able to make this model work and viably consume your time and attention to deliver the money.

Top tech M&A advisors for 2007

I just got the 451 Group's summary on the top M&A bankers for 2007.  As with 2006, Goldman Sachs was #1 on the list.  Take a look:

Top five overall advisers, 2007

                        

Adviser	Deal value	Deal volume	2006 ranking
Goldman Sachs	$79bn	43	1
Credit Suisse	$75bn	29	3
Morgan Stanley	$74bn	29	6
Citigroup	$61bn	23	5
Lehman Brothers	$56bn	21	4

Of course if you break down the numbers, you can see that the average deal size for all of these banks range from $1.75 to 2.75 billion.  Let me translate back for the startup community.  As I have written before, I am a firm believer that companies are bought, and not sold (see an earlier post).  In other words, I am not a fan of hiring a banker to shop a company around but rather find it better when a portfolio company receives an unsolicited offer and you then bring a banker in to leverage that bid to create a more competitive situation.  Assuming you are in this position, every startup I know says, "Let's go get Goldman or Morgan Stanley."  While in theory we would all love to have these guys as advisors, the chances are that you are not going to get them on board.  First, they typically have high minimum thresholds of exit value typically in the $300mm plus range and secondly even if you fit that criteria you may not get all of the attention you need since a $5 or $10 billion dollar will clearly trump yours.  What I would advise is that you find a banker that has the recent experience selling companies in a price range that you are seeking, will give you the PERSONAL attention that you need to make the transaction successful, and has the network to reach out to the right people on a timely basis.  Based on my experience, I have found that some of the firms like Thomas Weisel Partners and Jefferies Broadview who are not bulge bracket but with strong reputations in the technology markets can be a good fit.  I am sure there are many other great firms that I am missing but you get the idea.

What a Microsoft Yahoo deal would mean for startups (continued)

What a great move by Microsoft! This has been floating around for awhile and the last time I wrote about it was in May of 2007. Anyway, I thought I bought at the bottom for Yahoo months ago in which case it fell another 25% from there. When I saw the news this morning I was quite happy to sell my shares and make a slight profit. As we all know when it comes to the Internet and advertising, scale matters. What this potential deal could mean for startups are two things. One, when Microsoft finally integrates its 3 or more advertising platforms with Aquantive, adcenter, and Panama, they may just be able to offer startups a decent or even better alternative to using Google Adsense to monetize their inventory. Secondly, that huge collective sigh you are hearing is one that is based on the fact that there will be one less independent multi-billion dollar acquirer for the thousands of startups out there. In fact, this integration could take awhile and take Microsoft out of the running in the near term as well. So if you are a startup depending on a quick flip, I would do what you were always supposed to do - focus on your fundamentals and figure out how to build a real business. In addition, given the uncertain economy, I would be very careful on ramping up your business too quickly unless you have the results to justify your growth in fixed costs. Moving on, it will truly be interesting to see how Microsoft integrates Yahoo and what parts of Yahoo it decides to sell like Kelkoo or kill like possibly Zimbra. All I know is that there have been lots of senior Yahoo resumes on the street so it will be interesting to see where they all end up.

Need homework help - try Tutor.com

I got an email from George Cigale, CEO of Tutor.com, yesterday to check out the New York Times article on his company's service (full disclosure-my fund is an investor in Tutor.com and my partner Dan is on the board).  The article, "On Demand, On Time and for a Fee, an Army of Tutors Appears," highlights Michelle Slatalla's experience with Tutor.com's service where her two daughters were able to get instant homework help by going to Tutor.com, logging in, and clicking on their grade level and subject matter to find a qualified instructor.  Thankfully Michelle had a pretty positive experience as we have had time to hone the service and continue to find great tutors as we currently complete thousands of sessions each day.  Anyway, next time your child asks you for help on Algebra, you may want to visit Tutor.com and try another method.  From a thematic point of view, this is another example of how companies can leverage the power of the Internet to offer an on-demand service leveraging a distributed and free agent workforce.  I just love those types of models!

Social networking and ads-who's paying attention?

First of all, Google announced some amazing numbers growing its revenue over 50% and its earnings around 17%.  That being said, investors in Google have high expectations and the stock fell in after hours trading.  One note that many in the blogosphere seemed to pick up on is the higher cost of traffic acquisition from partners and the fact that social networking is not delivering results as expected( read Between the Lines for more)

CFO George Reyes said social networking advertising is not monetizing as expected. When questioned further Sergey Brin, president of technology, said: “We don’t talk about individual partners or anything like that.” Brin noted some things were tried that didn’t pan out. While Brin won’t talk about partners it’s fairly obvious that MySpace is an issue. Google is obligated to pay at least $900 million in minimum revenue guarantees to MySpace through 2010. Later, the question was revisited again. He noted that Google also has Orkut and other social networking partners. “We have an incredible amount of this inventory,” said Brin. “I don’t think we have the killer best way to monetize social networks yet. We have had a lot of experiments (and some disappointments).”

I wouldn't ring any alarm bells yet for social networking sites in general, but it is clear that there is much work to be done to get these sites to monetize.  We all know that social networking sites mean that people are there to interact with each other, not to click and view ads.  I remember one of our portfolio companies in the early days of the web had automated bots for instant messaging where we could insert ads into the stream of conversation.  It sure sounded like an interesting idea but people just did not care.  They were on the system to IM  not to view ads.   The sames goes with social networking sites.  I do agree with Sergey that there is tons of inventory and much more learning to be done to monetize more effectively.  With that much inventory every penny increase in effectiveness per page means big dollars.  Better and different ways of targeting will surely be one of the keys to understanding if there is a there there in making big dollars from social networking.  That means we should all closely follow MySpace's hypertargeting ad system to see how it performs for the company over the next year as another data point for advertising effectiveness on social networks.

Greenplum closes on $27million round of financing

Congratulations to Bill, Scott and team on our new $27mm round of funding led by Meritech and including Sun Microsystems and SAP Ventures.  You guys have been pushing the envelope since I have known you and delivering some spectacular results to boot.  It is nice to see our team and product get validated with a significant round of funding so we can continue our battle to bring our customers a better, faster, and cheaper way to access and analyze massive volumes of data.  When we made our first investment years ago, our fundamental bet was that a new approach was needed to deal with exponential data growth driven by network computing and internet applications.  We certainly had some fits and starts tackling this data problem by utilizing a software-only approach built on top of open source software and delivered on commodity machines, but with this funding and our continued customer momentum, we are certainly on the right track.  For more on this investment, read the following quotes from Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, and Nina Markovic, head of SAP Ventures:

"Alongside Sun's acquisition of MySQL, our investment in Greenplum is further evidence of our commitment to the open source database community and marketplace," said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and president, Sun Microsystems. "Postgres has been a critical part of our support offering to customers, and Greenplum's leverage of Postgres to disrupt the proprietary vendors with breakthrough business intelligence solutions creates opportunity for their investors, and more importantly, our mutual customers."

"We invested in Greenplum because we're seeing a growing demand for scalable database technologies to support analytical and data-driven applications," said Nino Marakovic, head of SAP Ventures. "From a technology perspective, the Greenplum database is very strong and complementary to our offerings. We share the vision of enterprises harnessing ever-growing data repositories to make optimal business decisions in real time."