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March 10
By David Aronchick
The enemy of my enemy of their enemy is still (probably) my enemy, but boy they sure have a chance to turn everyone on their collective heads.
I have an Android phone – the only reason I didn’t go for an iPhone was that (foolish me) I thought the
140+ year old technology
of an actual keyboard might still be useful. I knew I was wrong when I hit the G and the H keys at the same time and my phone crashed. What an idiot!
(Image courtesy of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY_keyboard
)
Anyhow, for the most part, it’s been more than solid – the app store is really filling in nicely, and with
TouchDown
, I’m almost to where I was 3 years ago with Outlook on Windows Mobile 6. But I am constantly on the lookout for anything that will make me more productive on the road. As a former Microsoft Employee, I was both surprised and amazed that they appear to have rebooted the entire franchise so successfully with WM 7. We’ll see when the devices hit the market (later this year?!?!), but it certainly looks like they’re back in the game. It’s almost like they got so far back in the race that people started to lap them and the lap counter lost count and thought they were all battling together.
There has been a lot of buzz in the mobile space lately, and I suspect there will be even more around
Windows Phone 7
at next week’s
Microsoft Mix conference
. One thing I wanted to clarify as it may have been lost in some of the other news is that Adobe and Microsoft are working together to bring Flash Player 10.1 to Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Phone 7 Series.
I dont have an eta or other specifics right now, but it is something that both Adobe and Microsoft are working closely together on.
Holy crap. The ONE thing that both Android and the iPhone lack and MS is nailing it. I can’t remember the last time that anyone (let alone Microsoft) went right to the heart of what was missing in a market and delivered, when the other major players had skipped over the requirement (for myriad reasons).
Apple doesn’t like Adobe/Flash
, and refuses to let them run on the iPhone. This despite the fact that Photoshop/Illustrator on Mac is one of the top reasons for ANYONE ANYWHERE to buy a Mac – apparently Apple forgot that when they decided to become “a device company” (READ: Sony).
Google doesn’t like Adobe/Flash
because it makes the Web hard to crawl, and they both want control of
all those pretty Power Point presentations
. Along comes Microsoft, who is frenemies with EVERYBODY, and they figured out how to deliver what people actually want – FARMVILLE ON YOUR PHONE.
Without Flash, Zynga (and the millions of other casual gamers) will have to rewrite every app they have for every new platform. With Flash, a billion new devices became their playground. What platform would you choose? The fact is, entertainment (usually video games and porn) drive everything, and, amazingly, Microsoft put aside their desire to offer a unique stack end to end and drive for what customers actually want. This doesn’t mean there aren’t six million ways for MS to not succeed here, but they’ve taken a huge first step. So what does this have to do with you?
A problem that many businesses face is that they get so focused on competitors, rather than their customers, that a lot of times they will miss a huge opportunity to change the conversation (or watch in horror as someone they were not paying attention changes the conversation for them). Here are some questions you should be asking yourselves every day:
· Who are my competitors? (I almost skipped this question, but, trust me, lots and lots of business people don’t even have a good sense of this)
o What customer scenarios are they targeting?
o Do I have any chance to displace them with a “better” product? (Extra credit for a truly honest assessment)
o Where are they going next?
· What do our customers want? Think about this with no baggage whatsoever.
· How ACCURATELY are my competitors getting at what the customers want to do?
o Where do they get their money from? Where do I?
o If I was starting fresh in this business, would I build the company I have today?
Competition is almost never about someone delivering an incremental new product that slowly sucks away your market. It’s the
unknown unknowns
that you have to be worried about.
March 9
By Marcelo Calbucci
We’ll be taking over the Hops & Chops -- a weekly
gathering of entrepreneurs, investors and friends of startups – and have a meet
& greet for Jennifer Cabala, the new Seattle 2.0 President &
Editor-in-Chief.
This is the perfect opportunity for you to come tell
Jennifer what you want from the Seattle 2.0 blog and events. We expect lot of
Seattle’s most interesting entrepreneurs, investors and startupers attending,
so you should be there too.
If you never been to Hops & Chops, this is the
opportunity to experiment it for the first time. It’s a no-stress,
beer-irrigated, startup-geekiness dream.
Confirm your presence on the event Facebook page – March 25
at 6:30 PM at the Spitfire in Belltown.
March 5
By Seattle 2.0 Follow Friday
Follow Friday (known as #FollowFriday) is a Twitter meme where a Twitter user recommends other Twitter users for his friends to follow. The Seattle 2.0 automatically generates suggestions from our Twitter Directory every Friday based on the number of entrepreneurs and startup people following that person. Today we recommend: Find more Entrepreneurs, CEOs and Investors of Technology Startups on our Twitter Directory.
March 5
By Seattle 2.0
List of interesting blog posts from the Seattle Startup community on the last week: asack/Andy Sack (Founder's Co-Op) There's a simple thesis at play in this investment. UntitledStartup is a great example of the following investment thesis: i) People First ii) Market Second... Tony Wright/Tony Wright (RescueTime) My startup (RescueTime) has enjoyed some pretty ridiculously good PR (online, print, and video). It’s not a surprise that the most common questions that we... TechFlash Yesterday, with the help of my dog, I offered my picks for the WTIA's annual Industry Achievement Awards which take place tonight at the Showbox Sodo. As I... William Carleton/William Carleton, Counsellor @ Law There are some thoughtful comments -- from lawyers! -- on Fred Wilson's post of yesterday on the various sets of seed funding documents now available on the... Dan/Techwag In great news for Seattle Startups, Picnik gets picked up by Google in some interesting M&A activity, because everyone is going to be thinking of Flickr... Adam DuVander/ProgrammableWeb The writing has been on the virtual wall for some time, but it's official: mashup pioneer Platial (our Platial profile) is shutting down. Former CEO Di-Ann... Gregory T. Huang/Xconomy Seattle by Gregory Huang Google’s acquisition of Seattle-based photo editing company Picnik is the deal of the year—and maybe more—for the local tech startup community. It just... anthonyrstevens/Anthony Stevens Tonight’s e-mail brought a reminder from Gaurav about the Seattle Tech Startups meeting next Wednesday, March 10th, at the Douglas Forum at the Executive... Marcelo Calbucci/Marcelo Calbucci Every once in a while I post my agenda on my blog to make it easier for people to know where I’ll be. There is quite a bit happening on the next 7 days, so... ichirofan47/CheckOutMyCards CheckOutMyCards will be in attendance at the first show at Factoria Mall in Decades!! 710 ESPN Radio is making this THE show on the eastside of Seattle...
March 4
By Marcelo Calbucci
 Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO, the guy appointed by Obama to bring 21st century technology to the federal government, is doing the rounds on the West Coast. After a speech at the University of Washington today, I’ve got invited for a small meeting between a handful of bloggers and him, so we could ask him whatever we wanted. I went there with an agenda: Figure out how startups can benefit from his IT revolution.
First of all, Vivek is a very nice person. He’s calm and focused. He knows what he needs to do and he knows how to do it. I focused on three topics: how’s he partnering with startups, how’s he seeking startup innovations and how’s he making it easier for startups to find about opportunities to sell/partner with the government.
He’s certainly in love with IdeaScale, a product by Survey Analytics, a Seattle-based startup. They’ve made a deal to deploy IdeaScale at several divisions of government to seek user feedback and he mentions that as an example of a startup with a solution for something they were looking for. They added IdeaScale to the federal government “AppStore” called Apps.gov. The goal is to pre-approve applications, products and services that meet the requirements of federal branches of government, so when someone at the IRS, for example, is looking for an application to seek customer feedback, they can easily learn about IdeaScale and deploy it on their organization. So I asked him if he was using IdeaScale on his own office to ask the population what technologies they should be using for whatever problems they identify, like a cheap RFP system. They are not doing that yet, but they will do it soon. Which means startups will be able to look at what the CIO of US is looking for and suggest their own solutions. I asked him what areas a startup that is just getting started should be going after so they have a chance of having a deal of them and it became clear that two areas have his attention: cloud computing and mobile. He’s very excited about the opportunities provided by the new generation of smartphones and the data already available at data.gov. He thinks there is a lot more to explore there.
Finally, I asked him if he was familiar with the StartupVisa movement and what his thoughts were. Unfortunately, he had never heard about it. Now he has.
March 4
By Jennifer Cabala
I had my first business at seven. I saw Lucy from the Peanuts cartoon with her advice booth and thought that was a good idea. Unfortunately, we lived on a farm so only my Grandma came for my advice. I charged a nickel. This was not a business that would scale.
In a later effort, I became a contractor for my dad and other salesmen who didn’t want to collate information packets for meetings. Fortunately, It paid a lot better than a nickel. I prepped them every two weeks before my dad went on the road. While he was gone he kept in touch by sending me articles he thought I would like, oftentimes out of Forbes or Fortune. The stories inspired me to become a journalist, but they also gave me a deep admiration for entrepreneurs.
Throughout my career I’ve gravitated towards business and technology stories. I especially loved meeting people who started their own business, sacrificed so much, money, benefits, relationships, and time - to pursue something they are passionate about in the hopes of turning an idea into something special. After a while, the writing wasn’t enough, I wanted to become an entrepreneur too.
I met Marcelo close to a year ago through a mutual friend Danielle Morrill. I’ve always liked Seattle 2.0 and appreciated Marcelo’s mission of growing and improving the startup community in Seattle. When Marcelo asked me to consider taking over Seattle 2.0, I thought it would be a perfect fit, an opportunity to take a respected startup company and grow it. I’m excited about all of the challenges involved with running and growing a business from accounting to marketing to strategic planning. While much of Seattle 2.0’s future success depends on the decisions I make and the work I do, Marcelo has also laid an excellent foundation and will be a terrific mentor and sounding board.
I am also excited to work in such a supportive, passionate and ambitious community. I know many of you and hope to meet many more. I know some of you have a deep interest in Seattle 2.0’s success. So do I. I expect that Seattle 2.0 will grow to provide more events to help you start or expand your business. The website will soon feature new voices from the start-up community and will showcase more of the great startups in the Seattle area. I look forward to working with all of you. There is already something special here in Seattle; I just want to shine a light on it.
March 4
By Marcelo Calbucci
 It’s with immense pleasure that I announce that we are taking Seattle 2.0 to the next level by having Jennifer Cabala heading the Seattle 2.0 business and editorial content. Jennifer will be the President and Editor-in-Chief of the new Seattle 2.0.
If you don’t know Jennifer, she has been a reporter in Seattle for last few years now at KING 5 and before that for Q13. She’s also on the board of Social Media Club Seattle, and an exceptional writer. Jennifer has a passion for technology and for startups. To top it off, she was looking at building her own business and becoming an entrepreneur. Why not become an entrepreneur at Seattle 2.0? We asked and she agreed it was a great step for her.
Seattle 2.0 has been a mix of new media, technology and events, and we plan to continue this way. But there is a lot more we haven’t done yet that Jennifer will be able to improve and take to the next level. Consistently, I’ve been asked by founders and CEOs of Seattle-based startup to improve our coverage of their services, to feature profiles of the great people working on the startup ecosystem in Seattle, to add this or that feature to the website to make it more useful and to do more events. Jennifer will be able to make that a reality and much more [no pressure Jennifer].
We will continue to have entrepreneurs and investors as regular contributors to Seattle 2.0, as well as guest bloggers.
What about me? Well, I’ll continue to be a blogger contributor and a hands-on advisor for Seattle 2.0, and there will be a transition period where Jennifer and I will be sharing some of the core responsibilities.
Please, help me welcome Jennifer to her new venture -- she and I will be at the WTIA Industry Achievement Awards tonight.
March 4
By Gerry Langeler
So, previously, we've talked about the first two risks VCs evaluate when looking at a new deal (People & Product). Now, on to risk number three: Market.
In many ways, this can be the toughest to figure out, since so often start-ups are targeting markets that don't exist yet, or are bringing products to market that could potentially change the dynamics in existing markets. In fact, this is the question "lisafernow" asked after my last post. "What evidence do you have that your prospective consumer really needs and will buy what you're offering?" This is essentially a test of customer readiness. Frankly, we put about zero weight on market research reports from the big consulting and pundit firms. They are remarkably self-serving, are usually overly optimistic as to timing, and can't foretell the future any better than the rest of us. So, when it comes to market analysis we go about this in the most basic, bottom's-up way we can. We ask the customer!
One of the most surprising things I've found over the years is how willing complete strangers are to take our calls, and share in-depth insights into their businesses, their "care-abouts" and their priorities. This goes all the way back to my days as an entrepreneur, when we emulated vaudeville and traveled the country asking these questions face-to face of potential customers. We started with those not quite in the mainstream and worked our way to "Vegas," which is our case was Motorola . By the time we got there, we'd gotten feedback to our initial concept and adjusted accordingly, our "act" was polished and so when we presented our product concept to MOT they said, essentially, "If you build it, we will come." Then we went back and asked our engineering team if they could build it.
As potential investors, we maintain a cadre of contacts in the industries we serve, and so when an entrepreneur gets our attention, we get on the phone and ask those key industry players to evaluate the idea. If we don't feel confident explaining the product ourselves, we'll put the start-up team on the phone and play fly-on-the-wall while we listen to the pitch, and the questions that are asked. The amazing thing is, it doesn't take too many of these calls to pick out a pattern. Some academics found years ago that somewhere about 20 you've hit diminishing returns. We often seem to get there at about 10.
The most important thing you can do is make these calls before we do. What you never want to have happen is for us to have more customer insight than you do. So, before you darken our doors, darken the doors of your prospects and be prepared to share that anecdotal insight with us. We'll still do our own, but you'll have started out on the right foot.
Of course, sometimes if you are at the leading edge of technology, you are explaining a product the customer can't even fathom. These are the really tough ones. On our end, we do hobnob with some "futurist" type folks and we'll certainly bring them into the mix. Our key issue on these "change the world" deals: is the product a nice-to-have or a have-to-have. The difference can be subtle, or time driven. The initial cell phones were nice-to-have, because they were big, bulky, expensive and not too many people had them. But once they hit the right form factor, cost and penetration, they became have-to-have's. The problem for VCs is we usually can't wait long enough for a nice-to-have to become a have-to-have. And when we are wrong (which is often) it is because we didn't evaluate properly the fact that technology moves faster than people do.
Another major issue besides customer readiness is market scale. I wrote some about that in my first post on Seattle 2.0, so I'll just refer you to that. The key issue is if you are successful, can your company grow to a scale whereby our economics work? There are many fine companies that create products customers are ready to buy, that are have-to-haves, but there just aren't enough of those customers, or they aren't willing to pay enough, to grow a major enterprise. One additional thought about markets: I've seen thousands of product feature comparison matrices in start-up presentations. But not once have I ever seen a company comparison matrix. Yes, your new product may be better in certain ways, but what about your distribution channel? What are the switching costs for customers who have solved your problem in some way to date? What is the average evaluation cycle for new products in this market? How important to your customer is eco-system integration? Do those big, established competitors have relationships with your prospects that transcend a simple product feature decision? When they FUD you for being a small struggling start-up, how will you counter that? (a strategic partnership, perhaps?) When they cut price to keep you at bay, how will you respond?
Market entry against entrenched competitors is very, very hard. Relying on product features alone to carry the day is very, very shortsighted.
Next time, the fourth (forgotten) risk (by entrepreneurs): Financing
March 2
By Marcelo Calbucci
I’ve got invited to be on a roundtable panel this Thursday
with Vivek Kundra, the Federal Chief Information Officer. He’ll be giving a
speech at the University of Washington during lunchtime and he’s confirmed at
the WTIA Industry Achievement Awards at the evening. In between he’ll be at the
Café Solstice at the University District where me and a few other bloggers will
be able to ask him questions.
Just trying to make my job easier, I’m asking you: What
should I ask him?
Although his work involves pretty much anything with the use
of technology on the federal government, I want to know how we can make it more
interesting for startups, particularly Seattle startups.
Feel free to send me ideas and topics you want me to bring
it up on the comments below or send it to my email at marcelo-at-calbucci.com.
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