VentureBlog

CES: Confessions Of A Bluetooth Skeptic

I spent the end of last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. That show keeps getting bigger and bigger. I heard one estimate that there were 160,000 people in town for the event but I wouldn't be surprised if it was bigger than that. Then again, it may have just seemed more crowded because the rain (and at one point, unbelievably, snow) drove everyone inside, further congesting the hall floors.

One interesting thing that I have noticed about CES is that it is increasingly about the people, not just the technology. There are a bunch of people I know who use CES as an opportunity to catch up with folks they haven't seen the rest of the year. I am certainly one such person. There are friends I see at CES who I scarcely have the opportunity to catch up with otherwise. As a result, the crowds keep growing. I was hanging out with a group of Venture Capitalists from August and Gabriel Venture Partners on Wednesday of last week and of the 10 people in the room, 9 of us were on our way to CES later in the week. We might as well charter giant cargo planes and move all of Sand Hill Road to Las Vegas for the convention. We must have bumped into a dozen or so other VCs while wandering the halls of the convention and the Belagio.

To a certain extent I don't actually think there is that much new to be learned from wandering the halls of CES. You certainly have the opportunity to see some amazing TVs (like Samsung's 102 inch plasma -- sell your house and you can buy this TV, but then where will you put it?) and speakers (although high end audio had been banished to another location this year, so it was not nearly as well trafficked as past years I'm sure) and the likes. But the truth is, there aren't that many big announcements coming out of CES. Essentially everything you see at CES you have read about before on Gizmodo or Engadget. The truth is, the only real excitement around technology announcements these days comes out of MacWorld, not CES. Which is why Steve Jobs doesn't participate in CES, despite running the most innovative consumer electronics company of today. He is able to drive people to his very own show and get all the buzz for himself, for Apple and for those companies supporting Apple. You've got to hand it to Jobs -- he is an amazing marketer (maybe it will even translate into a little bit of market share this time around -- he certainly owns the MP3 player market and I am sure the Shuffle will only further strengthen that position).

New Year's Resolution: Meet Great Entrepreneurs

Happy New Year! As we enter into 2005, I have been reading pundit after pundit predicting the future. Sure, it's entertaining reading. But I'm not much for predictions. While there is no question that omniscience would be extraordinarily valuable in the venture business (and there are no shortage of VCs who think they have it), I do not personally believe that my job is to predict the future.

I believe that the job of a good Venture Capitalist is to find great people with great ideas. After all, VCs don't build companies -- entrepreneurs do. We just provide the capital to make it possible for entrepreneurs to bring their vision to reality. So while some of my brethren in the Venture Capital industry are picking their sectors and choosing their investment themes, I will be meeting with as many smart people as I possibly can, because one of them may be the next Bill Gates or Scott McNealy or Scott Cook (each of whom sat before my partners in the not too distant past, armed with a vision and a passion for the technology they were building but only a fragment of the great companies they went on to build).

Investing behind great people is a far sounder strategy than investing behind great ideas. Great ideas are an important part of any startup. But they are merely a byproduct of great people. Great ideas are an indicator of great people and not vice versa. If a team comes to you with some great ideas that can be applied to solving a known problem (be it in RF or price optimization or consumer electronics or lithography), the exciting thing is that you have met a team of people who can come up with great solutions to problems, not that they have come up with the great solution to a particular problem. Because the one thing that is certain about startups is that their course is uncertain. Startups are organic. They evolve. And the ability to thrive during the course of that evolution is what distinguishes great corporations and great executives from mediocre ones.

So my goal in 2005 is to meet great entrepreneurs. It was my goal in 2004, and my goal in 2003. And, while I'm not omniscient, I'm guessing it will be my goal in 2006. Great entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of Venture Capital and I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to be surrounded by so many smart, pragmatic, lithe and principled individuals. I enter 2005 with nothing but optimism and excitement, and a great admiration for all those entrepreneurs with whom I work and with whom I'll meet over the coming year.