VentureBlog

Do VCs Find Mobile Interesting?

It has been a while since the last time I had a guest post on VentureBlog.  But it seems only natural for Howard Hartenbaum, my partner at August Capital, to be posting here.  Howard and I do a podcast together called VentureCast that is really fun (at least fun to do -- I'll let you be the judge of how much fun it is to listen to).  He is a consumer Web superstar (among other things, he was the first investor in Skype and played a major role in the emergence of Skype as a powerhouse).  In any event, Howard has been doing a lot of thinking about the mobile space, so he decided to share his thoughts on the "emerging" mobile space.  Without any further ado, some thoughts on the mobile space by Howard Hartenbaum:

 

“Do VCs find mobile interesting?”  I know that I do.  And so do the partners at August Capital.  Every VentureBlog reader must have a location aware smartphone in their pockets by now.  Mobile is a game changer. It enables new business models, new consumer and enterprise services, and a better life with more fun.  While mobile, I regularly pay bills, get caught up on Facebook and check on the status of my family without having to disturb them.  I find my smartphone to be the most useful consumer device I have ever owned and it is hard to conceive leaving the house without it.

Here are a few classes of “mobile” that VCs get excited about:

1. Companies that provide tools and services needed to make mobile applications and their business models work.  These include Flurry (mobile analytics), AdMob (mobile advertising) and Urban Airship (mobile push messaging) to name a few.  These are solutions for mobile application developers and these companies have straightforward business models that make sense for a venture investor.
2. Mobile applications that use your device’s location to enable new services.  Uber and Lyft/Sidecar (ordering a ride when you need it), HotelTonight and Airbnb (find a place to stay overnight). There’s also Wrapp (mobile gift card gifting with in-store redemption) and Gigwalk (provides a mobile workforce of more than 100,000 across the US that can perform paid tasks for enterprise customers).  These businesses take a percentage of a transaction, again a straightforward business.  Another interesting service based on device location is Life360 (enables you to track the location of your family/friends in real time without disturbing them with a text or call). 
3. Mobile applications that control non-mobile products and services such as Nest (mobile control of building thermostats) or eSecure (mobile control of building alarm systems).  The mobile application to control my Dish Network recording also falls into this camp.  These mobile applications make other services much more useful and are reason enough to convince me to buy those services, even if no money is generated directly from the mobile application. Turo, a peer-to-peer car rental service, has a mobile application that allows me to open a GM OnStar rental car’s door without a key.  These types of mobile applications make a solution more useful because they provide on-the-go access.
4. Mobile payments such as Square take a transaction fee, and they can also provide loyalty programs and couponing.  There are many mobile payments related companies with their own twist, but they all have a strong value proposition for all parties involved.
5. Mobile games – Angry Birds, Minecraft, most of the top applications in the app store are games.  Though it is a hit driven business, the winners generate hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. 
6. Photo applications include Instagram, Cinemagram and Snapchat.  Mobile messaging applications include WhatsApp, Voxer, Tango and Kik.  These companies typically don’t have early proven business models, but the winners at scale can figure it out.  These types of products are often the most useful and engaging on a smartphone.

The wildcard – As a venture investor, the most interesting part of mobile is what hasn’t been proposed yet.  Undoubtedly there are visionary entrepreneurs who are designing mobile products right now that don’t fit in any of the above categories.  The next big thing may be a service that comes across as a bit unusual at first, but these are the kind of “brave new world” business proposals that we want to see. The best part about being a venture investor is meeting these entrepreneurs and hearing these proposals. 

Note – August Capital is an investor in Gigwalk, Urban Airship and Turo.  Howard is an investor in Flurry.

The Wisdom of Jeff Bezos, Part 3

Two words: low margins. That's the secret to Amazon's success. Seems crazy when you put it that way. But Jeff Bezos views it as a competitive advantage. Amazon has spent a decade and a half making low margins profitable. And, as Bezos sees it, when you aren't addicted to high margins, there is a certain discipline inherent in how you operate. He doesn't quite come out and say that high margins are for the lazy. But you can tell it is a point of pride. Anyone can survive on high margins. It takes a real man to thrive on low margins. Jeff Bezos is that man.

Bezos is quite clear about the high margin/low margin dichotomy. In his Wired interview he says "There are two ways to build a successful company. One is to work very, very hard to convince customers to pay high margins. The other is to work very, very hard to be able to afford to offer customers low margins." He has chosen low margins. Why? Because he believes that offering the lowest possible price will allow you to attract the largest possible customer base. Putting on my consultant hat (OK, I never actually wore a consultant hat -- but I have met enough of them that I can channel consultant), here's the two by two matrix of margins:

      Low Margins               High Margins
      High Volume               High Volume


      Low Margins               High Margins
      Low Volume                Low Volume

Jeff has chosen to sit in the upper left corner of the matrix -- low margin, high volume. He has proven that there is a big business to be built there. It is certainly better than low margins, low volume; that's a recipe for extinction. He suggests that the tech world is focused on high margin, low volume businesses in which companies fight it out to win over customers and sell high margin software or hardware to a relatively smaller numbers of customers. His ability to show profitability with low margins allows him the opportunity to deliver rock bottom pricing and amass the greatest possible consumer base. [1] That capacity to execute on low margins has allowed Bezos the ability to broadly extend his product mix, attracting an ever larger customer base.

So what does it take to deliver low margins? Incredible efficiency. Bezos has been obsessed with efficiency from day one. And that efficiency extends throughout his entire enterprise. Bezos has built the state of the art distribution system that allows Amazon to deliver practically anything to practically anywhere (at least anywhere in the United States) in the shortest possible time for the smallest amount of money. That efficiency has made it possible for Amazon to offer Amazon Prime, providing free two day delivery while still making money (ok, Prime isn't completely free, but it's darn close when amortized over a customer's ever-increasing order volume). Amazon also maniacally focuses on driving down the cost of customer support. According to Jeff, "[e]very time a customer contacts us, we see it as a defect." That doesn't mean Amazon ignores the needs of customers. They simply work hard to satisfy customers with the smallest amount of human intervention possible. The system appears to be working -- Amazon has one of the highest net promoter scores on the planet.

Bezos' obsession with efficiency is perhaps best seen in Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is an extension of Amazon's own technical infrastructure (its development has dramatically driven down the cost of maintaining Amazon's own web presence). Bezos has always been determined to deliver AWS the same way that he has delivered books -- high volume, low margin. Moreover, Bezos was not willing to use "inferior products" to deliver the lowest possible price point. That dramatic pricing with quality components has made AWS the backbone of a stunningly large percentage of the Web today (from FourSquare to the New York Times). Jeff asserts that, "the most expensive thing you can do is make a mistake" and as a result, "[Amazon] can afford to focus on smaller and smaller defects and eliminate them at their root. That reduces cost, because things just work." It does seem to be working. AWS has become a big business, while simultaneously increasing the efficiency of Amazon's own infrastructure -- that's a win, win.

Low margins may not be for everyone. It is a tough business, and an unforgiving one at that. But Jeff Bezos deserves huge credit for knowing his business model from day one and executing perfectly on his strategy. By driving down costs and driving up quality through an obsession over efficiency, Amazon is able to deliver the best possible service at the lowest possible price. That makes it awfully hard for others to compete. And that is just how Jeff likes it.

[1] Of course if I am going to properly channel my inner consultant, I have to be honest and point out that the upper left quadrant is always the desired outcome. This matrix is no exception. The ability to deliver high margin and high volume is manna from heaven. There's a reason Apple is the most valuable company in the world and has $97 Billion dollars in the bank. They've cracked the code on high volume, high margin. As have Google ($44 Billion in the bank) and Microsoft ($50 Billion in the bank). But when it comes to high volume, low margin, Amazon is as good as it gets.

The Wisdom of Jeff Bezos, Part 1

On a plane flight the other day I was catching up on an issue of Wired Magazine that had sat in my backpack for several weeks (as an aside, Wired continues to be my go-to airplane reading -- it is so well written, well designed, well researched, always entertaining -- I definitely qualify as a Wired fan boy). In December's issue there was a great article on Bitcoin. What an amazing story of markets run amuck (reminded me a bit of our current gold and oil markets). There were a dozen Steve Jobs tributes, as interesting for what they said about Mr. Jobs as what they said about those lionizing him (George Lucas, Penn Jillette, David Kelley…). But the article that really sucked me in was an interview with Jeff Bezos.

The cover of the December issue of Wired is adorned with the better part of Jeff Bezos' head (I think that 2/3rds of Jeff's head looks even more like Andre Agassi than his full head). The cover reads "Jeff Bezos started with books. Now his company dominates the web in more ways than you think." The cover may not be giving us the credit we deserve. I can think of lots of ways in which Amazon dominates the Web. Every book, DVD, CD, Lego set, remote control car, electric razor, electric toothbrush, obscure french soap, Kinder chocolate bar, etc. etc. that I buy online comes from Amazon. Every time I pay for a great project on Kickstarter (most recently this important documentary on William Kamkwamba), I do so using Amazon payment services. And practically every startup that pitches me is running some part of its infrastructure on Amazon Web Services. The world we live in would be a very different -- and much worse -- place without Amazon.

Given the incredible impact that Jeff Bezos has had on the digital landscape, it isn't surprising that his interview is filled with smart observations and valuable insights into company building. In particular, I was thrilled to read Bezos' articulation of the value of maintaining a longterm outlook. I have often warned would-be entrepreneurs that company building is a marathon, not a sprint. It seems to me that there has been a fair amount of near-term optimization going on in recent years at the expense of long-term thinking. Bezos takes the opposite tack. In his words, "If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you are competing against a lot of people. But if you're willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you're now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that." He's right. Very few companies take a long-term approach. At August Capital, our goal is to fund those entrepreneurs -- entrepreneurs who think big, or maybe more appropriately, who think long.

Great companies are built over decades, not years. And great CEO's think in decade long time horizons. If you look at the evolution of Facebook and Facebook Connect, it isn't happenstance that Facebook's tentacles are now so far-reaching. Those close to Mark Zuckerberg tell me that his vision of Facebook as the social graph to everything dates back to the early days of the company. Mark's goal has always been to build an important company, not just to make a bunch of money. And building important companies takes time. Mark could have learned that philosophy from Bill Gates (who's vision for Windows emerged and blossomed over decades) or Steve Jobs (who's understanding of the interrelatedness of software and hardware drove a product strategy that over two decades captured the worlds imagination) or Scott Cook (who's maniacal focus on the needs of small business owners -- who are always fighting for resources, visibility and time -- has changed how practically every mom and pop in America does business). But he would be just as well served to study at the side of Jeff Bezos. Jeff describes Amazon as "stubborn on vision and flexible on details." In the vein of "good things come to those who wait," Jeff tells Wired, "you don't know how long it might take, but you know it will happen if you are patient." That patience, combined with persistence, is a testimony to Jeff and is a big part of Amazon's recipe for success.

New entrepreneurs would be well served to learn by Jeff Bezos' example. Smart. Thoughtful. Patient. Jeff has demonstrated over two decades that he has the vision and leadership to create one of the most important companies in the world. And he has the stubborn genius and unworldly stamina to be a powerful force for decades to come. I missed the opportunity to fund Jeff when he came around Sand Hill Road (I handn't yet snuck my way into the venture business). But I sure hope I don't miss the next Jeff Bezos. It is the rare entrepreneur who has the capacity to build a great business day in and day out, while planning a decade ahead.

iPads in the Board Room

I don't know about the rest of the country, but Sand Hill Road has clearly embraced the iPad. There was a time when every VC on Sand Hill proudly carried the latest, greatest Palm Pilot. No self-respecting VC would be caught without one. And for good reason. Suddenly VCs could carry their calendars with them (no need to print out a pesky piece of paper) and have their contacts at their fingertips. It was a huge improvement over the status quo and increased the efficiency of VCing greatly. [1] Plus, it just looked cool when you pulled out your Palm Pilot at a board meeting. It said to everyone at the meeting, "hey, I'm on top of all this tech crap and I have the tools necessary to be a world class VC, so check me out."

Fast forward a decade and that tool of choice for the VC world is the iPad. Since its launch, the iPad has taken over the board room. I have not attended a single board meeting since the day the iPad shipped in which at least one iPad wasn't present. Ok, that's not exactly a fair measure, given that I have carried my iPad to every board meeting since launch. But I am not alone. In nearly every board meeting I attend, multiple iPads are unfurled. In a recent board meeting, after every VC in the room pulled out his iPad 3G in matching black Apple case, one of the entrepreneurs in the room noted, "I take it the iPad is the new board room toy of choice." Indeed, it is.

And I think there's good reason that the VC community has embraced the iPad for board meetings. Prior to the launch of the iPad, VCs would arrive at a board meeting and promptly set up their laptops. Anyone who's attended a meeting of laptop users knows that it is not the most conducive environment for discussion. Open laptops create a real obstacle to discussion. Perhaps it is the clicking of keys. Perhaps it is the physical barrier the laptops create. Whatever it is, the VC community has realized that an iPad lying flat on the table does not have the same effect. It is possible to pull up your calendar, browse for a piece of information, share relevant contact info (and, in all truthfulness, scan your email) with minimal interruption on the iPad. Less distraction. Less interruption. Better board meetings.

The iPad has also eliminated the need to print out board slides. For a decade now I have been greeted at board meetings with printouts of the latest PowerPoint deck. Some folks like to take notes on the printouts, but most of us just use them to see the teeny tiny little numbers in the financial updates. Thankfully, the iPad is a fantastic PDF viewer and has made the wasteful printing of slides a practice that will go the way of the dinosaurs. At least I hope so.

I will say that, for some, the iPad is perhaps not the perfect board room device. If you actually want to take notes, the iPad is not your friend -- I have yet to find anyone who can type with speed or accuracy on the thing. That said, the former litigator in me thinks that's more of a feature than a flaw. I personally think that hanging on to board notes is a recipe for disaster. It is a bit like keeping delicious smelling food in your tent. Eventually you will attract a bear.

If you are not a note taker, the iPad is the board room device for you. It does all the things you'd need for a great board experience, plus you can play some awesome games if you arrive a little early. You can count on seeing a whole lot more iPads at board meetings -- all meetings for that matter -- in the months to come. You'll certainly see me with iPad in hand.

[1] I'm sure there is no such word as "VCing" but I think there should be. If I were to define "VCing" it would be the act of being a VC. Dictionary people please take note.

Why the Time for Mobile is Now

I was at a party the other night to celebrate the first anniversary of Nokia's "Ideas Project." The "Ideas Project" is an effort to bring together a diverse group of smart folks to share their thoughts on the evolution of media. The site has a bunch of interesting videos in which the likes of Esther Dyson, Robert Scoble, Loic Le Meur, Jerry Michalski, etc. share their big ideas. It is a really nicely curated site.

When Nokia started the Ideas Project just a year ago, it was not as blindingly obvious as it is today that the evolution of media is all about mobile (ok, maybe it was to Nokia). But, truth be told, venture capitalists have been predicting the domination of mobile and mobile applications for more than a decade now. And those of us who bet on the emergence of mobile in 2000 or 2003 or 2006 lost a lot of money.

So what has changed? A few short years ago, if you were pitching me on a mobile business, the most important slide was the one describing your startup's relationship with the carriers. If you weren't "on deck" -- meaning, your application wasn't pre-approved and pre-installed in the phone by the carrier -- you were nowhere. So carrier relationships were everything. And carrier relationships were hard. They took a long time to make happen. They cost a ton (carriers took the lion's share of the economics). And they were a huge dependency over which startups had very little control (and VCs hate that).

A second challenge for mobile startups of old was contending with the incredible variety of form factors and functionality. Startups trying to create location-based services couldn't count on a phone having GPS or Wifi or even a decent processor. Each phone had something different in it. Mobile gaming startups couldn't count on a phone having a big screen or high resolution. So mobile startups of old weren't developing a single version of an application. They were developing dozens of versions to suit dozens of screen sizes and processors and resolutions and chip sets and operating systems.

Enter the iPhone. As Apple did with music before it, Apple broke down the walls that existed in mobile. They opened up the "deck" and let application providers write straight to the device.[1] That changed everything. A huge dependency was lifted and innovation really started to flourish. Sure, the devices also got a whole lot more powerful. There's a lot more that you can do with a smart phone than you could do with your standard device circa 2005. But processing power was never the problem. The problem was access to consumers. And that door has been swung wide open.

The operating system problem has also gotten a lot better. Developers can write to a small number of mobile operating systems and reach the vast majority of the market. Mobile application developers were almost giddy with the simplicity of writing only for iPhone. But we all knew that couldn't last. Now it is iPhone and Android. Tomorrow Windows Phone 7 Series and Symbian as well. But that is a far cry from the OS challenges of old. (Unfortunately, despite the greater simplicity on the OS side, I fear a recurrence of the form factor problem -- Android may be a little too democratic and is bringing back a thousand variations on a theme).

Given the power of the devices, the simplicity of developing for them, and the proliferation of amazing applications, it is not surprising that the mobile revolution is finally upon us. Up next is "write once, publish everywhere." It's great that you can now write a mobile app and get it distributed quickly and easily to a plethora of mobile commuting devices. But why do developers still need to write a version for Flash and Silverlight and FBML (Facebook) and Android and . . . ? Solve that problem, and we're really off to the races.

I was one of the first people Nokia interviewed for their "Ideas Project" website a year ago. And I didn't talk about mobile. I talked about social. Which is still clearly a huge piece of the future of the consumer Web. But it is hard (dare I say impossible) to build a social application these days without also including mobility. If a digital experience doesn't extend to your pocket, it isn't long for this world. As an extension of the "Ideas Project," Nokia has just launched a section on the "Big Questions" and I got a second bite at the apple. This time I think I got it right. This time my question is all about mobile -- specifically, what is the future of location based services (LBS) in mobile computing? Go check it out here and let me know what you think. You may even win a Nokia phone and you can test out your theories.

[1] Yes, I know that some of you out there are thinking that Apple's approval process is onerous enough that they have simply replaced one deck for the other -- now you need to get past Apple, not the carrier. Whatever you may think of Apple's approval process, there is no comparison. Just ask anyone who tried to get an application on a phone in the early 2000's.

All Things Digital: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs

This year was the 5th addition of Walt Mossberg's and Kara Swisher's "All Things Digital" conference. I'm sure that it will come as no surprise to you that I have attended all five and intend to attend the next five as well. They say that first year conferences are a huge crap shoot because of the chicken and egg problem of attracting fantastic speakers and a fantastic audience -- you need one to get the other but can't get one without the other. By force of personality and reputation, Walt and Kara blew that away the first year by simply getting the most amazing speakers ever. The fabuloous audience quickly followed. But they created a problem for themselves.

The speakers at their first "D" were just too good: Gates, Jobs, Diller, Larry and Sergey, Meg Whitman, Terry Semel, Mark Cuban. I mean, give me a break. Year two: Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Carly Fiorina, Masa, Henning Kagermann. Year 3: Gates, Jobs, Mel Karmazin, McNealy, Zander, Diller, Jerry Yang and Dave Filo. Year 4: Gates, Al Gore, Howard Stringer, Terry Semel, Vinod Khosla, Bob Iger (Jobs couldn't make it and was sorely missed). So what were Walt and Kara going to do to make their 5th anniversary "D" a special one? They touted the answer on their homepage -- "Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to Make Historic Joint Appearance at D5."

Now I have to admit that, as much as I looked forward to seeing Gates and Jobs spar on stage, I thought that perhaps Walt and Kara had gone a bit too far calling the Gates/Jobs smackdown a "historic joint appearance." The cardinal rule of showmanship is to under-promise and over-deliver. It is hard to imagine that calling a chat "historic" could be viewed as under-promising, and harder still to imagine that after advertising a talk as "historic," one could possibly over-deliver. But I was wrong.

The "historic" joint appearance of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs wasn't just historic, it was, in fact, awe inspiring. I envisioned a half-hearted quarrel, punctuated by clever but cynical jabs at one another. What I got was a history lesson taught by the principal protagonists of the story. As I sat and listened to Gates and Jobs recount their 30 year journey to bring the best possible personal computers to the world, it struck me that no two living humans have had a bigger impact on my quality of life than they (case in point, I am typing this blog post on my MacBook on Microsoft Word).

It would be hard to replicate the energy and mood of the room with simple words. It may even be hard to replicate with video. Nonetheless, I strongly urge you to watch the videos of the conversation over at Kara and Walt's great new "news and opinion site" called AllThingsD.com. In the videos you will see a pair of mature, thoughtful moguls. Bill Gates was erudite, statesmanly, and utterly charming. Steve Jobs remained the consummate performer, yet managed a bit more humility than is his norm. They traded fours like an old married couple. And their recounting of the history of the personal computer industry had the cadence of an on-again off-again romance. In the end, Jobs had the turn of phrase that brought us to our feet -- a snipped right out of a love letter -- "There's that one line in the Beatles song, 'You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead,' and that's definitely true here."

Great conferences are all about great theater. And I have never seen better theater than Jobs and Gates on stage together, modestly recounting how they changed all of our lives, in incalculable ways, forever. Hats off to Walt and Kara for orchestrating this once in a lifetime event. When can I register for D6?

CES 2007: True HD, OLED and Ultra Wideband

I have survived another Consumer Electronics Show. No small achievement. But it has taken me nearly a week to recover and tell the tale. The Consumer Electronics Show has gotten so large -- so out of control -- that it will undoubtedly break apart under the weight of its own mass. Conference organizers were predicting that 140,000 people would come to Las Vegas for CES this year. But I'm betting they missed by a couple tens of thousands. Quick trips from the convention center to any hotel on the strip took 45 minutes when they should have taken 15. And the line for free ice cream at the Yahoo tent was backed up all day, every day. I heard one blogger at the airport say to a friend that he spent the day at PodTech's BlogHaus rather than contend with the crowds (I myself took refuge at the BlogHaus on a daily basis -- they had the winning combination of copious drinks, snacks and bandwidth).

All the whining aside, CES was jam packed with gadgets, technologists and big giant TV's. That's right. Once again, CES was absolutely dominated by Televisions. LCD TV's. Plasma TV's. Home Theater projectors. My partners Andy, Vivek and I wandered the conference floor obsessively comparing TV's. We got right up close and looked at the consistency of color. We stood back and looked at motion blur. We debated the extent to which differences in displays were the results of actual technical superiority or merely better tuning. We checked out Sharp's 108 inch LCD TV (for those keeping score at home, last year's colossal TV king was a 103 inch plasma but this year LCD claims the bragging rights). We enjoyed Panasonic's use of plasmas in their booth for window panes, picture frames and a blazing fire.

And the winners are? None of the above. There weren't any clear winners in TV land this year. I suppose if there were any winners, it was the consumers. There were a panoply of stunning televisions on display. Technology is getting better. Prices are going down. That's undoubtedly a winning combination for TV buyers. That said, there were three TVs that I left the CES floor excited about. First, Sony was showing the thinest, most beautiful little OLED (Organic LED) displays you've ever seen. Sadly, they aren't yet in production. But when they are, they're going to be big sellers. They had extremely vibrant colors, a stunningly precise picture (with a 1,000,000 to 1 contrast ratio), and a form factor that can not be beat. I really want one. Second, as beautiful as some of these flat panel TVs are, the best pictures on the show room floor came out of a high end projector. Optoma was running the perfect scene from "Phantom of the Opera" to show off their amazing HD81 projector. The quality of the picture was unrivaled by anything I saw on the showroom floor. Sure, at ten thousand dollars or so, it isn't cheap. But for those of you with an empty basement and an old car to sell, this projector is the way to go. And Third, my partners and I were thrilled to see beautiful TV's on display using the single panel LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon) technology from our own portfolio company MicroDisplay. Both Akai and Memorex will soon be manufacturing MicroDisplay enabled Full HD TVs that will be priced hundreds of dollars cheaper than the next closest 52" and 62" Full HD TVs.

It was not, however, the fancy new televisions that I found most compelling at this year's CES. It was the amazing disappearance of TV wires. Several companies were demonstrating wireless systems for high definition televisions. It reminded me of the initial hints of wireless audio several years ago at CES. The first year there was a single dedicated Yamaha system demonstrating wireless audio. The next year wireless audio was scattered throughout the convention center. And the following year it was everywhere. I imagine we'll see the same trajectory for wireless video. This year there were a few manufacturers demonstrating wireless televisions (several of which were powered by our own ultra wideband portfolio company Tzero). Next year I anticipate that it will be everywhere -- built directly into TVs, in stand alone systems, as part of set top boxes. Wireless video is a no brainer. Imagine the ease of installing a flat panel on the wall if you don't have to worry about burying the wires in the wall. (Now if only someone could come up with a system that safely and efficiently delivers wireless power.) I guess I'll go back to CES next year. If nothing else, to see the proliferation of wireless video -- and party like its 1999.

VentureBlog Conference Roundup (Under The Radar: Mobility / Business Blogging Seminar SF / Web 2.0)

It is no secret that I'm a big fan of conferences. I use them as both a great source of information and a great source of new conversations. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to speak at a bunch of events and to be an advisor to others. In light of that, I've decided to be a little more systematic about sharing conference info on VentureBlog. I'm going to try to share info about the conferences at which I'll be speaking, as well as the ones I think will be interesting and that I plan on attending. I hope it proves interesting and helpful to those of you reading.

Under the Radar: Mobility!

While the idea of mobility has evolved rapidly in recent years, there is no denying that mobile networks, platforms and devices are going to be a major mover of tech economies for the foreseeable future. I would personally sooner give up television than my Treo. For folks interested in getting a great overview of the cutting edge startups in the mobility space, you should definitely check out IBDNetwork's Under the Radar: Mobility!. This one-day conference is being held at the Microsoft Mountain View Campus on November 16th and will run from 8am to 6pm. Companies like 4Info, EQO, MostionDSP, Plusmo and Sharpcast will be presenting. It should be a fantastic mobility primer.

VentureBlog readers can get a $70 discount when they REGISTER HERE.

Business Blogging Seminar in San Francisco

In an effort to help businesses large and small alike better understand and utilize blogging as part of their business strategies, Six Apart has started running half-day blogging seminars throughout the country. You can see the latest dates and locations at the Business Blogging Seminars home page. Anil Dash and crowd from Six Apart do a great job of helping Marketing, PR and Product Management folks better understand the blogging landscape and put blogging to work for their businesses. The next Seminar is in San Francisco on Monday, November 13th at Le Meridien. You can REGISTER HERE. I don't know if I'll be talking at this one but I'm sure to speak at some of these in the future (count me in for the Honolulu seminar). When you talk with folks who are doing a good job of using blogging as part of their business, you can appreciate the power of the medium. Great stuff.

Web 2.0

OK, this is really a tease I suppose because it is no longer possible to register for the upcoming Web 2.0 conference. It is sold out. And for good reason. I was looking at the latest schedule for the event and was blown away by the lineup. Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle have really pulled together an amazing set of speakers for this year's Web 2.0 Conference. I have no doubt that people will be blogging this event like crazy next week (it runs Tuesday through Thursday). I'll be there for sure. And Craig Syverson and I will be podcasting from the conference one Wednesday. Keep your ears pealed for our VentureCast from Web 2.0.

If you missed your chance to go to the Web 2.0 conference because you registered too late, you should definitely keep your eyes on the Web 2.0 Expo home page. The Web 2.0 Expo is a new conference and tradeshow being launched by O'Reilly Media and CMP Technology this coming spring in San Francisco. The event will take place from April 15th through 18th in the Moscone Center. I will be giving a talk about communicable diseases (no lie), which is worth the price of the ticket alone. It should be another great event from O'Reilly and crew. I'll be sure to let you all know when registration opens.

I guess that is it for my first VentureBlog Conference Roundup. I hope it is useful. Track me down if you're at any of these events.

Building Great Internet Companies

For those of you out there looking for some practical advice on Internet company building, I'm speaking at an event this week called "From Garage to IPO: How to build a successful consumer Internet company." The event is a day long tutorial being put on by the TiE Internet SiG, of which I'm an Advisory Board Member. There are a lot of great folks involved in the event, including Iggy Fanlo from AdBrite (formerly from Shoping.com), James Currier from Ooga Labs (formerly from Tickle), Reid Hoffman from LinkedIn (formerly from PayPal), Caterina Fake from Yahoo/Flickr, Heather Harde from Fox Interactive, Manish Chandra from Kaboodle, Munjal Shah from Riya, and a bunch of other great people. We'll cover topics ranging from getting started to partnerships to customer acquisition to monetization -- it should be a great discussion for new and seasoned entrepreneurs alike.

Here are the details on the event:

Wednesady, October 18, 2006
7:30 am - 7:30 pm
TiE SV
2903 Bunker Hill Lane
Suite No. 108
Santa Clara, CA 95054

To sign up, click here. I look forward to the conversation and hope to see lots of you there.

Recovering From FOO Camp

I can't decide what is making it harder for me to write this morning. Is it the fact that I am still completely exhausted after a weekend of too little sleep and too much mental stimulation? Or is it the more mundane fact that God-awful music is blasting out of my speakerphone courtesy of the now 57 minutes I've been on hold with Bank of America credit card services? I'm going to go with mental overload because I refuse to cede the power to communicate to B of A musak.

This weekend I was privileged to attend Tim O'Reilly's FOO Camp. FOO stands for "Friends Of O'Reilly" but the crowd is only a small subsection of those who count Tim as a friend. Tim has long been not just a uncanny predictor of future technology trends but a supporter and promoter of both those technologies and the individuals responsible for inventing them and shepherding them from concept to phenomenon. The individuals present at this year's FOO Camp had played significant rolls in the creation and dissemination of some of the most important technologies over the past decades (from Lotus 1-2-3 to Perl, Python, Ruby, Flash, you name it). But the conversations of FOO Camp were clearly pointed at the future, which leaves one's mind spinning.

One of the things that is striking about FOO Camp is that nearly everything that takes place over the weekend is collaborative. Talks are rarely lectures -- they are conversations. Ad hoc projects at FOO take interesting twists and turns because they are necessarily interdisciplinary, driven by experts in hardware, software, networking, who are encouraged by the environment to think out of the box (a child of FOO's inventive environment was unveiled at this year's gathering -- Chumby is an open source hardware and software platform that truly embodies the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of FOO). As I wandered around O'Reilly's campus Saturday night I was struck by the incredibly inclusive, social and creative energy everywhere -- in one room a group of folks were singing and strumming Simon and Garfunkel tunes, in another a crowd was engaged in their 5th or 6th hour of Werewolf, on the patio a few pyromaniacs enjoyed a fire sculpture involving propane and a zen sand garden, others gathered 'round the laser in Make Magazine's office engraving their laptops and cell phones with various a sundry images and insignia.

Two of my favorite sessions during FOO Camp were further testimony to the collaborative nature of the weekend. One of the "talks" was entitled "Halfbaked.com: entrepreneurial improv theatre." It was organized by Dave McClure, Paul Rademacher and James Levine, who had the great idea of randomly assigning teams of participants two word company names and, with fifteen minutes of preparation time, having them then present their business plans to a panel of VC judges (namely, me and Paul Graham). The results were clever and funny and felt sufficiently close to my day job as to be a little disconcerting. The winning team pitched Bottlecap Porn, fully functional (if somewhat under-featured) website and all. The other session I can't stop talking about was called "That Sucked," which was organized by Joshua Schachter. In Joshua's session, he started off by telling about times he'd been faced with technical challenges that really sucked. He then opened up the floor to the crowd to share their stories. The tales of woe expounded were like a history of computers gone bad, from printers shooting parts across the room to infinite loops to missing source code (the inspiration for SourceForge). They were simultaneously the geekiest and funniest stories I'd heard in some time. And like the "Halfbaked" session, virtually everyone in the room participated, making the session all the more illuminating and entertaining.

I hope that Tim and the entire O'Reilly organization get as much out of FOO Camp as do the participants. We all certainly owe him a debt of gratitude for hosting this incredible event.

Post Script: I hung up on Bank of America after being on hold for 190 minutes! I hope there is less of a wait when I call to cancel my card.

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