Microsoft is partnering with gaming startup SimOps to host a free Game Jam on its Mountain View campus April 4 to 5. Indie developers, small studios, student and others interested in creating games are invited to register for the all-weekend event on Bay Area Game Jam. SimOps is a spin-off from Carnegie Mellon, now based in San Francisco, and is part of Microsoft's Accelerator program – which aims to accelerate startups growth through technology partnership and marketing sponsorhips. The event will feature a game creation competition using SimOps' new browser-based Wild Pockets 3D game engine and platform for developers who can compete individually or in teams; a chill zone in the Microsoft Connected Home lounge to play Xbox games; a concert featuring the Megas and the OneUps on Saturday night; A Rock-Band tournament; and insights from game industry gurus. Lots of prizes for winners of the game competition – from cash prizes to XNA creator license to promotion of games on the web site of co-sponsor Crispy Gamer. Come and join the fun!
In the current economic downturn where 1) VC money is tight and 2) the IPO market is at a standstill, startups are increasingly looking at corporate venture as a means to growth -- or even just survival. Most startup-oriented conferences I have attended recently have featured discussions about corporate venture funds – in fact, I am on a panel this week about Corporate Venture Capital at the annual Private Equity conference organized by the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Phoenix.
The problem is that most corporate venture funds are also victims of the economy – and thus tightening up. That is, "pure corporate funds" – the ones that hug closely the traditional definition of a corporate fund : "The subsidiary of a large corporation which makes venture capital investments." What I found interesting in the past few months is how that definition is being stretched to include other business development activities such "corporate partnerships" or "corporate in-kind investments" (ie technology investment as opposed to pure $ injection).
When money gets tight and scarce, big corporations have to get more creative about how to integrate external innovation into the corporate fold. While acquisitions have been an obvious option – albeit fraught with potential "soft barriers" such as integration of mismatched cultures – "strategic partnerships" between a David (small startup) and a Goliath (big corporation) are the current buzz. They involve no (or little) money changing hands, instead they focus on finding synergies – mostly how a small startup with promising technology can help fill a specific gap in a corporate product portfolio, or accelerate time to market. Many of the conversations I have with startups and VCs investing in the Digital Space these days revolves around the theme of "How can we help you help us?" – in other words, the value is not just calculated in terms of pure $ but in terms of business proposition: what is innovative in a startup's technology or business model is evaluated both in terms of the potential value it can bring to the corporation but also in terms of what the corporation can do, if anything, to help that startup further develop. The focus is on "partnering" rather than "venturing". What this means for startups is that it's not all gloom and doom out there: sure, acquisition deals are harder to come by-- but many large corporations are seeking out partnerships with startups as part of their innovation strategy – and now is the time to take advantage of this trend.
SimOps Studios, based in San Francisco, is getting ready to launch the open beta of Wild Pockets, its Web-based game development platform and marketplace for 3D casual games. As a hosted online 3D game development platform, WildPockets developers and users to buy and sell using the Wild Pockets marketplace. Wild Pockets offers an end to end solution that includes a consolidated distribution through channel partnerships, and multiple methods for game developers to monetize their content. Through a built in library system at the core of the marketplace, developers can buy, sell and trade assets they've created as well as sell the finished games directly to players. the young company (only 9 employees) is a spin-off from Carnegie Mellon University. Its main competitors are 3D Game engines that produce browser based games ( such as Unity 3D and Instant Action) and other web browser-based game development platforms such as Metaplace – a large virtual world that allows customization, but is not 3D; and Adobe Flash – the current standard, but not a game engine and does not support full 3D. Wild Pockets revenue model is to generate revenue from several sources: Marketplace transactions, subscriptions (premium services), advertising (in game branded & traditional web) and distribution partners. They are planning to host a "Game Fest" event on Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus in early April – a wild and crazy all-weekend, non-stop (no sleep!) game coding fiesta for game developers that will feature competitions (and prizes!), game industry icons and plenty of junk food and energized sodas to keep the crowd going. Stay tuned for more details!
Let me make a prediction: the Surface session at Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles October 27-30 – which will introduce the new Surface SDK to developers - will be standing-room only. After all the interest generated by media coverage at recent tech events where Surface was on display ( for example, TechCrunch 50 in San Francisco Cruising TechCrunch DemoPit: the Buzz and the Standouts)start-ups in gaming, retail, music, location-based services etc are coming out of the woodwork, wanting to develop apps for this cool new platform. Well, here is their chance to make their dream come true:Brad Carpenter, Microsoft’s General Manager leading Surface’s software platform development, will be taking developers on a tour of the new Surface SDK at PDC. His presentation will cover vision-based object recognition and core controls like ScatterView and explain how the Surface SDK aligns with the multi-touch touch developer roadmap for Windows 7 and WPF. Session attendees will receive access to the Surface SDK and Brad will show how existing investments in WPF and Visual Studio that can leveraged to build apps for Surface. While all the bloggers crowded in the main auditorium to cover the TC50 stars, I cruised the DemoPit, chatting with VC and entrepreneurs and the DemoPit exhibitors . It was like sneaking backstage at a rock concert: great rumor mill and lots of “wanna-be’s” hanging around.
The “Buzz Stars”on the TC floor? Microsoft’s Surface and TC50’s Swype - no contest. The success of Surface was widely blogged, including by even-better-looking-in-person-than-on-screen Ashton Kutcher. I won’t dwell into it again here, check out the cool details in my colleague’s Anand Iyer blog Ashton Kutcher doesn’t think the Surface is just blah blah (blah). Swype was another buzz star- everybody’s favorite mobile app which, by the way, works on Windows Mobile Smartphones . Read my colleague’s Don Dodge writeup: Swype slide to type - at TechCrunch50.
Then there was lots of buzz around Ustream and Qik – I would put them in the category of “WOWS.” Not “technology WOWs” but “my-life-just-got-easier WOWs”. By providing live streaming of event happenings (Ustream on PCs and Qik on mobile phones), they enabled people not attending TC50 to “sneak into the event” by watching sessions from their desk/Starbucks/ the soccer field… One VC I had lunch with on the second day of TechCrunch told me that she had been watching the demos from her desk in her comfy office while conducting her regular business. Multitasking just got expanded… When traffic was slow in the DemoPit, exhibitors kept themselves busy by checking out (on a window on their PC) what was going on at the same time at the Republican convention - compliments of Ustream who was also live streaming that event. Qik , a Microsoft partner, is more geared towards the crowd who likes to take and share snapshots of “cool happenings” (the teenagers will love this). The app was sizzling when Ashton, Mark Cuban and rapper MC Hammer made their rounds around TC grounds…
My two DemoPit standouts (I use the work “standout” liberally as there was nothing earth-shattering there, just some new iterations of existing ways of doing things) were:
SnapPages: a web-design site that offers several customizable templates, allowing users to specify colors and the placement of columns, text boxes, and widgets, but only to a limited degree. Nothing new here – web site creation is a super-crowded space, other players include Squarespace.com, Wix.com, Webepags, SyntaSite, Weebly etc. But the cool thing about SnapPages is its uniquely intuitive and sleek UI. Everyone who stopped by their DemoPit table raved about that. My view is that design simplification will be the key to success in that market and SnapPages delivers on that. The website simple AND beautiful – nice job by founder Steve Testone who single-handedly developed the site.
Mulodo, demoed Deckkr, a pop-up tool that lets users get around the web smoothly without opening and shuffling between several different tabs or windows. If you click on the Deckkr button in the address bar, a small window pops up, overlaying the browser. If you go to a product page on a shopping site, the tool extracts information such as reviews on a given products and related products from it and displays the information within the Deckkr screen. Deckkr works the same way on blogs (listing the most recent entries). Deckkr only works for Firefox 3 at this point, but Mulodo is considering developing versions for Internet Explorer in the future. Mulodo, a privately-funded startup from Japan, offers a couple of other products –Mokuji, which automatically creates an index for your blog and indonews.jp, a Japanese website dedicated to providing business news, columns and resources from India – in Japanese. A little known company, Wavexpress, a provider of broadband media technology and services, is powering the NBC coverage of the Olympics through Microsoft’s MediaCenter for Vista. This free service, called NBC Olympics-on-the-go” enables viewers to watch NBC’s coverage of the Beijing Games on a sport-by-sport basis, with channels designated to match the hundreds of events included in the Games. Users can sign up for the channels they are interested in, and the service will automatically synchronize NBC’s video clips as they become available.From their laptops, viewers can then view their selected sports offline. The service is a white labeled version of TVTonic. Check out the crisp video quality. Transpera, a startup based in San Francisco, has developed technology that virtually turns Internet sites into mobile video channels. Riding current wave of “mobile content monetization”, it provides a mobile content and distribution network that links consumers with online video publishers and advertisers. Its magic sauce is not only serving content avaliable on the web onto mobile phones but also enabling users to share and exchange—as if they were on an online social network. For example, I can share videos from my cell with my friends on their phones, receive updates of my friends’ videos on my phone, comment on their content from my cell, and interact with real-time polls—still from my mobile phone. This cross-platform integration between web-based and mobile is interesting for both sides—consumers, who don’t have to be sitting in front of their PC to “social-net” and share videos; and for advertisers/mobile operators looking to take advantage of consumer trend to access and share video content directly from mobile devices. One the more recent content partners signed by Transpera is the Associated Press, which plans to run its news video clips on Transpera’s network for access from mobile phones. Transpera, which was funded in January 2007 by Frank Barbieri, a former member of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile group, has raised venture funding from Intel Capital, IDG Ventures and First Round Capital. Any star would love to debut in Vegas—that’s what is happening to Microsoft’s newest interactive table, Surface. Six of these Surface tables are now installed at the iBar ultra-lounge located at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. It enables bar customers to order drinks, watch YouTube videos, play touch-screen games and even flirt with each other. The Microsoft Surface team custom-built the apps for the Rio’s bar—the hotel belongs to the Harrah’s group, which is one of a handful of hospitality companies that was targeted by Microsoft for initial launch of Surface. Harrah's is the first to install Surface in an entertainment venue. A program called Mixologists enables customers to play bartender by creating and ordering mixtures of whatever cocktails they click on. The system is able to remember users' drink orders and, one day, may be able to offer customers the same drink at other Harrah's locations, such as when they play a slot machine. The table also includes a program called Flirt—aptly named as it enables customers sitting at any of the six Surface tables in the iBar lounge to chat with each other, take and e-mail pictures and even trade cell numbers. Other programs let users play video games or get information about restaurants, shows, nightclubs and other Harrah's attractions.
For those who haven’t see the cool demos by Bill Gates when Surface was launched, here is how it works: Surface is a rectangular, coffee-table type with a built-in 30-inch flat screen. the touch-screen technology uses a camera behind the screen to detect hand movements, which become visible to the camera like silhouettes once users press their fingers on the table. The screen displays high resolution images—the graphics are very compelling.
Outside the entertainment world, Surface can also be seen since April in some AT&T wireless stores. There, they are programmed to recognize eight mobile handset types and give information about their features. More retail and hospitality sightings to be announced soon… Vollee’s service basically streams 3D console gaming experience to 3G phones. It enables any virtual world game and multiplayer game to be accessible from a cell phone with amazing graphics quality. I saw a demo of a shooting game set in a 3D virtual environment—looked like Second Life in a futuristic war zone. Graphics resolution was way beyond anything I expected—especially for the small screen of a cell phone. Vollee delivers this service through tools they have developed and patented—which deliver their compelling graphics and also have an interesting time-to-market value proposition for publishers who want to bring their games to mobile platforms. Vollee can adapt the apps in a matter of weeks because they don’t touch the source code and for just about all types of 3G handsets—they support Windows Mobile, Java, iPhone and BREW on the handset side; on the server side, they run Windows XP. Their business model is subscription-based and ad-supported. They have received $11.5M in funding from BlueRun Ventures and Benchmark. The San-Francisco-based startup brings an interesting twist to the ad-supported gaming experience on cell phones: not only do gamers get to play the 850 game titles that are in Greystripe’s library for free, but they are not distracted by ads as they play the games. The trick is that Greystripe inserts the ad BEFORE or AFTER he game, using the full-screen of the phone– which enables some compelling graphics, and thus higher click-thrus for advertisers. The company has deals with some 90 game publishers, supporting over 1,000 handset models. I saw a demo of their service – it was one of the rare times I was not annoyed by advertising being wrapped around my entertainment. The truck ad they showed me was a miniature version of the quality you would get on TV, which really holds your attention (even for someone not interested in trucks…). Same picture quality for the games they offer – a cool way to stay entertained for free on your commute to work… The company has already received $10 million in VC funding from Incubic Venture Fund, Monitor Ventures, and Steamboat Ventures. | View in Web Browser | /_layouts/images/ichtmxls.gif | /Blogs/anne-marie_roussel/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?listguid={ListId}&itemid={ItemId}&DefaultItemOpen=1 | 0x0 | 0x1 | FileType | xlsx | 255 | | View in Web Browser | /_layouts/images/ichtmxls.gif | /Blogs/anne-marie_roussel/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?listguid={ListId}&itemid={ItemId}&DefaultItemOpen=1 | 0x0 | 0x1 | FileType | xlsb | 255 | | Snapshot in Excel | /_layouts/images/ewr134.gif | /Blogs/anne-marie_roussel/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?listguid={ListId}&itemid={ItemId}&Snapshot=1 | 0x0 | 0x1 | FileType | xlsx | 256 | | Snapshot in Excel | /_layouts/images/ewr134.gif | /Blogs/anne-marie_roussel/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?listguid={ListId}&itemid={ItemId}&Snapshot=1 | 0x0 | 0x1 | FileType | xlsb | 256 |
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Featured Startup
The BizSpark startup of the day is Avetrium, based in Canada. You will find below an interview with Tim Smith, COO of Avetrium. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!
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Anne-Marie Roussel
Connected Entertainment
Anne-Marie Roussel manages the Entertainment portfolio (Zune, Video, Xbox). She came to Microsoft in December 2005, with over 22 years of IT experience most recently as Vice President, Research at Gartner. During her ten year career at Gartner, she was responsible for Gartner predictions on the future of IT, launched Gar...
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