Microsoft Startup Zone

Xobni social networking for Outlook users

Don Dodge — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:19:00 GMT

Xobni - is an organizer for Microsoft Outlook email. The beta is now available to the public. I have been using Xobni for 6 months and love it. Xobni is inbox spelled backwards. Xobni compiles a summary for each email sender, extracts phone numbers, photos, organizes attachments in several different ways, and ranks each sender by how many emails they send to you, and how many you send to them. People connected to the email sender are listed, along with email threads from each of them. See all the attachments associated with these people. Search is an integral part of Xobni and can be done in several different ways.

Robert Scoble has a great video interview with Xobni founders Matt Brezina and Adam Smith. I knew the instant I first saw Xobni at the TechCrunch40 Conference that we should be partners. I talked to Adam Smith immediately after his presentation, and had dinner with Adam and his partner Matt Brezina that night. We sketched out how Microsoft could help Xobni, and started executing on the plan the very next day.

Xobni is now a Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program partner. There are lots of benefits to the program like free software, consulting help, press releases, introductions to Microsoft people, partners, and even VCs. But this is one benefit that we didn't anticipate...a demo by Bill Gates at the Microsoft Office Developers Conference. Check out this 2 minute video of Bill talking about Xobni.

Try out Xobni and let me know what you think. What additional features would you like to see? What other email productivity tools do you use?

Windows Live China in action to the earthquake in Sichuan province

Yun Xu — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:20:00 GMT

At 2.28 PM on 12th May 2008, I was at the Suzhou (Jiansu province in east China) train station buying a train ticket to Shanghai as my next stop of my business trip, at the same time a 7.8 Richter Scale earthquake attacked Wenchuan County in southwest China's Sichuan Province. Windows Live China team took actions quickly this time, you can get the latest information with map label at Live Search Map. I feel so lucky that I still alive while more than 10 thousand people lost of their lives, wish every survivor could be rescued with 72 hours after the quake.

Quantifying Music

Yi-Jian Ngo — Tue, 13 May 2008 06:01:00 GMT

Over the past decade, data driven techniques have been steadily gaining ground over more intuitive approaches. Marriott’s Courtyard brand was born from the results of a conjoint analysis, not a light bulb going off at an executive retreat. And the crisp metrics generated by online advertising campaigns are placing intense pressure on legacy “I waste half of my budget, but don’t know which half” advertising models.

It's particularly interesting when quantitative methods are applied to former bastions of intuition. Moneyball is a memorable account of how a professional baseball team used statistical techniques rather than talent scouts to identify undervalued players. And Epagogix has sophisticated algorithms that can allegedly predict a movie’s box office takings based on the script alone.

It doesn't take an education in music to observe the similarity between musical and mathematical notation. Just as algebraic chess notation is used to describe the moves in a game of chess, I wonder if a piece of music can be expressed in some standard schema that makes it amenable to quantitative analysis. That will open the door for analyzing the entire musical corpus, and perhaps distilling the essence of what it is that makes a piece of music “good”.

The obvious near-term application of data driven musical analytics is to predict whether a new song is going to be a hit–companies such as Platinum Blue and Polyphonic HMI already have some traction. I wonder when we will have the ability to build the musical equivalent of IBM’s Deep Blue–a system which can write original music just as well as the world’s leading composers, and the impact that will have on the world’s music ecosystem.

Where Are They Now—Robosoft Revisited

Startup Superstars — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Robosoft

BIDARD, FRANCE
http://www.interse.com

Developing Service Robots—For Transport, Cleaning, Healthcare Markets

A robot in every home—or a ‘robuter,’ as Robosoft calls them. Someday soon, this may become reality if Robosoft’s President and Founder Vincent Dupourqué gets his way. Since 1985, Robosoft has been providing advanced robotics solutions for transport, cleaning, security, healthcare, and research markets. The company is considered a European leader in service robotics, and is one of the first spin-offs of INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control. ‘Robuters’ have applications in such areas as entertainment, education, culture, healthcare, assistance to the elderly and handicapped people, and more. And to bring these applications to life, Robosoft already integrates 80 percent of the software complexity in its robuBOX, a software module developed with Microsoft Robotics Studio.

By using Visual Studio .NET and the Microsoft Robotics Studio, Robosoft was able to create robuBOX in less than a year. RobuBOX is a complete set of hardware, software, and sensors that enable a range of robot controllers from performing simple, low-level functions to a sophisticated fleet of service robots. This is a hardware level abstraction allowing software applications to run on different platforms, just like the BIOS in early PCs.

According to Vincent Dupourqué, in the 1960s, robotics technology became a mainstay of manufacturing floors, and now it is coming of age in the services area. “Imagine robots cleaning floors in malls, transporting people in theme parks, or washing skyscraper windows and more. Our big challenge is to put our robotic engine inside every robot—and to sell our engines to the people making

And by robotic engine, the company means software—that is the main value, which is what led the company to Microsoft.

The Microsoft Connection?

In 2005, the company decided to use Microsoft tools—with the original idea to make roboticized PCs. Says Dupourqué, “We decided to switch from purely robotic tools to PC software tools and we chose Microsoft technology to do that.” To investigate Microsoft’s technology in this area, Dupourqué did a Google search on Microsoft Robotics, and a speech by Tandy Trower, now the General Manager of the Microsoft Robotics Group came up. He immediately emailed him to tell him what Robosoft was working on—that original email spawned a flurry of other emails and meetings with people in the UK and France. Once the Microsoft France IDEES program met with Dupourqué, they suggested that Robosoft become a beta tester on the first release of the Microsoft Robotics Studio.

Explains Dupourqué, “Before I had this tool, I had to spend too much time and money on software development kits. Now that I have this product available, I can focus on robotic software and develop the robots very quickly.”

At the RoboBusiness Conference in June 2006, Robosoft showed off its six-wheeled robuROC6 robot, capable of autonomous navigation across difficult terrain, which highlighted how a distributed architecture, built from its robuBOX robotics core, could be easily controlled via the Microsoft Robotics Studio runtime.

During the last two years Robosoft and Microsoft have focused primarily on technical exchanges—since the market for robotics is still small and in its infancy. Says Dupourqué, “We are building relationships for the future, and have been working with the development team in Redmond, using their software, giving them feedback, asking for improvements on the software development kits.”

Where are they now?

The company’s big achievement is its ability to make robots much faster, and less expensively, than ever before. Just last week, the firm delivered three huge robots (weighing in at more than five tons) for transporting people in a theme park in France, and it has also developed a robot that is now cleaning the glass Pyramid at the Louvre Museum. As another example, Orange, a major global network operator, is using Robosoft technology (the robuLAB equipped with a video camera) to give its subscribers a novel experience—remote visits to museums. The creation of this unique robotic experience was realized in one month using Microsoft Robotics Studio, which provided a high-end development environment that allows fast, reusable software development. Unlike virtual visits, this is a real visit to a museum over the Internet, from a simple web browser and remotely achieved via a robot acting as an individual’s personal guide.

At Microsoft’s Innovation Day in Brussels in late 2007, the company showed how its service robots could help elderly and handicapped people staying at home. In March 2008, it delivered the first units of a set of 16 robotized machines to the “City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution (ESPCI).”

To date, the company has developed nearly 500 robots for different applications. Its ultimate goal is to get its robot engine into every robot—and to commercially develop a ‘universal robot engine’ with Microsoft. Dupourqué is convinced that the Microsoft Robotics Studio will become a major product, and critical enabler technology.

For more information, visit Robosoft online.

Fring - Mobile Social Networking Made Easy ...

Rodney Bowen-Wright — Sat, 10 May 2008 03:39:00 GMT

Unleashing the power of the mobile internet, fring™ is a community and service that enables users to talk, chat and interact with other fring users and their favourite online communities & services, all from their mobile devices.

Originating from a vision of freedom, fring was born out of a desire to fundamentally change the way people communicate. fring users, or fringsters™ enjoy true mobility without the boundaries that have traditionally existed between the mobile and fixed internet worlds. Launched in Feb 2007, fring already growing more than 100,000 new registrations per month and has users in 160 countries around the world, with no one country accounting for more than few percentages of traffic.

fring™ facilitates free and low cost calls over the mobile internet connection and live instant message chat - instead of SMS - to each other and their communities. Integrating all buddies into one, searchable list, fring also displays real-time presence indicators (online, away, offline, in-a-call, on their mobiles or in front of their PCs) and enables users to quickly swap music tracks, pictures, video clips and other files between each other, from mobile-to-mobile and mobile-to-PC.

Developed specifically for the mobile environment, fring's unique hybrid peer-to-peer/client-server architecture reduces battery consumption and bandwidth usage, permitting optimal functionality even on low-end devices. Maximizing the handset’s internet capabilities, Fring connects via GPRS/3G (using the data within an existing data subscription plan rather than traditional cellular airtime minutes) or through WiFi at home, in the office or any hotspot, making the mobile calls themselves completely free. Fring can be set to automatically switch between the best available connection type.

Fringsters can even make low cost local and international calls to landline and regular cellular numbers using their existing SkypeOut/SkypeIn accounts or almost any internet voice service (SIP), even from non SIP-enabled handsets.

Available via a simple download of a thin client and installation process, fring is a consumer-centric application that does not require a PC or any dedicated hardware or airtime. All that’s needed to use fring is one of over 400 compatible handsets with internet connectivity and an internet data package or a WiFi account.

Company Facts

Location – Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel with marketing representation in the UK, Germany, Benelux, Finland, France, Russia & South Africa via onsite agencies

Stage – Beta

Funding – fring is backed by US-based venture capitalists North Bridge Venture Partners and by Venfin limited, Israeli venture capital funds Veritas and Pitango, and Yossi Vardi, as a founding private investor.

Team – Avi Shechter, CEO; Alex Nerst, Founder and Chief Technological Officer; Boaz Zilberman, Founder and Chief Product Architect; the fring team count for 50 proud employees

For recent press about fring, please visit:

http://www.fring.com/newsroom/in_the_news/english/

Change the Microsoft Startup Zone! Take our 1 min survey!

Kris Olson — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:55:00 GMT

We are in the process of defining a new version of the Microsoft Startup Zone -- and we would LOVE, value and appreciate your input and ideas! Please take less than 1 minute and take our super short survey-- tell us the one most valuable thing we can do to this site to help startups.

Thanks -- we will value and use your input, we promise!

Aras and Mindtouch Succeed in Open Source on the Microsoft Stack

Kris Olson — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:45:00 GMT

I met both Aras and MindTouch last year. They are interesting companies because their business model is open source but their platform is the Microsoft stack. Oxymoronic? Surprisingly, no.

I met Mark Lind, VP Marketing of Aras, last May at Software 2007. I was intrigued by Aras’s commitment to open sourcing their high end enterprise products built on the Microsoft stack. Our team (the Emerging Business Team – works with startups and VCs) had written a success story about Aras earlier in the year because of its SaaS delivery model. Aras chose open source because they believe that is the way all software will go. They chose Microsoft because they could see their customers moving to Microsoft in the backoffice for server applications.

From a blog by Paula Rooney, ZD Net, November 2007 – talking about a speech by Mark Lind in Boston:

But why would any commercially successful ISV take this path [moving to an open source model], especially one that competes against big companies such as Oracle and SAP?

Faster innovation, for one. Aras, for instance, recently became one of only 10 ISVs to gain full certification for its software running on Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, a feat which would not have been possible without the open source development model, Lind claims. Those Microsoft products will ship in February.

In 2005, Aras saw two seemingly disparate market trends emerging and the possibility of carving out a differentiated business model from its competitors.

“At one point, we were supporting J2EE on Websphere and we were multi-platform. But we were seeing clear indicators that customers were beginning to make a pervasive corporate commitment to Microsoft in the backoffice for server apps,” he said.

At the same time, Aras was seeing increased customer interest – especially its military customers — in open source because of its licensing and deployment flexibility and better control over IT costs. “In open source, we saw undeniable momentum and increasing corporate appeal for open source as a format..."

And, insight into the value of a subscription business model (charging for services)—which I experienced first-hand while VP marketing at McAfee (it’s marvelous having 50% of your revenue roll-in automatically at the start of every month!):

“The subscription model has a beautiful cumulative effect; it is very predictable. Its very profitable and highly scalable. It just keeps growing and has very nice deferred revenues stream. You know you have numbers in bank before you start the quarter. The investors like this model. ”

In 2007 I also met Steve Bjorg at a Red Herring conference. Steve is founder and CTO of MindTouch, makers of Deki Wiki, also using an open source model. MindTouch’s CEO says in a case study:
"With .NET, MindTouch is out-innovating the competition and delivering a better solution to the Open Source community."
—Aaron Fulkerson, Cofounder and CEO, MindTouch

These two companies both have an unusual perspective on open source and using Microsoft’s stack. Will it become more common?

You can read more about MindTouch, Aras and Microsoft’s involvement with Open Source below.

Aras Success Story

ComputerWorld article on Aras: “How one vendor learned to stop worrying (about open source) and love Microsoft”

MindTouch Video Interview

MindTouch Case Study

Microsoft Open Source Resources

Lynda Ting: Open Source—What are the Driving Factors?

Weaving in Open Source Code

Microsoft Open Source Community and Partnership

Expectations of a Bear Attack?

Christopher Griffin — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:39:00 GMT

Last night I had a dream…or maybe a nightmare. I was attending some kind of startup camp for young companies, but when I say “camp,” I mean it: there were hundreds of entrepreneurs packed into some kind of rustic log cabin/ski lodge, the crowd buzzing with conversation about base technologies, revenue models, and partner strategies.

Then came the bears.

Out of nowhere, a couple dozen grizzly bears attacked the crowd, mauling these young startups as they scrambled for their lives. Down hallways, up on bookcases, under stairs—entrepreneurs were in a state of complete panic, some clustering together for strength, others trying to escape on their own, others being ripped to shreds. The room was in total chaos as the bears tore the place apart.

Now I’m no prophet, but my dream made me think about some data points running through the startup community lately:

1. Marc Andreessen’s recent comment at the Web 2.0 Expo about raising capital in expectation of a “nuclear winter.”

2. A growing number of “companies who can” pulling down monster valuations while stockpiling cash (Ning, Slide, Meebo).

3. A growing number of startups—often with only a consumer-focused, advertising-based revenue model and one or two features—having to choose between death, fighting it alone, or partnering with/acquisition by other “Feature 2.0” startups to try and cobble a more robust offering together.

Those options from #3 look a lot like what that room full of entrepreneurs in my dream did when they were attacked by bears. I guess the brain tends to process a fear of marauding bears similarly, whether they are of the flesh-and-bone variety or the market variety.

Moreover, fear alone—rather than actual bears—can often drive the same behavior. This principle of expectation driving behavior applies across environments broadly (otherwise who would care about the VIX, a measure of expected market volatility around options on the S&P 500, a.k.a. the “fear” index). Whether or not expectations will create a broad bear market reality is still up in the air, but what is clear is that for some startups, expectations are influencing behavior locally as if a "bear attack" were coming.

Rather than end with gloom & doom, I should add that my dream was simply a composite of my last couple of days in the Valley--which were terrific--fused with the usual fear/anxiety components generated by the normal nightly activation of the amygdala and anterior cingulate areas of the brain during REM sleep (see page 214-215 of David J. Linden's entertaining book The Accidental Mind if you're curious). Yesterday I listened to about 50 pitches from a wide range of startups at the PlugandPlay Expo in Sunnyvale. Jason Kincaid on Techcrunch already noted the packed house at the event, which is undoubtedly the source of my dream’s general setting (I should note that the PlugandPlay facilities are excellent—I have no idea where the rustic ski lodge came from). I found the companies—from social applications to in-video advertising—interesting and their founders optimistic and engaging.

As for the bears: I could try and make some sweeping predictions about the market, about how many of these “Feature 2.0” companies are about to face the options in #3 above, but that and $1 will buy you a PBR at my local golf course. Instead, I’ll just note that the night before the PlugandPlay Expo I watched Will Ferrell’s movie Semi-Pro in my hotel. Grrrr.

(Note: yes, it's true that Dewie the Bear recently killed a trainer. Very, very sad.)

How to get Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins to invest

Lynda Ting — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:26:00 GMT

Straight from the opening remarks at the NVCA AGM today, Mike Moritz and John Doerr interviewed one another on stage and discussed everything from how they snagged their wives to the dismal return outlook for VCs in Silicon Valley - if you are not one of the top tier firms. The one pearl of wisdom I took away was the secret behind what it takes to get your startup backed by the two kingpins of venture capital.

Of the 50 companies in which the two firms have co-invested, Moritz pointed out that they've covered most of the spectrum of the alphabet when it comes to the first letter of your company's name, with the exception of the letters HQUXYZ. So, when naming your company, simply have it begin with one of these 6 golden letters, and you'd be a shoe-in for a first meeting.

According to Doerr's observations, his most successful investments were founded by a "couple of Caucasian, nerdy, male, engineers". For those of you who don't fit this demographic, it's an easy fix. Recruit a couple of engineers that do fit this demographic, make them founders and you have just doubled your odds of funding.

Lastly, Eric Schmidt should be your mentor. Moritz cited that his subtle leadership style and his ability to create an environment in which the founders could thrive was the secret to being a great CEO.

And there you have it - how to get Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins to invest in your startup.

Managing Startup Founders

Yi-Jian Ngo — Wed, 07 May 2008 06:03:00 GMT

I recently had the opportunity to have dinner with a small group of startup CEOs. Unusually, none of them had actually founded a startup before – they were all professional managers brought in to take a startup to the next level.

We discussed the lessons they had learnt over the course of their startup careers (most had led more than one startup), and one thing that kept coming up was how best to manage their relationship with the startup’s founders.

They agreed that the right approach was being firm with the founders that they were in charge, and to quit quickly otherwise. This did not mean pushing the founders aside, rather that the founders should stick to the division of responsibilities that were agreed upon and not engage in non-productive interference, particularly in areas they had little expertise in. Trying to politely ignore or manage around such antics simply prolonged the inevitable, and could seriously hurt the startup in the process.

Another Frontier For Consumer Oriented Software From Microsoft - Automotive

Rodney Bowen-Wright — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:35:00 GMT

Microsoft Auto is a new product group at Microsoft I have been engaged with over the last several months. The goal of this team is to provide a connected experience in cars for consumers. Two way data connectivity will allow consumers to get access to the internet and services while in their cars. The team introduced the first product SYNC with Ford last year and has been a very big hit for Ford which was struggling and has helped them connect with younger buyers. With that success, other Automotive Manufacturers are jumping in on the action.

Today, Microsoft just announced an agreement with Hyundai Motor company in South Korea to build a music and information system in their cars to debut in 2010. The product will be a voice controlled system linking mobile devices to car stereo systems eventually including multimedia and navigation systems. Essentially, the same applications and services that are being targeted on mobile devices today are applicable to an operating system in the car while driving. Imagine being able to tell your navigation system to take you to the nearest Starbucks, give you access to the latest traffic information, find you the nearest available parking etc. Better still, seamless integration between the mobile device and the in car system is essential.

See the latest announcement on the new Microsoft-Hyundai partnership here.

CTO Interview—Rob Barbour, Skoots

Startup Superstars — Tue, 06 May 2008 06:15:00 GMT

Founded in 2005 by automotive and IT industry veterans, Skoots provides a unique, web-based service for auto dealers and their customers—all based on the Microsoft .NET Framework and other technologies, including Silverlight. Consumers can find the new or used vehicle they want, eNegotiate with a dealer in real time, and lock in a deal without having to ever leave their home or office.

Here is our conversation with Rob Barbour, CTO at Skoots.

Microsoft Startup Zone: Why and when did you first choose the Microsoft Platform?

Rob Barbour: That was actually one of the easiest decisions. With any startup, with any company of this nature, you have to choose technologies that are basically going to get you to market fast enough to capture your existing audience or an audience that you hope to capture. We chose everything Microsoft. It was .NET, SQL, IIS from the start. The real reason is basically bringing our product to market faster than we could have done with other technologies.

MSUZ: Can you quantify what advantage that decision gave you?

Barbour: We didn't do any development work on other technologies, so it's tough to quantify. However, I can tell you my personal experience over the years, it's 50 to 100 percent faster [using Microsoft] than doing it in with other technologies. What can be done, for example, in .NET would take you two or three times longer using other technologies. Without question—it’s much, much faster.

Just to give you an example, I’ve been working with Microsoft technologies since the 1980s. I started on Visual Basic when it was launched and with .NET at launch. Today, it’s a quantum leap how fast you can bring things to the consumer, to the desktop, to the web. It’s just amazing. So if you were to compare .NET up against something like PHP or Ruby—there’s no comparison. I can literally develop an application, a complete application that could run on any desktop in minutes.

MSUZ: So for the Skoots Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, your LIVEoffer and Accelerator product, you used the .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual Studio, Windows Enterprise Server, SQL Server 2005, and Internet Information Server 6.0. Any one technology that was most critical to your business model?

Barbour: .NET was key—our product is based on it. But more importantly, is the scalability and the speed at which SQL 2005 has really enabled our company to do some amazing things on the back-end. It’s been an amazing tool to use. I mean, I’ve been through all the versions of SQL, and SQL 2005 is really a great platform to work on and develop on. It’s really enabled us to deliver the data faster and actually do anything we need to do on the back-end. SQL is far faster than using other databases.

As an example, if we want to display data (our application uses grids and things like that overall), we have a lot of flexibility with .NET. We can drop a grid in, populate it, display data, and have those done in minutes. It takes longer to really develop a rich user friendly interface, but being able to literally create something that displays data in a grid format, for example, within minutes, where else can you do that?

MSUZ: Can you explain how this is critical to your data model?

Barbour: It’s a combination of the front-end and the back-end. On the front end, we’re using ASP.NET and some grid components to display the data that is being brought in from the SQL back-end. On the back-end, there were hundreds of stored procedures that were written to actually generate the displays. This is the data that is then used by the grids in other technologies on the front end, which is part of the reason we are going to be using Silverlight. When Silverlight 2.0 is released we’ll have the ability to display the database information within the Silverlight application with ease, and with a rich user experience.

MSUZ: Can you elaborate on your use of Silverlight and how you think it will change the user experience?

Barbour: Since Silverlight 2.0 was just announced at the MIX conference, we’re going to gear everything toward that version. We think it’s an amazing interactive technology, and believe it will allow us to create some very unique ways for consumers, to not only view the data that we’ve already got on the back-end, but to a certain degree, to enable them to have some fun with the data we’re providing them. Silverlight will change how people interact with our Web site and what they’re able to do with it. Having already worked with Silverlight 1.0 in testing the waters, we’re just getting started with Silverlight 2.0, the beta release. In fact, we’re going to completely revamp the details page for a car—and that will really highlight Silverlight’s capabilities. Due to the fact that Silverlight is cross-platform, it will enable our application to work on a variety of desktops regardless of browser type. Eventually, we’ll revamp all areas of the consumer site so consumers have such a rich experience that they won’t want to go anywhere else to look for cars.

Other technologies we will use will include Server 2008, SQL 2008 and we’re already using Visual Studio 2008.

The bottom line with using these Microsoft technologies (.Net, SQL, Server 2003, etc.)—we wouldn’t have been able to bring the application to market as quickly if we chose to use other technologies. We’re truly looking forward to Silverlight 2.0 and to building an amazing and feature rich consumer experience for car buying.

Rob Barbour's Background

Rob Barbour has more than a decade of experience in the technology field—and has worked in a variety of environments, and in more than 52 countries worldwide. As CTO of Skoots, he oversees all current and future technology development work. Prior to joining Skoots, he worked for a variety of start-ups in executive roles, honing his entrepreneurial and creative skills. In 2002, he formed his first company and still runs it today. Before that, he leveraged his knowledge of Banyan and Microsoft, and began consulting independently, and within various organizations. He began his career in the networking industry, with an interest in Banyan, which at the time was one of the largest server systems. He worked in that environment for several years and eventually led several of the teams he was part of. His focus shifted to Microsoft technologies as the use of Banyan technologies began to subside. He also began to focus on programming and acquiring domain names. Many years ago, he had the vision to see the value in domains and currently owns an extremely large portfolio of domain names and associated Web sites.

For more information on Skoots, read the success story, “Skoots Drives Sales to Online Auto Dealers."

Xpree—wisdom of the crowds to a whole new level

Lynda Ting — Sat, 03 May 2008 19:32:00 GMT

I sat on a panel yesterday organized by Fountain Blue, a community that fosters entrepreneurial coaching and leadership in Silicon Valley.

This is how I came across Xpree. While I was given only a 60 second elevator pitch and a 3-minute Q&A session, I immediately took to the idea of using the wisdom of the crowds to create a predictive market in the enterprise. Specifically, in the areas of demand planning, forecasting and innovation management. What's even more interesting is the use of web 2.0 technologies and gaming principles to execute this idea.

At a very high level, you create a profile, bet on the outcome of an idea that a co-worker has posted, set the metrics and see what the crowd has to say. Top forecasters get ranked and if you use your imagination, there's a whole social community that can be built around forecasting. So, why would an enterprise customer care about this? Early proof points from Xpree customers show that these crowd-based forecasts, more closely align with actual outcomes than what the conventional planning tools offer today. Taking the idea one step further, this data could be fed back into existing product development and design management systems to improve products brought to market.

There are quite a few companies in the consumer space with only a few other competitors aimed at the enterprise space such as Consensus Point, Inkling Markets and NewsFutures, so it remains to be seen how Xpree can gain some ground.

SaaS: What the VCs are saying—part two

Lynda Ting — Sat, 03 May 2008 19:07:00 GMT

In case you missed the VC panel at Software2008, here's the second part of my debrief.

When asked: "How do you evaluate SaaS companies?"

Sanjay from Storm Ventures responded: "robust, reliability, scalability." While Glenn from Granite Global cited that metrics such as renewal rates and conversion rates from trial to paid were important. The panel agreed that low cost of customer acquisition was of paramount importance since M&A exit values are much lower than in the past.

This raised the question about the exit environment. All the VCs agreed that the amount of capitalization required to get a company to exit was down significantly. Gone are the days of $50M+ which is causing entrepreneurs to do more with less—$20M - $30M. In fact, Navin went so far as to say that the VC model is broken and rather than exiting through strategic M&A, the buyout market has become very active. VCs have learned to become very patient as they face 5-7 year exit horizons versus 3-4 years.

To sum it up, VCs have been large proponents of bring SaaS to bear and as the economic environment continues to look grim, expect to see more companies that sell into opex rather then capex while reducing TCO for the enterprise customer.

SaaS: What the VCs are saying—part one

Lynda Ting — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:31:00 GMT

In case you missed the enterprise software VC panel at Software2008, here's the debrief - part one.

When asked "What's a hot?" from an investing perspective:

Navin Chaddha of Mayfield immediately responded: "enterprise software is NOT hot;" companies catering to the needs of Internet 500 companies are hot and he is investing in business model innovation rather than technology. Sanjay Subhedar of Storm Ventures chimed in that data protection, application virtualization, risk and energy management were important investing themes. SaaS was still a theme across all panelists, with the exception of Glenn Solomon from Granite Global Ventures who takes the contrary view and prefers looking at traditional enterprise software opportunities.

When asked "Is there life for the licensing model in venture-backed companies?"

Prashant Shah responded: "in specific instances such as areas requiring deep integration in the messaging layer of applications. Sanjay added that is the application is mission critical, customers are still SaaS shy. Navin also noted that infrastructure software largely followed the licensing model

Continued in Part Two, SaaS - What the VCs are saying at Software2008

SOA, so what? The latest from Software2008

Lynda Ting — Sat, 03 May 2008 17:41:00 GMT

I attended a couple of the SOA tracks at Software2008. I was not surprised by the dismal success that SOA has demonstrated of over the years, but was left with a tiny kernel of hope.

All the promise that Service Oriented Architectures held for enterprise application development was largely unkept. Some anecdotal data points suggest that only 29 percent of all SOA implementations resulted in increased developer productivity; and 23% of all SOA interfaces were re-used. Solving the legacy data integration has been an extremely tough nut to crack. But wait, is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Enter—mashups. There is a synergy that exists for the SOA—mashup combo. They're like the fries you get with the burger. Sometimes you just want the fry high, but it's hard to just get the burger without the fries. At least, for me it is. Mashups are a great presentation tool for both web-based applications and interfaces to behind the firewall data. But, SOA will be required to govern, manage and secure them.

Guitar Hero a 10 year overnight success

Don Dodge — Fri, 02 May 2008 21:09:00 GMT

Eran Egozy, co-founder and CTO of Harmonix Music Systems was on a panel at the Nantucket Conference entitled "Tipping Point: The keys to getting new ideas to take off." Harmonix is the maker of Guitar Hero, the wildly successful video game.

Guitar Hero was an instant...overnight success, 10 years in the making, selling over $1Billion to date. Harmonix was founded in 1995 but Guitar Hero didn't come along until 10 years later in 2005.

What did Harmonix do in the first 10 years? Harmonix founders met at the MIT Media Lab and their first idea was to create new ways for non-musicians to experience the joy of making music. Similar to another MIT Media Lab company called HarmonyLine, this idea never really took off.

Eran joked "For the first four years we couldn't sell anything but stock. We knew that wasn't a business model, but at least we had money coming in to keep us going."

Around 2000 they decided to try applying their music technology to video games. But it was 5 more years until they tasted success. They released eight video games over that period, with modest results. Eran said "The trick in the video game business is to make enough money from your game to keep you going until you can release your next game."

Most new video games don't make a profit. The game business is very much like the music business, or even the venture capital business, in that it is a "hits" driven business. One big hit pays for lots of losers.

Guitar Hero was the 9th video game produced by Harmonix, 10 years after founding the company, and it put them on the map with more than $1 Billion in sales. They recently sold the company to MTV Networks, a division of Viacom for $175M.

iRobot a 12 year overnight success. Colin Angle, founder and CEO of iRobot told a similar story. iRobot was founded in 1990 with the idea of creating robots to do interesting stuff. For 12 years they did projects and built products but never really achieved financial success. Colin said they paid employees once a month at the end of the month. They never had enough cash at the beginning of the month to meet the payroll at the end of the month. But they persisted in their dream.

September 11th 2001 changed everything. They decided to apply their robot experience to help the military in dangerous situations. DARPA, the research arm of the U.S. Defense Department paid out grants to lots of companies to develop proposals for new defense technologies. iRobot won a $200K grant to write a proposal for a battlefield robot.

Colin Angle said the company had never had $200K in the bank...ever. So, rather than use the money to write a proposal they just built the robot. What a concept!! DARPA had a big meeting to review all the proposals from various defense contractors. iRobot showed up with their robot and a tiny written proposal. They won the business and DARPA awarded them a $4M contract to build robots for use in Afghanistan. They have since sold over $150M of robots to the military.

Colin said that iRobot entered and exited 18 different businesses over their 12 year existence before finally landing on the military robot idea. They have since entered the consumer market with robot vacuum cleaners and swimming pool cleaners.

Persistence and tenacity are hallmark qualities of successful entrepreneurs. Harmonix and iRobot are excellent examples of that never die attitude. There is a fine line between success and failure. There is no secret formula or obvious path to success. Just one common trait...an indomitable desire to succeed against all adversity and doubt. Very few people have this drive and the leadership ability to attract great people to their cause. This drive is indefinable but we know it when we see it. It is sometimes misdiagnosed as being delusional and fanatical. The difference in diagnosis is success or failure. Succeed and you are a brilliant visionary. Fail and you are a delusional loser. The line between them is very fine.

Sim Simeonov of Polaris Ventures is also at the Nantucket Conference and has a great blog post about "Top 5 suggestions for startups from IDEO." Lots of great speakers and content here at the Nantucket Conference.

PaaS and the innovation opportunities

Lynda Ting — Thu, 01 May 2008 03:23:00 GMT

Unlike what the development world experienced with emergence of two leading platform vendors, and up until recently a third with the widespread adoption of open source, cloud-based platforms, or PaaS—platform as a service, has yet to be dominated by a single vendor. I characterize the situation as a land grab, while some at at Software 2008 this week, namely McKinsey called it an emerging war in the enterprise.

Because the landscape is still taking shape and there are no clear boundaries on what services a PaaS should be expected offer, it's going to take the biggest and most prominent stake to declare them. There are several well-known PaaS vendors such as those from Salesforce, Amazon, Coghead, Bungee Labs, Webex and OpSource, yet they all differ quite significantly from one another.

I like the framework McKinsey employs in the report released today. To sum it up, there are three market segments that PaaS vendors cater to: delivery, developer, and ISV.

With fears of captive lock-in, customers will need to see innovation and efficiency at any of these levels, and integration to existing on-premise data sources will be a key differentiator.

McKinsey report on the emerging PaaS war

Enterprise Mashups—the longtail of IT applications

Lynda Ting — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:18:00 GMT

I'm on day two of Software 2008 and the SaaS, PaaS, SOA and Enterprise 2.0 themes couldn't be louder.

In terms of Enterprise 2.0, mashups & integration are the emerging topics to explore. On the heels of Web 2.0 Expo in SF last week, where the presence of and buzz around enterprise 2.0 offerings increased significantly from the previous years', mashups have been characterized as the "longtail" of IT applications. I certainly agree with this description. If you subscribe to the premise that there is significant unmet demand for application development, then it will take little to convince you that mashups can quickly, easily and economically alleviate this frustration with IT. Similar to how iTunes has revealed the longtail of music content by breaking individual song tracks free from the expensive, lengthy and arduous album recording process, mashups break application components free from the lengthy application development cycle.

I no longer have to wait for a 12+ month development cycle to access corporate data from various data sources to approve a customer quote. Serena Software cited the example of combining Salesforce, SAP and PeopleSoft data with external credit score data to provide one of its customers an automated order quoting mashup. Jackbe, Kapow and Denodo are other emerging entrants in the space.

While still evolving and estimated by Forrester at only a $60M market for 2008, mashups will be the presentation layer for these application components, but there will be much more to understand about the actual integration and whether enterprises are willing to pay for it.

Metering Cloud Computing

Yi-Jian Ngo — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:18:00 GMT

One of my favorite quotes from the book Fooled by Randomness is

Wittgenstein's Rule: Unless you have confidence in the ruler's reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table, you may as well be using the table to measure the ruler.

I believe that we are in the very early phases of the migration of enterprise IT infrastructure into the cloud. Once it’s there, though, I expect that there will be a need to measure its consumption in a uniform way, regardless of whether it’s desktops, servers or data centers that are being purveyed. Simplistic metrics like time or compute cycles are unlikely to survive contact with cloud infrastructure that can conjure up customized stacks in real time from globally-distributed & heterogeneous resource pools.

Failing to come up with an appropriate yardstick could lead to hairy billing issues, savvy customers tinkering with clever arbitrage schemes and potentially the inability of cloud service providers to effectively predict how much to charge in order to cover their costs.

One candidate for such a universal metric is the Computing Resource Unit or “CRU”, developed by SatoriTech, a virtualization analytics startup. CRU is a quantitative measure of compute capacity calculated via an algorithmic approach that normalizes a wide range of input variables.

Unlike metrics that are simply a thin layer of code wrapped around a set of arbitrary “consultant-generated” frameworks, the patent-pending technology behind CRU is the product of multiple years of research and is currently deployed in some of the largest commercial & government institutions in Sweden, where it is used to measure & benchmark the efficiency of internal IT infrastructure.

I wonder what the impact of such a universal metric will be. Some would argue that it will commoditize IT and destroy value. But it's also plausible that the economies of scale that cloud service providers achieve would merely shift value in their favor and that of their end customers.

Alltop—all the top stories from Guy Kawasaki

Kris Olson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:21:00 GMT

The post I just wrote about Start-UP Media in New Zealand got 25 views in a few minutes. One from a ping back (comment below) and one from Alltop.com -- Guy Kawasaki's new site that covers all the Top Stories. The MicrosoftStartupZone is a site they track. Yeah! Thanks, Guy. We're under Small Business and Startups.

How useful is Alltop? I love the concept -- Alltop collects the best sites and keeps you up to date. I don't have to "add favorite" and then forget where it is. Someone else does the work of keeping all those links up to date, as well. But it's a little overwhelming. I am working on SEO for this site, for instance (Connors), but Alltop had soooooo many SEO topics, I don't know where to start. Can I mark some as my favorites and have them float to the top? Under Startups, I recognize more of the sites, but there are still a lot. (OK, don't get me wrong, I am thrilled to have our site among them!!) How are they chosen? How are they ordered? (One old friend under Startups is Tim Berry—writing about startups, business plans, etc.)

The most fun was Egos, under People. Only Guy could get away with calling it that. Check the egos it tracks! Also the Mom blogs, a neighbor has an energizing and oh-so-true blog: Beth Blecherman. OK, enough, I could find connections all day on Alltop!

Alltop: check it out.

ReMIX in Silicon Valley—Silverlight shines

Kris Olson — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:14:00 GMT

ReMIX08 turned out to be a great conversation two weeks ago at our Silicon Valley campus. Scott Guthrie led off with a session on Silverlight peppered with lots of sexy demos. Sam Ramji led a thought-provoking panel on “what does open” mean, and the day concluded with an entertaining reprise of Don Dodge’s panel on social networking. Don started his panel by asking the audience of roughly 250 people the following questions—check out their/our telling answers:

Who has an account on Bebo? (1)
Who has clicked on a facebook ad? (5)
Who is a facebook user? (many hands shot up—the “older than college” generation)
Who is a LinkedIn user? (even more hands)
Who has clicked on a Google AdWord? (many hands)
Why did Bebo sell for $800M? and the panel kicked off on that question.

While I was writing a post on the conference this weekend, I found a great summary of reMIX08 Silicon Valley by Brian Finnerty of InnerWorkings, I have repeated some of his comments, below, on three key presentations/panels, and you can read the whole above. Also, if you attended remix or MIX08, let us know what you thought! [There are several posts about Innerworkings on this site, by the way; use the Search box.]

We were treated to a really entertaining demo of a working Silverlight application courtesy of Scott Stanfield, CEO of Vertigo Software. Scott’s presentation of the superb work completed by his team at Vertigo showcased Silverlight’s amazing “deep zoom” feature, which sounds cool enough but wait until you see it in action. Hop over to the Vertigo site for a project description, which provides fine-grained access to The Hard Rock Cafe’s varied collection of rock and roll memorabilia. The online collection includes 55GB of raw images comprising 250+ pieces of valuable music history, including sarcastic letters from Paul McCartney, guitars worth more than a 3 bedroom house in San Francisco, and other examples of stunning visual detail. Absolutely brilliant…

Another highlight of the ReMIX08 conference was the panel discussion about what “open” really means to developers, software companies, and entrepreneurs. Moderated with insight by our old friend Sam Ramji who runs Microsoft’s open source and Linux team for kicks and giggles, this was an excellent session with some very clued-in contributors. In particular, I thought Anil Dash from Six Apart and Jeff Attwood of Coding Horror fame had much to say about what defines open source development, community participation, and the messy tangle of software patents and copyright limits…..

Lastly, the day closed with a very lively and entertaining panel on the future of social networking — lots of raucous comments about how Plaxo burned their users’ trust only to regain it, rampant disagreements about how important profile portability is to the average user, and the stupidity of big companies who came late to the social networking game. If it was a title bout, I’d call it a split decision on points between Dalton Caldwell of imeem, Joseph Smarr of Plaxo, and Dave McClure of 500 Hats (who kept stirring the pot with relish).

Another member of EBT's (the Emerging Business Team) broader team participated on Sam Ramji's Open panel—Anand Iyer. He is all over Silicon Valley talking with startups and entrepreneurs. Passionate and articulate. He helped craft some of the content for this site on the Why Microsoft pages. Watch his blog: Artificial Ignorance. Great guy to contact if you are thinking of doing a startup or in the throes of giving birth.

Starting up a Nation—New Zealand

Kris Olson — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:53:00 GMT

Recently, we received a request from New Zealand to repost a blog by Don Dodge. We discovered a cool company in New Zealand that is helping start-ups in New Zealand succeed in the global online space. It's interesting how many similar and also creative efforts are taking place around the world to help startups succeed.

The company, aptly named Start-UP Media, has taken it upon themselves to see that their country’s local online sector becomes a player in the international online space. Start-UP, formed by Patrick MacFie with partners Tim Norton, Tim Copeland & Nigel Lewis, is all about providing local online entrepreneurs with access to the right information, resources and networks that they need to succeed in the Web 2.0 world. In doing so, Start-UP hopes to drive growth and investment into the New Zealand online sector.

“We recognize that the online space represents an area of massive opportunity for the NZ economy. We have world class talent in the creative industries and a unique perspective on the world that when focused on the Web 2.0 space could very quickly put our small nation on the Web2 Map” says MacFie. That’s obviously a pretty big call when considering that on a recent trip to the O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference they struggled to find a single person who could name a successful NZ Web 2.0 company. “We were at the conference filming for our upcoming TV series and as part of each interview we conducted we asked the interviewee what New Zealand online companies they had heard of, and people were like “ummm, arrrrr I’ve never heard of any.” It was pretty damn funny to begin with but a little depressing after about the tenth blank-faced answer.”

Undeterred, the team launched their NZ based online site and magazine publication in December 2007. “Our trip to the Valley was invaluable in that we were able to demystify the whole process of taking a NZ company up to Silicon Valley and conducting a successful in market launch. We were then able to come back to NZ and share the experience with others in the local space through our various media channels.” The Start-UP founders point to free flowing knowledge exchange and collaboration between experienced online entrepreneurs and new or aspiring entrants to the space as being crucial to their country’s ability to make an impact on the international scene. They are now poised to launch a Y-Combinator style Web 2.0 Incubator from their nation’s capital. “The incubator is a natural extension to our business model, everything we do is about supporting the local eco-system. The incubator provides us with the means to ensure that we are consistently turning out a world-class product and we’re not sending guys up to the Valley under-prepared,” says MacFie.

The Start-UP team are currently in production on their first TV series that will screen on New Zealand’s leading TV channel and have just moved into full time production of Start-UP Magazine. “I’d say that most people around the world would look at our print and TV media channels as pretty old school but in an early stage online market like New Zealand we have to reach out and engage our community wherever they are,” says MacFie. “We believe that there’s some kid in front of a computer monitor at some NZ University campus about to create the next Facebook; we want to make sure he or she gets the support they need to make it happen.”

www.start-up.co.nz

Where Are They Now—K2 Revisited

Startup Superstars — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:00:00 GMT

REDMOND, WASHINGTON
www.k2.com

K2 Snags 1,500 Customers in 42 Countries—20 percent of the Fortune 100

K2 (a division of SourceCode Technology Holdings, Inc.) says it is changing the way people use software. In 1997, it set out to build a better workflow product, and make it applicable to just about any type of industry. Today, it is doing that and more by offering a platform for building process-driven applications that improve business efficiency for all kinds of organizations. It can be set up to automate and manage business processes—such as document approval or inventory tracking—or pull together business processes, people, services, information and systems into a single application that helps drive business. You can even use it like building blocks to assemble new applications. In this way, K2 eliminates the complexity of traditional software development. It’s easy to use, visual tools enable business people and technical people to collaborate and assemble process-driven applications. The company’s flagship product is K2 [blackpearl]—a business process management tool for the enterprise.

The Microsoft Connection?

According to Adriaan Van Wyk, CEO of K2, “We set out more than seven years ago to build software on the Microsoft platform that would help people be more productive working in process automated environments. As we saw Microsoft innovate with the introduction of Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) as a platform, and saw the enhancements in Office and the Office system, it created so many more opportunities for us as an organization, and allowed us to expand our vision of what we could do with customers. It extended beyond the Office System to include the Microsoft BizTalk Server to address the system-to-system and EAI space. If I look at the core platform itself, the .NET platform, Visual Studio, and new technologies like Silverlight, it certainly has changed the way we look at our own software and capabilities and the problems that we solve for our customers.”

Having worked with the Emerging Business Team since 2004, Van Wyk says, “We’ve had a great working relationship with just about all aspects of Microsoft—from the field organization, to technical assistance to early engagements with product teams.”

Specifically, the company has worked with the Connected System Division, Developer Evangelism, and the Office team. Explains Van Wyk, “This has given us the insight, and empowered us to innovate with them, and enabled us to attach to their innovation cycles. That has probably been one of the key success factors of the relationship and of our making the decision to back our entire business on the Microsoft platform—Microsoft has allowed us to work with them, and be successful with them.”

The original Microsoft connection came when K2 was working with another Microsoft customer—it had only a handful of customers at that time. Once Microsoft saw the technology, Van Wyk says they were quick to help them achieve success. Recalls Van Wyk, “They wrote up our story and published it to their internal knowledge base where other divisions within Microsoft became aware of our solution, and invited us to engage with their customers as well.”

“If you look at where we were just five years ago, it is a phenomenal success story of how Microsoft empowered a company like ours to be part of their ecosystem and achieve success,” says Van Wyk.

Where are they now?

The company has grown from three customers and a few employees back in 2000 to 300 employees and 1,500 customers in 42 countries worldwide. Today, the company has about 20 percent of the Fortune 100 as customers including big-name companies such as BMW, Pfizer, Wells Fargo, Allianz, Accenture, and Microsoft. K2 is also profitable and growing about 50 percent year-over-year by revenue. As a Global ISV and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, K2 has won a number of Microsoft awards including the Information Worker Solutions Technology Partner of the Year in 2006. As it looks to the future, it continues to leverage Microsoft technologies, such as SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, together with the next-generation of server technologies such as Oslo. On its front office, it will be making investments in the Office System and in Silverlight, as well as the Unified Communications products. Says Van Wyk, “We plan to broaden our reach with customers and take most of our products and our offerings and offer them in a service-oriented way to allow a new generation of customers to get the benefits as well. There’s a lot of work happening between us and Microsoft to enable that. The whole software plus services (S+S) model is very key for us, and we’re going commercial with it in the next 12 months.”

For more information, visit K2 online.

Triggit is Winner of Web 2.0 Expo Launch Pad

John Nogrady — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 05:54:00 GMT

Congratulations to Zach Coelius and Triggit as the winning startup at Web 2.0 Expo. Triggit helps bloggers and small website owners make money. Their simple WYSIWYG editing tool uses just one line of JavaScript to enable instant drag-and-drop publishing of AdSense, Amazon and other affiliate programs and ad networks. Users can also easily add content from sites like Flickr and YouTube.