Man goes to moon. Does man then go to Mars? iPhone/iPad have been the moon. But TV is Mars. Steve Jobs tried and failed at TV. I am not optimistic about Tim Cook's chances of delivering on TV. TV is like cancer, it is like poverty, it is not any one thing. TV continues to be bigger than the whole of the Internet.
Apple could coast for a few years just on iPhones and iPads. But after that it enters Microsoft, Steve Ballmer territory. It matures. I hope I am wrong though.
Steve Ballmer is no Steve Jobs, and Steve Ballmer is no Bill Gates. You needed a Steve Jobs to spring forth the iPhone and the iPad. And those two have taken Apple into the stratosphere. You can't fault Steve Ballmer for not having come up with the iPhone or the iPad, although he has made some strategic mistakes even in those two spaces coming in as a latecomer.
But I think Microsoft might be able to do with gestures what Apple has done with touch. 3D computing might see a better day for Microsoft.
Steve Ballmer's number one failure though is the corporate decadence at Microsoft. There is too much red tape in Redmond. That is something Steve Ballmer is capable of rectifying but has not. Most of the lost decade sting he has earned through that inaction.
Steve Jobs paid Ballmer the ultimate anti compliment by calling him Sculley.
Mark Penn is a familiar name. The guy was a pollster during the 2008 election. He was on the other side! His new assignment makes sense to me. Politics is war by other means. Business is politics by other means.
a new corporate strategy role reporting directly to Steve Ballmer ...... is assembling a “SWAT team” to work on thorny strategy questions ..... corporate vice president of strategic and special projects. ..... politics and technology have been my two passions since I was about 12 .... the Microsoft boss was intrigued with Mr. Penn’s comparison of the marketing challenge of Bing to pitching a political candidate ..... Penn said more consumers need to be convinced to use Bing. .... “Diehard habits can be questioned, just in the same way that people drank Coke and then realized Pepsi was just as good if not better” .... Mr. Penn said he will continue to work from Washington, D.C., though he plans to spend time in Redmond
This hire speaks to Ballmer's tenacity.
Steve Jobs had innovation nailed down. Ballmer has tenacity nailed down.
Image via CrunchBaseThe PC/laptop is done. The smartphone is done. The tablet is done. I don't foresee any major transformations with any of those. What is not done is the TV screen. That is the next frontier. But I am not sure Apple - or any other company I know - is in a position to do it. The TV might get done by some startup not launched yet. Or it might get done by Apple and Google. Right now it is too early to tell. And the wrist watch might not see magic before nanotech really takes off. Which brings us to the big movie screen, but then the problem with movies is outdated business practices, less technology. People are okay watching movies on smaller screens.
Bill Gates retired, but Steve Jobs died. Tim Cook might be a better groomed successor than Steve Ballmer, but the guy still has a tough nut to crack. Ride the iPhone and the iPad wave for as long as you can. That is at least two good years ahead.
Forbes: Nokia’s Smartphone Chief On Microsoft Alliance, Future Windows Devices: the Finnish giant’s transition from its homegrown Symbian platform to Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system ....... The future of Nokia and, to a certain extent, of Microsoft’s mobile ambitions largely hinges on the success of the two companies’ alliance. ..... several Nokia devices were already running Mango, the latest version of Windows Phone software. ...... the first batch of Nokia Windows Phones will be a “small portfolio” of multiple devices. ...... Nokia was an early advocate for NFC, which enables phones to wirelessly exchange data such as payment information, mobile tickets, business card contacts and website links. ...... Early Nokia Windows Phones may also include a China-specific device.
Microsoft allied with Nokia, the number one name in mobile phone hardware. Nokia was struggling under the onslaught of smartphones and it looked like Android was about to take over the world. And Microsoft was largely missing in action. The Windows phone was widely considered a joke.
Bing - But It's Not Google - used to be an industry joke as well. Search was best left to Google.
Windows and Office looked passe. Chrome was coming. Google Apps were all over the place. The smart crowd was into Google Apps.
Microsoft buying Skype could still fail, and we will know in a year, but something tells me this purchase that was pushed behind the scenes by Bill Gates himself might help Microsoft become a post PC company, a player also in the smartphone and tablet spaces. Skype's deepest possible integration with the Windows phone just might work wonders.
Image via WikipediaStepping into Bill Gates' shoes was going to be a tough act to follow for anybody. It just was not possible. Bill Gates ruled the industry for a decade and a half. 1995 was the high point. Windows was the only game in town. And then the guy went into philanthropy where he has been as amazing as he was in software. It has been a second career to him.
Microsoft pretty much missed out the smartphone and tablet trains. But then competing with Steve Jobs is as hard as succeeding Bill Gates. Steve Ballmer has had to do both and I feel for the guy. He was an Economics major at college. And there is a cultural bias against fat, bald people. So people end up thinking he is less smart than he actually is. And he is a non coder in a coding business.
There is this story from the mid 1990s. Ballmer returned back to Redmond from one of his trips visiting with customers. And he got a group of his engineers together and said, "I don't know what TCP/IP is, I don't want to know what TCP/IP is. Just make the pain go away." Everywhere he had gone people had been talking about TCP/IP.
Image via CrunchBaseSteve Jobs, that most iconic of tech CEOs, absolutely has refused to take his eyes off the consumer to offer something also to the enterprise, and that has been his Apple story from the beginning. And he is winning. The iPad has been flooding the workplace. What is good for the consumer is also good for enterprise.
Mark Zuckerberg absolutely refused to let people have more than one identity when all the talk was that you are one person to your boss, another person to your college friend. He argued it should not be that way. You ought be the same person to everyone.
Image via CrunchBaseThe chances of Microsoft coming from behind in the mobile phone space are slim. The chances of Microsoft coming from behind in the tablet space are slim. The chances of Windows and Office getting the sexy back are also slim. So what is a company the size of Microsoft supposed to do?
TechCrunch: Microsoft’s Ballmer: Android Isn’t Really Free — You Have To Pay Us For Patents: this is all political nonsense and a pathetic play by Microsoft...... The software giant hasn’t been successful in mobile phones, so they’re attempting to ride on Google’s coattails with some software patents. ..... Microsoft is giving phone makers a choice: pay us to use our software, or pay us to use Google’s software. Or pay your lawyers to fight us in court. (Motorola is apparently choosing the latter — no doubt at Google’s urging.)
Microsoft has been left in the dust. It is nowhere on the smartphone stage. It is missing in action on the tablet stage. It was never nowhere on the data software stage. Bing is a joke. And Google is busy cannibalizing Windows - hello Chrome OS, hello Android - and Office - hello Google Apps. So Microsofties actually held a party in Redmond - not making this up - where they ritually buried the iPhone. That has to be a joke.
Now they are out to use legal shenanigans to hurt Android. Android is free. It is meant to be free. So is Windows. Put out a free, minimalist Windows if you want to keep competing. That is the message. Now the innovation is in taking things out and keeping the bare minimum, not in adding yet another feature no one wants and that gives everyone headaches.
But then what is an Economics major CEO gonna do?
TechCrunch
If Web 1.0’s Kryptonite Was the Bust, Web 2.0 Kryptonite Was the Grind: the CEO and founder of the media company I work for were on stage looking awkward and white, but dancing none the less. ..... One word has summed both of these guys for a while now: Tired...... and for me, mostly ended last week when TechCrunch was sold. But the recession didn’t crash this one– exhaustion did. Building media companies– which is what most Web 2.0 businesses are– is a grind. .... We make startups sound easier and more glamorous than they are..... the Industry Standard– the magazine that chronicled the 1990s bubble and held weekly rooftop parties ... A few million dollars is life changing for most people
Should Entrepreneurs Bet It All On The Billion Dollar Exit, Or Cash Out Small?: entrepreneurs are almost always wrong. They really don’t understand their customers; they learn by trial and error..... all the Groupon clones. .... If you’re a founder and own 50% of your startup, a $30 million acquisition can be life-changing. With a $15 million payout, you go from poverty to riches. You’re set for life
The Economist: The End Of Wintel THEY were the Macbeths of information technology (IT): a wicked couple who seized power and abused it in bloody and avaricious ways. ...... the two firms’ supposed love of monopoly profits and dead rivals. ..... increasingly seen as yesterday’s tyrants. Rumours persist that a coup is brewing to oust Steve Ballmer ..... “Intel Architecture”, the set of rules governing how software interacts with the processor it runs on. ..... the Wintel marriage is crumbling. ...... The Wintel marriage is now threatened, oddly enough, by technological progress. Processors grow ever smaller and more powerful; internet and wireless connections keep speeding up. This has created both centripetal and centrifugal forces, which are pushing computing into data centres (huge warehouses full of servers) and onto mobile devices— ...... The shift to mobile computing and data centres (also known as “cloud computing”) has speeded up the “verticalisation” of the IT industry. ...... now firms are becoming more vertically integrated. ...... Apple .. is building a huge data centre ....... Having lost its battle with the European Commission, for instance, Microsoft must now give Windows users in the European Union a choice of which web browser to install. ...... Microsoft has made big bets on cloud computing. It has already built a global network of data centres and developed an operating system in the cloud called Azure. The firm has put many of its own applications online, even Office, albeit with few features. What is more, Microsoft has made peace with the antitrust authorities and even largely embraced open standards. ....... Microsoft’s mobile business is in disarray. ...... in tablet computers, Microsoft is behind, too ..... Paul Otellini .. is pinning his hopes on a new family of processors called Atom. Rather than making these chips ever more powerful, Intel is making them ever cheaper and less power-hungry ....... ARM’s chips guzzle little power and cost much less than Intel’s, because its licensing fees are low and most customers use foundries (contract chipmakers) to make them. .... Intel’s position seems safe as long as Moore’s Law holds ..... Microsoft has yet to deliver a competitive version of Windows for smart-phones and tablets ..... Meego, an open-source operating system for mobile devices. Microsoft, by cuddling up to ARM, will be able to build chips of its own. ..... Oracle, Cisco and IBM will vie for corporate customers; Apple and Google will scramble for individuals (see table). IT, like the world, is becoming multipolar.
Like Bill Gates once said, success is a lousy teacher. But that does not explain it fully, or even a big part of it. This is about the tectonic forces in innovation, in technology. This is ultimately about hurricane size clouds.
The big company of one era does not end up also being the big company of another era. That is the nature of the beast.
Wintel was a PC era marriage. And the PC era has been ending for a while now. You end up facing a classic problem. How do you lose your love for the big revenue sources and go for the little innovative products that might (or might not) become big tomorrow, but if they become big, they will become big by eating into your current big products? No wonder it is almost always some outsider doing that munching and crunching.
As IT fans out into ever larger data centers and ever more powerful mobile devices, we have entered the era of welcome fragmentation. The PC used to be the center of the computing universe. The PC will still be around, but it will be just one creature in the vast tech ecosystem. It will be just one galaxy in the tech universe.
Like is supposed to happen in functional capitalism: the consumer wins.
So last night I presented at the Dot Com Hatchery for five minutes, took questions for five, and then listened to comments from the panelists for a few more minutes. Overall it was a wonderful, wonderful experience.
Sun Microsystems
101 Park Avenue
4th floor, Gramercy Park Room
New York, NY 10017
I was hoping to put out a series of posts at this blog leading to the day of the presentation, but I did not do. That was a mistake.
How many people are online today? What has been the history? What are the projections?
A survey of the global mobile market.
A long, definitive post about Wimax. Where is it coming from? Where is it going?
A survey of the ad industry in India, China, South Africa, Brazil.
I did not rehearse once before. How did Yao find out? She said as much during one of her comments. I did not rehearse once before my social media talk at the Science House MeetUp, and that went really well. (My Talk On Social Media At The Science House MeetUp) I guess there I had no time limit. Here it was five minutes by the clock. You needed to have rehearsed every single word, every single phrase. Not doing so was a big mistake. You have to deliver your lines like you are in a movie. There are not that many words you can pack into five minutes, especially if you want to deliver well.
What would my 30 second pitch be?
My tech startup wants to figure out ways to bring hundreds of millions of new people online. You do that by bringing the costs down for internet access. You do that by serving ads. Down the line we might also go into hardware if necessary for what I call the IC, the Internet Computer. For our core business we want to polish up the business model through a pilot project and grow it globally through the franchise concept.
What would be the five minute version?
Hi. My name is Paramendra. That is my name on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Gmail and you can google my name up.
The idea that I am trying to present can be caputured in two letters: IC, as in Internet Computer. Back in the 70s we were in the era of the mainframes, those big, ugly computers only big universities and companies could afford. For the past 30 years and more we have been in the era of PCs. I feel we are at the cusp of a new era, the IC era.
I also have to introduce the Web 3.0 concept as I define it. Web 1.0 was when websites were pretty posters. Web 2.0 has been when the websites have been populated. The semantic web is not Web 3.0, that would be Web 2.1. Getting a ton of new people online would be Web 3.0.
A little about me. There is a concrete mathematical theory called the butterfly effect. A butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon could be the reason a cyclone hit Bangladesh. During April 2006 over a period of 19 days, over 8 million out of Nepal's 27 million people thronged the streets to shut the country down completely to oust a king dictator. I was the butterfly flapping my wings in New York City. I am extremely good with vision and group dynamics.
How many of you have been to the first KFC restaurant in Kentucky? I have. I will tie that KFC mention later in the presentation.
This is my startup's relaunch. I am trying to raise 100K for my round one right now. I was done doing that, and then in February 09, reacting to the worst economy in 70 years most of my investors walked away. I took time off, focused on social media, accumulated almost as many followers on Twitter as Donald Trump, experimented with pro blogging, and now I am back in the game.
My former business partner Adam Carson was a Morgan Stanley banker, now at Tuck Business School. My primary engineer was Khushboo Vaish, still in Mumbai, an IIT, IIM graduate, one of the finest Indian engineers of her generation. I still have all the contacts to reassemble my engineering team. Khushboo went to the same business school as the Pepsi CEO.
My round one goal is to raise 100K. My round two goal would be to raise between one to five million. During round three I hope to splash out the franchise concept to grow fast. The first person who put in 100K into Google, that money is now north of a billion. I don't expect to do that well. But even if I can do one third as good in twice as much time, that will still be very good. If you have 5K, 10K or 20K that you are in a position to invest, and you have absolutely no chances of ever becoming a millionaire, I am very interested in your money.
Of the 100K, 20-30K will go towards the pilot project, 20-30K towards a global team, and 50K towards one full timer in NYC.
We in the New York tech community envy Boston and Silicon Valley. If the center of gravity in tech is going to shift from California to New York it will not be because we came up with the next big dot com. Like Steve Jobs said a few years back, the PC wars are over, Microsoft won, let's move on. And he gave us the iPod and the iPhone. Web 3.0 is what will put New York City on the technology map, this capital city of the world where people not from just every country, but every town in every country live. My company would like to take the lead.
Steve Ballmer said in a speech recently that by 2035 we will have four billion people online. That will be too little too late. We have to get there much faster.
These were the four panelists.
Scott Gingold - Director, Strategy at Hatchery
James Jorasch - Founder, Science House
Ken Kharbanda - Director, Strategy at Hatchery
Tereza Nemessanyi - Director, Strategy at Hatchery
James started by throwing me an easy question. After you raise the 100K, what are you going to do? I guess I did not emphasize the pilot project part enough. I said you can set up a pilot project for about 15-20K in my hometown in Nepal. You can start by charging people $25 a month, which is the going rate now, but you also end up with a small pool of users. The idea would be to bring the cost down by serving ads, to move from 25 to 15 to 5 to end up with a much larger pool of users.
That gave Ken an opening. He asked me why I did not mention those figures in any of my slides. I said I agree with you. The slides would have been better if those figures had been mentioned.
Scott said he knew a few people for whom my startup might be a good fit. I made a point to get his card later. Then he said, what's in it for me? I said you are already online, this is more for people who are not online yet. But this would be a great investment opportunity for someone like you. On the other hand there are a lot of people in the outer boroughs who go to the public library to check their email.
The Hatchery folks are religious about their 11 points.
1. Your team
2. What your product/service does
3. What issue/pain is it looking to solve/address
4. What is the solution
5. What is the addressable market
6. What is the competitive landscape
7. Any current customer/client/pilot pipeline
8. What is the revenue stream/source
9. What are your financial projections
10. How much are you looking for in investment
11. What will you do with the money, how will it be spent
Yao was very frank on the topic. She said my presentation did not cover "any" of the 11 points. Holy Moses.
It was curious to me that a guy who presented the idea of a print magazine - many say a dying art form - scored the highest, whereas I was not even scored and here I am saying I want to help shift the center of gravity in tech from California to New York. But I truly appreciated the frank feedback. And I do value the 11 points. I would do much better the next time I have a chance to present for five minutes.
My friends Ed, Alex and I went for drinks later. Ed kept saying I was Rocky, I will keep coming back.
The Sun guy, the all Indian Angelo Rajadurai, approached me on the floor later. Some of the feedback was "harsh," he said. "You might have done well if you had said there are 1.2 billion Indians, only 10 million of them are online today." I grabbed his card as well.
Everybody but everybody goes to the movie theater on the Indian subcontinent. That was true when I was a kid growing up. And they serve a ton of ads on those big screens. Of course the ad market exists and is vibrant out there. The ad market - local and global - will have to be tapped. Imagine Google charging us two cents per search. You can't.
The best part of the evening was the four panelists talked for about 15 minutes each towards the end about four broad topics in business. James talked about the idea, the product, the business. Ken talked about finance. Scott talked about market research. Tereza focused on business to business.
Image via CrunchBaseThe PC/laptop is done. The smartphone is done. The tablet is done. I don't foresee any major transformations with any of those. What is not done is the TV screen. That is the next frontier. But I am not sure Apple - or any other company I know - is in a position to do it. The TV might get done by some startup not launched yet. Or it might get done by Apple and Google. Right now it is too early to tell. And the wrist watch might not see magic before nanotech really takes off. Which brings us to the big movie screen, but then the problem with movies is outdated business practices, less technology. People are okay watching movies on smaller screens. 
Image via CrunchBase
Image via WikipediaStepping into Bill Gates' shoes was going to be a tough act to follow for anybody. It just was not possible. Bill Gates ruled the industry for a decade and a half. 1995 was the high point. Windows was the only game in town. And then the guy went into philanthropy where he has been as amazing as he was in software. It has been a second career to him. 
Image via CrunchBaseSteve Jobs, that most iconic of tech CEOs, absolutely has refused to take his eyes off the consumer to offer something also to the enterprise, and that has been his Apple story from the beginning. And he is winning. The iPad has been flooding the workplace. What is good for the consumer is also good for enterprise. 
Image via CrunchBaseThe chances of Microsoft coming from behind in the mobile phone space are slim. The chances of Microsoft coming from behind in the tablet space are slim. The chances of Windows and Office getting the sexy back are also slim. So what is a company the size of Microsoft supposed to do?
Image by Photography King ♛ via Flickr
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Image by voteprime via Flickr
leading to the day of the presentation, but I did not do. That was a mistake.
market share. Which are the top companies? What have been their trajectories?
Per Child: what happened?and you can google
my name up.
Computer. Back in the 70s we were in the era of the mainframes, those big, ugly computers only big universities and companies could afford. For the past 30 years and more we have been in the era of PCs. I feel we are at the cusp of a new era, the IC era.
has been when the websites have been populated. The semantic web
is not Web 3.0, that would be Web 2.1. Getting a ton of new people online would be Web 3.0.
called the butterfly effect. A butterfly
flapping its wings in the Amazon
could be the reason a cyclone hit Bangladesh. During April 2006 over a period of 19 days, over 8 million out of Nepal's 27 million people thronged the streets to shut the country down completely to oust a king dictator. I was the butterfly flapping my wings in New York City. I am extremely good with vision
and group dynamics.
restaurant in Kentucky? I have. I will tie that KFC
mention later in the presentation.
as Donald Trump, experimented with pro blogging, and now I am back in the game.
banker, now at Tuck Business School. My primary engineer was Khushboo Vaish, still in Mumbai, an IIT, IIM graduate, one of the finest Indian engineers of her generation. I still have all the contacts to reassemble my engineering team. Khushboo went to the same business school as the Pepsi
CEO.
and Silicon Valley. If the center of gravity in tech is going to shift from California
to New York it will not be because we came up with the next big dot com. Like Steve Jobs said a few years back, the PC wars are over, Microsoft
won, let's move on. And he gave us the iPod and the iPhone. Web 3.0 is what will put New York City
on the technology map, this capital city of the world where people not from just every country, but every town in every country live. My company would like to take the lead.
stream/source
guy, the all Indian Angelo Rajadurai, approached me on the floor later. Some of the feedback was "harsh," he said. "You might have done well if you had said there are 1.2 billion Indians, only 10 million of them are online today." I grabbed his card as well. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_syhJiZEbddtVV3iKsV36FNpttNXitxHc9Jtc0n9didXdbZirs2pNngxVr1PUKFJ-CnjT1YkgyWccsVG_bDuV8ETQ-R9Bo3gx7OvULbh18EmAr7JS2ijX0HW6SQIEqgTxl6P5cjIm_1HyDCueldmT2h=s0-d)
