Monday, February 18, 2013

The VC Model Fast Changing

Rocky Balboa
Rocky Balboa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Andreessen Horowitz has been shaking things up. They write checks, that's still the primary thing they do, but they do that and about 11 other things for the companies they invest in. Over the past few years angel investing has been fundamentally disrupted, and the VC game is also being disrupted fast. That's a good thing.

Transcript: The keys to Andreessen Horowitz's success
Partners are fined $10 for every minute they are late to a meeting, a punishment that reinforces the belief that at Andreessen Horowitz, entrepreneurs deserve respect. ..... Having raised three funds worth more than $2.7 billion--and investments that have included Facebook, Skype, Groupon, and Instagram--Andreessen Horowitz quickly has become one of the most influential firms on Sand Hill Road. ..... founders make the best CEOs .... professional CEOs have these incredible networks. They know people in the press and customers and executives and all these guys they can bring into the company. So we thought the firm ought to build the definitive network for Silicon Valley so that when a founder comes in, we can give him a network that's better than any professional CEO ..... if you take out administrative staff, and you take out back office, that gives you about 45 operating professionals in the firm who aren't general partners. And there's no other firm in this industry that has anywhere close to that. You know, other firms might have three or four. We have 45. ..... these 40-some people are extremely expensive. They're cost centers. ..... in CAA, the way they were able to build a platform is the talent agents didn't take any salary for the first several years, and they used the commissions that they got from the actors and actresses and screenwriters to kind of build the platform. .... you won't see us doing things like biotech or clean tech or, you know, we're not degreed in material sciences ..... we have software-based startups in industries as diverse as agriculture, real estate, financial services, education
The Rise Of Company Builders
Certain operators are foregoing the traditional path of joining a traditional VC to instead create a studio-like holding operation. By doing so, they remain engaged with the grit and grassroots challenges of building a startup. They remain company builders......... a “new asset class” in the VC world .... Even VC giant Andreessen Horowitz is building an army of marketers, business development execs, recruiters and more to help aid in the creation of startups. .... because it is so easy to build startups these days, that there is a need for models that allow companies to leverage certain functions like sales and marketing, hiring, legal and more .... built and scaled sales teams across a number of industries and companies ..... the value of a shared platform of data, analytics and monetization tools. Betaworks has a layer of tools that its companies, which include Chartbeat, Bitly and others, all use. He compares this to the movie studio model, where companies like Disney and Universal create individual movies but have a layer of services in-house that promote films, and provide other functions across these various content plays. ....... if an entrepreneur is a coding genius, Andreessen will work on helping with go-to market strategies, marketing, recruiting, and more ..... The traditional VC model is predicated on the fact that failure happens in the marketplace. But our model is a more flexible platform for innovation. If things don’t look like they will work out, we can easily pivot because there hasn’t been as much capital and investment put in ..... the traditional VC model doesn’t allow VCs to go as in-depth in the trenches with entrepreneurs as with the studio model. .... it is very difficult for someone who isn’t really close to the company to add value on a regular basis ..... a class of entrepreneurs who don’t need to participate in the studio model. ..... Science takes mid-to-high, double-digit equity in their startups (compared to Y Combinator’s 7 percent). All models are different in terms of how they are breaking down equity allotments, but it can be daunting to give away that amount of equity and it begs the question of whether this is entrepreneur-friendly. ...... when Apollo Creed retired from professional boxing, but then decided to coach Rocky Balboa against Clubber Lang
Enhanced by Zemanta

Pinterest Fast Approaching

English: Red Pinterest logo
English: Red Pinterest logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Pinterest May Be Bigger Than You Think, Competing To Be The 2nd Most Popular Social Network
67 percent of American Internet users are on Facebook, 16 percent are on Twitter and 15 percent are on Pinterest. .... For Pinterest, the 15 percent user number is up from 12 percent in August 2012, suggesting it continues to grow. Instagram placed fourth in the study with 13 percent of American Internet users on the service. .... Pinterest was offering an experience that Facebook wasn't. .... Women outnumber men on Pinterest by 5-to-1
For Pinterest to be competing with Twitter is really something. And it is growing at a clip that it will likely zoom past Twitter. There is a lesson there. Facebook is organized around photos and updates. Pinterest is organized around photos you don't even have to upload. Like many women say, Pinterest is their Google.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Nexus 4: The Top Phone In The Market

Nexus 4
Nexus 4 (Photo credit: abuakel)
In my opinion Google's Nexus 4 is the top smartphone in the market right now, the other two contenders being Apple's iPhone 5 and Samsung's Galaxy S III. Google's Android overtook Apple in quantity a long time ago. But with this phone Google has also beat Apple on quality. And the unlocked Nexus 4 selling at $299 is a steal compared to the iPhone's price tag of over $700. Couple that with a $50 per month for unlimited talk, text and data with T-Mobile and you are in for a treat.

Nexus 4 is my first smartphone. I am a Google fanboy. I love Google like some people love Apple. The iPhone was not something I ever looked at for me. And the Nexus 4 was not easy to get hold of. When it first went on sale online, it was all gone in 30 seconds. The next time it was gone in a few hours. I managed to place an order the second time. A tip I found on Twitter was to keep clicking on Order even thought the site claimed the phone had gone out of stock. After about half an hour of trying I was finally able to place my order. The phone still took over a month to show up. I went to the UPS facility to pick it up. By now the phone is fully in stock online.

My number one gripe with the phone has been the battery, the number two gripe is the storage space, but then I did opt for the cheaper 8 GB version. One car racing game I bought for five dollars alone is 2 GB. I wish the battery lasted three times longer and the storage space was also three times bigger. As for battery what would truly satisfy me is a small nuclear reactor embedded in there, but I don't see that on the horizon.

I consume a lot of news on my phone, I take a lot of pictures. I regularly check in on FourSquare. Gmail is my top app. I am frequent on Facebook. I have been playing Google's augmented reality game Ingress. I really like my Amazon Kindle app. I play chess. There are so many wonderful apps. I have one that makes me a doctor of sorts, another gives me a virtual gun, bam, bam, bam, a third gives me so many tools in one it is like a Swiss knife. I scan documents with an app on my phone. I have apps that are musical instruments. I have one app that my tech consulting firm made for a client. It is still in the works.

Because of Android's robust integration with Google services, my Google Voice contacts show up in name when they call, even when they call from Nepal. I often talk to my engineers on Skype on my phone. I also chat away on my Google Talk app. An unlimited calling plan brings peace of mind, even though I don't currently spend too much time talking on my phone. I am more of an email kind of guy.

My mobile phone is my mobile office as well as my personal assistant.

$299 is still not a globally cheap price. Android phones costing $80 are set to flood the Global South markets. If the PC hit hundreds of millions in volume, the smartphone is set to hit billions. The smartphone has become the internet access device of choice in both the rich and poor countries. People expect to be always on.

Google is not resting on its success at the operating system level. It has systematically entered the app space also on the iPhone. The iPhone's map fiasco got a lot of publicity. But Google has offered iPhone users substitutes to more than the iPhone's map app. It can be argued Google has been hollowing out the iPhone.

But 2013 is the year when bendable phones and new operating systems besides Android and Apple's iOS are supposed to arrive. Even Nexus 4 will feel like yesterday's phone in a matter of months.

(Written on 2/9/13)
Enhanced by Zemanta

Friday, February 15, 2013

How I Just Made Two Purchases

Image representing Amazon as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase
Last night in Union Square I met a fellow Ingress player called Omar, Ingress name Slomar. We talked. I griped about "battery life." He suggested I get an external battery.

Today I googled around. Then I gave up. The choices were too confusing. I was gonna wait.

Then I did the near daily thing of visiting TechMeme. From there I ended up at this news story.

Google must act quickly on libellous Blogger posts, says appeal court

At the bottom of the news story was this ad.



It was a near perfect price for a perfect product, something I really needed to get. The ad did what my Google searches were not able to do.

So I proceeded to place the order.

While doing so Amazon said they would give me a free 30 day trial on Amazon Prime, if I accepted, the product would get free two day shipping. I opted in for the two day free shipping.

Then I have been browsing around their movie catalog. It is quite amazing. I think I am going to stay with Amazon Prime after the month long free trial is over. It is $79 per year. I could easily watch 50 movies in one year. And I guess you get to borrow one book a month for free. I am not a frequent Amazon shopper. But free shipping is enticing. I am now more likely to search on Amazon before elsewhere for some future purchases. I am locked in a little I guess, but I am not unhappy about it.

Here Google and Amazon did not compete. They provided me with a seamless experience. This is sound capitalism. The consumer won. I won.
Enhanced by Zemanta