The Post Money Value

Microsoft = WOOF

Who makes this stuff up?

So, Dealbreaker.com has a commentary on a Valleywag thing about people at Microsoft not being able to have pictures of dogs in their offices.

Memo to Nick Denton:

1. I used to have a picture on my desk of my dog Brodie. Big Picture, big dog.

2. I've seen pictures of dogs and cats plus one really weird looking rabbit on my last visit.

3. There is a policy of no dog SOFTWARE products being shown.  Bob, the original Access product, VB 1.0, Windows 1.0, OS/2 Warp, etc. Perhaps your sources got the policies confused?

Problems with Vista? Apple does help

I had to get my daughter a new laptop. The old one had bit the dust after 3 years of faithful, if erratic, service.

We head on out to Staples/Office Depot as they usually have discounts/good deals on open boxes, weirdly configured ones, etc.  Most important, I was hoping for one that had XP pre-installed.

Alas, no luck, I got a special price on a new Toshiba with, Vista Home Premium or Uranium Edition, I can't remember.

Anyway, we get it home, fire it up and get it in it's happy place. It is ready for her to load up EverQuest II.  As it starts to do the install thing, there is a process where the program downloads some stuff, scans it or some such, and goes on to the next.

Michelle wanders into my office and says:

"It doesn't work."

As she starts to describe what the program is doing and before I get a chance to say a word, she says:

"Damn. Remember that stupid Mac commercial where they have the secret service guy making fun of all the permission stuff? I'll bet Vista isn't letting my program load."

90 seconds later the young lass has turn off the offending 'security' and off she goes into whatever, which is costing me something a month, I'm sure.

[Bonus observation] I asked about back ups. Naah. I asked if she had anything on the old one I needed to recover. Naah, all online between Hotmail, writely, facebook, flickr, and myspace.  19 years of age, folks. In University and basically requires no software, no fancy applications.  Worth thinking about.

Tag Clouds: Watching things go Mainstream

First,  we explain em...

Pre-RedEye Rant

I have a Blackberry 8800. It has some great mapping software, GPS, etc. You can add NavTech to this puppy and you are rocking.

Almost.

Why is the following so phreakin hard to do:

1. I'm on the road.
2. I'm jonesing for some sushi, a burger, starbucks, a DQ Buster Bar, whatever.
3. I speak into my device: "Where is Dairy Queen?"  or "Sushi" or whatever.
4. The device plots a speed course to the location.

Every single component exists right now. Voice XML, GPS, address books, Maps, blaah blaah blaah.

And, shockingly?  A potential revenue model!  I'll pay a couple of bucks for this service and so will lots of people.  And Dairy Queen or Burger King or the mighty M will pay to own the word: Hamburger. I know because there is a guy sitting next to me in the Starbucks (Terminal 2, LAX) who owns a Wendy's franchise.  Hell yeah, he said.

Attn: Microsoft.  Do this as an application today and get your little ol logo'd application on my Blackberry. Today. Now.  Dust off the old DRG playbook, run a code contest and reward the winner with a piece of the action as you market it.

There once was a company called VoiceGenie which got sold to Alcatel.  They had/have the tools to do this and Stuart Berkowitz, the founder/CEO and I talked about this years ago.  No GPS (yet) and I was a newbie/stupid VC and didn't do the investment. Dumb. Should have, Stuart was a brain and ahead of his time.

Somebody code this, terms sheet writers are standing by.

Off to the gate. Have a good weekend everybody.

Why you should worry

There are some blog postings running around about not having fear or some such. I can't remember who/details but what struck me was this almost chill out, relax, notion when it comes to running a business in a competitive, every changing business climate. Questionable advice.

A good friend of mine works at Google.  On my last visit to the campus, he said some interesting words which have stuck with me.

"How do I like the job? I'm scared shitless cuz we are a one click and they are gone kinda company with other apps that have to really compete."

Executive at Google.

Along comes my Blackberry 8800 with GPS and Maps.  I did not, have not and probably won't download Google's mobile maps on the device.

Google Maps were on my old one.

Displacement 101 as they say.

My larger, way way larger, point?  Don't get an ulcer, ignore your kids and kick the cat. 

But do think about the words of Andy Grove: Only the Paranoid Survive.

Angels in the Outfield -Disguised as Grandma

Mark McQueen, over at Wellington, dropped me a line, asking some interview style questions.  In them, I talked about friends and family, angels, etc.

I was trying to make two points.

1. Friends and Family expectations should be kept really low.

2. We need more Angels in Canada.

Matt Roberts saw it and wrote a blog entitled "Today's friends & family are Tomorrow's Angels."  You can read the full post here.

The chunk of interest to me is:

"But I’ve got a bit of the opposite view on the rest of his view - friends and family rounds - in most startups I know of are the original angels. They’re usually the ones who get the first $300-600K done, not by themselves but by opening up their contact list to the entrepreneurs and introducing their usually wealthier friends or contacts. They wouldn’t flog the deal to their contacts if they didn’t consider it an investment. Never mind what Rick (or I) might believe, to them its an investment.

Ricks comments also leads into the usual complaint I hear about VC’s, in that they (we) have no respect for the angel/friends/family investors. I hear this all the time. Its a concerning trend that all Canadian angels seems to share this view, especially after years of limited liquidity events."

Ahhh, no.

With respect, Matt, this is not at all where my thinking would be heading.

Over the last, call it, 200 new/start-up/seed type deals I have looked at, most of them start out with credit cards, second mortgages, money from Mom/Dad/Uncle Ned, etc. That is before the lawyer calls in the 'friends' as does the account, the doctor, etc.  My focus with the comments to Mark was strictly: Uncle Ned. 

First, I totally respect Uncle Ned and anyone that helps out a start up.  Mazel Tov.  Set your expectations low as you are doing it as a family member first.  If it is truly, no kidding, I'm serious, it is an investment; no problem, structure it that way.  Different plan.  That would lead into my rant about debt that converts into the formal raise of capital so that Uncle Ned, even tho he can't do the pro-rata thing, gets some pref shares, some shares along side of the professional (or formal) money.  That's respect and that is what I love to see coming into my front door: Debt from Uncle Ned vs. Uncle Ned's $25,000 dollars which created a post money value of the idea (!) at somewhere north of 50 million dollars.

You show me a family that passed the hat on a good deal, got a debt instrument and I'll show you a JLA term sheet that rewards those people by respecting that up front risk/faith in the form of honoring the terms of the debt and not crushing people, etc.  And, yes, to be crystal clear, I have term sheets out that put my money where my mouth/blog is.

But my original statements still hold: set expectations low so everybody can enjoy the family Thanksgiving Day turkey.

Angels got/get screwed because of bad structuring of deals.  Angels are a critically import part of the eco-system and must be rewarded for taking early risk and I've said as much for a long time.

While I appreciate Matt's view and respect the excellent work he does (queue theme from love boat),  Uncle Ned is not tomorrow's Terry Matthews or Ken Nickerson or Peter Schwartz - to name three extremely smart/successful angels-when it comes to the Angel network. 

Uncle Ned is helping out a family member and deserves respect/some reward for that effort which is accomplished expectation setting and by proper, but pesky, paperwork.

[Note to Mark Ralph. You are one of my favorites and if the Raptors go all the way, get out the checkbook, we're baack.]

Fun with the Dinosaurs

I had a chance to visit the zoo today and feed some animals.  On display were some dinosaurs from the world of Network TV.  Big ugly fellas. Grunting, Waddling around, pigging out on whatever nasty looking meat or meat by-products they could get their hands on.

Okay, I'll stop.  I met up with two Executive VPs from a couple of the major TV networks in the US who happened to be in Toronto.  I promise, you are about to shake your head in amazement or as Dragnet's Jack Webb would say, the story is true, only the names have been changed to protect the dorky.. Or something close to that.

These guys were bragging about the ability to start showing TV shows online.  If, for example, you go to ABC's website, you can watch episodes of certain shows pretty much a day or so after they air on TV.

They were proud of these two key points.

They had 'locked down' the content.  Their words, not mine.

They had 'locked out' the rest of the world outside the US. Their words, not mine.

Me: "Yer kidding, right?"

Them: "Not at all. We got this baby right. We'd show you but since we are in Canada, you can't see the stuff."

Me: <sigh>

I crank up the laptop and fire up the abc.come website and we verify that I get the evil, only those in the US can see this, message.

Me: Pay attention, boyz.

Step one: Google: ip spoofer software

Step two: grab one, install it.

Step three: watch Ugly Betty.

Them: Nobody is going to know how to do that. Besides, if you were to tell people, we'd sue for damages.

Me: So, if I told the world that in order to get around websites that restrict access by IP, you could change the IP address via a zillion pieces of software freely available on the Internet, you'd sue me? Really? Like as in, say a blog entry? Can I get that in writing? As a promise?

Them: <blank stares>

Me: If you liked that, watch this trick, guys.

Step one: Google: video screen capture

Step two: grab one, install it.

Step three: grab Ugly Betty.

Them: OMFG! That means some ass hole in a Banana Republic can grab this and put it out on the Internet or sell phreaking DVDs!  Jezzus, why the hell are we paying these geeks.  How does Sony do it?

Me: By destroying the customer's equipment with worms and evil software.

I paid for lunch so it wasn't a total bust. Plus, I showed them where the Hockey Hall of Fame is located.

Dinosaurs, mmmmm, yummy, tastes like chicken.

Notes:

1. I did not meet with ABC people, it was just the first site that came to mind when I went to show -n- tell mode.

2. I really did pick up the check.

Keeping the books - Free

If you are out there using free tools to build free offerings, you probably are trying to keep your expenses low (aka zero).

That 'unsuccessful' and 'dead' company up in the Pacific Northwest has a free accounting package that you can use to keep the books as you get started.

You can impress the heck out of VCs, bankers, angels, and the kids by showing off things like balance sheets, cash flow statements and other pesky details that get in the way of just coding up something.

Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 is available here.

FaceTime vs. all those gizmos

If you are watching the blogging world, you've probably noticed more than one world famous blogger declare "email bankruptcy". 

Back in the day, when I was at a small software company out in Redmond, WA, there was a working theory that said if you just blew away your entire inbox, sent a note to the world announcing that you had a crash in Outlook (totally believable ) and to resend anything important; presto, the good stuff flows back into your email life.

Now -more than once- I've seen this send it again, sorry, I'm overloaded and deleted it all to start over blog posts.

Good news for the Outlook Team! You aren't the default excuse anymore, well done.

When you combine this email overload to all the skype conference calls, video conferencing, net-meetings, etc, one wonders about good old fashioned face time.

I left my home this morning at 5a to catch a LA bound flight from Toronto. I'm in LA for a meeting; then I'm taking the redeye back to Toronto.  The smiles, laughs, body language, etc, can not be replaced.  They are what get deals done and relationships built.  I believe it was Jeff Nolan who said he was heading to the phones vs. email more often.  Amen, Jeff, the face to face is even better.

[Budget Note: I have an Air Pass from Air Canada which allows me unlimited flights on Air Canada's North American network for 6 months. 6 grand a month, worth every penny.]

User Involvement Continues

Items of potential interest:

 

1. If you'd like to be a dead body on CSI:

CTV ups the ante on consumer-generated content today with a CSI contest (link)

2. Microsoft is working the user generated content thing as well:

Xbox is getting a little closer to the world of television with a user-generated pilot promo (link)

 

3.SlideShare  had a contest:

"Quick reminder from the SlideShare crew: there's only a week left in the 'World's Best Presentation Contest' (it ends on April 23rd)."

Productivity: Two Amazing Ideas (or Duh..)

• Turn off the email notification alert in Outlook. I used to think it was really cool. Turn it off and watch your productivity soar while doing stuff on your PC.  I got this tip from another VC out there (Brad? Fred? Paul?) so, thank you, brilliant.

 

• Set your mobile device - Blackberry in my case- to only buzz you from a seriously select few people, like family.  With the 8800 (and Pearl I would guess), you can set very granular ring tones/alerts for virtually everybody's inbound email/phone.  Essentially be ruthless in defining what's really immediate/important.

Of course, taking out the entire Blackberry network helps as well, but that seems excessive.

Sports Junkies and Podcasts

Nothing like the good old four out of five dentists recommend stuff.

Interesting stats from Jupiter via Red Herring. (I'm at 37,000 feet, sorry)

Somebody tell Scoble, bag tech, head to the ball field.

How to Make Money with Twitter

See my previous post, read the last line in the news clipping.  I can just see a zillion 'do I look fat in this' messages brought to you by the Gap.

Fun Tech Coming to a Store Near You

Red Herring has an article about retail stores using gizmos and the like to get people back into stores.

One example:

Plan B might be competitive prices and helpful people. But Circuit City killed that plan, never mind.

The Open Source Debate Traps Hugh

Ah, Open Source vs. Microsoft. The endless debate about tastes great, less filling.

My favorite cartoonist and out of the box thinker, just walked into the trap.

The picture is part of a project Hugh Macleod is working on for Microsoft.  In the post, Hugh makes the comment:

"This cartoon was an attempt by me to sum up the answer to a very simple question: If Open Source software is free, then why bother spending money on Microsoft Partner stuff?"

He tries to answer it with his observation:

"I know very little about software, so my hunch is that the reason Microsoft is able to make money, is simply that running a large business with 2000 people on the payroll requires very different ways of going about it, than just hacking together something in your garage. Open Source may be free [at least at first], but how well does it scale? How well does Open Source currently meet the needs of shareholders and CEOs?"

Approximately one billion Open Source/Anti-Microsoft people are probably burning up keyboard around the globe on this one.

I will focus your attention on the line about shareholders and CEOs. Heck, let's add investors to the pile because all three of us likely have the same answer.  We don't care.  What we collectively care about are solutions to problems that make us money.  That's what you should care about.

For example, last week, I gave a talk with three powerpoint slides full of opportunities with Exchange/Outlook that I believed people would pay to have solved for them.  If a Microsoft Partner fixes or some hacker in the backroom fixes with the free Microsoft compilers, I'm good either way. 

There is a pretty good open source project happening to deal with some schedule/calendaring problems which cover all platforms.  People are going to pay (gladly) for the product that comes out of it.

Shareholders, CEOs, and (for the most part) Investors are generally clueless when it comes to the beginnings of your great idea.  You take the tools (whatever they are), your vision, and your passion into the game.  You create a solution and see if the dogs eat it.  You don't worry about pleasing anyone, just fix the problem.  If it was worth fixing, if the product/service you offer has value/meaning to people, you are there.  Your shareholders and your investors will be happy after your customers are.

And none of us will care about Open Source or Microsoft.

Hope you had Thomas custom fit that flak jacket, Hugh.

Update: Seth Godin has another insight here. Go read it, smarter than me.

Truition - Some Great Stuff in There

Now that everybody's had some fun (thanks for coming by Scott, keep spending them VC dollars, they luv ya) with my friendly poke at the official/unofficial Truition Blog, there are some great items you'll want to take a look at. 

Google Patent Fun.

Matt MacGillivray was wandering the world of patents and found some interesting things Google is thinking about with respect to Interactive Kiosks.  

"The patent suggests such a device would allow people to search for specific products and it would return a list of retailers with the product in stock, details about the product, a map to the store and promotional material for that specific retailer whether it is a coupon or sale price.  There are endless possibilities for such a device that Google will no-doubt take full advantage of."

The abstract contained in the patent application is a very interesting read. Amazing what words can do to simple concepts.

Getting it Right.

Rick Simpson has an excellent post on sticking to the basics and getting the shopping experiences right.

"Improving the end user experience is common sense – it just takes setting aside some time to review.  Check out www.zappos.com for a fabulous end user experience (I never thought I would buy shoes online…) and read the ancient text “E-Commerce User Experience’ guide by the Nielsen Norman Group for the never aging axioms of adding to cart."

He's completely right about zappos, my shoes are on the way. Rick Simpson is one of my personal favorite smart guys as he trained Adam, MusicIP's resident product manager who himself has a great product management blog that I've mentioned before.

The B Club.

Mike Hennessy provides some insight/data on Williams-Sonoma's quest to joining the Online Billion Dollar Club.

"Williams-Sonoma grew web sales by 21% to $927.6 million in 2006.  Overall, eCommerce chipped in for 25% of total sales – that’s BIG. News like this is always great to hear, particularly the % of total sales number – 25% is nothing if not “material” to this retailing giant"

The blog is a true team effort and all unofficial kidding aside, it's officially some great stuff, well done folks!

The Lowly Receipt - An Opportunity?

I wandered into The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf shop in Monrovia, this morning.  I ordered a green tea and cup of coffee for my guest. $3.45 was the bill. I paid with a five and got back my $1.55 with a receipt.

A 10 inch receipt. (I measured it)

If you fold this receipt in half, you can see that the bottom half is the return/refund policy for the CDs you can buy in the store.  If the cash register was just slightly smarter, it could allow for the possibility that when I buy tea and no CD, the paper is being wasted; don't print the policy.

If you go into Staples and buy a single package of paper, you get a massive 23 inch receipt with all kinds of return/refund policy information that doesn't apply to a package of paper.

And so it goes with a few other examples of receipts currently stuffing my pockets.

When you ask people in stores (clerks, managers, etc), the answers come in all different flavors:

"Yeah, lawyers make us do that"

"They are pretty dumb around here when it comes to stuff like that"

"This place just sux when it comes to the environment, you should see the......"

"I dunno, I just work here, man"

Seems to me there is an opportunity here to save some money, save some trees, and maybe have a smarter way to deal with receipts, transaction records and the like.

[Note: If you are into Green Tea, the Japanese Cherry is excellent.]

Picking On Our Own

In a recent speech, a student in the audience basically said that all the VCs who blog (mentioning "that guy", Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, by name) never say anything even close to bad about companies they have money in.

I wanted to just go, well, duh, but didn't think that would have gotten me invited back.  I offered up some lame PC speak about each blogger having a style, process, motives, and other nonsense that probably kicked me into the Nob column for some.

But give em what they want, I always say.  This one's for you, Anthony.

I have an investment in a company called Truition.   They recently sent a note to customers, etc, regarding an e-commerce blog they are doing.

The text was:

------------------------------------------

Truition is pleased to announce the launch of
Add to Cart, the new Truition eCommerce Blog!

Add to Cart is Truition’s “unofficial” home for musings, anecdotes and practical advice on the world of online retailing.

-------------------------------------------

Bzzzt! Thanks for playing.  Having the official mailing list/customers sent an announcement talking about the new Truition blog as being unofficial strikes me as silly.  It's a blog not the ten commandments.  It's not official or unofficial, its a blog where, as they say, the gang does musings.

When you start splitting hairs over unofficial/official, make sure you and your start up team haven't let the Bureaucracy monster out of his cave by mistake.  I know there are reasons, know the lawyer are out there, PR, HR, etc. I know.

I'm just saying......

[note: I love these folks and the company. Nice blog, folks.]

[note: "that guy" as it turned out is Paul Kedrosky. The student Googled 'greed' and figured out who he was thinking of, sorry Paul.]

I'm with Hugh (Johnnie) on this

Michael Arrington's code of conduct commentary is excellent and I agree with him. Just a big time slippery slope to start doing stuff like this. And just using the term slippery slope is risk enough for me.

In general, I agree with Hugh when he points to Johnnie Moore's code of conduct:

1. If you look that [sic] entire content of this blog, you'll get some notion of how I conduct myself. It varies a bit.
2. You'll also see how visitors conduct themselves. It, too, seems to vary.
3. The past is not necessarily a guide to the future.

Now back to your regular installments of VC stuff.

The Scariest Video You Will Ever Watch

Via Johnnie Moore who has the actual hat tips on his page, this is clearly the scariest video I've seen come out of corporate America in awhile.

Wow..

The D-Word - Almost Got Me

Paul, you link baiter, you.  After an amazing dinner with amazing company and really outstanding red wine, I happened to catch the ruckus about Paul Graham's Microsoft is Dead essay. I get my news via Hugh.

Right on, Hugh.

Anyway, I read the essay and almost fired up Live Writer to blast Paul outta of the sky with all the predictable billions of dollars of profit, thousands of employees making a living, 100,000 companies living off the eco-system stuff I could muster and ending with STFU.

But I didn't.  Don Dodge did.

While Don was doing that, I was re-reading Paul's stuff to see where the larger point was since using the word "Dead" was so obviously over the top, it had to have been code for "let's see if the smart ones actually read this".

Here are the observations I believe you should take from Paul's essay, Hugh's cartoon, and even Don's STFU smack back to Paul.

1. Being afraid is a good thing, not a bad one.  Making the assumption there is competition (big or small) coming after you as well as worrying about somebody hungrier and smarter than you will keep you on your toes. See Hugh's cartoon.
2. Paul's larger point about influence is right.  Having the Internet, always on, high speed connections opened up a world of possibilities which means that no one large player is going to control it all.  In addition, your opportunities as a entrepreneur are plentiful.  IBM's, Microsoft's and Google's influence are all balanced against a vast market with open source, "free", web service, client based, alternatives for everything. 
3. Dan is wrong that people weren't "afraid" of Microsoft.  Back in the 90s, a change to API or not releasing information about an API could make or break a company. Never mind tons of people made money (and still do), the point was that you had to keep up with the interfaces, had to watch what was coming out of Redmond, and could get seriously screwed, for example, if you relied on an interface which got changed.  Today, that's not as true. Besides the obvious -Microsoft is 1000x more open with information- tons of people are creating product that don't have this level of dependency which lowers the 'fear' of getting tripped up or -even worse- run over by Microsoft. HTTP is 'safe' and doesn't 'scare' anyone.
4. While Paul's literal view about Microsoft buying up the Web 2.0 world is funny/wrong, Microsoft actually agrees with Paul's assessment about getting Web 2.0 companies outside of the Redmond fold.  For the last couple of years, Microsoft has been spending tens of millions of dollars spinning out technology, companies, and employees in a realization that they won't live inside the Redmond machine so spin em out.  Some make TechCrunch, some don't.  The point is, unlike other monster companies that now lay actually dead, Microsoft does get the point about making some types of innovation happen inside the machine while lots of it needs to happen elsewhere.  Message received, Paul.
5. Desktop Apps are not going away, that's just nonsense, but that's not actually what Paul said.  Paul makes the reasonable point that lots and lots of applications can now happen because of AJAX, Javascript, etc.  Where as before, everything was desktop or a Green Screen, today this is no longer the case.
6. Don is right that if making good money now and for some time to come is a definition of 'dead', bring it on.  But as I said at the beginning, I believe Paul was using hot words to make broader points.

Microsoft is doing the right thing by moving into other businesses with products like the Xbox.  There are lots and lots of high growth opportunities for Microsoft and by adapting to the changing world, Microsoft will continue to grow, employee people, make money, send out dividends, and be a magnet for diverse opinions on all matters Redmond.

Happy Easter/Passover, everybody.

The VC Cop Out - No

Without getting all mushy about it, I greatly admire Paul Kedrosky both as a blog writer and Venture Capitalist.  He blows away everybody when it comes to finding amazing stats and documents all around the Internet. 

Paul commented on my previous No post basically pointing out the saying, sorry too busy, can actually be a cop out.  Sometimes it really is a resource, I'm busy thing, but he rightly points out the other side.

I thought about this for a couple of days because I'm trying to give the start up types as much insight into the VC game/business as possible.  In thinking about Paul's comments, there is much truth to the notion of the cop out.

So, here is some extended no commentary. It applies to me and maybe other VCs out there.

The Easy No: We don't do that.

My firm doesn't do drugs, wet lab, medical devices, real estate, brick -n- mortar commerce or chip/foundry work. If you show up with a new CPU, GSM, 1XRT, EVDO, Math Co-Processor combination with pre-orders of 5 million dollars, I'd pass.  I put the pre-order comment in there for a reason: Discipline.  We don't do this stuff and regardless of the status or opportunity, we'd say no.

The Market Size No.

This is "the come back when you have traction" no.  I think just saying that we pass because we don't believe the business can grow to create an IRR for the firm is an open, honest no.  When I give this reason, I usually say "and I could be wrong."   I believe the inability to just say no or be wishy washy gets people these please show us some traction or whatever vs. the straight up, we don't believe the market is there.   And this should be a fast no.  It takes a minimal amount of time to make the call. The start up shows up with market size information and you can verify it, believe it, or not.  In the end, the point is to say no if you don't believe. They can come back, sure, but they know where they stand.

The Team No.

This is a cop out alert and I freely admit that if I don't like a team or I don't think I can work with a team, I simply pass with some vague not for us commentary.  There has been two times recently where the CEO was brilliant but I didn't like/trust others around them and I said so.  I said, go forth and find a VC that will love all of you, it isn't me, sorry.  I did not say drop the CTO or CFO, etc, rather I just said I can't work with your team, no.  But, generally speaking, I won't trash people for all the obvious reasons. 

The I Don't Get It No.

Here's an example. Fred Wilson has been putting up some posts on Twitter.  Dave Winer has (as Fred said) a thoughtful post on what it could be. Right. I don't get it (or the more obnoxious big freaking deal).  If the founders walked into my office tomorrow, I'd say, pass.  I have on many occasions said thanks, sorry, I don't get it.  The point is that I believe you should say I don't get it vs. some other vague non-answer just in case.  Maybe that's how the big, wildly rich VCs did it. They played in the non-no/non-yes world of let's continue the dialog just in case.  Maybe.  I believe, for sure, I will be wrong a whole bunch of times but at least there is a straight up answer given to the entrepreneur.

It's Not For Me No.

There are a lots of great investments that simply aren't for me. I get excited about many things, not so excited about others.  If it is something I'm not excited about, I simply say so.  It was this 'no' that got me thinking with respect to Paul's commentary.   When b5 media came rolling along, I made the time to work on it because I was/am all over this social media stuff (Note: I DO get Twitter, it was just an example).  We were in the middle of a road show for another company as well as closing two other things. Didn't matter, I wanted b5 in the house and I made time.  So, no resources or sorry busy, Paul is right, it can be a cop out.  I hope I can avoid doing that because being as transparent as possible should always be the rule.

My thanks to Paul for causing me to think about this even more.

TripSync - More Lessons for You

(Warning: Long Post)

Back in August of 2006, I wrote a long post about TripSync.  It wasn't particularly flattering but did have a pile of lessons for anybody doing a new service/start up.

Fast forward to March 2007.  Christopher Capra of Lotus Public Relations drops me a note about the new and improved TripSync:

"Hi Rick,

I happened upon your blog post about TripSync in August. It is very comprehensive and I have to say you really did a good job articulating many of the problems Portaga encountered when working in the .net framework.

 

I am happy to report to you that TripSync has been redeployed as an AJAX application (Web 2.0) and the new version of the software is available at www.tripsync.com We would love it if you could check out the new version, try it out and give us your feedback, either directly or on your blog. If you like, I'd also be happy to have you talk with Portaga's CEO, Rob Kost to get the scoop on what is in store for TripSync. "

Given the fact that yours truly isn't on the A, B, C or Q list of bloggers, I thought this was a nice/smart thing to do.   So, memo to self, check out the site again when I get a free moment.

Chris sent a follow up note, pointing out a promotion that pretty much says if you head over to the site and do a booking, you get a $25 gift certificate good at restaurant.com.

You just know where this is going, right? Buckle Up...

My original note was all about the registration process not being particularly good. The most annoying part was allowing you to select things like Canada as your home country with the rest of the address fields still being US centric.  The new an improved TripSync?  Only allows you to pull down USA as the country.  So, all the problems of address and phone number verification have gone away; the site is for US customers.

Which, of course, brings me to the punch line: Why contact me, I'm in Canada.

The product can not store my home or office address and pretty much hasn't changed from a focus on US customers since the last time I took a look. 

But here's the bonus: restaurant.com and the gift certificate.  US only. A double doesn't apply to me.

I dug in a bit more. Stay with me, there is a point to all of this.

The founders of TripSync, Robert and Sam,  appeared to have hired two firms Lotus Public Relations and SalemGlobal, a website marketing and SEO company, for the business.

I found out about SalemGlobal because I was interested in how many bloggers both reported on TripSync and of those how many mentioned the restaurant.com gift certificate. When I used Google's Blog search, I got 125 results just for TripSync. There were none using restaurant.com or gift certificate. TripSync and restaurant did get one hit.

SalemGlobal's President, Dov Weinstock (nice Toronto boy!) has a blog and he mentioned TripSync as a new client. No mention of the restaurant promotion on that entry nor could I find a supplemental entry.  Tech Crunch picked up on the new and improved TripSync as did others but nobody talked about the gift certificate.

SalemGlobal's website doesn't show TripSync as a client nor could I find the news of the new client. [Note to SalemGlobal: All of your wiki links are broken.]

Lotus Public Relations doesn't show TripSync as a client nor could I find any new on the Lotus site either.

Lessons in all of this for you.

Follow up with Bloggers (maybe)

Going around and finding all the people who said things about TripSync when it first came out was a good move. It's easy to do and most bloggers (me included) are happy to get an update or some follow up email.  To me -and this is a bit harsh- Chris blew it on two fronts.  My blog commentary was specific.  I mentioned Canada and mentioned the issue of being a US only/focused play.  Contacting me (I'm in Canada) to try it again was boo boo number one and highlighting a US only gift certificates was boo boo number two.  In my (snap) judgement, this was good intention fouled up by not paying attention to details.  Clearly, I'm not a useful influencer because the product doesn't apply to me (yet).  It would have been way more effective to wait until the product had been fixed and addressing issues that I specifically called out.  Chris probably isn't happy because I did respond to his second email with well done contacting bloggers.  That was before I fired up TripSync, Chris, sorry.  My expectation was, we fixed it, come back. Clearly, not the case.

Set expectations.

Nowhere -as of this blog post- could I find anywhere on the Tripsync web site which indicated it was for US based people. You could sign up with an email address, get on the site and start playing and only find out about this pesky problem when you go to do a profile which is needed to get tickets, etc.  This is just sloppy on the part of TripSync.  Given I blogged about this the first time and given that I spoke, live, to one of the founders; sloppy fits.  For you, don't do this. If you are international, deal with address and phone numbers correctly.  If you aren't,  say it up front so as to not waste people's time.  Set expectations of your users correctly and exceed them. You get happy customers instead of additional, less then positive blog entries.

Your agencies are part of the team, hopefully.

Based only on what I can see with the fast searches and zipping around the Internet, I'd draw the conclusion that SalemGlobal, Lotus Public Relations and the TripSync management team did not sit down and have some kind of coordinated activity list or possibly even meet up.  Obviously, this is just from what I can see and I could be wrong.  Dov got the launch date wrong in his blog vs. the press release about April 2nd, I think.  With no client listing, no press release on Salem's web site combined with no press release/no client listing on the Lotus Public Relations site either, one is left with the sense that coordination was not high on the list.   

Don't blame the technology unless you can prove it.

In the eighties, Trip Sync's CTO, Sam Meo, was hanging out at Prodigy while I was building the AEtna insurance application for Prodigy.  He has many technology patents and is a philosopher at heart.  Never met em but a smart guy, for sure.  That's why it is painful to see the note Chris sent to me dumping the problems onto .net (see above).  Field validation, not taking into account foreign users, etc, has nothing to do with .net.  It is a lame (and technically wrong) excuse to be sending out the door.  Sam clearly knows better and I suspect would never stand up and say, yeah we couldn't make the .net framework accept the notion of Provinces versus States and it really sucked at doing international telephone numbers.  See my point about about having your agencies and management team talk to each other.

And in conclusion:

The basic problem that TripSync is trying to solve is meaningful.  Unmanaged business travel is a multi-billion dollar business, clearly worth going after.  TripSync (Portaga) is VC backed, as a side note.  If you live in the US and you handle your own business travel, TripSync can be a useful tool. 

Good luck folks, my email inbox is always available.

The "No" part

A couple of people asked me how I say no.  I know, it seems funny, but  both of these young entrepreneurs were trying to understand why no gets translated into everything but no.

Here is an email I sent to a company moments ago. My comments are after the email.

------------------------

From: Rick Segal
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 1:35 PM
To: David 
Subject: Meeting

 

Hi David,

 

NEWCO was reviewed at our partners meeting on Wednesday.  Unfortunately, we have to pass. We’ve got a number of active deals going on and do not have the resources to devote to this opportunity.  It is in no way a reflection of your opportunity, simply a matter allocation of people/resources in our firm.

 

Thank you for thinking of JLA, I appreciate you letting me take a look.

 

Best regards,

 

>R<

-----------------------

There are a couple of things I didn't do. They may seem rude but they are done to try and be clear about our firm's intentions.

 

"We have to pass." and not "We have to pass for now."

 

It is the "for now" part that I believe may confuse people.  I don't say, I'd be interested in hearing about your progress, let's continue the dialog, keep in touch, write often, etc.  I don't do that because the smart folks will do that anyway.  They will send email with an update, I'll respond with congrats, they ask if there is an opportunity to re-open the discussion, and there you go.  

 

I try to always answer email, always be polite and always be clear on our intentions.

The Great Board Debate

A few people have asked me about the board make up with respect to the start up letter I posted previously.  Some didn't like it.

My views on this, your mileage may vary.

The letter I posted was the opening gambit and I expect push back. If I can get it, great, I don't, let's see what happens.

My firm requires a board seat. One.  It is mandated by our LP agreement that we are active and one of the things that we use to explain active is -no surprise- a board seat and representation on the Compensation and Audit committees.  It's not negotiable and we have walked when we couldn't get it.  Maybe management didn't want to add people to the board or the existing board was happy with status quo, didn't matter.  When you are in our office and ask me to tell you about our firm, this tidbit is in there.

In the example, I showed two VC firms getting seats, the Founder/CEO getting a seat and an Independent.  What I would be perfectly fine with is:

1. Current CEO

2. Common Shareholder

3. VC

4. VC

5. Independent

You could rightfully point out that the CEO is a separate seat from the Founder representation and I'm good with that.  I've seen cases where there were two founders and both wanted seats.  We worked out something and that deal closed.

The key for the board? Useful people. Doesn't get much simpler. 

If I'm not useful, beyond questioning why you'd want my money, I shouldn't be on your board.