The Post Money Value

In Tough Times, You Always Find Stars

b5Media, one of my portfolio companies, has been hunkering down trying to make sure they can make it through the current mess and come out the other side as one of the survivors.

Last week, Co-Founder Jeremy Wright and his management folks came to me with a plan that, in his words "protected the core".  Jeremy stepped up and took his pay down to just above minimum wage letting me know that he could find some things, like his book, etc on the side.  He wanted to protect his equity.  To him, b5 was an amazingly great property with amazing bloggers and solid team.  He believes and I believe. We put additional capital in last year because we believe.  He comes to work everyday and is on email with me at all hours of the night.  Rock solid.

Next, the other managers basically presented a plan that said you don't need us in this present situation. One is going part time with another going on to a different job.  They  showed me a plan that for the most part doesn't impact the line workers nor the bloggers.  It is a plan that basically said even if the world effectively grinds to halt (and it just might) for a fairly long/ugly period, the company lives. People get paid, we survive. When the world turns around, and it always does, we will be there, be strong and be ready to take advantage of having lived through the bad times.

It was an extraordinary meeting on so many fronts.  The maturity, professionalism, and true believe in the value of the company was a a refreshing change from the normal nonsense of how people go overboard in order to keep upper management in place. The stars in the company continue to shine thanks to some amazing people.

You will, no doubt, see doom and gloom written about b5 from competitors or sites that do those things for a living.  You'll see complaints or shots at this or that person. That's fine, it goes with the territory.

I can just tell you from being up close and personal that Jeremy and his team are exactly the type of people you want around the table when you have to make tough choices in really crappy times. 

Jeremy's post on all of this is here.

It is All About Mobile

Back a lifetime ago, Google’s VP of Mobile Platform Engineering (Vic Gundotra) and I used to work for Microsoft racking up the frequent flyer miles by traveling the globe hawking programming interfaces and all other things Windows NT. We’d have every known hack, alligator clip, modem, acoustical devices, etc, in our bags trying to stay “always on and always connected.” Hanging out in the early nineties in, say Hong Kong, usually meant taking the cover off the wall’s phone jack and using the alligator clips to then get into the phone system so we could get a some type of crappy data connection which would then allow us to dial some GEIS local number. This got us onto some packet network which then got us onto the Microsoft UNIX mail system so we could send and receive a few emails before the $900 phone bill went into 4 (or five) figures.

I’m only ever so slightly exaggerating.

Fast forward to today. I’m a suit and he is still a major geek.

Vic’s role at Google gives him a unique insight into the mobile evolution. He recently wrote a guest post for TechCrunch titled Follow the Mobile User:

Focus on the mobile user, and all else will follow

Simpler data, better browsers, and a smoother experience

Today the mobile industry finds itself in a unique position to do right by its users:

Worldwide phone penetration continues to climb at a break-neck pace, with over 4 billion mobile subscribers at last count. (In comparison, the PC industry is forecasted to see its sharpest unit decline in history.) Prevailing economic conditions will accelerate this trend, as users consolidate pricey communication services into cost-effective, all-in-one mobile devices. And for the first time ever, half of all new connections to the Internet will come from a phone in 2009.

Be sure to check out the full post here. Smart guy, that Vic.

Xobni - The Next BlackBerry Partners Fund Investment

I am delighted to announce the BlackBerry Partners Fund's newest investment: Xobni.  We are part of the latest $10 million dollar round.  This has been in the works for some time and I've been chomping at the bit to blog about it. 

The Why:

First, the people.  This team is off the charts good. Virtually all of the hot buttons you hear from the VC community, these guys nailed em.  For example, Matt Brezina and Adam Smith, the two co-founders, have been brilliant in their hiring. They went out and got an amazing CEO, Jeff Bonforte. They pulled in brilliant coders, QA folks, and others in all departments.  The team is world class. No egos, no control phreak stuff, no nonsense about titles, just laser focus on building a great team to drive the vision forward.  Well done, guys, well done.

Second, the product. Dead on smart, solves a pain point, and adds an amazing 'I would pay for this' value to that slog we call email. Nobody add more value to email and thus my business life.  

[Side note:  Lifehackers has a great post on all the ways to boost Outlook.]

Third, the technology.  In the 90s (ah the 90s, stock options, first bubbles,  some irrational exuberance), I worked the developer circuit hawking, among other things, messaging interfaces and the adventure of riding piggyback on other products, Outlook in this case.  They nailed it.  Adam's brilliance in exploiting Outlook can't truly be appreciated until you dive in and see the code.  Just off the charts smart.  When doing my due diligence, I reached into the Redmond gang and no less than three times was given the "I can't figure out how the $%#! they are doing this, it's really amazing" commentary. Top tier respect coming right from Microsoft and a text book perfect play on the value add strategy. Well done.

So why the BlackBerry Fund:

Simple. That smart phone you love, carry everywhere and would give up sex before you give up it up?  That's your next computer if it isn't already and that’s where power products will have tons of demand. I'm on the go 90% of my working day.  I want the power of what's on my desktop with me. I want the productivity hit on my device.  Xobni has a very compelling value proposition and we look forward to its extension into new platforms and use cases.

I've joined a board with some amazing people and along with my BBPF partner, Kevin Talbot, we'll be doing everything we can to help the company in any way possible.

Download the product, folks, it really is amazing. It reflects the amazing people behind it.

Kindle User: This Means You!

The jig is up. On my flight into Atlanta:

"Please stow all personal electronic equipment, including the Kindle."

Score one for Delta.

Your real-time is not my real-time

USA Today is reporting the Miami International Airport has installed flight display monitors at nearby hotels. They talk about the system's 'real-time' information. Ahh, not really. It's the same I dunno stuff you get at the airport. So that on-time departure you know is false? You can know it while eating breakfast.

Memo to USA Today: Real Time? Do some homework.

Every Company Needs an Untouchable

[I originally had named this post every company needs a Scoble but that would be a cheap attempt at links and likely send the conversation into a Robert good/bad debate which isn't the point.]

[Note: I wrote this a few days ago and, sure enough, I'm not the only person thinking about this. Others are calling it Ombudsman, I'll stick with untouchable. Clearly, I need to post faster.. :-) ]

After watching the PR disasters at Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook, I'm reminded of a general problem when companies grow, stumble, try to find their way, and generally loose touch with the very things that got them where they are today.  The list of boneheaded moves (Facebook's ToS being a good example) are almost endless yet lots of them can be traced to senior management being out of touch with users, employees, and the prevailing winds of public sentiment.

Enter the untouchable. Back in the day, the developer relations group at my former employer, Microsoft, was for all intents and purposes, a bunch of untouchables.  We had a boss who was tied directly to the CEO and the mission of getting mass numbers of developers onto the Windows platforms was paramount. We could get code from other groups, release pieces for people to ship before it was generally available, and do lots of things that were simply not for the faint of heart.  The other, arguably more important, function was making sure the developers message/issues/etc where all heard loud and clear by the C level management. We'd piss off far more internal people then external folks and that was a good thing because it meant we were doing our advocacy job correctly.

Fast forward to today. I think the CEO of Facebook, for example, having a user advocate reporting directly to him and blogging in a very public way when boneheaded things are about to happen or have happened would potentially prevent self-inflicted wounds.

I think a senior Scoble type reporting into the senior levels of management and being very public about her blog, would have gotten the first WTF on the severance issue and probably saved some level of PR mess.

Ebay having somebody speaking up about the slow destruction of the very group of people who made the company what it is (Power sellings), might have better dealt with all of that mess.

From my perspective, you hire somebody on a 3 year contract, they report to the CEO, the CEO is serious about listening, demanding answers, etc.  The person knows it is a fixed period of time and is responsible to make sure the CEO knows what's bubbling up but also is a human face that sticks up for the developers/users/community, whatever it happens to be. 

The larger point here is that loosing touch can seriously hurt a company, sometimes fatal, sometimes not but usually painful.  While my suggestion will seem extreme, the reality is that we are rapidly changing world, made even more profound by the current economic issues. Every company needs ever edge they can get. 

On edge might just need to be a loud, unfiltered advocate, wandering the halls, banging the drum.  I'm not at all suggesting one person should/could change anything rather making the case that the information gathered in an unfiltered, non-political manner, might be useful.

Or I could be wrong.

An Important Link for Every VC to Read

Most VCs do actually read Brad Feld's Blog. If you know a VC that isn't, send them to this story because it's really important.  Here you will find the tale of Kerpoof, a Boulder company being acquired by Disney. While lots of congrats will go around to the company, an item that might get overlooked is Brad's help/advice to a company he didn't invest in. 

In my view, every VC should be doing more of this. We are all in a position of helping with a wealth of experience, knowledge, scars, etc.  Sharing that knowledge and giving back to the entrepreneurial community is an important part of the start-up cycle; especially these days.

Congrats to the company but super kudos to Brad.

The Secret VC Checklist Revealed

As many of you now know, the VC community has a secret society called The Dart Board Group. It meets every other full moon based Thursday at a location randomly selected from the New York City Yellow Pages.  This ultra-secret group maps out strategies, looks into the future, and trades Pez dispensers on the first version of Ebay.

I'm not a member.  I got their secret checklist on the first pass filtering of deals.  I'm sharing it with you.

1. Type in the URL of the company:

Does the web site's home page tell you what the company does.

2. Google the company:

Anybody blogging about it?

Any news?

3. Google the founders:

Do they have a LinkedIn or other social/public profiles?

Do they have a blog?

Do they have anybody blogging about them?

Any photos out there on various public/private/leaked sites?

YouTube Videos?

4. Google the mission statement:

Anybody saying/blogging this one liner?

Any buzz words in the statement which pop up?

All kidding aside, try this on your own company and see what you get.  You'd be amazed at what is out there even for the "stealth" companies.  There are analysts in Venture Funds all over the world running through this list everyday.

Seth has a post up about people and their (your) brand which inspired this post.