VentureFiles » Blog Archive » FOWA Presentation on Venture Capital

Great read on Venture Capital... to me the best part is the last few lines...

"In the end this presentation has a bottom line - This is a partnership and there must be alignment on all sides in order to make it work. It is about relationships, communication and execution. If any one of those three are missing you will fail."

Absolutely right on the money... It's a relationship which needs communciation, execution, transparency and commitment on everyone's part. Anything less than that and it's going to fail.

Link to VentureFiles » Blog Archive » FOWA Presentation on Venture Capital

Local Search – via GPS or Address or Zipcode or Area code (on Mobile or Desktop or UMPC or “Anything that can read a Web page")

It's been a busy few weeks (hence the lack of posting).

We've been making some changes to our local search solution. You can see the page here The page is available on your desktop or any mobile device that can read an HTML page.

If you have our software installed on your phone it will enable the following local search

• If there is valid GPS information... use it...
  
• If there is a valid Street ADDRESS... use it...
  
• If there is a valid ZIPCODE... use it...
  
• If there is an AREACODE then convert it to ZIPCODE and use it..
  

If you don't have our software installed

• If you don't enter a Zipcode it defaults to Denver
  
• If you do enter a Zipcode it will search on that
  

Every search result page is now formatted for mobile… if you click on the First | Previous | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 etc. | Next | Last links you get the right pages formatted for Mobile

More to come….

Local Search from GPS coordinates inside an image

Well it's now possible.

We've added another new feature to our image/GPS location demo. (This works in your desktop browser as well as the mobile device)

All you have to do to see this is go to this link… select the third option "Choose one of our sample images" – select any picture, I suggest starting with the Westin Hotel just north of Sheridan CO. What you will see is pretty amazing. First you will see a picture, then the information inside the picture, then a mobile map of the location of the picture, then satellite images showing the location of the picture and then finally you will see the location of the nearest Pizza and Hotels within the vicinity of the GPS coordinates.

The actual search query is live – so if you type in say "grocery stores" it will find all the grocery stores nearest to the pictures GPS location.

Search can now be done with GPS in real time. Next comes moving map displays based off location.

So what’s the back of a napkin worth these days?

Well that depends – however if you are lucky enough to be selected for TechStars then it's worth roughly $300,000 (in exchange for you giving up 5% of the napkin (your new company).

Brad Feld has a post today which discuses whether or not it's worth giving up 5% of your company. He makes some compelling arguments.

Personally for the new entrepreneur I think it's worth it.

I remember when I started – there was no one to help or guide me. I learned at the School of Hard Knocks (and I'm still learning).

What TechStars offers is "acceleration". If you have a good idea, and if you have a great team, and if you can execute, and if you can solve a customer pain point and deliver value, then TechStars can help. The Mentors have all been there and done that.

There are many "IF's" on the road to a successful exit. If the entrepreneur is willing to learn and adapt then the three month education they get at TechStars will be worth the 5%.

Geo-Tagging

As more and more devices are showing up with GPS chips inside it's important to think about the usage model for these devices. I've just upgraded my Cingular phone to a new Hp iPAQ 6925 which has an embedded GPS chip. One of the cool features is to be able to take pictures with the GPS turned on and embedded your current coordinates inside the image.

The resulting image uses the latest EXIF standards which supports Geo-Tagging.

Here's a picture (pun intended) (link) of what the results look like.

I took a picture using my iPAQ which has a GPS inside it. I uploaded the file to Windows Vista and viewed it in the gallery. Then I uploaded the same file to our server and ran it through our software. As you can see quite a bit more information is revealed - including the exact time and location I took the photo.

What you will also note is that every piece of data in that photo is now available for search engines (if they only knew that it was there). None of this is rocket science - however for those people who are interested in Geotagging in real time from a GPS enabled camera it's now possible.

For those of you who want to see how much data is inside one of your pictures go to this page (link) and click on "Mobile Demo Page"… the first link on that page is 5o9 MobileMe Geo-Picture Location. This allows you to upload a picture to our web server (No personal information is recorded and the image is not saved).

If your picture has Geo information inside a link will be active at the bottom on the page that will send the GPS coordinates to MapQuest who will draw a map of your exact location. We've been tweaking the GPS program so that the position you send is rendered exactly. (This is important for certain business usage models such as fire and rescue, insurance adjusters, and people who get lost – exact position not something 200' feet away.)