The riskiest part of the spectrum has to date proved the most rewarding, and the greatest capital gains have been earned in companies which were started from scratch.
Doriot, in a 1960 talk to the Chicago Society of Security Analysts, titled "Creative Capital"
Why?
You get a blank slate to start with. You can build everything the way you want. After several rounds of funding there are a lot more "agendas" to deal with.
Free Ideas, Just add Execution... ain't that the truth.
Something all entrepreneurs learn sooner or later (if they want to stay an entrepreneur).
So how do they make those pages look so good in the browser?
Answer - Every time a user requests a page the browser talks to their backend servers which actually get the page and then process it prior to delivering it to the mobile browser.
Who else does this? - Opera
Issues? - just one big one - Privacy. There servers get to see every request you make including the HTTPS ones
Minor issues? - Maybe one, what about transcoding engines that also modify pages on the fly so they can display on mobile screens.
Bottom line - there was probably room for one more browser in the market place. It certainly disrupts Opera who charge for their browser. Skyfire's is free so it the jury is still out on how they will monetize their product. One idea is to cut a deal with the search engines and be the default on their browser.
Apart from that browsers will always be free. The key is to figure out how to value add them in a unique way and then do that across all the mobile platforms.
Now there's a surprise - what were they thinking?
Remember the Prime Directives that I talked about a long time ago - well here they are again:
1. A clear and unambiguous “problem statement” that solves an identifiable customer problem
2. Measurable, Sustainable, Profitable, Revenue that comes from Volume
3. Focus and Execution on a common plan
Every time I see a new startup getting funded I run this basic checklist. Now sometimes we don't always know how they are going to do - however some are pretty obvious. Usually item 1 above is easy to deal with as everyone has some sort of problem that needs solving. Item 2 is the really hard one because to solve that you have to find an addressable market that "has their hair on fire" for your solution. The key is really, really talking to potential customers and listening (not always an easy thing for a tech entrepreneur to do) and then iterating through several prototypes while you solve the "real problem".
Remember while you're doing this to focus on VALUE - because ultimately that's what gets you noticed, by customers, investors and acquirers.
Link to article below:
FT.com / Companies / Media & Internet - Web 2.0 fails to produce cash
From my last post...
Advertising Revenue Math - How much traffic is needed to generate $1M in ad revenue? It all depends on how well you can target your audience and how much you can charge for CPM rates. For social network sites let's assume an average CPM of $0.40. You would need 2.5 Billion page views per month to earn $1M in ad revenues. That is 2,500,000,000 page views...how many sites generate that traffic?
Now for the other question - what does it cost to deliver 2.5 billion page views a month?
My guess is more than a $1m
This is one of the reason monetizing mobile is so hard. Everyone things all you have do is advertise and things will work out just fine. Well reading through the math below indicates otherwise - unless you get the CPM's to change significantly e.g. into the dollar column.
We've been in the Mobile business for the last 2 1/2 years and understand it "quite" well. Reading the math below sure makes me feel happy at night that we picked a different way to make money.
Advertising Revenue Math - How much traffic is needed to generate $1M in ad revenue? It all depends on how well you can target your audience and how much you can charge for CPM rates. For social network sites let's assume an average CPM of $0.40. You would need 2.5 Billion page views per month to earn $1M in ad revenues. That is 2,500,000,000 page views...how many sites generate that traffic?
Amazing - we've been able to do this for two years. Real time search coupled with real time location on a mobile platform and our solution is cross platform e.g. it runs on Blackberry, Windows Mobile with 80% of the code already written for Symbian.
Oh yes - one more issue - Privacy. We solved that one as well. All user data is individually controlled by the customer and can be enabled or disabled with a simple check box.
What a great post - absolutely worth your time to read. One of my biggest pet peeves is being in a room talking to someone and they are either reading something or checking their Blackberry.
At which point I always stop the conversation and politely ask them when would be a good time to reconnect with them when they are not so distracted.
Section 1 in this post talks about "looking people in the eye" - you can learn a lot from deaf people.
Well worth a read - in case you thought it was easy picking winners. Be prepared for 6 - 8 years and about $20m in losses.
Two things about Mobile that the experts are predicting... it's all about MobileMe... (more at the link at the end of this post)
2. From Vinod Knosla: The mobile phone will be a mainstream personal computer. With built in projector. Authentication. Credit cards on SIM cards. ID cards, passports, drivers licenses. Any information you need. Khosla says he keeps pictures of his passport electronically on his phone. He says people will be less likely to carry their laptops. Come near a computer, and physical hard drive will be yours, including half-sent email message you left at home. Lose the phone, and all the information is on the network. Imagine what you want to do, and it should be available anytime. Projectors in cell phones in next two years. More than one camera per cell phone; high priority for Texas Instruments. Critical ingredient is high speed networks, which we will have in next 2-3 years. Jurvetson says the trends are already playing out, other than the projector piece, particularly in Europe, where cell phones are 8% of credit card payments. McNamee says Asia is where most of that functionality is already embedded; he says the carriers and the government puts this projection further out in North America. Schoendorf says he believes the trend; he says a good way to lose money is to bet against Vinod. “I’ve learned to listen when Vinod says something might change,” Schoendorf says.
4. From Roger McNamee: Betting on smart phones: The mobile device migration to smart phones from features phones will produce even greater disruption than PC industry moving from character mode to graphical interface. Used to be just Palm and Research in Motion. (Note that McNamee’s firm is a large investor in Palm.) What you are really doing, is put in real software environments, with applications layer that separates network from physical device. Phones far more pervasive than PCs. Will take out Motorola. One of LG, Samsung or Sony Ericsson as well. Will be intensely disruptive. And it will hurt Microsoft. You can not make a great consumer product with unbundled operating system. It will be incredibly disrupted. In five years, half of what we think of as phones will do something far more profound than what we think of a phone as doing. Design centers will fragment. An Amazon Kindle is a smartphone, with 3G network behind it. A life changer for people who use it. Will turn billion unit a year industry on its head. Assume Nokia, Apple, RIMM will do really well. (And Palm will do great, he says.)
Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online : At The Churchill Club: The Top 10 Tech Trends
Two great reads for the entrepreneur
Great advice, Great reading and right on the "money".
My advice... focus and execution on a plan that solves a customer problem. Do that right and the money will appear.
KPCB has 7 rules for startups they invest in. They are;
- Instant Value to customers - solve a problem or create value with the first use
- Viral adoption - Pull, not push. No direct sales force required
- Minimum IT footprint, preferably none. Hosted SaaS is best.
- Simple, intuitive user experience - no training required.
- Personalized user experience - customizable
- Easy configuration based on application or usage templates
- Context aware - adjust to location, groups, preferences, devices, etc.
Do you have all of these covered?
Judith hits the nail on the head with this blog.
SOA is about the new "stack" - the API. And focuses on "The new style developer is a business collaborator. That individual must partner with colleagues in the business units to determine what services and what business processes can be abstracted so that they can be used and repurposed to support business change."
SOA combined with SaaS will show up soon on Mobile.
Is a Hedge Fund Manager Right About SOA? « Judith Hurwitz’s Weblog
For those members of the Oxford Forum who follow my blog this is a very good read. It has ramifications in the mobile arena - the critical part of the paper is the ability to support two level keys inside a single key - one carries my personal data/identification the other carriers the policy surrounding who can access my information.
In light of new Online Ad regulation (see previous post) this will be "key".
Pay attention to this one - especially as it relates to mobile. Remember it's MY data and I want to be in control of it.
Turncoat Microsoft Supports Online Ad Regulation (MSFT) - Silicon Alley Insider
Great post - talks about "Microsoft Application Virtualization (MAV)"
He's right - this will kill other HTML/XML based web app's. Office online with all the richness vs. the rest of them.
Here's a simple test - tabs... try tabbing in an online word processor. It doesn't work.
Ultimately it boils down to solving the customer need/want. At that point what's good enough? Free is one way, however it's not a sustainable business model. Therefore something that costs just a little more - yet delivers more is the way to go.
Virtualizing Office is the way to do it. What comes next is Virtualizing Windows which should have been done years ago.
