5 Things A City Needs To Attract Start-Ups

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What are the 5 most common traits that startups look for in hiring talented employees.

This audio post talks about the 5 most common types of VCs you encounter in Tech.

In this conversation, I discuss reasons why not to take venture capital.

In this podcast, I talk about the 5 things a VC looks for when making an investment decision.

I really want Microsoft to do well in search, because the overall search experience for consumers would be improved if Google had a viable competitor.

(Also, I have friends there, and I want to see them do well.)

Having built Spock.com, a vertical search engine company, and having worked with both Google and Microsoft on various partnerships during that time, I think I can share a few simple things that Microsoft can do to improve search.

None of this is rocket science. It’s computer science. Which is why it’s so surprising to see Bing not pushing harder on these things that would decrease the gap between them and Google.

Improve Bing Crawling for the Long Tail

Google’s crawlers are impressive to say the least. If you launch a site tomorrow that has over 1,000 pages, within 2 days, Google will discover your site and crawl all those pages. Now, it might not put them in the index if the pages do not meet Google’s quality standards, but at least Google found and crawled your site.

With Bing, I don’t see that same level of execution. Heck, some popular sites that have thousands of pages indexed on Google are not to even be found on Bing (except for the home page). Bing likes to say that they are on par with Google when it comes to search experience. That may be true for the head terms like “credit cards”. But, when you type in long-tail terms like “freehold township credit union” the results from Google and Bing are drastically different. With Google’s being more relevant to the user.

If Microsoft really wants to compete with Google, then it needs to improve long-tail search. The only way to do that is to crawl faster, deeper, and with a lot more scale. Google has over 200,000 servers. I am sure Microsoft can match Google dollar to dollar on spending for servers. But if Steve Ballmer wants to really win, then get the right engineers in the crawling group working on the right set of challenges, like building crawlers that can crawl at least 50% of the web. That would be a good start.

Get AdCenter on Par With Adwords

This one is not hard. Microsoft should just copy what AdWords does and stop confusing advertisers.

Several months ago, I was invited to give the AdCenter team advice on how to improve its experience for advertisers. While I was there, a group of researchers walked us through some advanced thinking on AdCenter. It made no sense to any of the advertisers in the room.

We told Microsoft that they should just work to get AdCenter on par with Adwords from a user experience point of view. We showed them the features that Adwords had for years that AdCenter still lacked. Some of us were surprised when it seemed that we knew more about the feature to feature comparison of AdCenter to Adwords than the AdCenter team.

Stop using AdWords!

The only team that should be using Adwords at Microsoft is the AdCenter team, and that only to learn from it. Why give free revenue to Google?

Google won’t let employees use Windows based computers in the future, which means 20,000 less Windows license fees for Microsoft. If Google wants to do that, maybe Microsoft should stop giving Google so much revenue with all the AdWords accounts that are being used across Microsoft.

Yes, Microsoft marketing teams across the company use AdWords like crazy to market their products. Several people at Microsoft have told me that there are over 50 Adwords accounts at Microsoft. Let’s make that zero.

No more gimmicks

Gimmicks like slideshows and xrank need to go. They are artificial and do not result in real growth, When Google came out in 1999, they focused on core search experience, while other search engines offered prizes to people for using their engines. Guess who won! Microsoft needs to end all gimmicks and only focus on core search and nothing else.

No more MSN.

Microsoft should focus on building utility web products like Bing search, Office Online, and SkyDrive. See what happened to Yahoo when it tried to be both a search company and a content company?

Microsoft should learn from them and cut all content related products. It’ll be a tough pill to swallow. Especially given all the people who work in MSN. But if Microsoft wants to win in search, online documents, and the cloud, then it cannot be spending all those resources on content related activities. Focus on utility products. That is where the money and future reside.

This article was written by Jay Bhatti on 12/03/2001 for the Wharton School

Start a Search Engine Company

This duo stands apart from the big guys with its people search technology.

By Amanda C. Kooser   |   Entrepreneur Magazine – October 2008 |   PDF Version

Some entrepreneurs may look at an online search market dominated by Google and Yahoo and then look elsewhere on the internet for a startup idea. But other entrepreneurs see opportunity. Spock.com co-founders Jaideep Singh, 40, and Jay Bhatti, 35, are taking on search by intentionally not taking on Google. Their Redwood City, California, startup focuses solely on people search and capturing a share of what eMarketer estimates is an $11 billion market for search advertising in 2008. “The opportunity to develop a compelling experience is there if you focus on the right verticals and create a differentiated enough experience from Google,” says Bhatti.

The first hurdle a search startup needs to clear is finding the right niche. The general search market may be cornered by some big players, but there’s still room for innovative ideas. “We’re not trying to build a fad,” says Bhatti. “We’re trying to build a real technology with a business model behind it. This has the potential to change the way users look for content on the web.” He points to search engines Kayak.com (travel search) and TheFind.com (product search) as examples of other search businesses finding success in specific niches.

Despite being located near Silicon Valley and its savvy Web 2.0 techies, Bhatti never loses sight of Spock.com’s target customers. “You have to make sure you build it for the right audience–and that’s the mass consumer audience–and not for the tech crowd,” he says. That effort shows in Spock.com’s simple user interface and cleanly laid out search results. New search entrepreneurs will have to spend a considerable amount of time and effort on the framework of their search technology, at the same time figuring out the best way to present it to potential users.

Spock.com has invested a lot more of its $7 million in round A funding into engineers, search technology and user interface than it has into marketing. Currently working on round B funding, the company hopes to scale the business up and eventually crack the top five of search engines. “One of the biggest things that you have to understand as an entrepreneur is that anything is possible,” says Bhatti. “Market conditions can change very quickly, [as can] market leaders.” That need for nimbleness in the search market is a good sign for small startups in this space.

entrepreneur-magazine cover sheet.

Spock was mentioned as one of the leading compaines alongside Facebook and Google in ZDNet. Click here to see the article.

PDF of  ZDNET Article

by Laurie Sullivan, Thursday, May 21, 2009, 5:58 PM     –     PDF | Link

As Microsoft readies the release of Kumo, some industry insiders wonder if new features in the Redmond, Wash. company’s long-anticipated search engine will come a little too late. Yahoo Thursday unveiled the Smart Ads platform to extend customized display ads on mobile phones. Google last week held Searchology, releasing a slew of services that pay closer attention to the way users view information. And then there’s newcomer WolframAlpha, the computational knowledge engine that attracted buzz by bringing up the search engine via live video online.

Microsoft’s drive to release a revamped engine based on enhancements in video and images to provide a more universal approach and semantic technology demonstrates that consumers are ready for something new, according to sources who asked for anonymity. The search engine also will likely integrate technology from the natural-language search company Powerset, which Microsoft acquired last year.

“If it’s as good as it looks in the demo, this will be the most impressive search experience Microsoft has offered,” says David Berkowitz, Director of Emerging Media & Client Strategy at 360i. “The focus is on the right areas such as organic results, layout and advertising.”

Berkowitz, one of the chosen few outside of analysts and Microsoft employees to get a briefing, took extreme precautions to select every word in describing his experience. He couldn’t speak to the difference in the way that Microsoft will serve up relevant ads in paid search campaigns, but did reveal that it has been a focus for the team with the launch of the new engine. “Historically, one problem for Microsoft has been serving up relevant ads,” he says. “They haven’t been as relevant as they could be. But I’ve see firsthand they are trying to fix that.”

Jay Bhatti, co-founder of the people search engine Spock, which Intelius bought in April, managed to catch a glimpse during a test run in Live Search. He says the ads seem to blend more with the content, which would make them less noticeable to consumers to generate more clicks.

The site appears to have an emphasis on filtering data and ecommerce that would give consumers product-related information such as inventory in stock and prices at specific retail stores, Bhatti said. A search for “iPhone” would also return links to download apps, for example. “On the left side of the search query you’ll find a navigation column that shows related searches, search history and filtering options,” he says. “It would keep the top of the page and right side clear for advertisements.”

Microsoft has been testing its search engine internally since March, but has not revealed when it would launch. Sources say it could be next week at D: All Things Digital, while others believe the teaser will announce another venue not too far off. The launch will also coincide with a major ad campaign.

Microsoft views search as an important piece to the company’s business, but Nielsen Online reported that the Redmond, Wash., company held a mere 9.9% of the U.S. search market, compared with 16.3% for Yahoo and 64% for Google.

I asked Jay some questions about Spock, where the online advertising industry is going and the technology sector sentiment and success factors for the “where now and how”.

See my interview below and afterwards go check out the new answer to to “googling yourself” – Spock.

Jay Bhatti was quoted by the E-Commerce Times about his thoughts on the Yahoo quarterly earnings call.

Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) announced Wednesday that first-quarter earnings fell by nearly 80 percent and that it will cut 675 jobs as CEO Carol Bartz struggles to revive the ailing Internet company.

The news was not generally jeered by investors, however. Between opening time Tuesday, when they stood at US$13.94, and mid-day Wednesday, when they stood at $14.88, Yahoo shares put on 94 cents, or 6.7 percent.

PDF of the Article

PDF of the Article

It’s tech’s turn to feel others’ folly

By BILL VIRGIN |  PDF |  Link To Article

SOMEWHERE IN the tech industry — be it on the Eastside or in Silicon Valley, at a giant like Microsoft or a tiny startup — someone is watching the housing finance debacle eat Wall Street, the banking industry and perhaps the American economy as a whole, and saying, “Well, at least they can’t blame this one on us.”

The one they could blame on tech — and did, and with considerable justification — was the dot-com bust of 2001-02, in which companies closed, people lost their jobs and billions of dollars in market value evaporated.

That downturn was felt beyond the realm of technology, but the ripple effects were nothing compared with the tsunami the housing-finance earthquake has apparently unleashed. The tech bust’s effects also were eclipsed by other hits to the economy, including the post-9/11 contraction of the aerospace industry that translated into thousands of layoffs at Boeing.

Now it’s tech’s turn to be on the receiving end of someone else’s folly.

Just how much it receives is critical to the regional economy, since technology has been one of the sectors propping it up. The Washington Employment Security Department recently reported that the software-publishers category, for example, had 53,000 jobs in August, up 4,300 jobs from the same month a year ago.

For a perspective on this, we turn to Jay Bhatti, who has been in big and small tech. For three years he worked at Microsoft, as product manager in the Windows server marketing group and later in consumer services. More recently, Bhatti was co-founder of Spock.com, which developed a search engine designed specifically for finding people.

Thus Bhatti also has spent time in both the Puget Sound region and the Valley, and before that he worked as a tech consultant for major banks, which is where we begin our journey through the impacts of the financial sector’s swoon on technology.

“In big tech it’s going to have a huge impact,” Bhatti says. At many companies, “What you’re going to see is a lot of (chief information officers) being given memos by their CEOs saying, ‘cut down costs, get rid of some projects that aren’t mission-critical.’ You’re going to see a lot of CIOs cutting out budgets, and going to Microsoft and going to Oracle and going to SAP and telling them, ‘Look, we’re not going to do the upgrade as fast as we planned.’ “

The hit will be felt both by hardware manufacturers, as customers defer spending or look for less expensive alternatives, and software providers who license their products for use on employees’ desktop and laptop computers, he adds.

Even though startups don’t depend on Wall Street or traditional banking channels for their lifeblood, they’ll feel the effects as well, Bhatti says.

Venture capital, private equity and hedge funds draw their money from the same sources — pension funds, endowments, trusts and other pools of investment capital, who are “going to be a lot more prudent and cautious about where they put their investments.”

That will mean a contraction in both the amount and sources of funding. “Over the past two or three years, what’s happened in tech is a lot of the hedge fund guys and private equity guys have gotten in in the later stages,” Bhatti says. “That became a very lucrative option for a lot of entrepreneurs because (they) found a lot of these guys were not price sensitive. Valuation was not a big sticking point for them. … You’re probably going to see that market close up a lot quicker.”

Those still willing to fund startups may not be offering as much money or as attractive terms, and they’re likely to be pickier about the companies they’ll support. “One of biggest things the Valley is learning is because of MySpace and Facebook and all the social networks, that having an advertising-only supported business model is pretty tough.” Start-up funders are “not as excited about companies saying ‘We’re the next social networking site, we’re going to be an advertising business model with a huge user base.’ “

What VCs want to know, Bhatti says, is: Are companies building a compelling, sustainable business model with proprietary technology behind it “that other companies would be willing to pay for to get?”

The result, in Bhatti’s estimation: Fewer startups being formed or getting funded, “but the ones that do get funded, I think you’ll see them having a lot higher potential for success. The VCs will have vetted them out.” Those that have been funded will have to resist the natural urge to grow as fast as possible in order to conserve cash. The “dead pool” of companies that don’t make it will also grow, but the pileup of wrecked companies won’t be as large as last time.

While the excesses of the 2005-06 funding boom were minuscule compared with the late ’90s dot-com boom, the industry did see money thrown at fads and entrepreneurs seeking to build companies on them in the more recent boomlet. As Bhatti puts it, the startup segment of the tech industry “created a mini-bubble, and now it’s time to deflate the bubble.”

In other words, having learned some painful lessons in the past, the tech industry will contract, retrench, focus on fundamentals, examine risk more closely, re-examine goals and strategies and operate with caution and prudence — an operating philosophy that, had Wall Street and the mortgage and banking industries followed it, might have spared the country considerable economic trouble now.

Who would have predicted eight years ago that it would be the tech sector that would one day provide the model for financial rationality?

Jay Bhatti reports to the National Journal’s Tech Daily Dose about the impact of the economy on Silicon Valley.

At first, people may think the sectors are so far removed from each other that the impact would be minimal. I mean, come on. What in the world does Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Bear Sterns have to do with the fate of start-ups in Silicon Valley and established giants like Oracle and Microsoft. Plenty when you take a closer look.

The big players like Oracle, Sun, Microsoft, and SAP – These guys will feel an immediate impact. Financial Service firms are some of the biggest spenders of IT budgets around. I can imagine memo’s coming from the top to CIOs at banks telling them to cut costs ASAP. Naturally, they will start to push back on upgrades to new software (sorry Vista), ask for greater concessions on license pricing, and in some cases, abandon plans for new technology deployments such as new hardware or new ERP applications. This will impact the bottom line of many established high tech firms. Given all the layoffs at these banks, you will see a lower number of Microsoft Office seats, Oracle seats, Laptops purchased, and less server side hardware and software bought over the next 18 months.

Still, companies such as Microsoft are large and diverse enough to absorb the storm without too much turmoil. Yet, I would not be surprised if I heard Sun report: “We did not meet our numbers this quarter due to decreased spending and turmoil in the financial sector….”

Why Green Technology may be in for a scare – I can see the biggest impact happening on Green Tech Investments. Green Technology requires a LOT of capital (wind energy is not cheap, have you seen how big those turbines are?). Most software start-ups can be funded in under $20 million and get to profitability or an exit with that investment. However, in Green Tech, the amount of investment needed in many cases go well past the billion dollar mark. With congress taking a close look at wasteful spending on green technology (remember corn), many VCs and Green Tech CEO’s were looking to the private markets for later stage capital. However, with hedge funds imploding, private equity shops dwindling, and banks going out of business, who will be left to write those billion dollar checks for a high-risk high-reward technology in Green? Not Uncle Sam!

I can see a lot of VCs taking less of a gamble on technologies that will require significant later stage capital. Instead, they will probably make investments in Green Tech companies that have lower capital requirements. No VC wants to pour $20 million into a company, and when it comes time for that company to raise $500 million for wind turbines, they will find it harder to come by people willing to foot the bill. It’s sad, but the financial meltdown may also cause an ozone meltdown.

More traditional start-ups in the valley are also being impacted. When hedge funds were popping up all over the place, they needed a new place to invest their money. One of the investments they started looking into was high tech startups. Entrepreneurs welcomed this with joy. It gave them another outlet to get funding outside of traditional VCs (just look at the private investments made in Facebook less than a year ago). However, with hedge funds now reverting back to their traditional channels and many closing shop, a lot of funding that entrepreneurs were expecting may never surface. This is a shame in my opinion. There are more great ideas in the Valley than ever before and a lack of funding will prevent many would be great companies from getting off the ground.

Spock Co-Founder Finds Vertical Search Engines ‘Fascinating’

Posted by Michael Singer, Aug 11, 2008 07:02 PM

“Nowhere am I so desperately needed as among a shipload of illogical humans.” –Spock in “I, Mudd.” The same can be said of the search engine market these days, which is why Jay Bhatti, co-founder of Spock, loves his company’s business model.  – PDF Version – complete interview located here:

Spock — the Web site search engine and not Star Trek‘s famous Vulcan — claims it has more than 14 million site users and 5 million monthly visitors. As a former Microsoft employee, Bhatti told InformationWeek that knowing the target audience is paramount to growing the business, which is why Spock focuses on people and not on everything (read: Google).

“When you look at the statistics, 30% of all searches are for people,” Bhatti said. “It’s a huge category, to be sure, but one where we know the traffic will be.”

Launched a little more than a year ago, Spock isn’t reeling in the page views, about 150,000 to 200,000 searches per day, Bhatti said. But the partnerships are making up for organic traffic. The company is actively pursuing contracts that allow it to be the “Search Powered By” choice for content players.

“Very similar to how Google started, we feel that search is ultimately about people, which is where our strength lies,” Bhatti said.

For example, someone reading about famed General Electric CEO Jack Welch in the The Wall Street Journal could use an external search engine to find more information, but Spock (and certainly the WSJ) would rather readers keep within the paper’s Web sphere of influence.

In addition to site search partnerships, Spock allows individuals to pad their own profiles with keywords. The company said it has indexed upwards of 300 million unique people with more than 10 billion data elements. My Spock search result looks a bit like my LinkedIn profile, except that I populated Spock with my own list of common keywords. I still end up on the third or fourth page no matter which search engine I use (sigh).

A recently added feature to Spock is a blue band of suggested Titles, Organizations, and Locations. The list is handpicked based on a group of Spock’s editors, which Bhatti said are used with all of the search engines.

“One thing we found is people may have a hard time figuring out what to type in a search bar. So we’re helping them by suggesting a location or organization and get them started,” Bhatti said. “It’s just a random sampling that changes every once in a while. It’s not done by popularity but it’s a way for our algorithm to stay relevant given the challenges of people searches with pictures.”

To avoid spoofing someone’s identity, Bhatti said Spock relies on known and trusted reference materials before populating the search with a photo.

Another challenge for people searches is the category someone might have. For example, a search for Boxer may end up with boxing champ Mohammed Ali as the top hit or California Sen. Barbara Boxer. Bhatti said Spock’s 30 employees (mostly scientists) are in the process of asking Web searchers to hone in their queries. “Did you mean boxer the sport or person?” may be a preliminary result in the near future, Bhatti said.

On the horizon, Spock is expected to augment its people searches to social networks in the upcoming months. Spock currently has partnerships with MySpace, Friendster, Microsoft’s LiveSpaces, and Bebo, but not the ever-elusive Facebook. This may change as the social network begins to open up its profiles to other sites.

Forbes Magazine asked Jay Bhatti what he thought would happen in silicon valley after Microsoft decided to drop its bid of Yahoo.  The complete article can be found here.  PDF Version

Microsoft-Yahoo!: Ten Takeaways
Wendy Tanaka, 05.05.08, 6:00 AM ET

BURLINGAME, CALIF. –

Microsoft‘s three-month quest for Yahoo! came to a close Saturday as the software giant withdrew its multibillion-dollar bid for the Internet portal, confounding industry observers. They had placed bets on two other scenarios: a friendly merger between the tech titans at a higher price than the $31 per share Microsoft had originally offered, or a hostile takeover from Microsoft. Here’s what happened–and what’s next.

Why did the deal fall apart?

Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT – news – people ) and Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO – news – people ) could not agree on an acquisition price. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and Senior Vice President Kevin Johnson met Yahoo! co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo in Seattle on Saturday to negotiate. Ballmer raised Microsoft’s offer to $33 a share but Yang, Yahoo!’s chief executive, wanted $37. After the meeting, Ballmer sent a letter to Yang stating Microsoft’s withdrawal and adding that “a deal is not to be.”

Did Microsoft do the right thing by walking away?

Probably. Microsoft offered a hefty premium to Yahoo!’s price. The software titan’s original $31 a share offer on Jan. 31 was a 62% premium to the Internet portal’s stock price on that date. Microsoft said its last offer of $33 would have added another $5 billion in value to the deal. The deal was originally valued at $45 billion, but in the ensuing months, it fell to $42 billion as Microsoft’s stock price dipped.

Did Yahoo! do the right thing by not accepting Microsoft’s higher offer?

Probably not. Yahoo! doesn’t have an alternative deal that would return as much to shareholders.

How will Wall Street and shareholders react?

Yahoo!’s shares likely will take a beating. Analysts expect the stock to fall back to $19, the price it was trading at when Microsoft launched its bid. By contrast, Microsoft’s shares likely will rebound above $30.

Yahoo! has already been hit with shareholder lawsuits and should expect more. Microsoft’s shareholders aren’t expected to sue, but they’re anxious to know how the company plans to boost its stock.

What’s Microsoft’s next step?

It will pursue other acquisitions. In a meeting with employees last Friday, Ballmer indicated that he’ll turn his attention to other companies. “If the Yahoo! deal doesn’t happen, we know that there’s a different set of things that we’ll wind up investing in,” he said. “Yahoo! is not a strategy; it’s part of a strategy.” And Microsoft is no stranger to acquisitions: it has bought hundreds of companies in its 33 years.

What other companies is Microsoft interested in acquiring?

Speculation is swirling about Microsoft might be interested in acquiring AOL from Time Warner (nyse: TWX – news –people ) or MySpace from News Corp. (nyse: NWS – news – people ). Trip Chowdry, managing director at Global Equities Research, wouldn’t name names, but says Microsoft will seek out up-and-coming companies that have innovative technologies and also generate revenues from either licenses, transactions, subscriptions or advertising. “Microsoft will acquire a portfolio of companies beyond Web 2.0 plays,” Chowdry says. “Microsoft doesn’t want to fight yesterday’s story; it wants to capture the future.”

What’s Yahoo!’s next step?

The company is now under enormous pressure to find an alternative deal, or deals, that can rev up its stock. It’s considering a search-advertising outsourcing partnership with Google (nasdaq: GOOG – news – people ) to generate more revenue. The two companies launched a trial partnership a few weeks ago that is said to be going well. Look for an announcement on this pact.

Yahoo! also might still be considering a merger with AOL. Yahoo! also had discussions with News Corp. to acquire its social networking behemoth MySpace. But later, News Corp. switched sides and considered joining Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo!, so a deal with News Corp. seems unlikely now.

Will Microsoft come back at Yahoo! later?

If Yahoo!’s stock tumbles, industry observers say the acquisition door could open again, perhaps later this year. Microsoft will “watch what happens to Yahoo! and wait for Yahoo! to falter,” says Edward Deibert, a director at law firm Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin. “If Yahoo! is unable to deliver, Microsoft could take another stab at a [lower] price.”

What will happen to Ballmer and Yang?

It’s unclear whether Ballmer will be seen as a strategic genius or the guy who couldn’t get the deal done. Chowdry says Ballmer only went after Yahoo! and put a sky-high price on the company to make sure no other company acquired it. And while Ballmer has done lots of deals, he’s never done a deal as big as Yahoo! It would have been at least seven times larger than Microsoft’s biggest deal to date–the $6 billion buyout of digital marketing firm aQuantive last year.

Yang could be ousted if he doesn’t find a way to bump up Yahoo!’s stock in a hurry. Industry watchers are scratching their heads about why he wanted so much more than what Microsoft offered.

What is Silicon Valley’s reaction to the news?

“I think people are pretty shocked and surprised” that a deal didn’t happen, says Keith Rabois, vice president of strategy and business development at Slide, a Web application developer. “The Internet trendsetters all think of Yahoo! as past its prime” and expected it to accept a good offer.

Jay Bhatti, co-founder of search engine Spock.com, says start-ups in the Valley are generally relieved that the deal didn’t happen because two major acquirers are still intact. The deal would have consumed both Microsoft and Yahoo! for a year while they integrated their operations and would have left the Valley with just one major acquirer where once there were two. Now, “Ballmer and Microsoft will want to do more small acquisitions,” Bhatti says. “They might spend $10 billion buying 20 small start-ups. I think the Valley’s pretty happy about that.”

Rabois notes that Microsoft’s image in the Valley has improved as well. “Microsoft had a bad reputation among Internet elitists mostly because of the browser wars” in 2000 when Microsoft put Netscape out of business, he says. Now, Microsoft is considered a good business partner. Slide, for instance, has an advertising partnership with Microsoft. The software titan’s most high-profile partnership is with Facebook, in which it owns a small equity stake.