New York VC

Could Twitter be the next Pointcast?

2009-08-10T17:57:20-04:00

Today's news that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed has me wondering whether Twitter could be the next Pointcast. My guess is almost every Twitter user has a Facebook account already and assuming Facebook executes well (big assumption), FriendFeed affords them an opportunity to develop new features and functionality and tighter integration over time that could eat away at Twitter's user base.

Some of you may recall Pointcast, the immensely popular and incredibly hyped push technology for news and content. I'm notgoing to get into Pointcast's entire history but if you're interested read the Wikipedia profile here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PointCast_(dotcom). In summary, the following happened:

- Pointcast's push technology was all the rage and a user base developed that on a relative basis is larger than Twitter has today

- The media elevated Pointcast beyond the reality of what it had achieved in its short life - similar to Twitter

- An offer was made by News Corp. to acquire PointCast at a similar price to the rumored offer by Facebook for Twitter and promptly turned down (to be fair Twitter was rumored to be offered stock only)

- Pointcast started having technical issues keeping the service functional and tired out its user base over time; Twitter continues to be plagued with similar issues

- After numerous missteps Pointcast essentially disappeared as more relevant offerings came to market to provide the content users craved

The big question of the day is did Twitter peak too early? Should they have sold at the height of the buzz? Over the last 2-3 months I've had several agency execs tell me the Twitter craze is dying down with brand marketers and they're advising clients to not spend much of their marketing dollars around the Twitter ecosystem.

There are many differences between Pointcast and Twitter (too many to name) that could lead to a better result for Twitter but I can't get Pointcast out of my head every time I think of Twitter.

Who knows what will happen from here but I'm very interested to see things play out as a bystander.

NOTE: AS I PUBLISHED THIS POST ON TYPEPAD I RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE:

Attention: Recent attacks to Twitter are affecting the performance of our 'Share this Post' feature. TypePad is working with Twitter to remedy this issue. Thank you for your patience.

COINCIDENCE OF THE DAY!

Practice What You Preach

2009-04-28T14:05:34-04:00

New Yorkers were rightly outraged by yesterday's Air Force One photo shoot over Manhattan. What I haven't seen discussed, however, is the timing of what was likely a very expensive "classified mission" to update the photo of Air Force One on the White House website.

Back in November every politicianwas outraged when the Big Three auto industry CEOs flew private planes to DC to ask for taxpayer money. This was a stupid move by the automakers and was a clear symbol of waste in an industry that has been operated poorly for decades.

So why aren't politicians just as outraged over the taxpayer money wasted on yesterday's photo shoot. I don't know the exact cost of an Air Force escorted photo shoot in downtown Manhattan, but I'm willing to bet it cost taxpayers a whole lot more than the auto industry CEO private flights back in November.

To me yesterday's photo shoot flight (and lack of political outrage over the cost) is just as significant of a symbol as the private flights in November. Our government finds more ways to waste taxpayer money on a daily basis than any corporation in this country - including the auto companies.

Our government leaders need to start practicing what they preach.

Pontiflex

2009-04-15T15:46:54-04:00

Pontiflex, our Brooklyn-based portfolio company, announced a Series B financing round with new investor RRE Ventures. The team at Pontiflex has achieved extraordinary growth since our initial investment a year ago.

We're thrilled to welcome RRE as a co-investor and in particular Eric Wiesen to the company's board. Not much more to say since earlier today Eric eloquently outlined on his blog where Pontiflex is positioned in the online advertising universe and why they're sitting on a golden opportunity.

Fittest tech firms will survive in the future - Redux

2009-03-30T10:40:40-04:00

I wrote an article for the Baltimore Business Journal 7 years ago during the last tech downturn while I was at Sterling Partners. A lot has changed over the last 7 years but after coming across this article recently I realized many of the messages apply just as well today as they did back then. I've pasted the article below as well:

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

Charles Darwin would have made one hell of a venture capitalist. Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest was played out each and every day in the halls and conference rooms of venture capital firms and early-stage technology companies during 2001. More often than not, these young companies succumbed to the forces of natural selection.

So as 2002 begins to unfold, how can we expect Darwin's theory to affect the current crop of young technology companies? And just what characteristics are Darwin's agents, the venture capitalists, looking for in companies this year?

Entrepreneurs and investors should expect more of the same for the rest of 2002. While many weak tech companies have folded, many still remain. Our offices still receive business plans daily from existing technology companies still struggling to survive.

I predict by the end of 2002 all but a few of the "walking dead" technology companies will disappear and we'll be left with two types of young companies: survivors and upstarts. "Survivors" will emerge leaner and stronger after having survived the Darwinian market of the last two to three years. Upstarts will learn from the failed businesses of the last few years and bring new, improved and innovative ideas to the market.

And if history repeats itself, both types of companies will produce this country's next generation of technology leaders. One only needs to look back at the 1984-1985 recession to find a couple of good examples. In Silicon Valley, Intel became a survivor by shifting its business from producing memory chips to microprocessors, which led to its explosive growth during the 1990s. Meanwhile, in Texas that same year, a young college kid founded an upstart company called Dell Computer just as the PC market was in the midst of a complete meltdown.

I expect my colleagues and I in the venture capital industry will be on the lookout for both survivors and upstarts in 2002.

We're looking for technology companies that can deliver value to their customers, value to their partners and value to their shareholders.

We're looking for technology companies that offer a defensible and differentiated product or service. The successful companies will understand that they may forgo profits to achieve rapid growth.

And finally, we're looking for experienced entrepreneurs with domain expertise who are capable of managing their company through the ups and downs of the business cycle.

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

One mistake I made in the article was stating that the walking dead companies would disappear by the end of 2002. Many companies (and VC funds) proved to be more resilient than I expected. They didn't thrive but did manage to keep the lights on. I expect the same thing to happen again.

The venture industry has always been a cyclical business and I don't expect that to ever change. I do wonder whether or not the boom/bust cycles are getting shorter and shorter in our business. Tech innovation cycles are shorter which may be tightly correlated to the venture cycle as well.

Food for thought.

Can you spare $1 a month for Facebook?

2009-03-27T10:01:12-04:00

There seems to be an obsession over monetization of online properties through advertising. The preferred formula is build a large audience, sell targeted advertising, get rich. Google perfected the model better than anyone but it's not easy to achieve and is often the wrong choice.

We come across many bright entrepreneurs that are easily seduced by ad supported business models when sometimes alternative types of monetization can be more effective.

Case in point - Facebook.

At its core Facebook is a utility used by members for communication, community, collaboration and expression. Facebook is providing a valuable service to consumers and deservedly should be compensated for its efforts.

If i was an investor in Facebook I would be strongly pushing a subscription model. Facebook has 175 million users worldwide and at $1 per user per month they could generate $2.1 billion in annual revenues. Even if half of the members paid FB would generate over $1 billion sales on a recurring basis. Of course not every user is active and a percentage will refuse to pay but I would argue that any user not willing to pay $1 per month isn't likely a great target for advertisers anyway. The average Facebook user is now ovr 25 years old and $1 would mean buying one less cup of coffee or can of Coke each month to cover the cost.

The beauty of adopting a low-cost subscription model is that it wouldn't rule out FB's advertising opportunities at all. Cable tv has figured out how to make both models co-exist successfully.

Facebook management just needs to have more confidence in the power of their platform and the value they provide to members.

Just one man's point of view but I would be interested in other views on this topic.

Flat World Knowledge

2009-03-23T23:56:59-04:00

I've been lucky to have a ringside seat over the last 8 years to watch as the education industry evolves right in front of my eyes. First at my old firm Sterling Partners which sprouted blockbuster companies like Sylvan and Laureate Education and where I was exposed to a consistent dose of young, innovative education companies over several years. In recent years I've been fortunate to spend a fair amount of time both formally and informally interacting with some of the largest education publishers in the world right here in NY. One of them is in fact an investor in our fund. What I've learned over the years as a VC is that finding a compelling early stage company to back in the education industry is challeging. The venture industry's collective investment track record across the sector over the last 20-30 years confirms this to be true. To be a successful investor in the education sector it's necessary to attack a large, preferably unregulated segment of the market with a highly disruptive solution and with an A team of domain experts that understands the education industry inside and out (rookies need not apply).

Which brings me to the $8 billion college textbook market.

Much has been written over the last year about the imminent demise of the $40 billion print newspaper industry at the hands of digital media. At Greenhill SAVP we believe the newspaper industry is just the tip of the iceberg and that conditions are in place right now for disruptive and rapid acceleration of other print content to all web-based or web/print hybrid content solutions. College textbooks are near the top of the list. Let me explain why.

Unlike the newspaper industry which is highly fragmented, the college textbook industry is an oligopoly where the major publishers utilize their size and pricing power to effectively control the market. The average new business & economics college textbook today costs $150 and many have surpassed $200 during the past year. In an age of seemingly readily available and cheap digital content, textbooks prices are actually rising. For a 4 year public college student, the estimated average cost of textbooks and related materials as a percentage of tuition and fees is 26% and for a 2 year community college student, the percentage is about 76% (U.S. Department of Education). As the recession has deepened, enrollments in colleges rise, university budgets are being cut, and everyone is being asked to do more with less. In response many institutions of higher learning have been forced to raise tuition and fees to keep the lights on while students who are already struggling financially are asked to shoulder an even higher financial burden.

The current situation is not sustainable, particulary in today's economic and political climate. A perfect storm is brewing that's created the ideal conditions to disrupt the college textbook market and rewrite all the rules. That's why we're thrilled to announce the latest addition to the Greenhill SAVP portfolio - Nyack, NY based Flat World Knowledge.

Flat World Knowledge is the world's first publisher of open source textbooks. Their highly disruptive business model and technology platform is breaking all the rules and doing nothing less than reinventing the textbook publishing industry. Flat World publishes premier textbooks written by leading experts that are as good or better than those offered by major publishers. All students can access their online texts for free or purchase affordable alternatives from paperback editions, audio chapters, Kindle versions, .mp3 study guides, mobile flashcards and web quizzes. In other words, students can consume educational content anywhere, anytime, anyhow and in anyway.

Additionally, Flat World openly licenses their books and provide an easy-to-use platform so faculty can modify the book and deliver a customized version to their students. The platform also provides a rich learning environment for students through the ability to collaborate around the textbooks where students can actually create, share and sell study resources to one another.

We're excited to be an investor in Flat World Knowledge along with our good friends and colleagues over at Valhalla Partners and High Peaks Venture Partners. In particular, I'd like to thank Hooks Johnston from Valhalla for first introducing me to Flat World Knowledge. We look forward to working with Jeff Shelstad, Eric Frank, Brad Felix and the rest of the the Flat World team (our A team of domain experts) over the coming years to help revolutionize an industry in desperate need of change.

Tim Armstrong named Chairman & CEO of AOL

2009-03-12T22:55:23-04:00

I was very happy to see the news today that Tim was named the new Chairman & CEO of AOL. Tim's a friend and I've been fortunate to work with him first as a fellow board member at KnowledgeStorm and over the last 4+ years as an investor and Advisor to our fund, Greenhill SAVP.

Personally seeing Tim in action and having had the opportunity to pick his brain and exchange ideas on a number of initiatives over the years, I can state that his appointment as Chairman & CEO of AOL is one of the more important announcements in the digital media/advertising market in a long time. People that are in the know are aware of how significant of a role Tim played in the success of Google. Tim was long overdue to take the helm as CEO of a major media company.

I have no inside knowledge but I expect AOL will get the following from Tim:

Strong leadership - Tim is a natural born leader and excels at rallying the troops towards a common goal
Focus - Tim will bring real focus to AOL and will build on AOL's core strengths while jettisoning side projects that don't provide sustainable value to the franchise
Re-Invigorated Sales Culture - Tim plays to win and as a former athlete is very competitive. Expect him to revamp and revitalize the ad sales team
Deeper Technology Moat - Tim is generally thought of as a sales leader but he very much understands the importance of utilizing technology to create an edge over the competition. I expect Tim to emphasize technology through focused investment in R&D

Fixing AOL isn't an easy task but Time Warner couldn't have chosen a better individual both personally and professionally to make it happen. I wish Tim the best of luck and look forward to watching him lead AOL to a better future.

Is the venture capital model dead?

2009-02-11T23:33:26-05:00

There's been an increasing belief over the last few years about the impending death of the venture capital business. I'm not going to elaborate on the various theories floating around out there. If you want to learn more then a simple google search with the keywords "venture capital dead" will provide you with plenty of reading material.

The bottom line is the venture business is alive and well but is in the midst of a long period of transition. Alan Patricof, one of the deans of the venture industry, did a fantastic job in a NY times article a couple of days ago of explaining how the business has shifted over the last 40 years. His view is very consistent with ours at Greenhill SAVP and exactly the view we shared with our LPs back in 2005 while raising our current fund.

Prior to fundraising back then we did a lot of research and crunched a lot of data about the venture industry and came to several conclusions:

historically the most successful VC-backed companies are consistently the most capital efficient
the most successful early stage venture funds were smaller in size with virtually no evidence in our industry (outside of late 90's bubble funds) of early stage funds generating strong returns above $300 million
valuations matter - A LOT. Fair and reasonable valuations work better for venture funds AND entrepreneurs. Inflated valuations combined with too much capital consistently lead to exit value expectations which statistically have not been reached with enough frequency. Most exits are less than $100 million in value with bigger exits serving as the exception, not the rule. Too many venture funds are currently structured so they can only succeed by producing several "exceptions" in each fund.
the venture industry will need to contract signifcantly over the next decade. Between 1997 (the year I entered the venture business) and 2007 the number of venture funds and number of investment professionals increased about 60% and average fund size increased 120%. We think we'll revert back to 1997 levels over the next 3-4 years.
venture capital and entrepreneurship is democratizing and becoming increasingly global as core technology becomes widespread and cheap. Silicon Valley will continue to be important but less so than the previous 30 years. Innovation will become more distributed and certain geographies with particular depth of domain expertise (e.g., financial services in NYC) would stand out as future centers of innovation.

Four years later our view is unchanged and in fact we expect to see these changes to accelerate. We constructed our venture fund and investment approach based on the above-mentioned assumptions because we felt it was the best formula to serve both entrepreneurs and our investors.

We feel now is a terrific time to invest in innovative, capital efficient start-ups and we plan to be active investors in 2009. We're fortunate to be well-positioned today with plenty of capital to invest and believe that we'll look back on the companies we fund in today's environment as some of our best performing investments. On a macro level, we're long-term bulls on the venture industry, long-term bulls on a continued strong rate of innovation and long-term bulls on the entrepreneurial spirit that has always been the foundation of America.

Pontiflex

2008-04-30T06:00:00-04:00

Despite the fact that lead generation has been the fastest online ad category, the market is riddled with inefficiencies and problems which have led to a high degree of friction and fragmentation. Lead generation deals take longer and significantly more effort to set up than search campaigns or banner buys. Today, to run a lead generation campaign, several different departments must get involved: media buyers / sellers, creative groups, and technology teams.

More importantly, today there is currently no efficient way for advertisers and publishers to access the entire lead generation market. Advertisers lack a way to access the universe of potential publishers to run their offers. Similarly, publishers do not have a streamlined way to present their networks and sites to advertisers.

This fragmentation leaves most companies reliant on a few large lead gen ad networks and brokers. The ad networks and brokers for the most part keep their partner lists secret, forcing the advertisers to run their lead campaigns “blind.” Advertisers typically do not know where their offers are running, what the true markup is, and how much of a return they are yielding on their advertising investment. This lack of transparency, in turn, has led to a host of issues, including problems with lead quality, improper use of promotional incentives, and resale of leads without advertiser authorization. As a result, the lead generation market has attracted a number of disreputable parties which has damaged the sector’s reputation and held back the overall market.

When an advertiser and publisher do strike a deal, they often have difficulty transferring lead data or advertising creative due to a variety of standards that currently exist. For instance, some advertisers want their lead data sent by email, while others prefer HTTP or FTP format. As a result, publishers have to set up each lead generation campaign from scratch – a process that can take several days worth of work.

The opaque nature of the market and the complications associated with data transfer has made it difficult for advertisers to optimize and accurately calculate the ROI of their campaigns. Many large brand advertisers have avoided the use of lead gen for some or all of these reasons.

It's against this backdrop that we first became interested in Pontiflex. Pontiflex is looking to solve all of these issues with the recent soft launch of the industry's first and only open and transparent lead generation marketplace. Pontiflex enables advertisers to:

find lead gen publishers
set up and run campaigns
optimize, report and validate leads,
and transmit leads in real-time

Advertisers can achieve all this with the same ease as running a search campaign with Google with the benefit of full transparency. We believe by addressing a number of the key problems in the lead gen market, Pontiflex can grow the overall market by attracting more mainstream advertisers into the fold. The same advertisers that adopted banner ads and search ads over the last 5-10 years can now add lead gen to the mix just as easily. Despite being in open beta launch mode, Pontiflex has already attracted a large number of advertisers and publishers to their platform and can already deliver access to 17 million leads monthly for advertisers.

We're thrilled to have invested in Pontiflex with New Atlantic Ventures and look forward to building a great company with them and Pontiflex's team - Zephrin Lasker, Roshan Bangara, Jon Beardsley, Geoff Grauer, Arun Krishnan, Chris Halvorsen and Nick Herman.

Bear Stearns Fire Sale

2008-03-16T20:22:52-04:00

JP Morgan is acquiring Bear Stearns for $2 per share ($235 million) in what will go down as one of the most spectacular flame-outs in investment banking history. Consider these three points:

- Bear Stearns was trading at $150 per share just 9 months ago representing a market cap over $17 billion.

- AOL last week announced the acquisition of Bebo for $850 million or almost 4x the acquisition price of Bear Stearns. Bebo's reported 2007 revenue - $20 million. Bear Stearns 2007 revenue - $6 billion.

- Widget maker Slide recently raised $50 million at a valuation of $550 million. Revenue - little to none.

Despite Bear's troubles this will one day be known as one of the best acquisitions of an investment bank or any business ever and will become a landmark deal in the career of Jamie Dimon.

If you were to look out 2-3 years from now and had to predict which one of these three deals will be the most lucrative for the acquirer/investor which deal would you choose?

We sure are living in interesting times!