Jason Ball's TechBytes

Up, Up and Up

2008-04-24T00:13:23+01:00

It's earnings season on Wall Street and the news is very good:

Amazon- Q1 profit up 29%
Apple- Q1 profit up 36%
Google- Q1 profit up 30%
Broadcom - Q1 profit up 22%

Most of the results are due to non-US strength, but they are very stong results across the board...

Web 2.0 Expo Party List

2008-04-20T14:57:12+01:00

If you're in the Bay Area for the Web 2.0 Expo, here's a list (which has a public Google Calendar as well) of updated, collected, filtered, processed, pre-selected, recommended expo-related events.

Enjoy.

Should I stay, or should I go?

2008-04-14T21:05:00+01:00

This is the eternal question every Londoner (or any urbanite) faces:

You've missed the bus- do you walk to the next stop to try to catch it, or do you stay put and wait for the next one to come along?

There is a precise mathematical equation that can be used anytime you're faced with this dilemma:

The long and short of it is, if you walk to the next bus stop- chances are the bus will pass you by, and you'll end up waiting even longer...so stay put.

You can read the full proof here, Walk versus Wait: The Lazy Mathematician Wins, if that's your thing.

Can i haz VC?

2008-04-09T21:15:00+01:00

A great post over on Under the Radar on VC slang:

VC vocab for those of you who are about to venture into, well, venture...and for those of you who could use the refresher:

Star: A portfolio company that generates 5-10x ROI upon exit

Walking Dead/Zombie: A portfolio company that can only generate an ROI, equal to the amount of money invested into it.

Dog: A portfolio company that has no chance of returning any money to its investors.

Kennel Capital: A portfolio of dogs

Dogcatcher: A VC whose portfolio is kennel capital

ArchAngel: A serial Angel investor who has, to date, invested in a number of starts. (See Jeff Clavier)

Blowfish: An early-stage (often pre-revenue) stratup entrepreneur who claims that his company makes better chips than Intel, better software than Microsoft and who knows more about customers and their needs than Dell.

Conservative Estimate: Overly optimistic financial forecasts that inexperienced first-time entrepreneurs generate using Excel.

And our personal favorite.....

Putting Lipstick on a Pig: When an entrepreneur tries to create a positive spin on a negative event (ex. Our management team leaving us at this time affords us an opportunity to retool our entire business focus and go-to-market plans). It can also be used to describe a bad product that is re-launched with new dressed-up front-end or the process in which a VC will over spin a portfolio company's stort to facilitate a high exit.

And just in case you missed Max's excellent post on VC wear (that still has me laughing), you can browse some more originals like the one to the left over at Venture Capital Wear.

Now you can talk like a VC and dress like a VC. (YMMV.)

Nsyght - Social Search Beta released

2008-04-09T20:41:44+01:00

The guys over at nsyght have been burning the midnight oil... they released a beta version of the social search engine today, and techcrunch has a full blown review.

As Mike points out on the UK site:

This tiny boostrapped startup from West London wants to take your bookmarks and social network and use that to create more relevant search results. The idea is that, over time,a user will have a totally custom-built search index specific to them and their tastes...

...Try a search on “iPhone development” across Wikia, Nsyght and Google. Nsyght comes off pretty well - and they don’t have anywhere close to Wikia’s funding.

In my experience, I would agree- a search like iphone development will give you good results (pretty much any early adopter/geek search will yield better results than Google, et al.) If you haven't taken time to test "social driven search", now's the time to do so...

Jajah on spamming spree... [updated]

2008-04-08T20:17:00+01:00

[Update, April 9] Just had a call from the guys at Jajah. They were very apologetic and stressed that they had not begun spamming their user base. Some background investigation is currently underway to determine how/where this message got sent...(watch it be my fault)

Even if it did come from Jajah, a call to rectify definitely things puts it right in my book....Jajah is again my favorite voip service. :-)

What is it with tech companies these days? First Bebo go and spam everyone and now Jajah (my now ex-favorite voip service) goes spamming my contacts WITHOUT my consent:

Hi!

Do you want to talk to jason@emailaddressremoved for FREE?

Initiate a regular phone-to-phone call with JAJAH at www.jajah.com. Between registered JAJAH users telephone calls are free of charge. I am already registered, so effectively we can talk for FREE. Even before you register you get 5 free minutes. No download, no installation, no headset. Try it out now!

jason@emailaddressremoved also left this message for you:

Initiate a regular phone-to-phone call with JAJAH at www.jajah.com.
Between registered JAJAH users telephone calls are free of charge. I am already registered, so effectively we can talk for FREE. Even before you register you get 5 free minutes. No download, no installation, no headset. Try it out now!

Curious? Check out www.jajah.com, get 5 free minutes and register to talk JAJAH too!

Note: Your Email address was only used for this message.

Talk JAJAH! http://www.jajah.com/

WHAT?! I was floored when I got a response to this email. Very naughty Jajah...

Quote of the Day- Gordon Brown

2008-04-08T20:12:00+01:00

Responding to criticism that the UK property market is crashing, Gordon Brown stated:

"We've seen house prices rise by about 180% over the last 10 years and they have risen by about 18% over the last three years, so a 2.5% fall is something that is containable," Brown said.

A quick check shows that Bear Sterns was up 150% over the last 10 years as at Dec 2007 ($90/share)...

Then, the bottom fell out and the stock is trading down (87%) YTD ($10/share). What destroyed their share value? The credit crunch.

Guess what's about to crack the UK housing market?

Ireland Venture Capital/Startup Events

2008-04-01T22:44:04+01:00

Continuing with the Startup Events theme, I thought I'd start posting what I'm seeing around Europe. Conor over at Argolon gave me the low-down on what's happening on the green isle:

Dublin has traditionally been the mobile dev centre here (Movidia, Newbay, Xiam, Puca, S3, Rococo etc etc) and I think that is still the case. Scattered around the country you have start-ups like Cubic Telecom and YouGetItBack in Cork, VoiceSage in Limerick, Nubiq in Waterford. We're only just dipping our toes into mobile/wireless etc in LouderVoice with SMS reviews/customer feedback. Medium term aim is full LBS functionality along the lines of Socialight or Whrrl.
We had the big success with DemoBar last autumn and there was supposed to be a follow-up in January but it hasn't happened yet. TechLudd is a new monthly meetup but it is mainly concerned with the web (and techies). The OpenCoffees in Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galway, Belfast and Dublin are still pretty small (we average 15 or so in Cork) but particularly strong mobile presence in Limerick. They are also kicking off a BarCamp there pretty soon. Web2Ireland is still probably the best place to keep an eye on for events. The TechLudd guys have also recently started http://irelandstartupevents.com/ which looks good. Finally, Mobile Monday Dublin seems to be a bit quiet at the minute (http://www.momodublin.com/)

I found out via irelandstartupevents.com about the upcoming Adobe Air developer day here in London (too late, now full)...

What other resources/upcoming events should the budding europreneur know about? Post any thoughts in the comments...

(+ I'm planning a trip to Denmark in the near future- anything I should be sure to catch?)

iSurprise with Kleiner's iFund

2008-03-06T21:15:05+00:00

Wow, who would have thought Steve's "One more thing" would be a $100 million fund dedicated to iPhone apps. (It's not everyday that I can blog about Apple AND Venture Capital in the same post...)

The only part that threw me was it's Kleiner Perkins and not Sequoia. Unless my history is wrong, Sequoia backed Apple, not KPCB- so why aren't they running the iFund? Accel are running the Facebook Fund. If you back the original, surely you back the ecosystem too?

That aside, I'm really excited that Kleiner are putting some muscle behind development for the platform.

Yahoo OnePlace- An Intelligent Mobile Agent?

2008-03-05T22:18:27+00:00

Continuing with the theme of The Next Web, Yahoo has announced Yahoo OnePlace today:

Yahoo! onePlace brings together all your interests, passions and important information into a single location, creating a rich, highly personalized experience around it for you. Everything is instantly organized, dynamically kept up to date, and served up to you the way you want [to your mobile]...

...News feeds, websites, videos, images, emails, search queries, etc.—all can be linked into Yahoo! onePlace from anywhere across the Internet with a single click [and delivered to your mobile]....

and

...Yahoo! onePlace will list each of these for you as well provide a preview of the underlying content, which is continually refreshed throughout the day.

If they pull this off, this is going to be an exceptional service to bring the internet to the mobile. Before you dismiss Yahoo out of hand, pick up your iPhone and search for anything inside safari. Look at the google results. Then go to prefs and change to Yahoo as your search engine, and run the same search. Then, sit back and admire Yahoo's implementation of mobile search...

The Next Web

2008-03-05T21:50:00+00:00

Good post over at Genuine VC yesterday covering the History of the Web:

...a transition among three distinct phases of consumers’ primary activity online from receiving, to hunting, and now doing...

Receiving, Hunting, Doing is a good indication of what we've seen so far- and I think we're going full circle to "Receiving" again- only this time from intelligent sources.

Two examples are Kwiry or Tripit. With Tripit, you email them your travel itneratry and they scour the web in the background and send you a nice package of maps, directions, thoughtful suggestions, etc. I've posted many times about "intelligence inside" which lives in the same neighborhood as the Semantic Web:

...I also think there's a huge opportunity to get to data sooner via the sensor revolution. When phones report location, when phones listen to ambient sound, when credit cards report spending patterns, when cars report their miles traveled, when we're increasingly turning every device into a sensor for the global brain, there will be more and more sources of data to be mined...

All of which means the process is reversing: doing by machines, hunting by spiders and receiving by users- remix and repeat.

Google Gears on Mobile Devices

2008-03-04T19:42:00+00:00

Google has announced Google Gears for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices.

Google Gears works in exactly the same way on a Windows Mobile 5 or 6 device as it does on a desktop PC. If you've already written an application that uses Google Gears, your application will also work on a Windows Mobile 5 or 6 device. Except, of course, only within the limitations of that device. This means you need to consider things such as small screen and limited ability to input text as well as the limitations of the Document Object Model and CSS APIs present on mobile devices.

If Google Gears is expanded to work on Safari (Desktop and iPhone), then Gears might provide an easier way to develop for an iPhone than even Apple's own SDK.

London Venture Capital Events

2008-02-24T10:48:57+00:00

A comment was posted earlier in the week asking what events are relevant for new arrivals in London looking to get involved in the venture/start-up comunity. I was looking for the same in 2004 and posted a short list in 2005. Here's a revised short list of VC-related events in and around London, no particular order:

Regular events:
Internet People (no link)
Open Coffee
City Zone
Chinwag
Mashup events
Mobile Monday
Geek Dinner
Second Chance Tuesday

Conferences:
FOWA
Symbian Smartphone show
Paid Content UK events
Library House events

Mike Butcher over at TechCrunch UK tends to post lists of upcoming events on a regular basis. Latest list here.

Any events I've left off, feel free to add them in the comments section.

World Mobile Conference- The Year of the Browser

2008-02-16T16:31:57+00:00

The number one thing that jumped out at me during the conference was Google's report that there are 50x more searches originating from the iPhone than any other mobile handset.

Just to put that in perspective there are 4 million iPhones in the wild compared to 3 billion other mobile devices. This goes hand in hand with O2's report that 60% of U.K. iPhone users are sending or receiving more than 25 MB of data a month- which is unheard of on other handsets.

Android was only available on a few booths- AMD, Qualcomm, etc. From the demo I saw, it's clear that Android will offer iPhone-like touchscreen functionality along with a tightly bundled suite of Google Apps and browser. It's important to highlight that Android is using WebKit- the same as Safari on the iPhone (and Mac OS X desktop).

Opera was demoing their latest 9.5 release- showing off Opera Desktop, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile and Opera Wii. They've created a browser for many, many other non-handset devices (Wii, Airplanes, Archos, etc.) They allow users to sync their profile, bookmarks, widgets, etc across all devices. (This is the exact same functionality that Apple should be offering.)

I didn't see Mozilla, but Firefox is coming soon.

Great browsers, combined with device specific site optimization (e.g. iPhone) or server-side optimization (e.g. Novarra) mean 2008 could finally be the Year of the Browser on mobiles.

Qualcomm Ventures Europe

2008-02-16T16:31:25+00:00

I joined the Qualcomm Ventures Europe team earlier this month. Qualcomm, Inc (NASDAQ: QCOM) announced their European fund last May, in addition to Qualcomm Ventures in the US, China and India.

I'll be focusing on European startups (both early and later stage) in the following sectors: mobile application/platform software developers, handset components, network infrastructure and core technologies (semiconductor, battery, plastic electronics, etc.).

As a consequence, you'll see a shift towards these sectors in the blogging content. As always, if you're working in an area I'm actively investing into or blogging about, don't hesitate to drop me a line.

Exit Valuation Trends: 2007 [Updated]

2008-01-16T21:00:40+00:00

I posted last year’s figures from Icon Corporate Finance, showing how exit valuations were 1.5x -2x sales. I use figures like that as 3rd party data when discussing valuations.

This year’s data focuses on one of the same two metrics used last year price/EBIT (no price/sales data was provided). What's clear though is that the multiples for 2007 are trending down from those of 2006...

If you’re an entrepreneur out fundraising, you need to keep these multiples in mind. Many companies I’ve met with over the past 12 months have really pumped up their valuations. If the exit valuations aren’t increasing, then the entry price isn't going to be increasing…

Fred summed it up well just before Christmas: funding in 2008 isn't going to be the party its been over the past 2 years, so hold onto your hats.

P.S. Bonus points for spotting Fred in a Darth Vader mask in 2008!

--
[Update 28 January 2008]

Stacey over at GigaOm (thanks for the link love) has a good post on venture valuation trends from a US perspective- the party's coming to an end stateside (and with the recent NASDAQ slide, perhaps even more abruptly):

... But for video startups who raised money based upon the valuations set by Google when it bought YouTube for $1.6 billion, or the open-source startups out there checking out MySQL’s eye popping $1 billion price tag on what’s reported to be about $50 million in 2006 sales, the party may be dragging to an end. Slide’s recent $550 million valuation set by private equity funds notwithstanding, free-spending strategic buyers are showing signs of coming to their senses, so valuations may be coming down...

Apple Movie Rentals (and Macworld thoughts)

2008-01-16T20:38:32+00:00

Like I do with every Apple iTunes new feature, I buy immediately to help promote the format. The introduction of Movie Rentals is no different...

If you rent a movie through iTunes, a new source appears in iTunes "Rented Movies". I decided to watch Pirates of the Carribean (one of our portfolio companies' software has been used in the various Pirates films). Seeing rentals at $2.99 makes me wonder what the cost of delivery and infrastructure is for a circa 2GB file? Is Apple making any money on the rental? If any one knows the economics, please post in the comments.

The other main highlight for me was Time Capsule. I'm a backup fanatic (ever since I had 3 mac laptops stolen in one fell swoop), and Time Capsule will really simplify my backup strategy. 1TB of storage sitting in our closet ticking away... well done Apple!

My new pet monster

2008-01-07T20:10:23+00:00

I was given a Moshi Monster phone charm by our "secret santa" this year. I was pleased to see that Mind Candy (an Accel and Spark Ventures investment) was behind the charm and that it linked to a virtual pets style website. I've now registered and adopted a monster, my new, if somewhat despondent, moshi monster called Alpi:

Moshi Monsters is kind of a Second Life for Kids with a tamagotchi thrown in... the puzzles they offer kids as edutainment are definitely cool -some of the brain teasers are very similar to nintendo's Brain Training game. I haven't spent long periods of time with my monster (and probably won't), but I can see where kids could really get into this. The site has just launched, so traffic volumes are still relatively low, but they are growing. Only time will tell if this turns into a monster of an investment ;-)

Social Search- Mahalo's new move

2007-12-12T23:53:16+00:00

I posted last week about Google's recent foray into social search. My friends over at Mahalo launched Mahalo Social at LeWeb3 this morning, which adds the social graph to Mahalo's search results.

The profile pages (see C.K.'s here) allow you to contribute to the results pages and see what your friends are recommending as well.

Oddly, it allows you to add other sites/bookmarks etc, but that doesn't seem to incorporate those inputs into a recommendation. Not sure why they haven't chosen to take on as many pre-bookmarked sites as possible to help prime the "recommended links" pump. Perhaps they'll switch that on in a few weeks time.

One thing that is clear- Mahalo's search results are becoming better- and more robust. I also think we'll see a loosening of the "guided" Mahalo over the coming months- with increasing emphasis on the madness of crowds...

Social Search - The Race

2007-12-05T21:31:09+00:00

Nic posted yesterday about the social search space. I'd highlighted one of the companies he mentioned in an earlier post, Nsyght. I tend to follow the search space closely and have wondered out loud "why isn't google leveraging social input" to further tweak their algorithms? It appears I won't have to wait long to see what Google is cooking up:

This Google experiment page isn't active yet, so you can't use it, but does describe how social ranking works.

This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you'll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you've made. Note that this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks.

The same way that the YouTube video ads are very primitive, expect to see the social tweaking component of Google's results become more sophisticated...