3Tera, a developer of cloud computing services and software, presented at one of our Under the Radar conferences in 2008 as a startup with major momentum. Barry Lynn, Chairman and CEO, certainly piqued the audience’s interest at Under the Radar. You can see photos of the event here.

Since presenting at Under the Radar, 54% of startups have gone on to raise funds or be acquired.

Congratulations 3Tera!

Oh, and warning: harsh language below – nothing new to you Valley-types…

Ten Classic Valley Clichés

by Ivan Gaviria

As a partner in a startup law firm I have spent countless hours in board meetings over the years. This front row seat has led me to conclude that one of the Valley’s underappreciated contributions to society is the wealth of catchphrases, clichés and buzzwords that permeate the culture. Ignoring the industry specific hacker and technical slang and the trendier offerings, there are a number of phrases that seem particularly unique to world of venture backed startups and have stood the test of time. The following are a couple of my favorites:

“Open the Kimono” – Basically means to reveal sensitive or confidential information; usually in the negotiation context. Example: “It’s going to come out in diligence and we don’t have the time to play games so we just need to open the kimono and take our chances.” I’m frankly amazed that this one is still in heavy circulation with the politically incorrect overtones, but I think I hear it at least once a week. Extra points when it’s accompanied by an illustrative hand gesture from a middle aged guy with a BMI of 30+.

“Agree to Disagree” – This is essentially just a polite version of “fuck you”; it functions as a segue to allow the negotiation or conversation to move on after hitting an impasse and where an actual “fuck you” would be unproductive. Example: “I think we just need to agree to disagree on this and move on.”

“We are in violent agreement” — Sort of a cousin to “agree to disagree” this is also a segue to move the conversation forward, but without the “fuck you” element – it’s more of an acknowledgment that people are missing each others’ points and don’t really disagree but are getting spun up.

“Spun Up” – Essentially, to get upset, irate, etc. In my experience, used predominately as a threat, i.e., “I could bring that point up with our side, but people are going to get spun up.” Can be used in tandem with various head related hyperboles such as “he’s so spun up his head is going to explode/pop off his shoulders/lift off” etc.

“It Is What It Is” – This is a handy phrase for the moment of resignation when it’s clear something can’t be changed. The issue has been fought, the other side won’t concede and you’ve got to accept the point and move on. “It is what it is.” Depending on your perspective it’s either a super trite cliché or a koan with real existential implications. Lastly, with the right intonation, it can also mean “fuck you.”

“At The End of The Day” – This phrase means something like “when all is said and done” and precedes some conclusion about an open discussion point. Example “At the end of the day, this is a small risk and shouldn’t stop us from doing the deal.” It can be used interchangeably with “the bottom line” or in a cliché combo such as “at the end of the day, it is what it is.”

“Is it the Horse or the Jockey” - The first time I heard this one was during a discussion of whether a high priced, highly recruited sales guy was getting the job done. After the discussion, one of the VC’s leaned in and said “We need to sort through these product issues before we can discover if the problem is the horse or the jockey.” I’m not sure if it’s the Woodside thing but equine metaphors in general are pretty popular in the valley.

“Horse Trade” – A “horse trade” is distinguishable from a reasoned negotiation point and typically made in some non linear fashion often at the tail end of a negotiation. A rational negotiation point might be a founder arguing for a smaller option pool increase because her hiring plan calls for only a modest headcount increase. A “horse trade” would be something like “Ok, we’ll drop the post money pool to 15% but we’re going to increase our participation cap from 2X to 3X.” One could say that a good horse trade is also a variation of “fuck you.”

“Sleeves Off Your Vest” – This one’s presumably been around since before the days of business casual. Giving someone the sleeves off your vest is a concession that doesn’t actually cost you anything. Its corollary among sartorial metaphors is the “belt and suspenders” – a purposely redundant addition to an agreement made to satisfy a paranoid party.

“Reach Out/Ping/Circle Back” – No one around here can just call someone. You have to “reach out” or “ping” them, etc. I’m not sure why this is the case but … it is what it is.

If you have the bandwidth, and I can get your mindshare – I’d love to hear other people’s favorites. Comment below!

In the spirit of Seth Godin’s Purple Cow (a must read for any startup!), and IDEO’s mantra: “Disruptive by Design” we’re hosting a special evening event on March 3 at Clearstone Venture Partners in Santa Monica…

HOW TO BUILD A REMARKABLE COMPANY (aka: How Not to Be Boring)

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 | 6:00PM – 9:00PM
APPLY TO ATTEND (seats are limited, so startups get priority access)

Join us and the founders of ICON Aircraft for an inspiring conversation that will challenge you to go from ‘Good’ to Great and give you to tools and motivation to rise above the rest.

At this evening event, we’re thinking out of the box, so you can too.
* Startup DNA: How do you build a truly remarkable company?
* Where does inspiration for “new” ideas come from?
* How do you promote a new idea to a market that might not yet be defined?
* Spreading the gospel: turning doubters into believers.
* How to surround yourself with a winning team

Speakers:
How did two guys from Stanford come up with an idea for a personal airplane that can be hauled behind a car like a SeaDoo? And… how’d they get design icons like IDEO to support them in their quest for disruption? Join us to find out!

See you there!

How to Measure Your On-Demand Sales Success
Thursday, February 18, 2010 | 6:30PM -8:30PM
Trident Capital | 505 Hamilton Ave (Suite 200), Palo Alto
REGISTER!

The myth that SaaS sales drive themselves, and startups don’t need to pour resources into enterprise sales teams has been dispelled.

The sales cycle for enterprise SaaS has proven longer and more expensive than many founders expected and, to add salt to the wound, the on-boarding process can get complex and drawn out too.

Join us on February 18 for a hands-on discussion with veterans of The War for Customers who will give advice for qualifying leads, landing new customers and bringing in revenue (while keeping operational and marketing costs low).

GOT QUESTIONS? You can ask the speakers straight up at the event; or – tell us what you want us to ask!

Evangelos Simoudis, Managing Director, Trident Capital will be hosting the conversation and is looking to emerging SaaS startups to tell him what they want to hear…. So pipe up and have your voice heard. Send your questions his way, and he’ll be sure they get addressed.

SPEAKERS:

Jon Miller, VP of Marketing, Marketo | Marketo landed 110 new customers in Q4 2010… Ask Jon how they stir up demand and manage their sales pipeline.

Tom Dibble, Chief Revenue Officer, Aria Systems | Tom’s responsible for Aria’s channel strategy — ask him about forging relationships with platform partners, systems integrators, and ISVs.

David Vonk, SVP Sales and Business Development, PivotLink | Selling analytics tools to customers like Rossignol and Bauer Nike; ask David about what metrics he uses to gauge success when it comes to identifying and landing new customers.

Check out the list of the top 20 mobile startups as determined by the mobile community. The final winners will be announced on February 15 in Barcelona.

Congrats to fonYou, Aloqa, Percent Mobile and Layar (Under the Radar 2009 alumni)!

MobileMonday Austria – Mobilizy
MobileMonday Barcelona – fonYou
MobileMonday Berlin – spendino
MobileMonday Bogota – RedSalvavidas
MobileMonday Chennai – mobiSiteGalore
MobileMonday Copenhagen – Cepa Mobility
MobileMonday Edinburgh – Mobile Acuity
MobileMonday Estonia – TaxiPal
MobileMonday Lithuania – SendFlow
MobileMonday London – Audioboo
MobileMonday Milan – Soundtrckr
MobileMonday Munich – Aloqa
MobileMonday New Delhi – Voicetap Technologies
MobileMonday New York – PercentMobile
MobileMonday Oslo – Bipper Communication
MobileMonday Rest of EMEA – Layar
MobileMonday Silicon Valley – CloudMade
MobileMonday Slovenia – Visionect
MobileMonday Stockholm – MoSync
MobileMonday Tel Aviv – waze

“What’s a content advisor?” you ask? Well, that it means that as we sift through hundreds of startups in this space, Geva chimes in with knowledge and practical language that can help cut through marketing lingo and tech jargon to help us filter out the wheat from the chaff. Geva helps out here and there while balancing his work advising startups, writing his blog Thinking Out Cloud and sitting in with James Urquhart in their podcast.

About Geva:
Geva Perry has 15 years of experience as an executive in the enterprise software industry. His blog on cloud computing is widely read and he is a frequent speaker on the topic at corporations and industry events. He is an advisor to a number of companies, small and large, on cloud computing related strategy.

Until recently Geva spent 5 years at GigaSpaces Technologies where he played a variety of executive roles. His latest position was General Manager Cloud Computing. In this role, Geva was responsible for all global go-to-market activities at GigaSpaces related to cloud computing, including strategy and positioning, product marketing and strategic alliances.

Under the Radar is set for April 16, 2010.
Each year Under the Radar brings 350 C-level executives seeking to find, connect and partner with startups who’s products, technology and teams fit strategically into their road maps.

From Microsoft to Google, AT&T, Nokia, Cisco, Sun, HP, Amazon, Rackspace, Salesforce, Pfizer, Coca-Cola, Nike, MTV and more – executives in the audience and onstage (as judges) use Under the Radar to narrow in on tech’s latest cool kids. See you there!

They’re offering a deal for Dealmaker Media. Check it out:

Entrepreneur Forum: Guerilla Marketing for Tradeshow Season
Feb 03, 2010, 12:00pm – 02:00pm
TIPS Group, Palo Alto, CA, USA
Whether your startup has a booth at one of the largest tradeshows, has a speaking slot, or whether you simply have a few people walking the tradeshow floor, there are things you and your company can do to maximize the return on your investment in tradeshow marketing. We have a few marketing experts in telecom and wireless who specialize in the different parts of marketing to give you a refresher course on guerrilla marketing tactics that may fit your product and your budget.

Dealmaker members get 50% when using the code “dealmaker” during registration.

Agenda, Details, and Registration here.

Friend and SaaS Guru, Lincoln Murphy of 16 Ventures – a software sales and marketing consultancy – recently published “The Reality of Freemium in SaaS” on the back of his other paper, “7 SaaS Revenue Streams.”

If you’re in Silicon Valley on Feb 18, join us for a Strategy Series Round Table event with SaaS sales veterans talking about new metrics to measure sales success. REGISTER!

Some excerpts from Lincoln’s paper:

“As part of a business model, Freemium has fundamental flaws. The most obvious flaw is that supporting a large base of nonpaying users that will never convert to paying customers can bleed an early stage startup of precious financial resources. In addition, these users can draw on the limited time and attention of the team, taking those resources away from development and support of the premium product that will sustain and grow the company.

While it is the “free” versions of software that get picked up in the blogosphere and social media (for a few minutes, at least), it is also the free products that get lampooned by those very same outlets, and the users, when problems occur. A small base of paying customers can keep both the overhead in check, but also the scale of the venture which the young startup must support.”
….

“Investment in lieu of revenue seems to be on many founders’ minds even when investment dollars have been harder to come by. Many startup founders seem to feel like it is easier to pitch investors than to go out and make sales. When this mindset is considered, it is easy to see how Freemium also became so popular with startups; especially those founded by technologists. It takes the pressure off of technical founders who just want to build a product and not worry about “selling.”

Critical questions for SaaS vendors to ask themselves are:
• First the big one: If no one is willing to pay for our product right away, are we sure there is a market for it?
• Second big question: What is the quid pro quo? What is in this for us? Why should we let them use our system for free?
• Do we sign-up for free versions of applications and then stop using them or do we always move onto the premium version? Why?
• How can we monetize users even if they never “convert” to customers?
• How can the users of our system benefit our customers?
• Are our customers just those that pay to use the “premium” version of the system or might they be stand-alone consumers of the byproduct of system usage?
• Can we glean actionable market intelligence from both free users and customers?
• Can we aggregate the network effect data and monetize directly?
• Can we benefit from the “nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd” notion of having a large
number of users?

Each year Under the Radar brings 350 C-level executives seeking to find, connect and partner with startups who’s products, technology and teams fit strategically into their road maps.

From Microsoft to Google, AT&T, Nokia, Cisco, Sun, HP, Amazon, Rackspace, Salesforce, Pfizer, Coca-Cola, Nike, MTV and more – executives in the audience and onstage (as judges) use Under the Radar to narrow in on tech’s latest cool kids.

LAST CHANCE TO PRESENT: Apply by January 31, 2010
If your startup would like the chance to present – the time frame for nominations is fast approaching and you’ll want to submit your company on the a-sap. APPLY TO PRESENT HERE.

Categories we’re interested in:
Infrastructure | Platforms | Virtualization | Saas | Collaboration | Business Apps | Development Tools | Mobile | Storage | (and more!)

Past Under the Radar presenters include: Aria Systems, Marketo, Eucalyptus, Zuora, Box.net, Ribbit, Tap In Systems, Twilio, New Relic, CloudKick, Jive Software, Filtrbox, Animoto, and more.

Below, Nike, CBS and Sprint discuss startups at Under the Radar: Mobility in Nov 2009:

Today, two UTR alumni have joined forces, with Jive Software (who presented in 2007 while they were still fresh on the scene) acquiring fellow UTR presenter Filtrbox.

From ReadWriteWeb:

Jive sought a social media monitoring company to bring into its Social Business Software (SBS) platform. The goal is to extend the social footprint of the Jive platform. Jive sees the market becoming far more oriented around conversations on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. These conversations affect everything from product development to sales strategies. Monitoring is critical to following and capitalizing on the conversation flow.

Congratulations to both groups for joining forces!