WayTooEarly

First Round Is Going To The Dogs

HLM — 2012-05-15T19:18:22-04:00

In a way, we are – with our latest investment – dogvacay.com. I’m happy to announce that @FirstRound has lead a seed round in Dogvacay.com – a community where you can have your dogs boarded in real home settings, not caged in a kennel. While I’m not a pet owner (NYC apartments are not that dog friendly), I know many of them – and they all feel guilty whenever they have to put the pet in a kennel.

Aaron Hirschhorn faced this same problem and decided to do something about it. He has created a web site and community where people can sign up to allow dogs to be boarded in their homes, living in a far more friendly environment than the traditional kennel. And the family’s that are boarding the dogs get to make new canine friends. It’s even possible to board a dog for a weekend and show your kids what it really means to take good care of a pet.

Dog Vacay vets (no pun intended) – (ok it was intended) all pet-sitters to make sure they have the experience and ability to provided a loving temporary home. In addition, DV provides insurance, veterinary support, and a satisfaction guarantee,

What surprised us when we started looking at Aaron’s plan in detail was how large a market exists – over $5 billion per year. And we always love coinvestors – in this case Mike Jones’ Science Ventures – that have real experience in consumer facing internet companies.

So if you’re a pet owner anywhere in the US or Canada , please check out www.dogvacay.com.

The First Round BOT

HLM — 2011-10-28T15:12:39-04:00

The dictionary defines a bot as “an autonomous computer program that performs time-consuming tasks, esp on the internet”. Those of you who know First Round Capital have learned that we are fanatics about measurement and metrics. We believe that it is easier to improve something when you have a metric, and can tell objectively when things get better. Analytics are at the heart of web based businesses, and we’ve also made them at the heart of our FRC culture. This past week, we held our Annual meeting with our investors. We have been collecting data almost since day one about every aspect of our business – deal flow, voting habits, performance of companies, performance of our portfolio, etc.

To make sense of all this data we are fortunate to have built an outstanding BOT. This one is not a computer, but our Back Office Team. Led by Jeff Donnon, our CFO, this group of five people did yeoman’s work, both on and off the computer, to put together the charts, graphs and data analyses that help us provide strong transparency to our investors. When you look at almost 3,000 deals each year, and tens of funding events, there is a huge amount of data to make sense of. Yet our BOT, which I doubt we could automate into a “bot”, has done this work quarter after quarter to make sense of our investment pace, decision timing, reserve planning and so many other factors. They are helping us to find the signals in all this noisy data. While the business of judging entrepreneurs and ideas will always require some key human judgments, having our BOT adds analytics that let us focus our attention on the people part of the equation, while adding the quantitative view to our process.

So kudos to the team, and I’d encourage any of you who want to adhere to the high standards of transparency that we do, to build a BOT that can not only crunch numbers, but also help make sense out of them.

GroupMe to be acquired by Skype - what a birthday present

HLM — 2011-08-22T11:31:21-04:00

Last night, GroupMe announced their acquisition by Skype, a great outcome for Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci, and for their investors, First Round Capital included. It was announced a few days after their first anniverary party. I"ve had a great time working with Jared and Steve - their enthusiasm and work ethic are first rate. I've also had a great time using the product, which has made keeping in touch with my family and friends much easier. I'd write more, but my colleague, Charlie O'Donnell (@CEONYC), who brought this deal in, has said it very well here. And our coinvestor, David Tisch (@DaveTisch) shows that the focus on investing in people works.

All the best to @jared and @Smart as they build Skype's NYC Social Media presence.

A Pivotal Week At Firstround

HLM — 2011-06-17T16:15:55-04:00

My partner @joshk has written about finding entrepreneurs who are “heat seeking missiles” , and this past week has driven that point home to me and the entire @Firstround team. When we fund a company, we hope that we have picked the combination of a great entrepreneur and his/her team, along with a great product in a large available market. But sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way we all expected. Perhaps we need to modify the old adage to “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then pivot, don’t be a foolish slave to the first idea.” When the first idea doesn’t succeed, the true heat seekers show their advantage over those who are so wedded to their initial idea that all the contrary data does not move them off of it

With both Jason Goldberg at Fab.com and Billy Chasen at StickyBits we have been fortunate to back two of those heat seeking missiles that know when to pivot and how to reaim.

Jason (@betashop) came to us with an interesting social networking idea, well executed in terms of product design and market focus.. But the truly viral growth wasn’t happening. However, once he had an audience, Jason tried to add a few daily deals to his audience. Seeing how well they did inspired Jason and Bradford, his cofounder, to stop and tell the board they wanted to pivot into becoming a truly design inspired flash sale site. He set some ambitious goals, such as having more than 100,000 people on the list pre-launch, and getting lots of beautifully designed products in the sales queue. And then he added the community feature to encourage people to post on the inspiration wall, so that the design aesthetic of the site could be shared across communities. Fab.com launched a week ago (sign up here), and the results blew us all away. Sales were a significant multiple of expectations, ASP was higher, viral signups higher, and it looks as if we have another winner here. Jason has been generous enough to share some of the experience on his Betashop blog. Only time will tell, but this seems as well designed a pivot as we’ve seen.

Billy Chasen (@BillyChasen) came to us with StickyBits, a FourSquare for objects. The concept was to allow users to scan bar codes of objects, and attach comments, get offers, share with friends and participate in some games. The launch at SXSW went very well, and there was a lot of interest in testing. But, in the end, scanning bar codes, QR codes, etc. did not prove to be a viral behavior. Lots of things were tried to boost engagement, but we never quite found the secret sauce. However, Billy told the board he had been thinking about another completely different idea, listening to music with friends, synchronously.

The music space is littered with startup corpses, and the record industry has a number of barriers even for those entrants who want to legitimately allow and pay for music to play over the internet. But the pioneering work of people like Tim Westergren (@twestergren) of Pandora and others has gotten a licensing model (however egregiously expensive it may be) for legal streaming. The board decided to let Billy pivot with the remaining capital, although not every investor agreed. Those who didn’t were offered a buy back. Over the past few weeks, turntable.fm has launched, and we’ve been amazed at the way it pulls users in, and has gone viral.

As I write this, there are dozens of rooms, with all different types of music. Users are competing to DJ, and get points that give them priorities, new avatars, etc.. Watching the comments in the chat window is also an addictive experience. Here then is a pivot that also seems to be working.

These two examples reinforce my conviction that backing great people in big markets remains the best way to play the venture game. And we at First Round are lucky to have the chance to back some great ones.

Medico.com - Health Care is more than a US concern

HLM — 2011-06-08T15:00:14-04:00

It’s always easy to think of the United States as the greatest market in the world, and ignore the rest of the world (except maybe our Canadian cousins) as we develop businesses and web sites. Often the next step is to simply clone the US site overseas, sometimes successfully, but often with poor results as the Ugly American syndrome raises its head. And for those businesses that can really help people improve their lives, e.g. health care, there are added problems when local issues are ignored.

So I’m really pleased to announce First Round Capital’s investment in the just launched medico.com web site. Elan Dekel, a former Google Executive with extensive international experience, connected with us last summer and described his concept of bringing locally sensitive health care information to the rest of the world. More than just WebMD for non-US, it would include the community and local health care providers, along with local language information, and local disease related information. Today’s launch is Medico.com in Spanish, targeted at Spain, and later the Latin American markets. By the end of this year, several other markets including India will be launched.

In each market, medico.com strives to find physicians who can answer questions and direct consumers to relevant information. There are already thousands of articles on the site, a twitter stream @Medico, and communities for key diseases (heart, diabetes, etc.) . One of the interesting drivers to our investment was finding out that is nih.gov one of the most heavily trafficked web sites from outside the US (for health information). There are also many countries where information about pregnancy care, STDS, etc. are hidden because of cultural biases that often prevent women from getting this information at home or in schools. Here medico.com can provide truly life saving information. And by later this year, it will also be on our mobile platforms, which dominate internet access in many countries.

Together with our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Julian Fisher, a neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, a member of the Harvard Medical School Faculty and a pioneer in health care information on the internet, Elan has built a strong international team. If medico can give people around the world the information and tools to become well-informed and take control of driving their health care, this will have been a worthwhile investment. Of course, our hope is to do exceptionally well while doing good; the business case looks very good.

DLD 2011

HLM — 2011-01-26T14:58:34-05:00

I have been hearing for several years that the DLD Conference in Munich, traditionally held just before the Davos World Economic Forum is a wonderful experience. Not being as lucky as Henry Blodget, I’ve never been invited to Davos, and Munich in January is not quite the escape from NYC snow that would normally draw me in. But after some discussions with Steffi Czerny and Yossi Vardi (the cochairs) last summer, I agreed to go. It was a terrific experience. Hubert Burda Media, which hosts it in wonderful and gracious style, knows how to throw a party. It’s an eclectic mix of technologists, media folks, and just plain interesting people from the US, Germany, Europe and Israel who want to hear about and learn about the future of media and the Digital Life Design at the heart of this.

The conference was live streamed, tweeted (hash tag #DLD11), and opened to the rest of the world, but the feeling of being there was special. Seeing Groupon’s Andrew Mason and Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley being interviewed by Kara Swisher was a treat. Andrew is such a genuine, aw shucks Midwesterner, one forgets that he turned down many billions for Groupon just a few weeks ago. And he revealed his fantasy bachelor party (a complex game played in Vegas with zombies, paintball guns, and black helicopters) that made me admire his sense of whimsy, which shows up in Groupon’s great copy, even more.

The opening discussion with Arthur Sulzberger and Hubert Burda showed some real contrast. Is old media really dead, and/or how fast will it die? With Times Digital generating real profits from the old about.com and it’s other efforts, the movement is there, but the audience wasn’t clear it could be fast enough. And Accel’s Jim Breyer was clear that he would not invest in any media that was predicated on a significant physical (paper) revenue stream.

There was a strong feeling from many speakers that the future is in apps – mobile, tablet, etc. And the major market will be in Asia, mainly China. Accel will deploy several billion dollars in venture money there over the next few years.

Two of the most interesting talks were (@dptapscott) Don Tapscott’s new take on MacroWikiNomics (the title of his new book), and Dr. Hubert Burda’s thoughtful discussion of how images have shaped our thinking, from his book The Digital WunderKammerer (the Digital Wonder Chamber). The mixture of art and media was fascinating and thought provoking – and the book has a beautiful collection of images.

For a US based venture capitalist (and there were a number of us there), a key question is how to get innovation and entrepreneurship to happen in Europe. Unfortunately, my discussions with German and UK based VCs showed that it’s very hard to get early stage companies funded and going. Part of it is how hard it is to make the pivot (As @Jason Calacanis discussed in his speech on Mahalo’s pivot), when you can’t fire anyone after 90 days – even though you might need quite different skills.

On the party side, the Burda folks had a blowout with Sting’s daughter Coco doing a great set opening for Duffy. Of course the sound levels made any conversation a bit tough, but they do know how to celebrate, and even the snow falling in Munich did not dampen the spirits.

Now I'm back in NYC, and it's still snowing, but I have lots of new ideas to think about. I'm living the DIgital Life, now I have to design it.

Five Decades of CES and the rule of 3s

HLM — 2011-01-08T09:00:00-05:00

This year marks the 5th decade in which I've attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which started in the 60s. My first was back in 1979, and I've been loyal through the 80's, 90's, 00's and now the teens. I go each year, at the personal cost of missing my now late 30's daughter's birthday (except her 21st), the wear and tear of shoe leather, flight delays, pushing through crowds and lack of sleep, all in the hope of staying at the too early or wayy too early edge in this exciting field.

I've learned about the rule of 3s. Some changes are relatively constant - each year the TV screen size grows by 3", the cell phone volume drops by 3 cubic inches, and some dimension moves from 2 to 3. One year it's 2d to 3D TV, one year it's 2 screens to 3 screens, but the numbers stay the same.

This year is one of everything being connected to the cloud, and then back to everything else. Not just TV or content anywhere, but many more interesting sensor based applications. There is a Digital Health area, as those of us aging boomers become concerned about how to extend our lives by modifying and measuring our lifestyle. I've been a user of the WiThings scale, now they have a blood pressure cuff that ties in. DailyBurn and Zeo have now integrated your sleep pattern and fitness. And there's lots more to come of FitBit like devices.

Scanning was being done everywhere. CES had QR codes and a scanning application, similar to the ones that Scanbuy or StickyBits have created. Both of these seem to have growing audiences, but neither has figured out how to achieve escape velocity a la Foursquare. But I have no doubt scanning will play a bigger role in our future, as brands figure out how to do promotions that take advantage of codes and location.

A nice addition to CES for the last two years has been AllThingsDigital at CES. Walt Mossberg and Kara swisher do some interesting interviews. Twitter CEO @DickC hit the nail on the head when he said "Some CES showcase incremental improvements, some make quantum leaps. This one is an incremental one." I couldn't agree more, even though another speaker,Jen-Hsun Huang CEO of Nvidia, felt that Microsoft's announcement of a Windows Next Generation for the ARM processor family was an announcment of seismic proportion.

And of course there are always the great parties and dinners in Las Vegas - which has outposts of the greatest restaurants in the world. So I'll probably be back next year.

Stop playing with your food – understand it with Yummly.com

HLM — 2010-11-16T16:05:00-05:00

I'm pleased to announce First Round's investment in Yummly.com. This is a great site for anyone who needs a recipe, knows anyone with any special food needs, wants to understand what they're eating, wants to know how to use what's in the cupboards or anyone who just loves food. Fortunately, we are lucky to be coinvesting with Harrison Metal and Intel Capital, as well as some of the savviest angel food cake eaters – I mean angel investors) I know. I have been using this site for a few months and find it amazing.

David Feller and the team have taken the time to build algorithms that parse recipes for the actual content of the foods in them - both caloric and other. So there is a true semantics instead of just an ingredient list and this extends beyond nutrition to taste, price, allergens, diet etc.

For my nephew who is allergic to tree nuts, I can check a box and ensure I see recipes that don't use them. For my son-in-law with gluten allergies, I can check another box and get gluten free recipes. And if I have some fresh rosemary left, i can search and find recipes that use it, even if they're titled "herbs", since Yummly knows that rosemary is an herb. Yummly also makes great suggestions for recipes I might enjoy. In other words, this is the first real advance in recipe processing since multiplication for understanding how to change quantities (unless, of course, you're baking, which Yummly understands as well.).

Of course, in 2010, there's a social element as well - you get to follow others favorites and share your own. So get an account, start to share your favorites with others, and you'll see that Yummly.com will become your goto site for food.

AxialMarket - Making Private M&A Markets More Liquid

HLM — 2010-11-05T08:09:08-04:00

One of the great things the Internet can do is reduce friction in various marketplaces by bringing them online. Early examples in the history of the internet include transformative online marketplaces like eBay and Craig's List; others more recently include eHarmony (personality-based online dating) or Groupon (aggregating supply and demand for merchants and consumers). The internet, however, has not penetrated B2B markets as easily or as swiftly, usually because the transactions that occur in B2B markets are often larger, more complex and sometimes confidential. First Round is proud to announce its funding of AxialMarket, the premier online M&A marketplace connecting qualified buyers and sellers of privately held companies. Business owners and their M&A Advisors use AxialMarket to research, identify and engage qualified potential buyers; M&A-focused public and and private companies, as well as lenders and private investment firms, join AxialMarket to increase company-wide deal flow and lower deal origination costs. Launched in 2008, the company has helped over 2200 privately held companies, with revenues ranging from $5M to $275M, complete an M&A or financing transaction. Peter Lehrman, the CEO, is a serial entrepreneur who understands that the value is created not by dis-intermediating the existing market, but attacking the points of friction and cost of discovery for qualified participants, leading to more success for both buyers and sellers. In the U.S. alone, where millions of established private companies exist, this friction and complexity creates tremendous noise for buyers, who receive deals that aren't relevant, and sellers, who find themselves spinning their wheels trying to identify the right buyer. AxialMarket solves these problems by overlaying its relationships with large datasets and algorithms to create success for both buyers and sellers. Of course, doing this is not so simple, both technically and from a market sense, but Peter's team has the ability, experience and expertise to do it, and First Round is excited to be part of their team.

SinglePlatform - A new First Round investment

HLM — 2010-09-29T15:00:00-04:00

I'm pleased to announce @FirstRound is investing in SinglePlatform, a real solution for helping restaurants join the 21st century marketing world of internet and social media. For publishers it's a great way to enrich their local experience and monetize with restaurant content, and special.

The top item on First Round's criteria is people, and the SinglePlatform team is led by a terrific entrepreneur, Wiley Cerilli, who was a key player at Seamless Web.

In addition to the great management team, our co-investors include the founder of Seamless Web, the founder of restaurant.com, and some terrific venture capital partners, RRE and DFJ Gotham.

We're excited to be working with a strong team and great set of investors at SinglePlatform!