This opportunity is with an unannounced healthcare IT startup lead by a MD/PhD with a successful track record of building and selling companies. The management team includes seasoned entrepreneurs with backgrounds in healthcare and IT. The company leverages proprietary technology developed commercially and through NIH grants over the past decade to bring a unique solution connecting hospitals to the drug and diagnostic discovery programs within life science companies. The position is based in Boston, MA. I can't say more about this publicly right now, but this is an awesome opportunity.
You have to admit that there is some pretty cool technology here in Boston.
Take this for example. A couple of years ago I had seen these protypes from Boston Dynamics that look like a robotic mule a couple of years ago but then they were always tethered and on relatively tame terrain. Now seeing these more advanced versions I'm amazed. They are navigating some serious terrain (steep hills, snow, ice, water, etc.). The commercial applications aren't obvious to me but the military ones sure are (and judging from their website, that's what Boston Dynamics is focused on). The video is long (the Terminator sound track doesn't help) and shows the mule-thing for the first 6 minutes followed by short snippets of various prototypes.
A friend of mine recommended this book (Designing the Obvious by Robert Hoekman) which I read today. It's a book about how to make great websites (and avoid common mistakes). If you haven't read this book, it's well worth a read.
A lot of what is written is, well, obvious, but so much of it is ignored (in that way it reminds me of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People). And it's not just for web designers or engineers. If your business relies on the web and you're a CEO or senior executive, you should read this book.
Hoekman describes lots of small but important attributes of well designed websites giving real world examples of websites you're likely familiar with.
I've been wondering how the previous list of entrepreneur bloggers I posted maps to Twitter so I redid the list (order is now by Twitter followers which is the number in parentheses). 80% of the bloggers on the list are on Twitter. One thing that jumps out immediately is that several of the top bloggers are not (yet) on Twitter including: Seth Godin, Markus Frind, Linus Torvalds and Marc Andreessen among others. I suspect there's a "sunk cost" argument driving this. I think one of the reasons that Twitter is so popular is that it is a rare opportunity to redo the natural order of things (as evidenced by the changes indicated in the list below). It is also a lot easier to Twitter than to blog. If you want to bulk scribe to all of these folks, see the instructions at the bottom of the list:
If you want to bulk subscribe to all of these folks, one way is to use NinjaFollow. You can copy these screen names and paste them into NinjaFollow, press submit and voila!
Lastly, I'm sure there are many entrepreneurs on Twitter that didn't show up in this list (which was originally created as a list of entrepreneur bloggers). Post comments here with my omissions.
This post was inspired by Fidelity Ventures Partner Larry Cheng who recently compiled a list of VC blogs and ranked them in order of Google Reader subscribers. I have a few hundred feeds that I follow in Google Reader and the way that I find new ones is a random process of discovery so Larry's post was great in that he not only provided a rank-ordered list but also a convenient way to mass subscribe.
VC bloggers are fascinating to follow. But I also love to follow blogs by entrepreneurs. It's an unique viewpoint and one that I find that I learn a lot from. So with that in mind, I created a list of entrepreneur blogs. The criteria for inclusion on this list is rough but basically boils down to the primary author of the blog has to be a founder or C-level executive at an entrepreneurial organization and write relatively frequently about entrepreneurial stuff. In compiling the list I made several exceptions. For example, I included TheFunded which is not a single author blog but rather a feed from a members-only network of entrepreneurs and I included Marc Andreesson who has great stuff on his blog but he just hasn't written anything new in a while.
My list has many biases. For example, it's tilted toward authors in the US who write about "tech" companies but I would love to expand and grow the reach. So if you know of other blogs that should be included on this list, post a comment here and I'll update the list.
Lastly, here is a Google Bundle for the list. Full disclosure: I included this blog in the bundle which you can feel free to delete.
Joel Spolsky, Founder / CEO at Fog Creek Software (64,598)
Seth Godin, Founder of Yoyodyne; creator of "permission marketing" (41,957)
Jason Fried, 37signals co-founder Jason Fried (and other 37signals employees) (31,595)
Tim O'Reilly, Founder / CEO of O'Reilly Media (10,269)
Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo (10,000) [note: this is an email list & not in Google bundle]
Boston Globe tech columnist Scott Kirsner is organizing an event here in Boston next month where the theme will be technology innovation in New England.
A few weeks ago when I was talking with Scott about the event he asked what I thought was "next in technology." I think one of the biggest new opportunities is going to be a new class of companies that are now viable investments because of improvements in capital efficiency over the past few years. Until relatively recently, the capital requirements of technology businesses were quite large. You would have to spend millions of dollars hiring software developers, renting real estate, buying hardware, etc. just to build a product which you could then start selling (and in reality test whether there was a market at all). Rarely did you get it right the first time so you would have to repeat the cycle until you had a complete solution the market wanted.
An entire entrepreneurial ecosystem was built up around this model including venture capitalists who would fund the big investments provided there was a big market, entrepreneurs who would start the companies and seasoned executives who would take over once the business outgrew the founders.
The "old" model is represented in the blue curve above: lots of money in and (hopefully) lots of money out. What's happened (#1 in the chart) is that improvements in capital efficiency have "bent the curve" so that less money is required to get to positive cash flow. In some cases dramatically less money is required. What this means for entrepreneurs and investors is that you can now pursue opportunities that have smaller potential outcomes (#2 in the chart) and get the same (or better) return on investment.
What has caused this improvement in capital efficiency?
Many folks, including me, have written about the trends that are driving down costs. Some of the big ones are open source, cloud computing and virtual office infrastructure. In some cases costs today are 1/10 that of even 5 years ago. AWS is a great example. The virtual office tools today are so impressive that you can source talent globally and simultaneously improve productivity while cutting costs--unthinkable 10 years ago.
It is important to remember that this doesn't mean the big market opportunities meriting large investments have gone away. I fully expect the market for big ideas to continue to grow. Rather, what it means is that there is a *new* opportunity to invest in companies pursuing smaller opportunities but the manner in which you pursue them (as an entrepreneur or investor) needs to change. On the investment side, it means putting in less money, being more on-par with management in terms of rights and preferences, having less control. The investment won't work if you spend $80K on legal fees preparing investment documents that include things like registration rights and all those other terms that will never get used. As an entrepreneur it means bootstrap, bootstrap, bootstrap. Spend nickels like they were manhole covers. In some ways it reminds me of that Michael Lewis book Money Ball and how the Oakland A's found ways to win with a small payroll.
Anyway, so that's my crack at "what's next in tech." What do you think Scott? And, oh, by the way, come to the event on June 25.
No, this isn't a recessionary move to give away unbilled lawyer time nor is it some sort of shift to being a pro-bono only firm. Today, Wilson Sonsini announced the launch of a "term sheet generator." It's basically a web tool that creates draft preferred financing term sheets for startups. I got a preview of it a couple of weeks ago and my review is that it is really impressive!
The way the tool works is that you answer a bunch of questions (north of 100) and then when you are complete it gives you a perfectly formatted Word file term sheet. Most of the questions are structured as "select from" several options often with an optional to "write your own." The beauty of having the option to select from "standard" options is that WSGR has included some market data, e.g. what percent of term sheets in up rounds in 2008 included this term. Last year, I spent a lot of time attempting to reverse engineer this data based on a small personal sample size. Obviously, WSGR has a much larger sample size and the fact that they make it public (in aggregate) is impressive.
The Term Sheet Generator originated as an internal tool for WSGR attorneys to rapidly generate draft term sheets which they would polish up and then deliver to their clients. Not surprisingly, WSGR Partner Yokum Taku, who I've previously written about, is the key co-conspirator behind making this tool public. I exchanged email with Yokum about this tool and I wanted to excerpt a few take aways from that conversation:
Apparently this is the first of many online document generator tools that WSGR intends to make publicly available on the web. There are three categories (startup, equity financing and bridge loans) so we can expect more to come.
I would have thought that internally there would have been a debate about giving away for free what they used to charge for, but Yokum insists this did not come up.
The biggest challenge in building this tool is that each branch in the question tree is associated with unique verbiage. Building that must have been crazy.
So I think this is a brilliant step toward "open source law" which I've been advocating for a while. I am certain there will be hundreds (ne thousands) of lawyers who will use the WSGR Term Sheet Generator to create draft term sheets for use with their clients. In fact, I bet Google Analytics will quickly show Yokum and his colleagues at WSGR that his real userbase for this tool will be other attorneys both at firms and inhouse. What this tool really wants to evolve to is having an open, wiki-style back end where practitioners can change and comment on the myriad of options and verbiage which would keep the tool evergreen based on the best crowdsourced legal opinions.
In the meantime, I wouldn't be surprised to see some sort of watermarking of term sheets created by the tool that would allow WSGR to offer discounted legal fees if they created the draft term sheet using the tool. It would certainly reduce WSGR's time/costs as they would know the underlying terms
I saw a press release today from ClickForensics proclaiming their most recent statistic that 17.1% of all pay-per-click advertising is click fraud. So what does 17% mean in terms of dollars? That's hard to say, but if we assume the global pay-per-click market is equivalent to the global search market which JP Morgan estimates as an $83 billion market in the 5 year period of 2003 through 2008, then that could mean there has been $14 billion of fraud during that period. Odds are it is even more since if you're going to commit click fraud, you probably would stay away from cheap key words (otherwise it would be like robbing a bank and taking the 5 dollar bills).
I've been hearing about click fraud for a while, notably the case of Michael Anthony Bradley who in 2004 was caught red handed trying to extort $150K from Google (to not publicly release his click fraud software) and then the case was mysteriously dropped. The rumor at the time was that Google did not want to publicize the fact that they have click fraud. Two years later, Google paid a $90 million settlement in a class action case. Google has remained relatively quiet on the whole issue, although about 2 years ago they did give a brief explanation of what they call "invalid clicks" which they claimed to be "less than 10%" in total but a paltry 0.02% after their filters.
Even if Google's numbers are correct, that has grave implications for the rest of the industry (particularly those without the systems and processes of Google). What's more, to my knowledge there has never been an independent verification of any of these numbers (even ClickForensics has an ax to grind).
With a potential fraud this big (in a few years, it will be bigger than the $50 billion attributed to Madoff) it would seem there is a need for congressional hearings on this topic. What do you think? Am I missing something?
Yesterday I received a tour of the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, a.k.a. FCAT, and my review is F'n-A!. FCAT was formed about 10 years ago with a mandate to transform business through technology. I don't know if they've been able to deliver on that, but I can say that it's the coolest lab I've seen in a long time.
When you first walk in, you realize something is different. Almost every wall is a display. It's as if you walked into the Situation Room...I was half expecting to see Wolf Blitzer and John King around each corner.
On a giant wall screen in the main lobby, you see a map of the world with every Fidelity facility. You touch a facility and you see data about what is going on there; for example for call centers you see customer support metrics. If I were CEO of a large corporation, I would definitely have a "data" room like this to meet in.
Another area I was blown away by was the user interface labs which are typical focus group rooms (i.e. fancy conference rooms abutted with a control room and separated by a one-way mirror. But in the labs they have a bunch of cameras which allow them to, for example, track where testers are looking on a webpage. Elsewhere on the tour they have a bank of giant plasma screens showing web sessions with overlays of where people are looking.
In another lab they had one of those 10 grand Microsoft Surface tables. I didn't get to fire it up and play with it, but I'm already scheming on how to get back in and do that. Elsewhere they had set up something that looked like a full-size chalkboard on wheels except the "board" was made of a giant piece of 5/8" thick glass and they had RFIDs on the corners to create a giant multi-touch screen.
I was impressed that FCAT was not just looking into data visualization and manipulation, but also at social networking and communities. The facility is the kind of lab that startups fantasize about. I think FCAT should rent the place out so smaller firms can leverage their investments, but somehow I doubt that will happen.
In the meantime, you can check out this virtual tour.
Not much to learn here. That's actually about what I would have guessed had I not seen the Google Analytics numbers. Although in 2008 I did learn that this is called a "sneeze page." Who knew?
In the past year, I've harangued a number of friends relentlessly, telling them that they should start blogging. And by my count, at least 4 have taken up the calling. One example is my long time friend and attorney, Robert Chow, who just launched GrowthStage and has joined the open source law movement.
Blogging is a marathon. To do it well you have to enjoy doing it the same way you enjoy a hobby. If running a blog seems like "work" to you, that's a signal that it's not for you. If you're seeking fame or fortune, there are far more effective ways than blogging. Although, I confess that in 2008 I've gotten my 15 minutes of fame by getting on the front page of the BBJ, a mention by Wolf Blitzer on CNN, an article in Wired and a few blurbs in the Boston Globe, among others. To blog like a pro, it takes a few hundred hours per year (although, in your first year, it could take 500-1,000 hours), so the bottom line is that you have to want to do it.
Of course, these tips presuppose you have good to great writing skills and a content focus appropriate for the audience you're trying to reach. As Paul Stamatiou pointed out in the comments below, content is king.
So what does it take other than time to blog like a pro? Here are a few tips:
Use your own domain. Pick a witty name for your blog and buy
the domain. I've never seen a pro blog that uses the default domain @typepad.com, @blogspot.com or whatever. In picking a name, don't paint yourself into a corner (for example, SeriesA.com is not as good as Altgate). It's cheap (I use GoDaddy and it costs $15 for a
year). Also, when you buy the domain, buy it for at least 2 years,
ideally 5. Google likes domains
that are registered for longer periods of time (for natural search results). You'll have to upgrade
your blogging account (more on that in tip #2) which costs something but
it's worth it. You should also set up an email address with your new
domain, and use this as your contact on your blog. You can easily have that domain email merge into your existing Gmail account so you can "reply as" from your blog email.
Use WordPress. You can find a lot written on why choose Blogger vs. TypePad vs. WordPress, etc., but the short answer to this is that pros use WordPress. WordPress is open source so they tend to play nice with other companies, particularly the widget makers. For example, third party comment provider Disqus isn't supported (easily) by Typepad. You don't want to host your own blog either...you'll just end up going down at exactly the time you get a lot of traffic (although if your site becomes hugely popular you'll have to consider hosting). Some of you will notice that I'm not following my own advice here (I use Typepad for this blog). Unfortunately, when I launched Altgate I didn't have these tips and it turns out that switching from Typepad to WordPress is complicated.
Create a custom theme. There are millions of blogs out there and they all look pretty much the same. Pro bloggers have a custom theme that is clean, simple and recognizable. A couple of good examples are Startup Company Lawyer, Instigator Blog, Blog Maverick and Marc Andreessen. Unfortunately this is another case where I'm not following my own advice. If there are any designers out there who are reading my blog, ping me and we'll figure out how to fix that.
Use Google Analytics. Make sure you install Google Analytics
on your blog. You'll have to register for an account but it's free.
The analytics you get are amazing. You'll be able to see a lot about
your visitors. It will help you find out where your traffic is coming from and where they are going. Over time, understanding your "demo" will help you
write better for them.
Use Google Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools is a service that allows you to improve the visibility of your site to Google and other search engines. For example, there are diagnostics to see if there are any errors in crawling your site. You can see statistics like what search terms people are using to get to your site. You can see which pages are linked to and from where.
Create sitemaps. Sitemaps are a "poor man's semantic web." Basically it creates a map of your blog that computers can understand. I used this free service called XML-Sitemaps to create site maps for Google, Yahoo and MSN (naturally the standards vary) and overnight I saw a jump in natural search traffic.
Use Feedburner.There are two types of readers of your
blog. One will view your site in their web browser and the other in an
RSS reader (like Google Reader). Yes, I'm ignoring email and mobile users for the moment. Anyway, Google Analytics will give you information on those who visit your
site, but you'll want to use Feedburner to give you information on who's
accessing your blog via RSS. You should also promote your RSS
subscription button very prominently above the fold on your blog. RSS
readers are your most loyal audience (as they will see every post).
You should also include the option (Feedburner has it) to subscribe via
email.
[I can't recommend this anymore; Google has pretty much abandoned this service and in the process they have introduced some crazy new bugs.]
Use social commenting. Install a social commenting widget like Disqus or Intense Debate.
This makes commenting on your site much easier and you'll also get more
comments (eventually). I say eventually, because in the early days (as in your first year or so) you unlikely to get many comments at all. I use Disqus and have had a significant
increase in comments since installing it.
Create site navigation. Make sure you tag blog posts
with a category and then have those categories visible at the top of
your blog. I use them on Altgate. I didn't start with this and had to retro it so it
looks like crap. This will help your readers, but also will help with
natural search (e.g. you eventually will get Google site links). At least that's my hope...this whole site links thing is quite elusive.
Add a favicon. A favicon
is that little 16x16 pixel icon that shows up in browsers tabs, URL forms and
bookmark lists. To do one of these is easy and it makes your blog
look professional. If your blog sports the Typepad bubble or the Blogger "e" it's the sure sign of a nubie. If you have a custom theme, this will come with it. If you're like me and you haven't done the custom theme, you first need to create a square picture. Ideally
something that will be viewable at a small size. I just did an "a" for Altgate (as a joke, I used the Web 2.0 Logo Creator). You can get examples from other sites too. Then you need
to generate a favicon.ico file. Just Google "favicon.ico generator"
and there are many websites that easily convert square JPEGs or PNG
files to .ico files. Once you have the file, just follow the
instructions from WordPress, Blogger or whatever platform you're using to upload
the file and voila!
Learn web basics. Whatever blog application you decide to use, you will still be limited in what you can do if you don't know web basics. It's not complicated and you don't have to learn the fancy stuff if you're not interested, but you do need to have basic HTML skills, an understanding of CSS, JavaScript, XML, etc.
Provide site search. I recently installed Lijit and am loving it. Lijit (pronounced like "legit") allows viewers of your blog to search the content on your blog (and that of anyone in your network as you define, which in my case is my blogroll). It also has a cool feature called re-search which provides other search results to users who arrived from a search engine. For example, if you searched for "venture debt" on Google and then clicked on the link to Altgate, Ligit would show 10 more relevant posts from my blog and my network.
Write with a voice. If your blog reads like a Reuters news feed, it's less likely to attract an audience. Pros write with a voice. For example, Al Gore has a blog, but until last month (when it got some press coverage) there really was no audience. Billionaire Mark Cuban, on the other hand, has (until last month) had 10X the audience. I think the difference is voice.
Post regularly. The key with blogging is to realize it's a
marathon and not a sprint. I did my first post in 2005 and my second
post in 2007. Not a lot going on during those two years, but then I started posting regularly. Over the past year
I've averaged 2.1 posts per week (according to Google). You should
target 1 post per week. That's actually pretty hard to do. I was able
to get started on that pace during my EIR gig at Softbank. Since it's best to have your posts evenly spaced out, you should create posts and
save them as drafts or schedule them for publishing in the future.
Be social. Add a blogroll to your blog. People will
eventually return the favor. Comment on other people's blogs.
Give your blog URL and blog email in the comment form when commenting on other blogs. You'll start a
dialog and other bloggers will often continue it at your site.
So that's it. Like most things, there's no magic; just a little direction and a lot of time and hard work. Follow these simple tips and you're certain to soon be blogging like a pro.
Once again, here is a list of some of the more popular posts on this blog. The two most popular posts are relatively recent ones: this one on term sheet negotiation and this one on venture debt. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of my readers, particularly those who have voted, commented or contacted me about this blog...your interest is my motivation!
It seems like there are a lot of options out there for prediction market platform software. I'm interested in embedding a prediction market within an existing community site ideally using our UI with an existing back end. Contact me if you're a hacker and I can share more detail.
There are a lot of embedable widgets that enrich websites, but Apture is the best I've seen not only because it provides easy to use, accurate and well designed info to website readers, but also because the admin interface for publishers couldn't be easier to set up and use.
