Monthly Archives: July 2010

Jul30

Getting Online Communities Going

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Getting Online Communities Going
I've been involved with Democrasoft for a while now (the founder has been a friend of mine for thirty years and his daughter sang at my daughter's wedding), and we've come to the conclusion that most online communities don't succeed because they do not have good moderators/managers. Community management is still a new field, most of the people in it have been self-trained by trial and error or come naturally to the task, and the best practices are vague and difficult to find.

 I believe that's a problem for all collaboration platforms, because not all of them can run themselves. And unless they have good team leaders, community managers, moderators, or whatever other name you want to give these pivotal people, communities can die even if they are built on a very strong common interest.

Some of the most active communities are in health care, where participants are united by a common illness. I'm thinking of some of the early Health 2.0 communities that have grown quickly: Diabetes Mine, Patients Like Me, and  EmpowHer. In the beginning, each of these was driven by a single person with a huge need to reach out, draw others in, and provide mutual value to the community.That person, driven by a need for further information about his/her condition, brought a passion and energy to the community that caused it to grow beyond a single moderator/manager.

That's difficult to replicate if your online community is about less than life or death: if it's around a brand, or a political candidate, or even a church. I have a pretty good view into a number of collaboration platforms, all the way back toGroveSite from ten years ago (still in business) and they generally grow more slowly than their founders would wish. After years of working in silence or in separate offices, people can't train themselves to collaborate overnight. Putting yourself out there can be scary.

Some of Democrasoft's most successful communities, however, turn out to be in schools. because classroom teachers are — no surprrise – trained community managers. The best teachers encourage discussions, engage their communities and students, and actually can have lifelong influence as a result. We are trying to figure out how to replicate the kind of job the best teachers do for kids in more adult situations.

This has led to a study of how to train and engage moderators, and to the development of a site we're giving to the community, called We Moderate. Please join us there to talk about this critical topic. And any other resources you know of would really be appreciated. You will be paid in social currency:-)

Posted via email from Not Really Stealthmode

UPDATE: My karmic universe always in operation: @corvida just sends this great resource from @Mashable

http://mashable.com/2010/07/30/sustainable-online-community/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Mashable+(Mashable)




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Jul29

No Exit; No Matter

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No Exit; No Matter

You may have heard that the luminaries like Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman have taken some money off the table even though their companies haven’t  been sold or gone public. How exactly did this happen? Yesterday I listened to a fascinating panel by some of the guys who made that possible, and learned about their own agendas.

the cast: Barry Silbert. Founder of SecondMarket, who created the secondary market for Facebook shares; Ted Smith Union Square Advisors M&A Advisors; and Sam Schwerin of Millennium Technology Ventures, which provides-secondary liquidity to companies like Facebook and Epocrates.

The growth of the new secondary markets, which are made up of a very small number of companies that provide liquidity to entrepreneurs whose companies are still private, came about in response to a need: the macro IPO market no longer exists. Two decades ago, the Average time required for a company to go public was 4-5 years. It is now 10.4 years. why?  Well, there are no more boutique bankers and brokers. And decimalization has reduced the spread while online trading has destroyed commission prices.

Moreover, If you go public at less than $1b, your company’s average trading volume will be down by a factor of 5, and the number of analysts covering you will be down by half.
 Crank In the costs associated with Sarbanes-Oxley and the fact that younger CEOs resent having to show concern for quarterly earnings, and companies tend to stay private longer. It’s no longer very desirable to go public. And so there comes to be a need for a secondary market to create liquidity for entrepreneurs and their early investors.

This year, although IPO filings rose, only 33% were successful in getting out and only 42% of them traded up when issued. Because 2010 is almost over from the IPO window perspective, the  other companies that filed probably won’t get out on the street and will choose to pull their IPOs.
Bankers thus suggest a dual track process, in which you file for an IPO, but you are really doing is putting your company up for sale. For the strategic acquirers, however, the threat of IPO isn’t  really a threat anymore, so they will wait and let the market price the stock.

And even if you go public, it is not an exit anymore, because you  are probably stuck with  up shares. So according to these guys, the secondary market has become respectable way to liquidity, and capital is coming into the secondary market. To me, this sounds a bit self-serving, and indeed one of the panelists admitted that because they can’t advertise, can’t talk price, and have to sell to sophisticated investors only, secondary markets are a tool, not a strategy.

But these tools are now available to entrepreneurs both for employee retention and for exits, and like any tool, can really construct or deconstruct a company.




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Jul28

Five Big Business Ideas for Now

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Five Big Business Ideas for Now

For young people graduating from college with mountains of debt, and for workers of any age who have been jobless for long periods of time in the current economy, the picture is ominous: if we are in a recovery at all, it’s a jobless one, and more than likely we aren’t in a recovery except in a technical sense. Whatever the economists say, Americans and Europeans are feeling the earth move in unpleasant ways beneath them.

This is the first summer I’ve spent in Silicon Valley in almost a decade where the Valley didn’t seem like a hotbed of innovation. Things are happening here, but not the kinds of things that attract big venture capital investment. In fact, venture capital as an industry is struggling. Cash is sitting on the sidelines looking for places to invest. And sidelined people are looking for opportunities to apply their talents.
Time to get off your butts everybody. Obama didn’t do it with the stimulus, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be done. Here are my votes for the biggest business opportunities of the next decade:
1) The smart grid. We leak something like 30% of the electricity we produce. So we can sit around arguing about whether it should come from coal, solar, or nuclear, and we still haven’t solved a couple of big problems: we must get the energy from here to there more efficiently, and we must re-build our outdated power system so it can’t be taken down by the next heat wave. Somebody start a company to optimize electricity, and somebody start one to study what needs to be re-built. Power generation is already being worked on.
2) Water. Our water and wastewater systems are also old. Isn’t there an easier way to transport water than the ways we are using? The Central Arizona Project transports water to the entire southwest from the Colorado River. How much of that evaporates. Are there better ways to transfer and purify water? To get it into the home? To enable people to conserve?
3) Streets and roads. Our highway systems are falling apart. Are there new materials with which to re-build it? Materials that won’t wear out every summer, or get potholes every winter? Or use toxic concrete? Can we use nano materials on roads? Can we make them smart so they will tell us when they need repair?
4) High speed travel infrastructure. Both air and rail need serious re-thinking. Someone with a good idea here will attract all the venture capital she needs. Trillions of dollars are sitting there, waiting for the next good idea.
5) Cleaning up the oceans. I had a conversation with a friend who estimated that 20% of our GDP will be affected by the oil spill and the resulting dead zones in the oceans around North America:
“Nutrient pollution has emerged as the most widespread….effect of pollution on [ocean] living resources and biodiversity,” states NCCOS in their article. NCCOS is a branch of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headquartered in Washington, D.C.
NCCOS states that excessive ocean nutrients cause an “explosive growth” of microscopic algae plants. The algae blocks sunlight “needed for underwater grasses to grow.” Ocean plants and animals cannot live without sufficient oxygen. Not enough oxygen causes “hypoxic conditions” commonly referred to as “dead zones.”
These dead zones were occurring BEFORE the oil spill:
The Gulf of Mexico is a major source area for the seafood industry. The Gulf supplies 72% of U.S. harvested shrimp, 66% of harvested oysters, and 16% of commercial fish (Potash and Phosphate Institutes of the U.S. and Canada, 1999). Consequently, if the hypoxic zone continues or worsens, fishermen and coastal state economies will be greatly impacted.
So there’s an even bigger job to do now, to restore some of these regions to life.
These aren’t just jobs for environmentalists. They are the business opportunities of the future. So get going: I want to help.




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Jul24

The End of News

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The End of News

"With Cronkite's death, this has been a week of memories. It took me back to a time when there was such a thing as a trusted journalist.
6:50 AM Jul 22nd, 2009 via web"

That's a quote from the late Daniel Schorr's Twitter feed. Yes, this man who died yesterday at 93 and only composed on a computer for the first time last year had a Twitter account. And felt the same way I do about what has happened to journalism. Only I feel that way about HIS death.

I was one of the first film reviewers and "investigative reporters" at the old Phoenix New Times in the early 1970s, when that was a volunteer job for a young English professor. I pretty quickly discovered that investigative stuff wasn't for me when some "independent adjuster" of arson claims threatened me after I questioned why his business was necessary. Movie reviews were a lot safer, but I could afford to do either.

Although my "career" in journalism was brief, my love of news was not. I first met the New York Times when I began to read, and learned to fold it for subway reading in elementary school, when the "Times lady" came into our classroom.

I worshipped various Times reporters,  Huntley and Brinkley, Cronkite,  Daniel Schorr and Bill Moyers. Did I think they had a "liberal bias?" Who knew? No one ever discussed "sides" or "opinions" in the news, other than the editorial page. I never had to concern myself with bias in the news. And I welcomed CNN when it was founded:  more news, more often, from more distant places!

Even the advent of MSNBC, Microsoft and NBC's joint venture at news and technology — such a failure at the time — seemed awesome to me:  still more news, this time with geekery.

But both the news and Daniel Schorr both died this week. Schorr died peacefully after a long and productive life. The news, however,  was murdered by Andrew Breitbart, Fox, Tom Vilsack, and the chicken-hearts of the Obama administration.

All day long I switch fitfully among the cable channels trying to find some real news among the carefully "balanced" talking heads. To learn what is really going on, I have even begun to watch C-Span the channels of drying paint. At least they don't have blithering idiots thinking they are pundits and analysts. I read hundreds of feeds a day, all of them hammering me with a point of view. I've even tried Al Jazeera in an attempt to find real objectivity.

It's depressing. Technology didn't destroy news. The internet didn't destroy news. The collapse of advertising models didn't destroy news. Unworthy commentators destroyed news.

R.I. P. Mr. Schorr. You will be missed.

Posted via email from Not Really Stealthmode




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Jul21

FlipBoard Ends My Obsession With Bright Shiny Objects

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FlipBoard Ends My Obsession With Bright Shiny Objects

R.I.P. Francine’s obsession with the shiny and the new.

You can read the story of my iPhone4 disillusionment here. And this week I realized that when my MacBook Air’s business lease is up next month, I have nothing else I want to buy. I will just continue to use the Air. After all, I’m still using my old MacBook and my old Mini, which both pre-date the Air and still work just fine. The iPhones I’ve given away, however, to various needy family members like my grandson, who was too young to know an Iphone from a teething ring when he received this gift.

This morning, on the advice of Robert Scoble, who over the weekend informed the Twitterverse that he had seen the death of newspapers, I downloaded Flipboard, the new social magazine.

Um, not so fast. The interface is pretty, but the content was sucky, and I didn’t like Flipboard’s curation. And because everyone in Silicon Valley is a sheep, the site has been so overloaded that I couldn’t connect it to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, where the “good” (for me) curators already reside. So for me, Flipboard is just another pretty face. John Doerr funding it is like an old guy taking a trophy wife. Interface goes a long way, but it doesn’t replace fundamentals, like the right content curation. If I am adding Scoble’s lists to get the content I want and need, I might as well stick with Twitter. Besides, there’s no healthcare information. Even Vogue has health information. It’s not “my” social magazine without it.

Crank into this simmering stew the fact that Ben Metcalfe has an Evo with the huge screen, the fast OS, and the real ability to run apps in the background, tether, and get reception. He sat next to me at dinner last night, and I couldn’t control myself. I had buyer’s remorse for the iPhone. I should have paid a total of $60/mo for this machine, with its ability to do all the things I have ancillary equipment to do.

Ahhh, maybe I’m just getting old. But maybe, just maybe, I’m coming to my senses. I sure hope it’s the latter.




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Jul17

A Glympse of the Geolocated Future

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A Glympse of the Geolocated Future

This past week Michael Markman (@mickeleh), a friend of mine who was on his way up Highway 1 from Los Angeles to San Francisco, honored me with a visit. But although we were set to have coffee when he got to Half Moon Bay, neither he nor I knew exactly when he would arrive. I had to wait for him. So he sent me a Glympse.

For those of you who don’t follow the vicissitudes of Apple and the iPhone, Glympse is a small application that sits on your iPhone and allows you to send an email or a text message to someone, telling them exactly where you are and locating you on a map. So far, it doesn’t sound too exciting, but when you realize that as the traveller moves the app follows him/her on the map and automatically updates your visual in the same text message so you can track hiis whereabouts, Glympse becomes both convenient and transformative.

On the convenient side: if I had sent everyone who thought I couldn’t safely make the trip from Phoenix to Half Moon Bay a Glympse, they could have followed my trip and not had to call me to see how I was or worry about me.

On the transformative side, this is another of those features that makes one’s life more transparent. I am no expert, but the new iPhone has several new features, like an accelerometer, that must allow it to know where you are all the time. Blended with Google maps, this makes Find My IPhone work when your phone is missing (but also when it is on the nightstand in your paramour’s apartment). It also allowed a clever developer to invent Gympse, or someone to spy on you.

Basically, with Gympse, you don’t have to check in anymore. You are checked in by the phone as soon as you send a text message or an email to someone. Which means Apple and AT&T know where you are even if you never send the text message.

Personally, I am okay with all this, in fact I love it and gladly adopt it. But then, i am also okay with most people knowing all about me; I am whatever the opposite of paranoid is. But as people write to me and ask me if they should get an Iphone, they’re thinking about dropped phone calls and antennas, not privacy, and we all ought to know about the slippery slope I have chosen to slide down so we don’t all follow me:-)

__._,_.___




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Jul15

Apple’s iPhone4g Press Conference: Just in Time

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Apple’s iPhone4g Press Conference: Just in Time

I hope I can wait until tomorrow before I throw my shiny new mobile phone back in Apple’s face.
I stood in line 6.5 hours in 100 degree heat for this phone on Day 1. I’ve had every previous iPhone. Trust me, the antenna is not the only problem. I wish it were.

Here’s my list of pet peeves with this version of the iPhone.

1)It turned itself off yesterday right in the middle of a conversation and wouldn’t turn back on. I thought it was dead.

2)When if finally came back on, my selected ring was gone.

3)When I attempted to download app updates, the Apple Store made me give my credit card information again and would not let the form be submitted until I had not only re-added my security code, but also filled in my “Salutation.” Of what use is it to them that I am Dr. Hardaway, except for unwanted marketing communications?

4)I have the antenna problem when I don’t use the bumper.  When I do use the bumper, I can’t get the phone to charge on it’s charger, so I have to keep putting the bumper on and taking it off all day. As a result, it has stretched a little.

5) The phone also has crummy blue tooth, which means it doesn’t work too well with my car, the 2009 Honda Accord.

6) Only some apps really run in the background.  The NPR app, for example, turns off its stream if I try to tweet.

7) Video’s not as easy to edit as promised.  You have to buy the iMovie app.

8) Battery life is not better.  If anything, it’s worse.

Why bother telling you more? Coupled with the obvious issues with AT&T, I find this iPhone a big disappointment. Yes, it’s got FaceTime, which is fun with my family, although only one of them has an iPhone4. I FaceTimed once with my business partner and we felt like we were violating each other’s privacy (well, maybe that’s because the phone takes screen shots and I tried to put one on Twitter). And yes, it definitely has a better camera.

I like good industrial design as much as the next guy, but I’m getting sick of paying a premium for Apple design and winding up at the Genius Bar.




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Jul14

Why Co-Locating Startups Works

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Why Co-Locating Startups Works

Long before I went to China  and got to know Mark Suster, I read and admired his blog.He’s one of the new generation of open, transparent VCs. So it’s not surprising to hear him come out in favor of co-location for startups. He’s right. Distributed teams may work, but co-located startups work faster, quicker, better.  And if there is only one founder, they may be the single best way to get a good business idea the resources it needs to get off the ground (which is often a co-founder to begin with).

I’m not talking through my hat here. Stealthmode works out of a collaborative work space in Chandler, Arizona called Gangplank, and also run a startup incubator in Mesa, a town nearby. The Chandler startups are mostly creative and geeky, (Authority Labs is one of them) and the Mesa ones are health-related, retail, and web services.

In every case, the businesses have made huge strides by “living” together, using each other’s talents and services, learning from each other, and being exposed to the same group of educational resources and mentors.

A large part of helping companies is simply mentoring.  Well, maybe that’s not so simple. I’ve done it for the past ten years both privately and for four municipalities and part of job generation and retention programs. It is VERY labor-intensive work, and there are only three of us at Stealthmode. If we didn’t aggregate groups of entrepreneurs and allow them to learn from each other and us simultaneously — as well as from the resources who donate their time to the collaboratives (investors,lawyers, accountants, and yes, social media gurus), we couldn’t scale what we do. Because of the collaboration programs, we’ve been able to help over 400 businsses get started, grow, or stay in business during this downturn by changing their cost structures, product offerings, or marketing techniques.

After all, there are only 24 hours in every day. Even the best-intentioned VC, agnel, or attorney can’t give all the time they’d wish to give. So a colocation facility, where the resource can be brought to the facility for an hour of answering questions, can go quite far among ten companies.

In times of scarcity like the one we are in now, it’s important to form new businesses. Most hiring is done by businesses less than five years old. Those are the ones that gravitate toward the acceleration programs we are part of. They’re the best, the brightest, and the bravest of entrepreneurs. There may not be bank lending for them, or VC money (most companies aren’t eligible for VC money), or even seed money, but lowering their startup costs by sharing resources can make it possible for them to succeed.

We try not to call our co-location or collaboration “incubation.” My long-time business partner says “incubation” has the connotation of sick babies.  The companies that self-select to come into the Kauffman Foundation Fasttrac programs we offer at the co-location facilities every fall and spring are not sick: they’re companies that have decided to take advantage of every resource the community has to offer, and not to pre-judge their competitors or their complementors.

After ten years, our network of businesses have formed a “trust” network and often buy from each other or use each others’ services. I’ve never led a program that didn’t have a web developed as a participant, and two or three businesses that had web site issues:-)

In Mesa, where the businesses are less technology-centric, we have had businesses that needed graphic design services, and people who needed massage therapy. And surprise: we had a massage therapist, a yoga travel business, and a graphic designer. Also a gentleman who raised money for health related businesses, a woman who spoke on defeating cancer by natural methods, and a real estate specialist. None of them could have attracted a dime of bank financing or venture capital, and yet they are all off the ground and generating revenue.

This co-location idea works, both in technology-specific businesses and in unrelated random groups of small neighborhood businesses. To get ourselves out of this Recession/Depression, we need both. So I’m bullish on co-location, collaboration, or whatever else you want to call it:-)

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Jul2

Angel with Attitude: Jason Calcanis on Angel Rounds

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Angel with Attitude: Jason Calcanis on Angel Rounds
Open letter to Jason Calcanis on the occasion of his email about raising angel rounds:
Jason you are hilarious. You do manage to put yourself out there every time you send out a newsletter, and this one on angel rounds is no exception.
You have it right about how to be an angel. Although I also talk to fifty startups a year, I invest in maybe five, never more than $25k, more often time and talent and not money. That buys me the job of strategist and evangelist, which is always an unfilled position in a startup company. In the past three years, because there have been few exits, I have haven’t had much money to invest, but I’ve still got the time and talent.
I figure out how to take the product to market, and try to find people to hire. I advise people how to exist without raising more money, and how to have decent expectations about investors. I also explain how this idea they have will change, maybe not the world, but certainly their lives. They may lose their marriages, the childhoods of their babies, or their friends,  And that’s if they are successful.
Most entrepreneurs are so sure of their ideas that they don’t realize what it’s like to put one’s hard earned money in the hands of someone else. They come to pitch me, thinking I should really want to invest, when most of the time they don’t have anything, and have no idea how to get from where they are to where they want to go. Many don’t even know where they want to go.
The big missing element in most of the pitches I hear is market research.  Let me say it again. Market research. Many startups just assume there is a market. Fortunately or unfortunately, I owned not one, but two marketing companies before becoming a coach and advisor, and I know all too much about the vagaries of markets.
If I think the entrepreneur doesn’t know anything about markets, I like to be the interim marketing person without investing money. It’s not money the entrepreneur needs at this point, it’s knowledge, and you can’t buy that.  I’m the cheapest form of market knowledge they can buy, because I will work for almost nothing for the right people.
I wish I were more successful in putting people I know would be helpful to each other together, but chemistry always stands in the way and I often can’t get a company to hiere the right people (e.g. the people I want them to hire). Sometimes I even try to merge two somewhat similar ideas into one company, but the entrepreneurs are stubborn and usually won’t partner up. They would rather follow their individual approaches.
On the personal side, of course you are tired.  You have had a child, which is a life-changing and sleep-changing event. You stay up late playing high stakes poker. You have started a company. You are wrestling with Mahalo, a company you are obviously getting bored with ( no judgment here, because I do that with something after about three years, too). And your tussle with Facebook set off a time-consuming firestorm.
Oh, and you also broke up with Arrington.
I lke what you are doing with Open Angel Forum, and I think it’s necessary. But I like what you are doing with This Week in Startups the most, because that’s where you have the most power to have the greatest impact on entrepreneurs who will listen. Keep up the good work.

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