Steve Woda's blog

links for 2009-08-30

• The Leading Cause of Startup Death – Part 1: The Product Development Diagram
  When I started working in Silicon Valley, every company bringing a new product to market used some form of the Product Development Model. Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup.
  (tags: Product development Entrepreneurship)
• TheFunded.com: Example VC Pitch Deck with Explanations, Samples
  Recently, I shared this outline & pitch deck example with the Capital Factory companies in Austin, Texas; you may find example slides, download the PPT template file, and read descriptions / discussion for each here: http://kipmcc.wordpress.com/2009/08/0... 1. Title Slide * The get everyone in the room and sitting down slide; Don’t roll forward from here until you have everyone in the room and paying attention if you can help it. 2. Agenda + Company Overview * Make sure you’re covering what they want to cover; ask if you’re missing anything before launching into the pitch * This is also the slide to give a quick summary of your company. This summary is important because it will give any other partners at the firm you talking to a “snap shot” of you’re company after you’re gone; it’s helpful for other partners in the firm to have at-a-glace info on what you do, in what market, company details, and so on.
• (tags: vc presentations Entrepreneurship)

links for 2009-08-29

• FCC To Put Wireless Corps On The Hot Seat
  Today the Federal Communications Commission announced its decision to investigate the wireless industry. Under the gun will be the power held by the larger providers, truth-in-billing issues, and whether or not consumers have as much choice as they should. Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of Media Access Project, calls this new investigation "long overdue." My guess is the wireless providers disagree. The FCC has notified the major wireless players -- including AT&T (NYSE: T), Sprint (NYSE: S), T-Mobile, and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) WIreless -- that it is going to be undertaking two different inquiries. The first is going to be how the FCC itself can help increase competition in the industry and how network technology, device selection, application access and business practices affect the industry as a whole. A separate inquiry will examine whether or not the industry allows for new entrants.
  (tags: fcc)
• Steve Jobs: The man who polished Apple - Times Online
  For five years the owner of the Jackling House in Woodside, California, has been trying to knock it down. He hates the place, calling it “one of the biggest abominations of a house I’ve ever seen”. He hates it so much, he has abandoned it to live a few miles away in Palo Alto. Pictures of the interior show a ghostly, decaying mansion. The owner can’t knock it down because of protests from conservationists. But a deal has been done. He will spend $600,000 to have it taken down and will have it rebuilt elsewhere — not a big victory by his standards, but a satisfying one. He has been having a hard time lately.
  (tags: apple jobs)

links for 2009-08-28

• FCC inquiries could spawn new wireless regulations
  The Federal Communications Commission is taking a closer look at the practices of the wireless industry, potentially the first step toward more regulations intended to push down prices and increase choices for consumers. At its first meeting with all five commissioners seated since the inauguration of President Barack Obama, the FCC voted unanimously Thursday to open an inquiry into the state of competition in the wireless industry. The FCC also wants to explore factors that encourage innovation and investment in wireless.
  (tags: fcc wireless)
• Seed is the new Series A for VCs
  It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that VCs have, over the past few quarters, been reluctant to put term sheets down on new investments. Most venture folks have instead been preoccupied with tending to their portfolio companies, either ensuring that their most promising companies have enough capital and resources to weather the downturn, or trying to sell off the others. money The statistics bear this out. U.S. venture-backed companies raised $9.28 billion in the first half of 2009, according to VentureSource. That’s 44 percent less than the $16.47 billion raised during the same period in 2008. It may be too soon to pop the champagne, but the mood in the venture community appears to be slowly improving.
  (tags: vc Entrepreneurship)

Perspective... The ultimate weapon in the fight against "chase the shiny object" syndrome

Life, business, politics, competition, family... These things can all be challenging at times.  Stress in inevitable.  Over the years, I have determined that the most valuable tool you can acquire for managing these challenges is "perspective" or "context".

When you think about the big picture and put your daily stresses into a proper context or perspective, you often realize how minor the bumps are.  In the short run, challenges can seem huge and the desire for quick fixes is strong.  I like to call this the "chase the shiny object" syndrome.  For organizations, "chase the shiny object" syndrome leads to inevitable failure. 

In the long run, most challenges are manageable.  By staying focused on the big picture and by continuing to put one foot in front of the other, you can make amazing progress that compounds on itself to create success.  Intuitively, we all know this, but it is often hard to keep that state of mind when you are in the weeds and when the pressure is on for instant success.

As a leader in your organization, it is always important to keep folks focused on the big picture... to give your team perspective and context on what is going on around them.  Create a roadmap or plan.  Concentrate on execution.  Put one foot in front of the other over and over again.  One morning months later, the team will wake up and be pleasantly shocked to see how far they have traveled and how much they have accomplished.

If you want the ultimate perspective, watch this video.  It is awe inspiring to me, and it certainly puts our daily, personal challenges into a much bigger picture.  :)

links for 2009-08-27

• FIRST LOOK: New Mac system not a dramatic upgrade
  While Microsoft Corp. prepares to release the next incarnation of Windows on Oct. 22, Apple Inc. is cutting ahead, launching a new version of its operating system for Mac computers on Friday. Apple's new Snow Leopard software isn't as big of a step forward from its predecessor as Windows 7 will be from Windows Vista. The most important changes in the Apple operating system are under the hood, allowing software developers to rewrite their programs to run much faster.
  (tags: apple leopard)
• Brazen Careerist: A Professional Network That Realizes You’re More Than Just A Resume
  The job market is absolutely brutal right now in many areas of the country — a fact that’s doubly true for recent graduates whose resumes are still a little light on actual job experience. This isn’t helped by the fact that many career sites like LinkedIn place a heavy emphasis on past jobs and workplace connections. Tonight, Brazen Careerist is launching a new professional social network for Generation Y that’s looking to solve this problem. Brazen Careerist launched over a year ago as a blog network, and has since grown to include over 1000 bloggers. Now, the site is also launching its own social network that’s centered around Generation Y — adults who were born from the late 70’s through the mid 90’s. Unlike LinkedIn, Brazen Careerist is trying to focus on the human side of these potential employees, offering an environment where users can share their thoughts and activities alongside their resumes.
  (tags: career)

links for 2009-08-26

• How to Give a Lousy Presentation - BusinessWeek
  Giving truly great presentations requires skill, work, and practice. Giving catastrophic presentations is far easier. So if you want to take the easy way out and look like a rank amateur, here are 15 surefire tips to guarantee that you leave a really, really bad impression.
  (tags: presentations)
• Brazen Careerist Launch: Twitter meets Facebook meets LinkedIn meets Gen Y…and it’s about time.
  The folks at Brazen Careerist realize college students and young professionals aren’t always able to pull from years of previous work experience when marketing themselves to potential employers. And that often puts them at a competitive disadvantage. So, instead of sticking with the status quo, they decided to turn existing traditional online career management tools on their ear. With the launch of the new Brazen community, members can now showcase their intellectual horsepower (or potential) through their ideas…ideas that can lead to creative solutions to complex problems. And if there’s one word that describes today’s business landscape, it’s complexity.
  (tags: career)

links for 2009-08-25

• Farhad Mohit: DotSpots and the Wisdom of Crowds - Knowledge@Wharton
  Entrepreneur Farhad Mohit is hardly resting on his laurels, although he could. In 1996, he launched BizRate, a consumer rating site, and then in 2004, Shopzilla, a shopping search engine. His latest venture is DotSpots, a service that lets people update the news in real-time with dots, or distributed objects of thought. These could include mini-blog posts containing text, videos, images, documents, perspectives from the blogosphere or eye-witness accounts from the scene. Mohit talked with Knowledge@Wharton about DotSpots, the publishing industry, the wisdom of crowds, what he learned from his previous successes and the importance of finding the right team, among other topics.
  (tags: Entrepreneurship Farhad Mohit Wharton)
• Snow Leopard To Hit Stores Friday
  Apple will release major OS X upgrade weeks ahead of Microsoft's Windows 7 launch party.

  In a surprise move, Apple said Monday that it plans to release a highly anticipated upgrade to its OS X 10 operating system on Friday.

  Mac OS X v10.6, also known as Snow Leopard, will be available for purchase at Apple's retail stores, authorized resellers, and from Apple's online e-commerce site. OS X 10.5 Leopard users can upgrade to Snow Leopard for just $29, Apple said.

  "Snow Leopard builds on our most successful operating system ever and we're happy to get it to users earlier than expected," said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior VP for software engineering, in a statement.

  Apple was not expected to ship Snow Leopard until later this year.

  
  
  (tags: apple leopard)
  
  

links for 2009-08-24

• "I will not raise taxes"... Why? Because we'll make it up elsewhere. "Social Security Expects No COLAs for 2 Years" - washingtonpost.com
  Millions of people face shrinking Social Security checks next year, as officials project that benefits will stay flat for the first time in a generation.

  The trustees who oversee Social Security are forecasting that there will be no cost-of-living adjustment for the next two years. That has not happened since automatic increases were adopted in 1975.

  
  
  (tags: Politics)
  
  

links for 2009-08-23

• New Technology Incubator Goes Searching For ‘Rising Stars’
  A veteran software engineer and a patent attorney have teamed up to incubate start-ups in San Francisco, opening the doors of sfCube, where entrepreneurs can learn to develop, market and launch their products. “We want to work with the rising stars,” said Dylan Rosario, a co-founder of sfCube who has launched several successful start-ups, and who spent years building search engines for IBM Corp. “During hard times, innovation improves. People come up with all kinds of ways to do things cheaper.” The incubator opened Wednesday in a 5,000-square-foot space in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, and three start-ups have already located there, Rosario said. There is room for about 20 more, he said.
  (tags: Entrepreneurship vc)
• Another Remarkable Business Card...
  When you commit to the mantra of “Never Stop Marketing,” you promise to look at every customer touch point and figure out how to make it Remarkable. Longtime blog readers know that the business card, since it is one of the most mundane elements of corporate communications is my favorite place to start. Glad to see that more and more people are taking this to heart. Here is Steve Woda’s card (the back), which is a “tag cloud” of his expertise and interests. Love it!!
  (tags: marketing Woda)

links for 2009-08-21

• Retail E-Commerce Continues Slow Slide - eMarketer
  eMarketer has revised its forecast of US retail e-commerce sales growth after a lackluster first half of 2009. Retail e-commerce sales, excluding travel, are expected to contract by 3.1% this year. Growth will resume in 2010, at 5.5%, as consumer spending recovers from the recession. By 2011, eMarketer expects pent-up demand to accelerate growth, peaking in 2012. Retail e-commerce sales will continue to increase, but the rate of growth will fall off in 2013, continuing the pre-recession trend of strong but slowing growth.
  (tags: ecommerce)
• The truth about grit
  It’s the single most famous story of scientific discovery: in 1666, Isaac Newton was walking in his garden outside Cambridge, England - he was avoiding the city because of the plague - when he saw an apple fall from a tree. The fruit fell straight to the earth, as if tugged by an invisible force. (Subsequent versions of the story had the apple hitting Newton on the head.) This mundane observation led Newton to devise the concept of universal gravitation, which explained everything from the falling apple to the orbit of the moon. There is something appealing about such narratives. They reduce the scientific process to a sudden epiphany: There is no sweat or toil, just a new idea, produced by a genius. Everybody knows that things fall - it took Newton to explain why.
  (tags: grit success Leadership Entrepreneurship)

links for 2009-08-20

• And we think govt will improve efficiency of health care? ha! very funny... "After Taking In the Clunkers, Car Dealers Report an Extended Wait for the Cash"
  Car dealers are growing increasingly impatient with the government's slow pace in reimbursing them for accepting trade-ins as part of its popular "Cash for Clunkers" program, even though Transportation Department officials say they are working to address the delays. The National Automobile Dealers Association estimates that dealers have hundreds -- and in some cases thousands -- of applications pending that are "worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars."
  (tags: Politics health)

links for 2009-08-19

• Google Enables Document Sharing Among Groups
  Continuing its effort to differentiate its online applications from Microsoft Office though collaborative capabilities, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) on Tuesday made it possible to share calendars, documents, and sites among Google Groups members. Google has been courting business users in an attempt to get them to switch from desktop productivity apps to Google Apps. Lightweight sharing, without the complexities of software like Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) SharePoint, has been one of the major selling points of Google Apps.
  (tags: Google groups)
• 40 percent of Twitter messages 'pointless babble': study
  Forty percent of the messages on Twitter are "pointless babble" along the lines of "I am eating a sandwich now," according to a study conducted by a US market research firm. Pear Analytics, based in San Antonio, Texas, said that it randomly sampled 2,000 messages from the public stream of Twitter and separated them into six categories. The categories were: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational and pass-along value. Pear said "pointless babble" accounted for 811 "tweets" or 40.55 percent of the total number of messages sampled. Conversational messages -- defined by Pear as tweets that go back and forth between users or try to engage followers in conversation -- accounted for 751 messages or 37.55 percent. Pear said tweets with "pass-along value" -- messages that are being "re-tweeted" or passed on by users to their followers -- accounted for 174 messages or 8.70 percent.
  (tags: Twitter)

links for 2009-08-17

• 'Super Angels' Shake Up Venture Capital - BusinessWeek
  Earlier this year, as the stock market plunged, most bankers and other financiers hoarded capital and throttled back on new deals. But not Josh Kopelman. Even in the bleakest months, the co-founder of the venture capital firm First Round Capital hustled after startups to write them checks. Take one sunny morning in February. Kopelman sits in the San Francisco loft of First Round's West Coast office across a table from Gary Briggs. A veteran entrepreneur, Briggs just took over as CEO at Plastic Jungle, a startup building an online marketplace where consumers can buy, sell, or trade gift cards. "There's about $40 billion of unused gift cards on retailers' balance sheets," says Briggs, so focused he doesn't touch the salad ordered in for his lunch.
  (tags: vc angel Entrepreneurship)
• Facebook's Purchase Is Bid to Own Social Media - washingtonpost.com
  Facebook just bought the rights to nearly everything you do online. And it cost them only $47.5 million. Facebook's purchase of FriendFeed, an obscure social-media platform, is potentially momentous. To understand why, we must understand FriendFeed, a start-up that is ubiquitous among techies and unknown to everybody else. It's a sleek application that acts as a clearinghouse for all of your social-media activities. Post something to Flickr? That will show up on your FriendFeed page. Digg something? FriendFeed will know. Post to Twitter from your phone? FriendFeed will syndicate your tweets. Once you initially tell it where to look, it will collect everything and tell it to the world.
  (tags: facebook friendfeed)

links for 2009-08-15

• Outlook In, Entourage Out On Mac Office
  Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) said Thursday that it plans to develop a new version of its Outlook e-mail client for Apple computers to replace its Mac-based Entourage product. The software maker also disclosed new additions to its current Mac Office lineup. The move, which will go into effect with the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac, gives Redmond a unified e-mail and calendaring product line for the tech market's two major desktop platforms—Windows PCs and the Mac OS.
  (tags: microsoft apple)
• New law makes sex offenders' use of Internet social networking a felony
  Gov. Pat Quinn signed new laws Tuesday designed to limit sex offenders' use of technology as a way to find more victims. One law taking effect Jan. 1 makes it a felony for registered sex offenders to use social networking sites, a move aimed at taking another step toward shutting down an avenue of contact between an offender and victim. "Obviously, the Internet has been more and more a mechanism for predators to reach out," said Sen. Bill Brady (R-Bloomington), a sponsor of the measure and a governor candidate. "The idea was, if the predator is supposed to be a registered sex offender, they should keep their Internet distance as well as their physical distance.
  (tags: facebook MySpace security)

links for 2009-08-12

• Sen. Cardin Trades Points With Protesters at Town Hall on Health-Care Reform - washingtonpost.com
  Congressional town hall meetings on health-care reform have transcended their original purpose and become a kind of professional wrestling for the civically engaged. Monday night it was Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin's turn in the ring.
  (tags: Politics health)
• YouTube - Rep. Tom Price admonishes govt-takeover of healthcare

links for 2009-08-10

• Smartphones Boost Lagging Mobile Market - eMarketer
  Shipments of mobile handsets were down 8% year over year in Q2 2009, but in fact, that represented a positive trend. According to Strategy Analytics’ “Q2 2009 Global Handset Market Share Update,” 273 million handset units shipped in Q2. After year-over-year declines of 10.7% in Q4 2008 and 13.7% in Q1 2009, shipments are slowly trending better.
  (tags: Mobile)
• How to Build Anonymity Into the Internet
  Most people leave a trail when surfing the Web. Information such as a computer's IP address can be traced back to users, or used to reconstruct a profile of browsing habits. Search engines amass large quantities of data on individuals. Though they don't store this along with usernames, researchers have previously shown that individuals can still be identified using this data. People who want to avoid leaving this trail can turn to services such as Tor, an open-source system designed to muddy the path a user's data travels over the Internet (see "Dissent Made Safer"). But Tor struggles with slow network performance, and the service might be overwhelmed if too many users adopted it without also contributing resources. Last week, at the 9th annual Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, researchers described some more robust protections. They wondered if privacy protection could come from the ISPs responsible for the backbone of the Internet.
  (tags: security)

links for 2009-08-06

• Greenhill SAVP Completes Investment In TRAFFIQ
  Greenhill SAVP announced today it has invested in TRAFFIQ. Greenhill SAVP partnered with Grotech Ventures and existing investor Court Square Ventures on a $10 million Series B financing. As a result of this financing, Brian Hirsch, Managing Director of Greenhill SAVP, will join the TRAFFIQ Board of Directors.
  (tags: grotech vc)
• Apple vs. Google: Tech's Newest Rivalry? - BusinessWeek
  Over the past three decades, a few titanic rivalries have defined the technology industry's megatrends, ultimately determining which products eventually end up in consumers' and companies' hands. Now, adding to the annals of competition that include Microsoft's (MSFT) clashes with Apple (AAPL) in the '80s, IBM (IBM) in the '90s, and Google (GOOG) in this decade, the new defining rivalry in tech may be between Google and Apple. Google CEO Eric Schmidt's resignation from Apple's board on Aug. 3 highlights the degree to which these companies are more foe than friend.
  (tags: apple Google)

links for 2009-08-04

• Iran Says Three U.S. Citizens Arrested; U.S. Taps Allies for Diplomatic Help - washingtonpost.com
  Iranian television said Saturday that Tehran arrested three Americans who crossed the border from northern Iraq.

  The Americans, two men and a woman, were arrested Friday after they entered Iran while hiking in the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, a Kurdish security official said.

  A U.S. official in Baghdad said the United States asked the Swiss, who represent U.S. interests in Iran, to investigate the reports. Iran and the United States broke off diplomatic ties shortly after the Islamic revolution in 1979.

  
  
  (tags: iran Politics)
  
  
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  100 Iranians Tried for Disputing Election; Prosecutor Says U.S. Abetted Them - washingtonpost.com
  
  
  More than 100 political activists and protesters went on trial Saturday on charges of rioting and conspiring to topple the government in the turmoil surrounding Iran's presidential election, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.
  This Story

  *
  100 Iranians Tried for Disputing Election

  The defendants included several prominent politicians -- former members of parliament, first-generation revolutionaries and an ex-vice president -- who have been locked in a decades-long power struggle with Iran's hard-line clerics and Revolutionary Guard Corps.

  Wearing gray prison uniforms and appearing thin after weeks in jail, some defendants gave lengthy confessions, saying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the disputed June 12 election free of fraud.

  
  
  (tags: Politics iran)
  
  
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  A Reliable Randomizer, Turned on Its Head - washingtonpost.com
  
  
  Coin tosses are a classic metaphor in economics for randomness. For instance, in his book about market efficiency, "A Random Walk Down Wall Street," economist Burton Malkiel compares the price movements of the stock market to the random outcome of a flipped coin: "[S]ometimes one gets positive price changes for several days in a row; but sometimes when you are flipping a coin you also get a long string of 'heads' in a row." According to Malkiel, mathematicians' term for a sequence of numbers produced by a random process is a random walk. To him, this is exactly what stock-price movements look like, hence the title of his book.
  
  
  (tags: Economics science)
  
  
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  UnsafeBits: Going All In on MobileMe
  
  
  An attack on the service shows how convoluted some hacks can become.

  A group of researchers from security firm SensePost just revealed a hack of Apple's MobileMe service. Rather than demonstrating a weakness in the service, the feat is a model of the sheer doggedness on the part of some hackers.

  The three researchers--Haroon Meer, Nick Arvanitis and Marco Slaviero--wanted to find a way to break into the service and attack other users. Here are the steps that they took:

  
  
  (tags: apple mobileme)
  
  
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  Google CEO resigns from Apple board - MarketWatch
  
  
  Google Inc. /quotes/comstock/15*!goog/quotes/nls/goog (GOOG 449.24, +6.19, +1.40%) Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has resigned from Apple Inc.'s /quotes/comstock/15*!aapl/quotes/nls/aapl (AAPL 165.06, +1.67, +1.02%) board of directors, Apple said Monday. In a statement, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said Schmidt's "effectiveness" as an Apple board member would be increasingly diminished as Google "enters more of Apple's core businesses," as Schimdt would have to recuse himself from portions of meetings due to possible conflicts of interest. Among the Google products competing with Apple are the Android mobile operating system and the upcoming Google Chrome operating system.
  
  
  (tags: Google apple)
  
  

links for 2009-08-03

• Android Finally Getting Facebook App: Report
  One of the things Google talked about recently was the need to make its Android mobile operating system more social. It looks like Android is about to take its first step in the "more social" direction with the arrival of a dedicated Facebook app.

  There have been a few clues spotted in recent weeks that suggest Facebook is getting ready to show its, er, face to Android. Several weeks ago, a Facebook application was spotted on the official T-Mobile myTouch 3G launch site. It also appeared on a screenshot of the Sony Ericsson "Rachel" device.

  Obviously, these don't offer concrete proof, but they probably mean that Facebook is at least working on an Android-compatible mobile application.

  
  
  (tags: Google Android)
  
  
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  KidSafe / NightLight control panel
  
  
  
  

links for 2009-08-01

• I Quit The iPhone
  I have loved the iPhone, but now I am quitting the iPhone.

  This is not an easy decision.

  I was there in January 2007 when it was announced and I bought the first iPhone as soon as it was available. I happily bought the iPhone 3G a year later. I’ve proudly yelled “I Am A Member Of The Cult Of iPhone.” I’ve been an unabashed cheerleader for the device to all who’ll listen. And I’ve scoffed at developers who said they’d abandon the platform.

  
  
  (tags: apple iphone Google voice att)