There were several sessions. Here are a few points from the various sessions.
1. Naming and Branding
- Features of a good name: Relevant, but unexpected; combine tangible with intangible; Always spark emotion; competitive clarity — not just what it is, but what it can do for me; distinct personality to generate inteest.
- Marketing is all about conversation. What is the conversation about the compny and how do you continue that in the marketplace?
2. Wikipedia is 4 times the size of encyclopedia!
3. For the younger generation, the Internet is all about “self-expression”. They don’t care as much about privacy. Its more about sharing their “cool stuff”
- Related buzz terms: “Platforms of Participation” and “Browsing Experience”.
4. Why/How Youtube got acquired for a hefty sum:
- The momentum from Myspace acquisition (Google’s deal with MySpace).
- Great browsing experience
- Fits into the “self expression” category.
- Plenty of copyrighted content generated hordes of traffic.
Silicon Valley Celebrities who participated. Reid Hoffman (Linked In), Caterina fake (Flickr), Munjal Shah (Riya), Michael Jones (Userplane), Ashwin Navin (BitTorrent), Mike Cassidy (xFire), Heather Harde (Fox M&A), Raj Kapoor (Snapfish fame, now a VC at Mayfield).
- Reid Hoffman, “I am really busy. The best way to get my attention is to reach me through someone in my network”
- Caterina Fake, “You know…its like, its like…you know…you know,,…its like, its like….”
- Munjal Shah, “When the money runs out, the business is dead. So you raise all the money you can, but when you get it, don’t spend it”.
- Michael Jones, “When you raise money from VCs selling the business can be a lot tougher. 50M might be ok for the founders but the VCs migt need 3X. So you gotta think it through before raising money”
- Raj Kapoor (Snapfish fame): “I hear that at Google/Yahoo etc. for acquisitions under 30M, VPs can just go in and fill out an online form on the company intranet!”
For those technically inclined there was a brief discussion on software technology. Lance Tokuda (RockYou) said, “If you are building a system for lots of users on the web. don’t use Java. Its just too slow!”. Reid Hoffman (Linked In), shot back, “I disagree. Java is just fine if you know what you are doing!”. Someone brought up Ruby and the word was that its great but not scalable.
Pakora Korner 