Category: Technology

Wisdom from the TiE Internet SIG

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.

HP Drama: Gender Bias?

Carly Fiorina and then Patricia Dunn, both women, were fired from positions of great power at HP in a span of less than two years. It begs the question, does gender have anything to do with it? The WSJ has an interesting article about this issue. Interestingly enough, this was precisely what came up in a casual conversation I was having at home the other day. While one could argue that gender did play a role, it does have a lot to do with these individuals and their respective situations. While Carly took on the Hewlett family and her board, Dunn took on Tom Perkins, a Silicon Valley heavy weight. It remains to be seen what comes of Mark Hurd because it appears that he was aware of the investigation all along. Besides, the three (Dun, Perkins, Keyworth) instrumental in bringing him on board are no longer around.

Google Youtube rumor

The recent rumor about a Google Youtube deal for 1.6B, simply stinks.

Pump in a bunch of money, drive traffic, hype, hype hype, then sell out. How is this different from dotcomm days apart from the fact that companies aren’t going public? Its the same Sequoia Capital folks on both Google and Youtube boards, making life a lot easier for the investors. The mania that caused the dotcomm crash is slowly being re-created without the public markets.

Fine, Google loves the traffic. But $1.6B for a company that has no technology to speak off, no viable business model, burns cash at over $1M a month, and has a bunch of copyright violating videos and lots of traffic. Hello? Are we back in 1998?

HP: Back in the News

All this recent news about HP is really sad. The so called management gurus on the board, the former CEO all combined have done great disservice to everything that the original founders “H” and “P” stood for. The only good news at the moment is that Mark Hurd appears to be a sensible guy to lead the company and letting him consolidate power might not be a bad thing (at least in the short term). Any investigation into the recent scandal is likely to expose the inner workings of the Silicon Valley given that so many big-wigs are involved. It is not surprising that HP’s Chairman Patricia Dunn is being phased out given that she has chosen to take on some real heavy hitters —Tom Perkins and the like. It should be a great time for the press as the saga unfolds.

Beware: Reverting from IE7 to IE6 is a nightmare!

I made the BIG mistake of trying IE7. Now I find myself stuck. I can’t revert to IE6! I can’t get rid of IE7 either.

Ok, IE7 has tabbed browsing and I like it. But I can’t find myself getting used to the rest of the new interface. Also, IE7’s approach of dealing with pop-ups is painful. On a particular website the application appears as a pop-up! I can’t get IE7 to allow the pop-up! In short, I am stuck.

I went to the MS website, where theyy suggested some tricks to uninstall IE7. Unfortunately, those didn’t work for me.

My 2 cents…don’t upgrade to IE7 until its ready for mass use!

Youtube vs Google Video

I have watched videos on both Youtube and on Google Video. My personal experience has been much better on Youtube. The interfaces are almost identical but I find the video from Google constantly interrupted — stop and starts. Happens almost always on Google video but almost never on Youtube (I don’t think it has anything to do with the Internet connection because I have tried both using the same internet access). There is no question that Youtube has far more videos than Google Video. As for Yahoo Videos, its not worth talking about at this point!