The Well Known Secrets of the VC world (Part 2)

OK, it took a while since part 1. It is kind of busy here in Project-X and weekends are the only time left for some writing. Before it gets too far from my VC days, I wanted to write the promised (but perhaps not anticipated) part 2 of my post, and get it out of the way. The last post covered some basics: What’s a good VC, getting meetings and the strange habit of VCs not to pass on deals. Today we will focus on what’s important- what will a VC look into when  meeting you.

Apple Destroys iPhone Apps Credibility By Encouraging Bad Ratings

I tend to have great level of appreciation to Apple’s ability to design amazing and easy to use products. In most cases, there is a lot of thinking behind each feature, but here is one which is far beyond my understanding: Apple intentionally destroys third party apps credibility by encouraging bad ratings.

Workday Raises $75 Million- Good Sign for the Business Software World

Workday, a financial and human resources SaaS provider, has secured $75 million in Series E funding. In my humble opinion, this is a very good sign that investments in business software are going to get a boost in the next few years.

Look back 15 years ago and compare the progress in “consumer computing” to the progress in “business computing” – the differences are amazing.  Consumers moved from 14K modems to cable, from one inbox per office to unlimited mail accounts and storage, from backing up files on floppy disks to box.net, from from Rolodex to manage their personal lives to Facebook, from expensive and complex Photoshop to Picasa, from mail orders to Amazon and from paper atlas to Google maps. Our lives as consumers are almost 100% digitized now.

The Well Known Secrets of the VC world (Part 1)

The news are all grim about VCs recently. They can’t raise money, they don’t invest…While it is not the best time for VCs and startups (and for the rest of us), money is still invested.  I spent the last 6 months as an EIR (Executive In Residence) with a venture capital firm, classically located on Sand Hill road. Destiny (and network) got me to spend my winter with Storm Ventures, one of the finest VCs I got to know. During this time I saw dozens of startups, attended many internal discussions and learned a lot. And, as my old grandmother used to say: “learning is solidified by writing”. So here are some of my learnings that many people know, but more don’t…

• What’s a good VC?:

The Problem Facebook does solve

More than a year ago I spent time thinking about Facebook and the problem it solves. Back then, Facebook was growing in a staggering speed, adding 1 million users every week. This week, Facebook turned 5 and with 15% of the world internet users on Facebook, it is clear they are winning the game of user adoption. I made two claims about Facebook back then and I am happy to say I was very wrong about one and only somehow right about the other. Not much of a record…

I was wrong about the problem Facebook is solving. I thought it was a fun product that did not solve any real life problem. With 15 months of perspective I feel that I have a better idea: Facebook is so successful because we are all absolutely horrible in managing our social relations.

The Smart Layoff

Today’s economy leads to many layoffs across all sectors. According to TechCrunch’s layoffs Tracker, over 132,000 employees lost their jobs from August 2008 in the tech sector alone. Reductions in force (RIFs) are commonplace now but there are few best practices out there when it comes to doing it right strategically. While HR already mastered the process from their side, executives often fail to creatively think of the best way to reduce the number of employees, without destroying the company.

There is a smarter way, but let’s first understand how it is done today.

When was the last time you reinvented your company?

The only advice CEOs are getting nowadays is to cut costs and be more frugal. This is a good advice but I don’t think there is any CEO with a pulse that hasn’t heard it before. The other issue with cutting costs is that at best, it will allow you to survive 2009 and show vital signs when the economy is back on track. It would not create a competitive advantage nor will it help you deal with the next crisis or external change in the market place. The real test for a CEO is not cutting costs in time of crisis but rather finding a repetitive way to reinvent her company as market conditions change.

Take Salesforce.com. Not too many companies were able to grow from zero to billion dollars a year in less than a decade. Even mighty SAP took 20 years or so to touch the billion dollar marker. Do you remember how it all started? Salesforce.com started as, yes, sales force Automation company with a very narrow focus and commitment. Later it has expended to become a full CRM package (and picked “CRM” as its NYSE ticker). Nevertheless, in the last 3 years salesforce is becoming a platform company and pushing initiatives like force.com and App Exchange. Without judging the wisdom behind the changes, Mark Benioff built a company with “change” in its DNA. Not only does it want to change every few years, the company knows how to change and it is doing it enough to get really good at it.

How come we don’t drive a better horse…

If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse….. Henry Ford

If you are a product manager or product leader- the easiest way to get the job done is speaking with your customers and collect their requests.  After all, they are the ones that pay for your salary so just make them happy. Right? Not always.

Henry Ford, the man who invented mass production of cars, summarized his product management philosophy in one sentence, acknowledging that asking customers for product ideas will usually yield ideas for improving the status quo. 

Financing an ERP product does not equal financing a car

Microsoft offers zero percent financing on Dynamics ERP and CRM. Given the economy and the credit crunch, it must make a lot of sense, right? Not really. In ERP, licensing the product is far from being the most significant cost. Training, implementation, change management, additional hardware, additional software (like database), third party software components that goes with the new package (add ons are common addition to ERP implementations) make the money you spend with Microsoft the smallest part of your investment.

SaaS at the edge of the enterprise

SAP, Oracle and Microsoft solutions will not go away anytime soon. While the SaaS discussion is gaining ground in the last months, we still don’t see massive (or even minor) conversion of enterprises from mission critical systems like SAP to SaaS based applications. Netsuite for example, is reported to go after SAP customers in a competitive conversion offer. I doubt that they will get too many real R/3 customers that are fully deployed converting- the only success they may enjoy is from customers that never deployed SAP or subsidiaries of SAP shops that used something else (say MS-Dynamics) and now want a better solution.