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Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

Vente-privee’s Plans For U.S. Domination Exciting Enough For Google TV Execs To Jump Ship

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from TechCrunch.

“Vente-privee, the French flash sales juggernaut, announced in May 2011 that it had teamed up with American Express to form a joint-venture for its U.S. operations (dubbed vente-privee USA). Earlier today, the company announced the latest members of its management team, which is headed by vente-privee USA CEO Mike Steib.

The hires that I thought were most notable were those of John Saroff and Jill Szuchmacher, who both previously served in leadership roles to grow the Google TV business.

Saroff has joined vente-privee USA as VP of Digital Factory and Sales Production – he will lead the creative development and production of each sale event including photo shoots, music, trailers and online boutiques for each partner. At Google, Saroff headed TV Ads and Strategic Partnerships.

Jill Szuchmacher will be leading business development for vente-privee USA as Vice President. She previously served as Director of Business Development at Google, most recently heading up commercialization for Google TV, leading engagements with partners such as Sony, Vizio, Netflix, Twitter, and Amazon.

According to their LinkedIn profiles, they left Google around the same time, which speaks volumes about Google TV, which has seen very slow uptake since its introduction earlier this year.

Other hires include Robin Domeniconi, who joins as VP of Marketing after servering as SVP and Chief Brand Officer at Elle Group, and Nicolas Genest, a former Microsoft engineer who is making the jump from vente-privee to vente-privee USA to serve as VP of Technology.

Other new members of the company’s leadership team are Laure de Metz (formerly VP of Licensing for Marc Jacobs International) and Tim Quinn (formerly VP Investments, Integration and Measurement at American Express).

No word about the launch date of vente-privee’s dedicated US site.”

Read original post here.

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With Great Startups It’s All About The Execution

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , on September 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »

by Martin Zwilling, Forbes Contributing Editor

A startup begins with a great idea, but all too often, that’s where it ends. Ideas have to be implemented well to get the desired results. Good implementation requires a plan, and a good plan and good operational decisions come from good people. That’s why investors invest in entrepreneurs, rather than ideas.

People and operational excellence have to converge in every business, large or small. Microsoft found this out last year when their market capitalization, once at $560 billion in the year 2000, had fallen to $219 billion, allowing them to be passed by Apple at $222 billion, who grew from $15.6 billion during the same period. Both had access to the same technology, people, and market.

So what could have happened here? I found a good summary of the relevant keys to business operational excellence in a new book by Faisal Hoque, called “The Power of Convergence.” His focus is on repeatable practices to maximize business opportunities in large companies, but I’m convinced that these apply equally well to startups:

  • Clearly define your value chain. Your value chain consists of customers, partners, vendors, internal systems, and your own team. Make sure you understand this chain, as well as market dynamics, to drive operational innovations and every decision. Apple has been able to innovate at an amazing pace to define and meet new market opportunities.
  • Visualize abnormal or suboptimal performance. Recognizing and understanding deviations enables a startup or any business to take corrective action quickly. This requires executives and a team that understands the parameters, and is focused on customers, quality, and continuous improvement.
  • Facilitate the power of your team. Startups need to empower their people to take action in the absence of orders. That doesn’t mean abdication in setting corporate policies, which provide parameters to ensure that individuals have to ability to act collectively in the company’s best interest. Steve Jobs has a committed team.
  • Communicate effectively with the team and customers. Communication is a challenge in any organization, but it’s a particular challenge when you’re working in a startup, where customers, products, processes, and the team are new. Most founders forget that communication becomes exponentially more difficult as the business grows.
  • Measure value flow and performance. Measuring performance may seem self-evident, but many entrepreneurs mistake this task as a point-in-time or a one-time event. In operationally excellent startups, performance measurement is an ongoing effort throughout the process chain, not just at the outcome.
  • Define response mechanisms. Anticipating and planning for worst-case scenarios, and having a Plan-B, will enable the quick-response and pivots required to put a startup back on track. Metrics are required for ensuring the return to a known good baseline.
  • Maximize technology architecture and standards. Continuous innovation to maintain your competitive advantage does not mean that you can ignore current architectures and standards. These must always be leveraged produce optimal intended product outcomes.

What every business needs is a convergence of business and technology elements to optimize return and competitive positioning. All too often, entrepreneurs posit a new technology or idea, without understanding that a successful business is a never-ending process of adapting and improving all the elements in a business – especially business model, processes, and people, as well as technology.

Apple, with Steve Jobs, has demonstrated a rare convergence of technology, market understanding, business process, and people. Are you focused on all the right execution principles in your startup to do the same?

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Twitter’s active flock reaches 100 million

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, FaceBook, internet, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, Twitter, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from SFGate.

“Twitter use is growing, with more than 100 million monthly active users around the world and 50 million who log on every day, the San Francisco microblogging service said Thursday.

Chief executive officer Dick Costolo said the number of active users increased 82 percent since the beginning of this year, putting the company on pace to add as many active users by the end of 2011 as the combined 26 million that Twitter added from 2006 to 2009.

The increasing audience size is key to the company’s future because Twitter is now convinced advertising is “the horse they are going to ride” to generate revenue, said analyst Debra Aho Williamson, principal social media analyst for the research firm

“These are all positive trends,” Williamson said. “2011 has been a good year for Twitter in terms of getting more usage, not just awareness.”

Costolo revealed the new data during an informal “state of the union” briefing with reporters Thursday. Williamson was also prebriefed by Costolo on Wednesday.

Twitter has previously said it had more than 200 million registered accounts worldwide. But Twitter watchers had long questioned how many were multiple accounts registered by the same person and how many accounts were actually active.

So Twitter is now focusing attention on its active users, not just the overall base. Facebook uses the same strategy, touting its 750 million users who log on at least once a month.

The number of active users “can be a successful measure of the exchange of information that’s going on there,” Williamson said.

Many press releases

Still, Williamson said many of Twitter accounts are used by “corporations pumping out press releases, using it as a distribution service.” And she notes that media companies like CNN and The Chronicle have multiple Twitter accounts to distribute news headlines and story links.

“While it sounds relatively good that half of active users log in every day, I wonder what percentage of those active users are just entities putting stuff out and not people actively engaging,” she said.

According to Twitter, the data shows:

— An average 230 million tweets per day, up 110 percent from January.

— More than 5 billion tweets per month

— A 105 percent increase in the number of users who log on each day.

— More than 400 million monthly unique visitors to Twitter.com, up 70 percent from January.

— 55 percent are mobile users.

Twitter now has more than 50 percent of National Football League players, 75 percent of National Basketball Association players, 82 percent of members of Congress, 85 percent of U.S. senators, 87 percent of Billboard Top 100 musicians, 93 percent of Food Network chefs and all of the Nielsen top 50 TV shows.

But there’s one potentially negative statistic that sticks out – a huge portion of active users, 40 percent, have not tweeted in the past month.

“If you think of it as a social network, then 40 out of every 100 aren’t even being very social,” Williamson said.

Still, the overall numbers should be large enough to entice advertisers.

Maybe it’s not as big as Facebook, but “if you look at it from an advertising perspective, an audience is an audience,” Williamson said. “Twitter is really proving itself in terms of getting people engaged with the advertising.”

Ad revenue projections

Twitter hasn’t been successful generating revenue by licensing access to its extensive stream of tweets. Microsoft on Wednesday renewed a deal to license Twitter’s data “fire hose,” but Google has not.

Williamson said the company is continuing to learn from its Promoted Tweets advertising platform and has other programs in the pipeline, including a self-service advertising system.

Twitter is still a privately held company, but eMarketer has projected the firm will have $150 million in advertising revenue this year and $250 million next year. Williamson said she is examining how the newest data may change those projections.

“Twitter had a good year and they clearly have a lot of things planned throughout the rest of the year and in 2012,” Williamson said. “They’re hoping the growth trends will continue.””

Read more here.

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Hewlett-Packard Tranformation Plans Follow In Footsteps Of IBM

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) is following the lead of rival International Business Machine Corp. (IBM) in possibly shedding its personal-computer business and focusing more on higher-margin operations like analytic software–but the transition is not likely to be easy.
H-P is significantly farther behind in the software market than IBM was when the Armonk, N.Y., company sold its computer business to Lenovo Group Ltd. (LNVGY, 0992.HK) in 2005. And since then, the value of PC assets has declined, meaning the world’s biggest computer maker may not get the cash boost needed to catch up with the software leaders ahead of it.

For IBM, its move last decade has worked out well. While other tech companies have seen volatility from their consumer exposure, IBM has posted consistent results, even during the depths of the recession. The company last month boosted it outlook for the year, helping send shares to an all-time high.

“IBM is the best-positioned of the big tech companies by far,” Gleacher analyst Brian Marshall said. “The majority of revenue comes from high-margin, annuity-type revenue streams such as software and services. … IBM has a phenomenal business model, and H-P is trying to follow in those footsteps.”

H-P is taking a big step Thursday by agreeing to buy U.K. data-analytics firm Autonomy Corp. (AUTNY AU.LN) for more than $10 billion. Analytics software, a fast-growing area, helps companies sift through massive amounts of information to solve business problems or make predictions.

“It’s the beginning of the transformation of H-P today,” Chief Executive Leo Apotheker said.

IBM has focused on analytic software for a while. Among the company’s dozens of acquisitions over the past five years, IBM has spent $14 billion on 24 analytics-related purchases. IBM expects the market for analytics to be over $200 billion by 2015, of which it sees getting about $16 billion.

Transitioning out of one big business and into another takes time and money. Since 2001, IBM has bought more than 127 companies for a combined total of $33 billion. Those earlier acquisitions helped to give IBM a strong software business–second only to Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)–when it sold the PC operations.

As a result, in IBM’s recently reported quarter, the company had software revenue of $6.2 billion, 23% of its total revenue. In comparison, H-P Thursday reported quarterly software revenue of $780 million, 2.5% of its total revenue.

IBM decided to get out of the PC market because the company viewed it as a commoditized industry where companies can only compete on price. Chief Executive Sam Palmisano said last year during an interview with the Wall Street Journal that he wouldn’t be able to give away IBM’s PC business today.

“We got a reasonable valuation for the company, and today I’d have to pay them to take it,” he said. “And the reason being is that the technology shifted, and we wanted to get out before it was obvious to everyone.”

During the same interview, he also criticized H-P, saying he’s not worried about a company that no longer invests in innovation. About 6% of IBM’s 2010 revenue went to research and development, compared to only about 2% at H-P.

H-P has said in recent months that it’s increasing its research spending.

Meanwhile, Mark Dean–one of the creators of the first IBM PC–said in a blog post last week that the PC age is essentially over, going the way of the typewriter and incandescent lightbulb.

“While many in the tech industry questioned IBM’s decision to exit the business at the time, it’s now clear that our company was in the vanguard of the post-PC era,” said Dean, who currently serves as chief technology officer of IBM Middle East and Africa.

Read more here.

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Is the Google deal about Larry Pages’ desire to become the best strategist in the world?

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Economy, Intellectual capital, internet, Investments, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

By Tony Fish, AMF Ventures and member of Gerbsman Partners Board Of Intellectual Partners.

The changing face of mobile

Image001

Surprised at the latest Google deal to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5Bn, you should not be; Eric Schmidt was very clear back at MWC in FEB 2007 “Mobile Mobile Mobile” and since then Google has focussed both time and effort to deliver andriod (which was itself acquired).  When Schmidt stepped down in saying “ adult supervision no longer required” this left open the matured Larry Page to step up from being great at maths and a world leading entrepreneur, to take on the mantel of “world leading strategist and deal doer.”

This deal will be the discussion point for the next 3 months and already there are a lot of views circulating about what it means but there is no doubt that depending on your stance you can argue for change. However at Mobile 2 on 1st Sept in SFO – we get the first bite, why not join in. 

The Deal

Google purchased Motorola’s mobile business for $12.5 billion. In doing so, Google brought patents, hardware design, manufacturing and a seat at the patent table. However the context is… Oracle suing, Apple winning, eco-system struggling, Samsung annoyed and Microsoft attacking

Worthy of Note

Google has bought in cash and not shares.  This commitment will reduce their cash balance to $22bn from the mid thirties, but it is cash.  Given the issues that cash purchases delivered to telecoms in 2000/2001 this is an important fact as many ran into immediate issues and sold off key assets.  However, I expect the reason that this is cash is that Google are not expecting to hold the operational assets for long.  An equity purchase could have caused them problems from shareholders when they flip it assuming it completes in Q1 2012

Why now?

Porter 5 forces model is helpful here as it highlights the dynamic nature of the mobile market that Google faces.  Their power is low, their service fragmented and  they are being attacked.

Implications

This deal will be the discussion point for the next 3 months and already there are a lot of views circulating about what it means but there is no doubt that depending on your stance you can argue for change. However at Mobile 2 on 1st Sept in SFO – we get the first bite, why not join in.

Starting from the view of the world formed by ….

  • Operators – Deal does not change anything as we are the controllers of mobile – we keep all manufacturers below 30% market share and make sure it is a competitive supply market.  However, we are still worried about becoming bit pipe….
  • Oracle/ Sun/ Java – Defence needed as android has been beset with legal challenges from all sides, including a multibillion dollar lawsuit filed by Oracle, but Motorola patents are about wireless tech and unlikely to help.
  • Apple – By purchasing a manufacturer, Google has admitted it needs more than just a free operating system and loads of partners to compete with Apple: they need to duplicate Apple’s successes by totally controlling both the hardware and software of their devices.
  • OEM ‘s –  “Google has gone from partner to competitor.”
  • Media/ Content owners – According to Infonetics, Motorola Mobility was the leader in set-top box revenues last year, and was also tops in hybrid IP/QAM set-top boxes — that is, the boxes used by operators like Verizon that combine broadcast TV and over-the-top applications. By leveraging Motorola’s position with carriers, Google can better solidify its bid to expand Google TV and Android into the living room.”
  • Developers – At least there is one less system to deal with.

Scenarios and outcomes

  • The production shop – In this scenario Google keeps Motorola as is and starts to manufacture it owns handsets.  In reality this could provide short term stability to the fragmented andriod market place and show case devices and move into other screen based markets, but in the long run looks like a new Apple and being open is probably not a true option. Probability in long run 10% as this would not elevate Page to world class strategist who is just following Jobs view of the world.
  • The negotiator tactic –This is the company official line that the acquisition brings 17,000 patents (but are they relevant) to Google and enables them to robustly defend their mobile position and also expand.  It is a $12.5bn investment to get a seat at the table.  Strategically there is a lot of truth in this as mobile will dominate long term strategy and value. Probability in long run 25% as patents only last for a period….

Power to disrupt

Imagine Google takes the patents, yes they are useful to defend/ negotiate but also to empower others if free and open. This would reduce the power of others in the market and change the dynamics

Imagine Google keeps the patents and sells on production to Samsung to create a global partner across all screens

Imagine Google Wallet becomes the model – forget small transaction fees – lets go for user data in every model

Probability in long run 65% and Larry Page is now the best strategist in the world and did it without adult supervision.

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