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Posts Tagged ‘VC’

Java Appstore in the works

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Investments, Java, Market research, mobile 2.0, Sun Microsystems, Wireless, Wireless 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Building on the trend of Apple, Nokia and others – Sun makes the move into a independent Appstore deployment. As Apple has shown that it is a viable business model, it only makes sense – end-users like to shop around, and are willing to pay for smaller apps. As Google Android starting to make its way into mobile phones, and Nokia “opened” up Symbian – the end-user community developer trend will create a business eco-system worth spending some research on. The project is codenamed Vector but will likely be called “Java Store” after its official launch.

Here is some quotes from Jonathan Schwartz by way of Washington Post.

“Candidate applications will be submitted via a simple web site, evaluated by Sun for safety and content, then presented under free or fee terms to the broad Java audience via our update mechanism. Over time, developers will bid for position on our storefront, and the relationships won’t be exclusive (as they have been for search). As with other app stores, Sun will charge for distribution – but unlike other app stores, whose audiences are tiny, measured in the millions or tens of millions, ours will have what we estimate to be approximately a billion users. That’s clearly a lot of traffic, and will position the Java App Store as having just about the world’s largest audience.”

“The store will be for all Java devices. Initially, the PC desktop will get the most attention from developers and customers, but there’s plenty of Java-enabled phones and developers will be pleased to have another distribution channel, especially one with the power of Sun behind it.”

Read the full article here. Read Jonathan Schwartz blog entry here.

Other bloggers covering this topic include: OStatic, Mobile Marketing Watch, Mobile Blogs, IndicThreads.

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IT Forecast: “The Great Restructuring” On Horizon

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Market research, tagged , , , , on May 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is some good news posted at WSJ Venture dispatch. Please visit them for the whole article by clicking here.

“When chief information officers from across the country gathered Wednesday in Cambridge, Mass., for the sixth annual Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan CIO Symposium, talk was of virtualization and cloud computing, and the forecast was for a reconstruction of business IT infrastructure made more urgent by the economy’s troubles.

One panelist, MIT Professor Erik Brynjolfsson, even went so far as to say this period could become known in information technology lore as “the great restructuring.” He said it would have three elements, experimentation, measurement and building on scale.

Author James Champy, chairman of consulting at Perot Systems Corp., said many industries have overbuilt IT capacity and face a three-to-five-year challenge to right-size. He advised CIOs to reduce the cost basis of the enterprise to remove top line uncertainty across the business and to generate cash to invest in innovation.”

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Restructuring provides a new start

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is a interesting article posted at WSJ Venture Dispatch.

“Wallenstein, one of the first four employees and former vice president of sales at Recordant, a provider of sales analytics technology, said he purchased the company’s patents, software and trademarks at a bankruptcy auction last month for $1,000.”

The article continues…

“Recordant took in $12 million in venture capital before filing for bankruptcy in February. It raised $3 million in Series A financing from Kodiak Venture Partners in 2005 and 2006, followed by a $9 million Series B round led by FirstMark Capital, which was then called Pequot Ventures. Aurora Funds also participated in the later round.

Recordant sold a device, about the size of a small iPod, that could be worn by sales and customer service representatives to record their interactions with customers. The company also sold software to perform analytics to help its customers identify key words associated with a sale.

Founded in 2003, with its first products on the market in 2006, Recordant focused on retail, automotive, banking and hospitality industries. It fell victim to longer-than-expected sales cycles that became too much to bear when the economic crisis hit, and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in February.”

With no plans to raise money the company stands a good chance to run on a bootstrap.

“After extensive use of Recordant’s products by the U.S. National Guard, the U.S. Army had a contract to put the technology to use in their recruiting centers, but that fell through when the banking crisis hit, May said. It was also set to follow up a pilot program with an undisclosed insurance company to put the technology in 10,000 of its offices, he said. That company later declared a $1 billion loss, putting the project on hold indefinitely, he said.

May still remains confident about the potential of the business. “Somebody is going to do this someday, because there is a need for it,” he said. “We saw and heard things that were absolutely amazing in good ways and bad.”

Read the full article here.

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VC fundraising dropped 21 percent in 2008

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 3, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Fundraising by U.S. venture capital firms declined 21.4 percent in 2008, a new report has found, driven down by a sharp decline in the fourth quarter as the global financial crisis throttled the industry that bankrolls much of Silicon Valley’s innovation.

The report, issued Monday by the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters, found that $27.9 billion was raised in 211 funds in 2008, compared with $35.5 billion in 247 funds in 2007. Fundraising in the fourth quarter totaled $3.37 billion, down more than $5 billion from the previous quarter and nearly $8.3 billion less than the amount raised in the fourth quarter of 2007.

The news was by no means unexpected. VCs and their limited partner investors — pension funds, university endowments and other large financial institutions — have all embraced a more conservative strategy in the uncertain economy. Industry analysts expect the pace of fundraising and deal-making to remain relatively slow through at least the first half of 2009.

Read the full article here

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A Web Start-Up Counting on Ad Sales? Good Luck

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2008| Leave a Comment »

During the dot-com bust, as the online advertising market dried up and the Web companies that had been buying most of the ad space went bankrupt, the people who start and fund companies in Silicon Valley began questioning whether Web sites could survive on advertising alone.

That moment of doubt didn’t last. The ad market revived and free Web services blossomed. But now, as advertising shrinks once again, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are desperately seeking new sources of revenue.

Does this mean the advertising model is no longer a viable one for new Web start-ups?

Advertising requires an audience, and that takes a few years to build. Web start-ups struggle with the question of whether to sacrifice revenue for several years, build a huge audience and then sell them ads, as YouTube did, or find an alternative revenue stream that will bring in money from Day One.

The venture capitalists that back those start-ups have different philosophies, but as a group they have grown much more cautious about backing companies that have no immediate way to bring in some revenue.

Roger Lee, a general partner at Battery Ventures, said he looks for Web companies with multiple revenue streams. Even if some of a site’s services are free, most of the start-ups in his portfolio also have subscription products, premium services or an e-commerce element.

Read the full article here

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