Vinod Khosla Says Silicon Valley VCs Tried to Save Newspaper Industry In 1996

By Tom Foremski - July 1, 2009

At the recent SDForum 2009 Visionary Awards, Vinod Khosla, one of Silicon Valley's top VCs, gave an inspiring and very humble speech.

How To Succeed In Silicon Valley By Bumbling And Failing...

Afterwards, I went over to congratulate him on his award and also say how much I enjoyed his speech. Rebecca Buckman, one of Forbe's top journalists, was also there. He then started to tell us a very interesting story, about how Silicon Valley VCs could have saved the newspaper industry--back in 1996.

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July 1, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Media Watch | Subscribe to SVW

Visonary 2009: Jim Clark Was Always Looking For An Exit Strategy . . .

By Tom Foremski - July 1, 2009

Jim Clark, co-founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape was one of four winners of the SDForum 2009 Visionary Awards. He spoke about his earlier life and how he was thrown out of school, then trying to get out of Texas, then trying to get out of the navy. It seems his instincts for an exit strategy have served him well as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur...

He also spoke about the importance of Stanford university and its encouragement of entrepreneurs. Other universities look down upon business people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfUEf8X7JIE
Please also see the other winners:

Judy Estrin: Silicon Valley Unwilling To Fix Structural Problems Around Innovation, Blame Others

Kay Koplovitz: We Need More Women Entrepreneurs

Vinod Khosla: How To Succeed In Silicon Valley By Bumbling And Failing...

July 1, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Silicon Valley | Subscribe to SVW

Green Tech Investment Rebounds In Latest Quarter - Smaller Deals

By Tom Foremski - June 30, 2009

Greentech Media reports:

- Second quarter VC investments jumped to $1.2 billion in 85 deals compared with first quarter $836 million in 59 deals.

- Solar power was once again the leading investment segment at more than $330 million.

- One of the drivers for steady second quarter venture investment was the promise of stimulus monies offering startup investors a non-dilutive funding source.

- Early-stage and late-stage investments dominated, while mid-stage funding was harder to come by, and the average round sizes were slightly smaller.

- No giant $100 million+ solar or biofuel rounds as in 2008.

- Second quarter was more balanced investments across sectors:

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June 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: | Subscribe to SVW

Jajah Co-Founder Leads Launch Of Talenthouse - A Social Network For Artists

By Tom Foremski - June 30, 2009

Talenthouse launched today, lead by Roman Scharf, the co-founder of Jajah, a succesful free telephony service.

Talenthouse aims to be the first online community for artists worldwide. It allows them to exhibit their work and also to connect with each other to collaborate on projects.

"With Talenthouse we eliminate the age-old artistic struggle for recognition and instead focus on creative excellence,” said Roman Scharf, CEO of Talenthouse. “We are filling a tremendous void felt by the artistic community."

The site has won support from international artists:

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June 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Startups | Subscribe to SVW

Kay Koplovitz: We Need More Women Entrepreneurs

By Tom Foremski - June 30, 2009

Kay Koplovitz calls for more women entrepreneurs during her acceptance speech at the SDForum visionary awards.

She said that women haven't had the access to capital and she urged Silicon Valley to "open your hearts" to more women entrepreneurs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGRyvhsP7Uk

Her Bio:

Kay Koplovitz is currently a principal of Koplovitz & Co. LLC., a media investment firm and is the founder of USA Network, the first basic cable network delivered via satellite nationwide. Koplovitz was the first woman to head a television network when she founded USANetworks under the banner of Madison Square Garden Sports in 1977. Ms. Koplovitz co-created Springboard Enterprises, a national organization that fosters venture capital investments in women-led high growth companies. Since its inception, Springboard has presented over 380 companies that have raised $4.4 billion in new capital. She also co-founded Boldcap Ventures, a venture capital fund backed exclusively by leading women executives. Ms. Koplovitz is Chairman of the Board of Liz Claiborne, Inc. and a board member of CA.

Please see:

Judy Estrin on the Gender Gap in Silicon Valley

June 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Silicon Valley | Subscribe to SVW

Judy Estrin: Silicon Valley Unwilling To Fix Structural Problems Around Innovation, Blame Others

By Tom Foremski - June 30, 2009

Judy Estrin, one of Silicon Valley's top entrepreneurs, continues to sound warnings that innovation is in danger because of fundamental structural problems.

Ms Estrin again voiced her concerns during her speech at the SDForum Visionary Awards 2009. She was one of four recepients of the annual awards.

She said that Silicon Valley has been living off the innovative work that has been created over the past 30 years but that there needs to be new work done to support future startups.

"What I've been struck by, and concerned by, is that although everybody seems to understand that we have significant structural problems, few are willing to acknowledge their role in the solution. Each group tends to point to someone else that needs to change. The VCs need to take more risk, Wall Street needs to be less short-term focused, government is too involved, government is not involved enough... This is natural because change is hard. But isn't innovation and change what this valley is all about?"

She said that there is a need for "sustainable innovation" so that our future generations, our children, can experience a quality of life at least as good as we have had.

Here is her speech:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmNOEZM6kpk
Please see: SDForum Garden Party Notes: Vinod Khosla is the Antichrist; Jim Clark has a size problem; Silicon Valley Trophies - Hot women and large yachts...

Thought Leader Interview: Judy Estrin on the Innovation Gap in Silicon Valley and Beyond . . .

We Have a Serious Innovation Deficit Says Silicon Valley Thought Leader Judy Estrin

June 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Future Watch | Subscribe to SVW

Scobleizer Traffic Plunge - The Real-Time Web Can Be Bad For Your Blog

By Tom Foremski - June 29, 2009

Robert Scoble has been a tireless evangelist for the real-time web and he has been spending much of his time on Twitter and Friendfeed, and less and less time on his blog Scobleizer. [Please see:  Is Twitter (and Friendfeed) Killing Blogging? Scobleizer Hasn't Posted In 12 Days!!!]

Now he has sworn off FriendFeed and Twitter, saying that those services are "hurting long-time knowledge." This about turn comes on the heels of Mr Scoble berating Kara Swisher at All Things D for not taking part in the real-time web.

It’s interesting that neither Kara nor Walt show up very often on friendfeed, which is the best example of the 2010 Web right now. Kara Swisher has made a total of five comments there. Walt is even worse, doesn’t bring any items in there, and only has six comments. How can you know what the 2010 Web is, if you don’t use it and don’t participate in it?

However, by largely avoiding the real-time web Ms Swisher and Mr Mossberg have chosen to protect their largest asset -- their web site traffic.

By neglecting, Scobleizer, a web site run by Mr Scoble's employer, Rackspace, traffic to the site has plunged.

In just two months, from March to May 2009, Compete.com reports that traffic to Scobleizer fell from 181,500 unique visitors to 91,792. That's a nearly 50% drop in unique visitors!!! If the traffic for June can be projected, it looks headed for a 75% plunge.

I can imagine that Rackspace isn't too pleased to have such a massive drop in audience for its advertising and outages reports.

I'm sure that Robert can bring back the traffic but it's clear that its going to be difficult for him to also be active in all the other places, Building 43, Google Reader, email, Twitter, FriendFeed, FaceBook. And there's a lesson here for others too. You can't do it all.

June 29, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Media Watch | Subscribe to SVW

Socialbrite: Helping Non-Profits Master Social Tools For Social Change

By Tom Foremski - June 29, 2009

Eight top experts have joined together to launch Socialbrite - an online resource for non-profits searching for consultants and media tools to help them take their message to new audiences.

“We’re here to help nonprofits master the social Web to bring about meaningful social change,” said J.D. Lasica, a consultant and author of four books about emerging technologies. “There’s nothing else like this on the Web for nonprofits, social change organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and educators. Socialbrite's mission is to shine a light on the best practices, social tools and strategies that will benefit each of these important constituencies.”

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June 29, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: A Top Story | Subscribe to SVW

The Pressure Is On When Every Company Is Now A Media Company...

By Tom Foremski - June 29, 2009

I've been writing on this topic of "every company is now a media company" ever since I visited Dan Scheinman, head of M&A at Cisco Systems in March, 2005.

He told me that the @Cisco news site is run by journalists, and gets more traffic than the top computer trade newspapers. At the time Cisco was publishing more than 200 RSS streams. The penny quickly dropped and it was another of many "aha!" moments I have had since leaving the Financial Times five years ago.

These days more people understand the term and what it means to companies. However, not everyone understands what it takes to be a media company. If you are going to do it well It's a hell of a commitment.

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June 29, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Media Watch | Subscribe to SVW

Vinod Khosla: How To Succeed In Silicon Valley By Bumbling And Failing...

By Tom Foremski - June 28, 2009

Vinod Khosla is one of Silicon Valley's most successful VCs. I was at the recent SDForum Visionary Awards where Mr Khosla was one of four winners of the 2009 awards.

His acceptance speech was short and very good. Excellent advice for entrepreneurs.

Also, he talks about failure, which I have long advocated is Silicon Valley's strength.

A couple of years ago I met with a delegation of Russian diplomats, VCs, and government officials. They were visiting Silicon Valley and wanted to meet with me as part of their tour. They were looking for ways to create several silicon valley-like regions in Russia.

During our meeting, I told them I would tell them the secret of Silicon Valley. I paused. They all leaned in a little closer...

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June 28, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: VC Watch | Subscribe to SVW

Saturday Post: If You Are In The Path Of A Disruptive Technology You Are Toast - Goodbye Newspaper Companies

By Tom Foremski - June 27, 2009

Last week my Saturday Post was about how Internet based technologies have been used to create applications and services that devalue existing business models. It's a hugely disruptive process. [The Internet Devalues Everything It Touches, Anything That Can Be Digitized]

This trend is occurring because it can occur -- because if you have the ability to significantly improve a service at a dramatically lower cost, then there will be startups that will attempt to disrupt the business models of existing companies.

One of the best examples of how the Internet can devalue business models is Craigslist and its effect on the classified ads business.

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June 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Saturday Post | Subscribe to SVW

SDForum Garden Party Notes: Vinod Khosla is the Antichrist; Jim Clark has a size problem; Silicon Valley Trophies - Hot women and large yachts...

By Tom Foremski - June 26, 2009

The SDForum Visionary Awards are my favorite event of the year because there are tons of great stories and contacts to make. It was good to see BusinessWeek's bureau chief Rob Hof, and also Rebecca Buckman from Forbes, but apart from them, there was very little media there -- which was great for me because it gives me more chance to get exclusive stories, which I did. I'll be publishing more stories and video over the next few days.

Here is a taste of what's to come and also some notes from the evening:

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June 26, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Silicon Valley | Subscribe to SVW

Chips News Roundup: Memory Is A Mess; Chip Startups Are Squeezed

By Tom Foremski - June 26, 2009

[Matt Grimshaw offers a weekly roundup of news affecting the largest US tech industry.]

By Matt Grimshaw, Editorial Director, Future-Fab International

Change seems to be the only constant left in this age of double caffeinated, taurine infused hyper-communication. Icons seem to be a thing of a bygone era, now the world is populated by sharks; to stop swimming is to die. The Chip industry in particular is facing several key infliction points in parallel.

We’re entering an age of exponential change, in everything we know and take for granted, and the chip industry is no different. In fact it’s the chip business that is the catalyst for most of the changes; well what do you think runs your gadgets, laptops, TV’s and the like?

Well you haven’t seen anything yet – if some of the Star Trek Tech that I see coming from Universities is anything to go by prepared to not only accept change, but have that change happen to your physical being – for an idea of that which I speak take a look at this presentation by Juan Enriquez speaking at TED.

The News This Week…

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June 26, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: News Watch | Subscribe to SVW

Traveling Geeks Trip Next Week ... Join Us In London!

By Tom Foremski - June 25, 2009

I'm looking forward to the Traveling Geeks trip to London. I'm leaving next week and we will spend a few days in London and then Cambridge, meeting with local startups and larger tech companies.

I'll be particularly interested in how the startup scene differs in the UK compared to here. I keep coming across companies that are moving here, or at least having co-HQs here. Over the next few months I'll be profiling these Silicon Valley debutantes in a special section. So please let me know if you, or a company you know has recently moved to the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area. And also if you'd like to publish a guest post on why you moved here. More on this later...

In the meantime, here is our agenda for the London trip, come join us at one of te opne events.

Also on the trip is:

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June 25, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: TG2009 | Subscribe to SVW

AMD: Building Blocks For Building Clouds

By Tom Foremski - June 25, 2009

I met with Margaret Lewis, she is director of commercial solutions and software at Advanced Micro Devices. She spends a lot of time talking with data center managers about their needs and the transition to cloud computing.

Here are some notes from our conversation:

- AMD is creating microprocessors with many cores because clock-speed alone cannot increase the performance of IT systems. With several cores on a processor, servers can be virtualized and that means applications can be provisioned dynamically, which results in better utilization of IT resources.

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June 25, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Enterprise IT | Subscribe to SVW

Bitten and Smitten: Why Journalism Is Like Falling For The Wrong Person

By Tom Foremski - June 24, 2009

I was at an event this evening and I met a journalist who was new to the profession. She had been in IT and now was working for a San Francisco newspaper. She asked if I had any words of advice for a new journalist.

I said welcome. But be careful it doesn't get under your skin because if it does, it will become a problem. It'll be very difficult to leave.

In many ways,  being bitten by journalism is similar to being smitten. It's similar to falling for the wrong person.

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June 24, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Culture Watch | Subscribe to SVW

Human Or Machine - Or How To Get The News Before Techmeme

By Tom Foremski - June 24, 2009

I'm a big fan of Gabe Rivera's Techmeme. Over the past year or so, Techmeme has managed to improve its results by using humans, in addition to its much vaunted algorithm -based approach.

Lately, Techmeme seems to be relying even more on humans by paying attention to Twitter and to Twitter's prolific news tipsters. The most successful of these is Atul Arora.

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June 24, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Media Watch | Subscribe to SVW

Year One: The Lessons Of The Intel Insider Media Advisory Program

By Tom Foremski - June 24, 2009

[Today marks the first anniversary of the Intel Insider program, which brought together leaders in new/social media. I am a founding member of Intel Insiders. Ken Kaplan, is one of the key proponents of the Intel Insider program. Intel is a former sponsor of SVW.]

By Ken Kaplan - Intel

Two steps forward and a half step back to see if we’re going in the right direction and bringing forward things that can help us leap into tomorrow. That’s how we’re celebrating the June 24 anniversary of our Intel Insiders social media adviser program.

Last year, my Global Communications teammates agreed that we’d benefit from fresh advice from people who are doing great things in the quickly advancing area of social media. We wanted to get more involved with the inspiration, talent and know-how we saw driving people to communicate and share experiences and knowledge online.

So we pulled together some long time acquaintances, invited a few new friends we admired and created the Intel Insiders.

Our goals remained steadfast, but 12 months of relationship building, meetups and feedback gathering has changed the way we think, act and plan our communications and events. Across my Global Communications team, each public relations manager has moved more time, resources and ambition toward communicating online…in addition to their work with traditional print, TV and radio.

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June 24, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: | Subscribe to SVW

UberCEO Survey: CEOs Of Fortune 100 Snub Social Media - None Blog, Only 2 Twitter

By Tom Foremski - June 24, 2009

A survey of CEOs of Fortune 100 companies by UberCEO, found that their involvement in social media is almost none existent. No CEOs blog and only two have a Twitter account.

"I didn't expect CEOs to be heavily involved in social media but I was very surprised to see how few there were," said Sharon Barclay, founder of Blue Trumpet Group, which publishes UberCEO.com. It's a San Francisco based firm that helps manage the online reputations for senior executives.

Here are some of her findings:

- Only two CEOs have Twitter accounts.
- 13 CEOs have LinkedIn profiles, and of those only three have more than 10 connections.
- 81% of CEOs don’t have a personal Facebook page.
-Three quarters of the CEOs have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those have limited or outdated information.
- Not one Fortune 100 CEO has a blog.
- Twitter was the least used service by Fortune 100 CEOs, despite being one of the fastest growing social media networks.
- Wikipedia had the highest level of engagement among the Fortune 100 CEOs, yet 28% of those entries had incorrect titles, missing information or lacked sources.
- LinkedIn, a site mainly used for professional networking, only attracted 13 Fortune 100 CEOs, five of which had just one connection.
- Three CEOs stood out from the pack on LinkedIn, each having more than 80 connections. However, they are all from technology companies – Michael Dell (Dell), Gregory Spierkel (Ingram Micro) and John Chambers (Cisco).

Ms Barclays' interest in the subject was piqued recently when she was researching a senior executive at one of the largest US technology companies. Google results linked his name to a sexual offender. She was surprised that he hadn't taken steps to distance himself from his online namesake.

"A company's brand value is closely tied to its CEO and senior executives. Companies need to pay attention to managing their online reputations. Also, by snubbing social media, CEOs can appear to customers as being disengaged, disinterested, and disconnected. That's not a good message."

Ms Barclay says she will repeat her survey next year.

Here is a more data from the survey:

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June 24, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: A Top Story | Subscribe to SVW

Silicon Valley Stories: How Scott McNealy Made Room At The Top For Carol Bartz ( . . . Now At Yahoo)

By Tom Foremski - June 23, 2009

[SDForum visionary awards are later this week. Here is a series SVW is plublishing this week on Silicon Valley stories from previous SDForum awards events.]

From 2005:

Scott McNealy, Sun's CEO, introduced Carol Bartz, CEO of Autodesk.

Mr McNealy was in classic form, dressed in his signature jeans, white shirt ,and navy blue blazer, and he shared a couple of anecdotes about Ms. Bartz, who used to work at Sun.

He recalls that Ms Bartz stomped into his office and resigned because of a generous job offer from a rival firm. Mr McNealy acted swiftly: He walked down the corridor and into the office of his VP of Marketing and said "You're fired."

He walked back over to Ms Bartz and said "You can't resign, you're VP of Marketing." What happened to Lloyd? Ms Bartz asked.

"Lloyd is no longer with us," deadpanned Mr McNealy. Lots of laughter.

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June 23, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Silicon Valley | Subscribe to SVW