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June 30, 2005

We're off to the races...the first RSS focused VC fund is announced--$100m

...let freedom reign

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

At the Races.jpg Jim Moore and John Palfrey have launched RSS Investors with $100m of capital. It is the first VC fund with a focus on Really Simple Syndication, (RSS), the syndication technology at the heart of media technologies such as blogging and corporate news communication.

Jim Moore, RSS Investors partner says:

RSS is emerging as the next great tool in the spread of information and ultimately freedom: freedom of expression, freedom of communication and freedom of information.

This reminds me of years ago when Kleiner Perkins launched a $100m Java fund in 1996. It is milestone for RSS and its use.

RSS is very much a core technology for this next phase of the internet. It is a unique animal: neither email or web page, but with characteristics of both. It is opt-in, in that users or applications subscribe to RSS feeds which are pushed out — it is, in fact, a pushme-pullme technology (a nod to Dr Dolittle ;-)

More on RSS Investors:
The fund creators include: Richard Fishman, Steve Smith and Tom Crowley (representing Ritchie Capital Management)

It will focus on:

Supporting and nurturing the technologies and leaders who are championing RSS-related technologies, including news aggregation, blogs and new classes of search engines. In addition to examining technologies that utilize RSS for news aggregation, RSS Investors will strongly pursue RSS applications that aggregate data, particularly in the financial and medical industries.

Jim Moore, RSS Investors partner adds:

The Internet is the driving force behind the invention of new forms of communication enabling instantaneous personal dialogue across the globe. Like a mind constituted of millions of inter-networked neurons, the participants in this exchange of information are capable of astonishingly rapid and sometimes subtle community consciousness and action. The evolution of these communities has already had a profound effect on the media, professions and enterprises.

The mission:

For the first time in history, people who share points of view can communicate around the world in real-time to exchange and build ideas. Recognizing the economic opportunities growing from the next generation of Internet tools, the mission of RSS Investors is to support the growth of these borderless communities built on collective thoughts and goals.

The creators of the fund (in their own words):

Jim Moore is a noted technology expert who was the first to identify the significance of business ecosystems in the development of new markets, summarized in a variety of writings including “Predator and Prey: A new ecology of competition” (Harvard Business Review).

John Palfrey is an authority on the use of the Internet to champion global freedom of expression. He directs the leading Internet and society think-tank and teaches Internet law.

Steve Smith is currently responsible for the global venture and private equity business at Ritchie Capital Management, L.L.C., the lead investor in the fund. Both Smith and Tom Crowley, also at Ritchie Capital, have extensive experience in GE’s process disciplines from running GE Equity’s Internet and Telecommunications portfolio.

Richard Fishman is a successful venture capitalist most recently heading technology investing for MacAndrews & Forbes Group, Inc.

June 29, 2005

Forbes Radio wants to interview me and probably you too...bring your checkbook

I was thrilled to see an email from a producer of the "Forbes Radio" channel on American Airlines inviting me to be interviewed for the program. There was a description about the program spotlighting the world's most innovative organizations and forward-thinking leaders, and a long list of top companies that had been "distinguished guests" on the show.

The Forbes Radio channel claims a captive audience of as many as 4.2 million travelers. And the three-minute interview would be put together by a crack team of professionals capturing the exact message I want to convey. Excellent. But, I can't afford the half-price offer of $4,995.

[Er, shouldn't it be the other way around if money is to be exchanged?! Does editorial integrity take flight when you are 8 miles high?]

A reader writes... The problems of forced blogs; Anonymous comment on OutCast; The bandwidth issue

Dear Readers, the comments section of this blog is temporarily out of service . In the meantime, I'm manually posting some of the comments that readers have sent. Please feel free to do the same. Tom @ SiliconValleyWatcher.com, (omitting spaces) will reach me. Thank you. Comments might be edited for length and interest ;-)

[I met Wade recently, we were both on a panel at a The News Market event for Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Wayne was responding to this recent post.]

Tom, nice post. I enjoyed being on the panel with you. You're absolutely right that a "forced" blog is painful to read. One way organizations can avoid this is to give trusted writers the freedom to blog about whatever they want, whenever they want, without a lot of over-the-shoulder monitoring. At Technology Review, I've had the good fortune, under editor in chief Jason Pontin, of being able to blog as inspiration strikes. In fact I have two work blogs -- one on the TR site(http://wade.trblogs.com), and a "satellite" blog off the site that relates specifically to my August cover story about social computing (http://www.continuousblog.net). I try to emphasize quality over quantity, adding a substantive post perhaps once a week on each blog.

Thanks for your comment Wade. I agree with your point about emphasizing quality over quantity. There is way too much quantity in the world! Less quantity is a good thing.

It's a wonderful paradox, that in the online world where there is tons of space—brevity is encouraged by the medium. Yet in the print world, where there is limited space, journalists are often asked to stretch stories to beyond their useful value just to fill the space between ads.

A disgruntled reader comments on the acquisition of OutCast Communications by Next Fifteen, name withheld...

Many people have been talking about how small the deal was and what bad judgement that Caryn and Margit used in the deal. OutCast is notorious for hiring senior level management, who walk out after several months when learning that the two women can't relinquish control of any piece of their business. There is a growing number of old disgruntled workers from OutCast who would like to see the company go down.

Lynne Jolitz writes:

Hi Tom,
Posting the following regarding your bandwidth issues and rackspace:
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/06/running_out_of.php

"This is why you negotiate with a managed service provider for overage bandwidth. A good ISP should be calling you about your burst, not you calling them after you've been knocked offline as punishment for the sin of being successful.

I wrote about this in one of my essays on datacenter management and monitoring, but alas, I've been told that no one needs to know this stuff anymore, because everything works perfectly, right? :-)"

Lynne, you make a good point. We do tend to take a lot of the infrastructure stuff for granted these days, which I think is a testament to how bullet-proof the infrastructure services tend to be--mostly :-)

I don't mind being my own admin for a while, I like the work, it's just that I have trouble finding the time to do that and all the other things that I need to do. Writing is a top priority for me, and I will stay away from my inbox until I get some posts done, because that is often a two to three hour process wading through the emails.

AMD lawsuit against Intel shows how marketing in the PC world works

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

The lawsuit filed this week by Advanced Micro Devices against Intel, claiming illegal anti-competitive business practices, is interesting because it reveals the millions of dollars paid to PC makers and retailers by chip suppliers. The money is for shelf space in stores, co-marketing campaigns, and rebates on chips.

AMD claims that Intel uses such payments to disuade PC makers and retailers from buying and using AMD microprocessors.

The complaint alleges many specific cases in which leading PC makers and PC retailers received millions of dollars from Intel in rebates as long as they did not make or sell PCs with AMD chips.

In some cases, companies that announced plans to introduce AMD-based PCs are alleged to have been enticed by Intel's gold to drop, or not promote, the AMD-based computers.

From the complaint paragraph 49:

Intel also purchased HP's exclusivity for its most popular notebook line. HP captured 15% of the US retail market last Christmas with an Intel-powered 14 1" display notebook (the "DV 1000") with a popular power saving feature called Quick Play. When AMD sought to convince HP to carry a similar AMD-powered notebook, HP declined. It explained that Intel has paid between $3 and $4m to lock up this product line for at least one year.

The other way to look at this is that PC makers and retailers could be using the "threat" of AMD as a way to get higher rebates and more marketing dollars out of Intel...

I'm planning to announce a business line of AMD Opteron based PCs--if Intel is listening :-)

Here is the complaint.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/DownloadableAssets/AMD-Intel_Full_Complaint.pdf

Here is: An Open Letter from Hector Ruiz, AMD Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer.

June 28, 2005

Comments is broken...

My apologies but our comments section is not working and I'm trying to fix things. I speak a little bit of Geek so I might be able to put things right very soon.

Our media architect Nick Aster is out in Alaska, up in the Arctic circle, bringing blogging to the most extreme boundaries of human civilization. Not even the Mormons have made it to the remote Eskimo village where Nick is staying.

Actually, Nick is in this remote region of Alaska with a small group of business eco activists hoping to argue for the economics of not drilling for oil. And a documentary film crew, of course, is gawking their travails.

In the meantime, I have to pull long days at the server farm, on top of my many other daily duties. Such is the unglamorous life of a (sometimes) standalone journalist.

Zoto photo project aims to record more than 4.54m US sites

. . . Route 66 at hyper speed

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

If you have ever wanted an excuse to travel the US and visit places you never knew existed, Zoto has the mission for you: upload a photograph of each spot where a whole-numbered minute of latitude intersects with a whole-numbered minute of longitude.

That's 4.554 million "minute confluence points." So make sure your digital camera has plenty of batteries.

Zoto is an online sharing site similar to Flickr with some interesting twists on Flickr-like features such as tagging.

Flickr developed into a community platform almost by accident, and continues to produce "accidental" communities of users that are drawn together for unpredictable reasons.

Zoto, in contrast, has been designed from the start to be a community platform. It will be interesting to see if aberrant behavior by groups, the "madness of crowds," will show itself in abundance on Zoto.

Encouraging the unpredictable

That is the best test of a community platform such as Flickr, Del.iscio.us or MySpace.com — that there are thriving communities of users doing different and unexpected things. I like to tag this as a "flickriscious" quality and it is the holy grail of community platforms.

To encourage online communities, Zoto has chosen to sponsor the minute confluence photography project, also known as GeoProject USA and inspired by the successful Degree Confluence Project.

"Google is using trucks equipped with lasers and photo gear to create 3D maps of cities such as San Francisco, [see SVW scoop] so we wanted to do something different," said Dakota Sullivan, Chief Operating Officer at Zoto.

He estimates it will take volunteers two to three years to collect photos of nearly all the 4.554m points — each with four views — which are just one mile apart.

"Then you'll be able to zoom across a virtual USA consisting of a montage of photos in any direction, at hyperspeed. It'll be stunning. And people will come up with applications and uses for something like that," Mr Sullivan said.

Zoto lets digital photographers store tens of thousands of photos on its servers, and publish them to blogs, for family members or the public. It was founded in 2004 with several executives from LookSmart, the Australian search company.

The GeoSmart project should help it attract an interesting crowd of users. All you need to take part is a standard global positioning device, a compass and a digital camera.

M&A deals in hot photo sector

Photo sites and photo sharing are active business sectors because of acquisitions such as Picasa by Google. This year Yahoo bought Flickr, Hewlett-Packard grabbed Snapfish and, in June, Shutterfly acquired Memory Matrix.

Google seems to have the most integrated and ambitious plan for photos, photo sharing, and photographing near every inch of the planet. In October it acquired Keyhole, which has huge numbers of satellite photos that can be integrated into a ground-level view for creating 3D photo montages of cities.

Google also wants communities of users to come up with interesting uses for this type of geo-location photography. And with 3D cities as a focus, this will create opportunities for Google and its partners to overlay commercial services.

Will big always win?

These are early days and Zoto can still carve out a decent sized market. But these are essentially infrastructure battles, which generally play out in terms of scale; whoever gets bigger faster, using open, standard platforms, will eventually win.

Google has scale and it has open standard platforms. I'm sure I don't need to step my readers through the opportunities, from the application of the Google advertising network to the Google Earth project. Contextual advertising has a new meaning.

. . .
From Cnet:
Shutterfly buys out Memory Matrix

HP to acquire Snapfish photo service

Yahoo buys photo-sharing site Flickr

Here is some background from the announcement Zoto will make on Wednesday:

Geo Project USA is inspired by the successful “Degree Confluence Project” (www.Confluence.org). More than 7,000 participants have visited, photographed and written about 5,000 degree confluence points in 166 countries, including 872 of the 1265 degree confluence points in the U.S. “People have been asking me for something like this for a long time,” said Alex Jarrett who founded the Degree Confluence Project in 1996. “Geo Project USA takes our original vision to an extreme level.”

Zoto is a natural home for Geo Project USA. Kord Campbell owned the Oklahoma internet service provider (ISP) where the Degree Confluence Project was originally housed and has been involved in the project ever since, personally contributing several degree confluence visits in Oklahoma and Texas.

Zoto is a Web-based photo hosting, organizing, sharing and publishing site. Zoto was founded in 2004 by Kord Campbell, Rick Dunning and Trey Stout and is privately funded. Zoto is based in Oklahoma City, OK, with a business development office in Berkeley, CA.

June 27, 2005

The seemingly boundless interest in blogging. . .the Horse's Ass blog. . .and why forced blogging doesn't work

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher
I continue to spend a lot of time speaking on the subject of blogging, and I've heard many of the same questions from different audiences. There is a lot of confusion about how best to respond to blogging, and in general how to adapt to a changing and very fragmented media landscape.

I don't pretend to have all the answers — but it's fascinating being in the middle of this, and being part of the still relatively small group of people trying to find answers to these questions.

In recent weeks I've spoken with representatives of the Semiconductor Industry Association, with the Seattle chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), and most recently at an event presented by the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and TheNewsMarket. These events usually attract mostly corporate communications and agency people, they are in the front lines in trying to get to grips with the blogging phenomenon.

At each one of these events I try to freely share as much as I can about this blogging phenomenon and the medium's unique aspects. And it is always worth it, because I come back with a ton of stories about how other people do things within their organizations, and the cultural and other obstacles that they deal with in their work. Also, I meet other bloggers from other sectors and compare notes.

Differences in political blogging

Suzanne Hartman, from Hill & Knowlton, invited me up to Seattle to speak with the local IABC chapter after reading one of my essays on the future of journalism at New Communications Blogzine, and here on SVW.

It was an interesting trip and a memorable group. One of the people I met was David Goldstein, a political blogger (Horsesass.org—the straight poop on WA politics and the press). I remember saying to David that one good thing is if you make a mistake, a dozen people are looking over your shoulder and will point out factual errors by leaving messages at the site. Thus, there is a self-correcting process at work and an opportunity to grow a communal type of journalism such as that espoused by Dan Gilmor.

David says he gets hundreds of comments on his blog - but he says there is no community correction of facts. In the political sector, it seems people won't readily accept that certain facts they use are false. Instead, there is a partisan battle based around ideology

That seems a bit disheartening to me, because it means that when it comes to political issues, facts and reason can do little to change people's minds. Is there any such thing as meaningful debate, or are political arguments just lines drawn in the sand by opposing blowhards?

Blogging as a work duty rarely works

At the recent Dartmouth Business school event I was on a panel along with Charlene Li, Forrester's superstar internet analyst, Joel Dreyfuss, editor-in-chief of Red Herring, Wade Roush, senior editor at MIT's Technology review (now edited by former Red Herring editor Jason Pontin), and Jason Smith, ENPS project manager at Associated Press.

I was the only full time "blogger" even though the other journalists work for publications and write blogs. This is fine but I think that as established media continue to add blogs, problems are going to mount.

I can already see stress fractures at some large publications.

[This is not to say that my colleagues on the panel suffer from the following problems ... it just reminded me of some issues on the topic of journalists and blogging that I've come across over the past few months.]

The reason there is stress in established media organizations is that it is difficult to create a difference between the online publication and its blogs. Journalists are confused about what stories should go into the blog, what style should they be written in, and why the blog gets edited by the same editors as the publication.

In addition, writing a blog at work is yet one more extra task piled onto an already full plate. Many journalists that survived the dotbomb are working two to three times as hard as five years ago. It's a workload brought on by constant staff cuts and difficulty in recruiting experienced journalists to fill the job vacancies.

Adding blogging duties is a lot of extra work and it is forced work - forced blogging comes across as such and cannot be disguised. You know it when you see it.

Also, blogging journalists need time to develop a "blog voice" - or maybe several blog voices, depending on the time of day or mood. These are different personalities, and the style is different from the rigid house style of their employer. That's why journalist blogs are better done from home, and not hosted on their employer's server, and driven by passion and interest - not by the need to fulfil employee duties. IMHO.

Running out of bandwidth...the good, the bad and the ugly (support)

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Running out of bandwidth is something I have to watch out for, since our traffic continues to jump higher - especially when we have scoops and exclusive stories.

But running out of bandwidth can be a frustrating experience, as we found recently with our web hosting service TotalChoice Hosting. There was no phone number to call, just a "live" chat channel and the opportunity to email support "tickets."

SiliconValleyWatcher was off line for about 6 hours as traffic surged above our monthly quota. And I couldn't open up the pipes because there was no way to buy more bandwidth online. I found that I would have to wait until the next morning and email the sales department!!!

Nobody to call in times of trouble, plus hours spent sorting out problems. That's why I will be changing hosting providers. When your business is offline, you had better get somebody on the line pronto.

Fanatical support sounds fine to me

I'm thinking of changing to RackSpace. I interviewed one of their top executives a few months ago, but never got to write the company's interesting story.

This San Antonio, Texas web hosting provider says it has fanatical support. It is so fanatical about support that it has even trademarked the term "Fanatical Support." This company awards its top-performing support people with a straitjacket — plus other perks, such as limo rides to top restaurants. This and other activities constantly motivate their support staff.

Next time I get kicked offline by my service provider, I'm sure RackSpace will answer my call PDQ. And that's what you need in a crisis situation: Support staff competing for the straitjacket award! I'll take it.

My good buddy Om Malik, of Business 2.0 and the very popular GigaOm.com broadband blog, reported excellent support from RackSpace when they called him up a few months ago and told him his server had died. The RackSpace people worked through the night recovering his data and set him up on a new server by the morning.

[PS: I'm a few days behind on my emails--my apologies to all. I've been off-line with my kids.]

http://www.rackspace.com/aboutus/leadership.php

June 23, 2005

Pillar Data Systems: Larry Ellison's $150m data storage company emerges from stealth mode

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Stealth Storage.jpg It took four years and $150m of Larry Ellison's money for Pillar Data Systems to emerge from stealth mode with a data storage solution that could be disruptive to EMC, IBM, Network Appliance and others.

I spoke with Michael Workman, CEO of San Jose-based Pillar, about the long trudge ahead, the company's technology and its strategy. It is a market dominated by giants, and by an industry trend that favors providing broad solutions rather than focused IT systems.

The Pillar approach attacks IT costs through using one platform to manage and store all three tiers of data, from high availability Tier 1 data, to archived Tier 3 data that normally would end up on tape.

In the Pillar approach, everything is stored on inexpensive high performance commodity serial ATA hard drives, but on different sectors of the disk. Slower sectors hold Tier 3 data while the fastest sectors towards the outside edges of the disk are reserved for Tier 1 data.

The goal is to provide storage systems with Tier 1 to 3 capabilities for about the total cost of ownership of Tier 3 systems. This is accomplished by using inexpensive hardware within a single fail-safe platform.

The secret sauce

The heart of Pillar is a sophisticated software application of 2.5m lines of code providing essential data admin functions through a very simple user interface.

What takes sixty clicks to set up in an EMC system can take just 6 clicks on a Pillar system. And with headcount being the largest item in IT budgets, needing fewer admins is a key selling point.

Mr Workman has 20 years in the data storage industry, with 15 years at IBM and a dozen patents. He leads a veteran management team of former executives at Network Appliance, Conner, IBM, and Quantum.

Pillar Systems are in place at companies such as LeapFrog Enterprises, I/Pro and Thacher Proffit.

But building a market in the enterprise sector is tough work and expensive.

"Corporations typically take four to six months to qualify IT systems. And we must also make sure that we have a large customer support organization in place to support them," Mr Workman said.

In addition, Pillar has built a huge testing facility, costing more than $25m and comtaining 150 systems. Then there is the considerable expense of marketing Pillar within an IT market dominated by just a few large players, each able to offer more than just data storage systems.

$150m doesn't go too far in such a market, but Mr Workman said the company has Mr Ellison's wealth behind it and a long term multi-year road map. Funding is all from Mr Ellison's Tako Ventures, with no current plans for other investors.

Foremski's Take: The enterprise IT market today is all about scale and large vendors providing complete data solutions. Pillar needs partnerships with larger vendors and systems integrators to make its voice heard.

The company's software application, which sets up and manages a wide range of data storage requirements, is where the value of Pillar systems is clear. It is also a considerable barrier to competitors.

Requiring fewer IT admins is a message that attracts CIOs, and the lower hardware/maintenance costs are a nice bonus. But CIOs are also very conservative, and evaluation and implementation cycles can be lengthy. Maintaining a large sales/suport team during such times accelerates expenses.

Now that Pillar is out of stealth mode and into marketing mode, the burn rate is accelerating. Mr Ellison has deep pockets and understands the dynamics of the enterprise world, which should help Pillar.

Mr Ellison also brings attention to Pillar, which will save on some marketing costs. However, he is also a sometimes controversial figure, which may reflect on the way his companies are perceived by potential customers. A broader investment base would help mitigate any "Larry effect" and also bring in other cheer leaders.

June 22, 2005

Mercora—a good evening spoiled by endless presentations...[updated]

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

I went along to a dinner hosted by Mercora Wednesday. The event sounded interesting - it promised to discuss the impending MGM versus Grokster court case on file sharing.

Mercora, which offers music search and sharing services, lined up a good collection of music industry lawyers and others to discuss and promote the issue of legal file sharing.

Unfortunately, Mercora did not know when to stop. An attentive group of key journalists dutifully listened and scribbled notes. Then the salad arrived, and we listened and scribbled notes. Then the entree arrived and was dispatched, then it was time for desert and coffee, but the CEO stood up and said, now, let me show you the demo...

At which point I decided the time was better spent with my son and I left. And I hope others did so too. Giving up an evening to meet with company executives is asking a lot, but for Mercora to monopolize all of the evening is too much.

I don't mind giving up, say, half of the evening to listen to your pitches. But give me the second half to chat with my peers, and to get to know you and others there. Maybe I'll pick up an exclusive story/angle from chatting with others.

Please don't invite me to give up time with my family, or just myself, to hear your pitches all evening long. Your PR team probably told you it was a bad idea to do that - but who listens to them?

And you know what? Your pitch, that file sharing will boost music markets, is fake. Because you make your money anyway from enabling music sharing (living high on the bountiful riches from ad clicks...). Yet you are essentially saying to content creators/providers "give it away and you will end up selling more music and making more money."

You are not taking the risk of giving away content, but you are telling content owners they should. There is no leadership high ground to be had here.

Much has been said, rightly, about the stupidity of the music/movie industry in slapping down digital technologies that could aid them. But Mercora has only its self interest at stake in encouraging/enabling support for widespread song sharing.

Why don't you buy up a record label or two and give the content away as a demonstration of where your wallet meets your pitch?

- - - - - -
Interestingly, Perk, a musician Mercora shipped in from Los Angeles to perform two songs during the evening, said he admonished his friends for burning copies of his CDs for others. "How am I supposed to make money if you do that?" Despite long days performing, promoting and booking his own shows, (standalone musician) Perk said he makes most of his money selling tank tops for young women. And he has a generous patron, his wife, with a job.

Without music content, Mercora has a nice interface to nothing. Where is Mercora's value-add? Mercora's software enables Perk's music to be heard widely for free, while promising him pie-in-the-sky when he gets thousands of listeners...

I think I'd rather be a content creator/owner, like Perk, during this next phase of the internet, because content will be king this time around, while servers and software become commoditized.

(BTW, I bought the domain ContentWillBeKing.com a year ago. Why not? It was $8 on GoDaddy...own a piece of the English language online and a piece of the future for $8—priceless.)

- - - -

An excellent write up of the MGM-Grokster case and its implications at Eweek:
Preparing for the Grokster Watershed

Updated:
Mercora apologised for keeping me away from my son, and pointed out that it does pay for music, it is the same rate as a radio station pays to play music.

June 21, 2005

Eric Schmidt speaks up on GooPay, denies Google wants to compete with PayPal

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

AP reports that Google CEO Eric Schmidt has denied that Google is launching a competitor to PayPal, even as he confirmed that Google is in fact readying some manner of payment system.

"The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google's existing online products and advertising programs which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers," he said. That's not much to go on but I would guess that Google's payment system would allow them to manage a cost-per-sale advertising model, in which they can integrate advertising placements, clickthroughs, sellthroughs, and user behavior.

In any case, Schmidt went to pains to disabuse the notion that GooPay would be a PayPal killer. "We do not intend to offer a person-to-person, stored-value payments system," he told AP. It's pretty unusual for Google to break its silence on unannounced initiatives. Perhaps they were concerned about the rumormill unnecessarily punishing eBay's stock?

WSJ: Google Readying PayPal Competitor

The British Invasion continues as OutCast is gobbled up by Next Fifteen

...will everyone in San Francisco PR eventually work for Tim Dyson?

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

TDyson Hi Res bw.jpg San Francisco based OutCast Communications has been acquired by Next Fifteen, Europe's largest publicly traded PR company for an initial payment of about $6m and additional performance based payments that could reach $13m over the next five years.

From Next Fifteen:

Under the terms of the acquisition, Next Fifteen will pay initial consideration of £3.3 million ($6 million) for OutCast, which is to be funded out of existing cash and debt facilities and a vendor placing which raised £2.5 million. Further consideration will be paid over the next five years based on the performance of the company, with total consideration capped at £7.2 million ($13 million).

Earlier this year, at least one other company considered buying OutCast. Financial Dynamics, the large New York firm specializing in investor relations and now branching out into other sectors, explored a possible purchase.

Next Fifteen is now by far the largest employer in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley PR sector. It owns Bite PR and Text 100, two of the largest San Francisco PR companies. It also has a significant stake in 463 Communications, a PR firm targeting tech policy issues. The 463 Communications offices are shared with Bite.

Consolidation in PR mirrors the valley

The OutCast acquisition is a product of changing markets. The consolidation in the IT sectors has created a smaller number of vendors. And the remaining IT vendors are large and multinational. OutCast can make use of Next Fifteen's European and global reach.

In turn, OutCast founder's founders Margit Wennmachers and Caryn Marooney know how to build a fast growing PR organization, which will help Mr Dyson report a steady increase in revenues.

His challenge has been to grow business during a time when PR budgets remain very tight, there are fewer media outlets to target, and smaller numbers of large enterprise companies to pursue as clients.

New communications threats on the horizon?

In addition, media technologies such as blogging, represent a potential threat to traditional methods of corporate communication. While such "new communications" channels are still in their infancy, they represent an additional cost that will likely pressure PR budgets further, at least over the short term.

Large tech companies are beginning to specify that PR firms must have experience in using blogging technologies to augment traditional methods. And while there is much well justified skepticism towards blogging among Next Fifteen's PR companies, including OutCast, the fact that their clients recognize the power of blogging to reach potential customers, is something the PR firms cannot dismiss.

Smaller companies such as Voce Communications, in Silicon Valley, which recognized blogging early on and quickly integrated it into its products and services, represents a potential threat to larger, slower moving PR firms. The threat is that specialist PR firms could siphon away the more profitable and interesting communications contracts.

Next Fifteen gains aggressive duo

The gain for Next Fifteen is that it now has one of the most effective management teams in the PR industry. Ms Wennmachers and Ms Marooney set a blistering pace and their partnership has survived some of the most difficult times in the industry. Their expansion of OutCast is all the more impressive because it came during difficult personal times for both, that drew them away at various times to be with their families.

Yet OutCast continued to grow and surprised many west coast PR firms when it won the EMC account late last year.

"I was shocked when I heard that," said one senior PR executive at a rival firm. OutCast has worked for several years with VMware, now an EMC subsidiary, which may have provided some help.

The EMC win was not only a feather in OutCast's cap but also marked its transition from a boutique firm to a national company able to work with large global enterprise IT companies.

Next Fifteen also gets Marc Benioff

OutCast's most famous client is SalesForce.com, headed by the sometimes-flamboyant Marc Benioff, a master self-promoter. Mr Benioff led the company in a very successful IPO last year, which was part of a decent sized surge in stock market tech activity and Silicon Valley business.

IPOs such as Salesforce.com and RightNow Technologies, under the leadership of Greg Gianforte, also signaled a new software market emerging. This model is one that is based on software as a web based service rather than as a massive ERP or other enterprise software installation.

Now, Mr Benioff will be working with a company whose Next Fifteen sister company, Bite PR, is representing Siebel Systems, Salesforce.com's prime target.

A Marine boot camp

OutCast has earned a reputation as a tough place to work, a "Marine boot camp" as one former employee said. This is not a bad label to have in the tough PR market that the Bay area suffered from since the dotbomb detonated in late 2000.

The local PR and media sectors were devastated by the fallout from the tech stock market bust and markets groaning under a glut of IT equipment. Marketing and PR budgets were the first to be slashed at thousands of Silicon Valley companies.

This caused some firms to go bust or leave San Francisco completely. Next Fifteen snapped up Applied Communications, a large San Francisco PR company that was an early victim of the dotbomb.

Many US PR (and media) companies continue to struggle but there has been a resurgence in the Bay Area where there are many job vacancies among agencies.

The largest shortage is in finding people that have 5 to 8 or more years experience and like working at PR agencies. Most of those, prefer working within corporate communications teams where work levels are more consistent and less volatile. Or they can find work as freelance consultants, sometimes known as "mommy consultants" because some are able to combine work with child rearing duties.

From the Next Fifteen press release:

Under the deal, OutCast will continue to operate as a separate business under its own brand name, with its founders Caryn Marooney and Margit Wennmachers becoming co-Presidents of the business. As Presidents they will report directly to Next Fifteen's Chief Executive Officer, Tim Dyson.

Tim Dyson said: "Next Fifteen is keen to build a Group that comprises best-in-class consultancies. We have long been impressed with the way OutCast has approached this sector and have enjoyed competing with them over the years. OutCast has built a great team of consultants that have together built a great business. We look forward to working with them during the next stage in their development."

OutCast Communications was founded in San Francisco in 1997. In recent years it has experienced strong growth, with sales in 2004 increasing 28% over the previous year to $6.2 million. Operating profits in the same year were $1.6 million. The firm has also won a string of awards including PR Week's Boutique Agency of the Year award in 2001 and PR Week's award for Technology Campaign of the Year in both 2003 and 2005.

In conjunction with the acquisition, Next Fifteen has completed a vendor placing of 4,807,693 ordinary shares of 2.5 pence each at 52 pence per share, to raise £2.5 million.

About Outcast Communications
OutCast's mission is to provide unparalleled public relations services to the best and brightest technology companies within an environment where its group of talented, aggressive and connected employees can deliver the highest level of customer service and unprecedented results. OutCast has offices in San Francisco, California, and New York City, and can be found online at www.outcastpr.com.

About Next Fifteen
Next Fifteen Communications Group is a holding company for a number of world leading PR and marketing services firms. The majority of clients are in the technology industry with twelve of the world's top twenty technology businesses being clients of the Group; these include IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Cisco. The Group strategy has also evolved to pursue non-technology clients and the Group already works with such brands as Royal Mail, More Th>n (Royal and Sun Alliance Group), Olympus, Total and the Department for Education and Skills.

The Group is made up of four independently branded subsidiaries that operate as autonomous businesses thus enabling them to service competing client businesses. The Group has three broad technology PR subsidiaries: Text 100, Bite Communications and Inferno. The fourth brand, AUGUST.ONE, provides both B2B and Consumer services across a number of vertical market sectors. More information can be found at: www.nextfifteen.com.

BitTorrent's Cohen: Avalanche is 'Vaporware' and 'complete garbage'

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Ask BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen, as it seems many people have, what he thinks of Microsoft Research's Avalanche, their better-than-BitTorrent P2P program and you'll get an earful (or at least a blogful).

On his blog, Cohen writes:

"First of all, I'd like to clarify that Avalanche is vaporware. It isn't a product which you can use or test with, it's a bunch of proposed algorithms. There isn't even a fleshed out network protocol. The 'experiments' they've done are simulations."

I won't pretend to understand the technical niceties except to note that Cohen's critique is that the Microsoft simulation is rigged against BitTorrent. He concludes:

The really big unfixable problem with error correction is that peers can't verify data with a secure hash before they pass it on to other peers. As a result, it's quite straightforward for a malicious peer to poison an entire swarm just by uploading a little bit of data. The Avalanche paper conveniently doesn't mention that problem.
As you've probably figured out by now, I think that paper is complete garbage. Unfortunately it's actually one of the better academic papers on BitTorrent, because it makes some attempt, however feeble, to do an apples to apples comparison.

GooPay makes sense for Google's shopping, video, premium content businesses

AP's latest report on the unconfirmed story that Google is starting a PayPal killer quotes a number of informed sources who think it's a real thing and some good thinking on where this takes Google next. Google used to be thought of as a search engine; now you just have to look at their balance sheet to change your conception to "advertising company." Google's advertising is a "beautiful thing," as Larry Page once said, but Google's vision is far bigger.

It is, I think, really to make every online experience as good as possible, and to make a LOT of money doing it. Pick up the paper any day. There's almost always a story about identity theft, stolen credit cards, online fraud, etc. If Google can get control of the online transaction, and in the process track who's a scammer, how money is being spent, what the trends are, that could be as interesting as getting a piece of every transaction, which of course would also be a "beautiful thing."

As the AP article notes: "A payment service also might give Google more insights into accountholder buying habits - an advantage that theoretically could be used to do a better job of delivering relevant ad links that would be more likely to be clicked upon to generate more profits."

American Technology Research analyst David Edwards believes what I'll call GooPay would be tied to Froogle initially but the AP writer also notes:

... The service might process the money that's exchanged between the millions of merchants and Web sites participating in its online advertising network. A payment service also could make it easier for Google to sell content through its search engine.
Google already has indicated it will charge visitors to view certain videos that will be indexed in its search engine. Some analysts also think a payment service would enable Google to charge a fee on behalf of publishers looking to cash in on copyrighted or subscription-only news articles.

GOOG closed Tuesday at 287.84, well above Monday's open of 276.09. eBay, owner of PayPal, which would be hurt by GooPay, closed at 36.90, down from Friday's close of 38.05.

Ready for the Avalanche?

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

Microsoft will shortly unleash Avalanche, an attempt to improve on the popular filesharing app, BitTorrent. While BitTorrent is anathema to Hollywood studios and other copyright holders, Avalanche, which is being built in Microsoft Research, would include a DRM to block the unlicensed sharing of copyright material.

UPDATE: BitTorrent's Bram Cohen calls Avalanche "complete garbage." [Read[

Presumably what interests the folks in research, though, are some technical enhancements. Microsoft would add network coding to BitTorrent's swarming approach to large file downloads. In simplest terms, BitTorrent breaks content into blocks of data and does parallel requests for blocks from multiple servers. This greatly speeds downloads of large files.

Microsoft's improvements order the blocks that each machine has and creates a way for machines to communicate which blocks they have. According to Microsoft Research's paper:

Such encoding ensures that any piece uploaded by a given peer can be of use to any other peer. Peers do not need to find specific pieces in the system to complete, any encoded piece will suffice. This makes the system very robust as peers disconnect. Also, no peer becomes a bottleneck, since no block is more important than another. Finally, network bandwidth is considerably reduced since the same information does not travel multiple times over bottleneck links. And all this is achieved with zero-information of who has what, no knowledge of the network topology or available bandwidth, and negligible-overhead!

Very cool but its DRM not speed enhancements that will excite Hollywood as well as the digital frontier. Avalanche might actually legitimize P2P applications. Users uncomfortable with the shady side of the Net might be interested in using it if they didn't have to worry about love letters from the MPAA showing up in the mail.

And Hollywood would be happy to play ball with copyright-friendly companies like Microsoft, as they've proven with Apple. "Having a legitimate way to exchange intellectual property and respect copyright would be very welcome in the entertainment industry, and other industries too," movie industry lawyer Charlie Sims said.

But Microsoft needs to do DRM right. It would need to respect fair and free uses of copyright material, such as the ability to use purchased materials on more than one machine and to move materials to portable players.

Sounds like a release is imminent. I'll be happy to check it out.

I went to a garden party....and Carly Florina was there. So was Scott McNealy, Larry Sonsini, Ray Ozzie. and a digital Bill Gates, seeking valley love

. . . is BFG seeking love in all the wrong places?

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

I went to a garden party in the backyard of Heidi Roizen's house in Woodside. The event was the annual SDForum Visionary Awards.

This is a great event, because much of the Silicon Valley aristocracy turns out for it. It is small and comfortable; and people let their hair down and tell funny stories about each other.

The winners this year were:

Carol Bartz, CEO of Autodesk, introduced by Scott McNealy, still CEO of Sun
Bill Draper, of the Draper VC family dynasty (Tim is J.R, BTW), introduced by VC Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad
Carly Fiorina introduced by Larry Sonsini, master of the universe
Ray Ozzie, formerly of Groove and now operating under the pay of Microsoft, introduced by a Max Headroom-like Bill Gates and then handed over to Esther Dyson

It was a great evening and here is the rest of it. . .

Garden party part two: McNealy's tips for creating room at the top

Garden party part three: Bill Draper, the godfather of Silicon Valley's oldest VC dynasty

Garden party part 4: Larry Sonsini leads valley lovefest for Carly Fiorina . . .

Garden party part 5: SVW uncovers backyard plot by Microsoft loyalists

Tech companies concerned about possible US laws on radio tag chips

. . . should RFID technology be restricted?
By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

I try to check in with our sponsors at regular intervals but lately we've been swamped with exclusive stories and scoops to write, and we've been neglecting our stalwart supporters. However, it is all thanks to our sponsors, Infineon Technologies, Tibco Software, and Nooked, that we can bring you this unique coverage of Silicon Valley, the world's capital of innovation.

A few weeks ago I visited with Infineon, one of our first sponsors, to chat about what they are watching. I met with Christoph Liedtke, who heads media relations and his assistant, Mansi Agarwal, at the HQ of Infineon's US operations in San Jose.

Top of Infineon's watch list is possible legislation that could limit the use of RFID chips, tiny semiconductors used to tag shipments and eventually most commercial products. Concerns about user privacy has led to some US and Californian lawmakers to support calls for greater controls and limits on the use of the technology.

Can tech firms stop RFID backlash?

Infineon is one of many large global technology companies keen to see faster adoption of RFID chips. Other supporters include IBM, Microsoft, and leading Silicon Valley companies such as Oracle, Sun, HP, Cisco and others. And why not? The use of RFID is forecast to boost IT spending overall, as retailers and others install and build out the significant infrastructure needed.

RFID supporters argue that the technology itself should not be restricted or regulated by government. How RFID-generated information is used is a societal issue not a technology issue.

Technology companies however, are generally lousy about figuring out how to lobby governments and how to fight what they see as bad legislation. Large companies such as Intel and Texas Instruments have over the years developed their Washington offices and have figured out how the Beltway functions. But they are a rarity, and it is an expensive conversation to join — Washington lobbyists sell their services for a high price.

Trade organizations such as the Semiconductor Industry Association are reasonably effective at making their presence felt in Washington but, again, it takes time to establish the right connections and be heard.

Many young tech companies don't have the means — or often the awareness — that they need to be involved in the political debates.

Things become even more complex when US states pass laws, making it tough to become involved in public discourse in many different states.

Community PR trend

radio tower.bmp Most corporate communications is tailored to reach potential customers or investors—the trend in the PR industry is to create specialist firms that target messages to the public and legislators.

463 Communications is one such company, partially funded by Next Fifteen, the publicly traded European PR giant, which owns Text 100 and Bite PR--two of the leading Silicon Valley PR firms. Tim Dyson, CEO of Next Fifteen, is chairman of 463.

Sean Garrett, a partner at 463, says "This sector is still fairly small but is bound to grow as tech companies mature and realize that they could be directly impacted by some legislation, and they need to make sure they can communicate their message to politicians and the public."

At Infineon, the challenge is keeping track of pending RFID legislation and trying to determine where it might lead, and how to gain the ear of sympathetic legislators. Christoph Liedtke used to work as a speech writer within the German political establishment and is aware of the need for companies to be involved in politcal debates. But US politics is a different animal.

I would have offered some advice if I had it, but my understanding of US and Californian politics is tiny, probably matching that of most citizens of Silicon Valley.

- - - -

Some recent articles on RFID issues:

I.B.M. Expands Efforts to Promote Radio Tags to Track Goods
New York Times, 06/14/05

AP: U.S. to Scale Back Passport Standards

News and features on RFID from UsingRFID.com (UK), 06/14/05

The RFID Weblog by Anita Campbell.

Tim Dyson's blog and his recent post on Apple turning to Intel for microprocessors

The 463 blog, an interesting peek into some of the key legislative issues facing its clients.

June 17, 2005

WSJ: Google Readying PayPal Competitor

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is getting ready to launch an electronic payment system to go head to head with eBay's PayPal. "It could be a pretty big negative for eBay if it happens," Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy, who follows Google and eBay, said. The AP story notes:

Expanding into online payments might make Google less dependent on advertising, which accounted for nearly all of its first-quarter revenue of $1.26 billion. The merchants who run auctions on eBay are major buyers of Google's ads, which appear alongside search results.

Garden party part 5: SVW uncovers backyard plot by Microsoft loyalists. . .

. . .McNealy silenced by Redmond gold? And who else?

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Ray Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes, head of Groove Networks, and now CTO of Microsoft, won the last of the 2005 SDForum visionary awards. Although he deserves such an award for his body of work, I couldn't quite rid my mind of thoughts of Microsoft, and its hand at work.

It's not unnatural that the world's most innovative software company would seek to ally itself with the world's most innovative region bar none.

After all, being stuck up there in the soggy northwest, in the Fortress of Solitude, the cabin fever must be terrible. Here, in Silicon Valley, companies are challenged moment by moment. You get up and say one thing, and ten others will tell you you are a fool - and they'll prove it. That's what makes it good. That's why the innovation is here.

Looking back on the evening, there was clearly an attempt at some rapprochement between the world's capital of innovation, and the world's largest most-found-guilty-of-crushing-innovation-through-illegal practices computer company.

Bill Gates was present at the event, at least in moving image, as a prerecorded video projected a large talking head onto a screen, to introduce his boy Ray Ozzie.

[I thought I heard Bill Gates say, "Sorry about Netscape and all of that, it was the 90s....you know, youthful exuberance, what can you do? It's all a blur....and believe me, we paid for it, and we're still paying for it! Ouch. We're not going to do that again in a hurry, you can bet on that. We're completely fine now, so give us a chance, take us back, we're your buddies...Look, any of you, seriously, even you VCs.... can come up and crash at my place, a-ny-t-i-m-e. It's on a lake, really nice. Scott?....Scott? Tell them how nice it is....Ray...you tell them.....By the way, what are you guys up to these days...working on anything good? We've got nada up here...)

Instead of saying what was on most people's minds, BFG said something about Ray Ozzie. Then he was gone, and Ray Ozzie made what was for many, the best speech of the evening. Unfortunately, I had to step out to get a fresh battery for my camera and missed it.

The podium part of the evening ended with Heidi Roizen, our gracious and generous hostess, who jibbed and jabbed at her guests in a fun, lighthearted manner. She mentioned the geriatric research opportunities provided by the audience. And she spoke about a visit by Bill Gates, a few months ago. She said her 12 year old daughter said it was very cool that Mr Gates was visiting, and she asked if the Xbox was the only thing that Microsoft made.

[Microsoft, an icon of emerging youth culture? Whatever next...] Mr McNealy, under normal circumstances would have had some ready ammunition for his stand up act. He would have been calling Microsoft "the video games company," just as he has slammed HP for being the "printer ink company" because that's where its profits were made.

However, Mr McNealy was quiet, and has laid off all Microsoft jokes. Is it because Microsoft gave his company a ton of money? Nobody knows...

Ms Roizen said that it was difficult thinking of Mr Ozzie as working for Microsoft, and she said how bizarre it'll be when Scott turns up with a Microsoft badge. Ouch, I thought, that's a bit harsh.

But does she know something? Ms Roizen and Mr Gates have been close friends for many years.

Garden party part two: McNealy's tips for creating room at the top

Garden party part three: Bill Draper, the godfather of Silicon Valley's oldest VC dynasty

Garden party part 4: Larry Sonsini leads valley lovefest for Carly Fiorina . . .

Garden Party part 4: Larry Sonsini leads valley lovefest for Carly Fiorina . . .

. . . too little, a bit late

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Larry Sonsini, Silicon Valley's uber-uber lawyer, introduced Carly Fiorina. He said lots and lots of nice things. He noted Ms Fiorina had helped spin-out Lucent Technologies, the largest IPO in history, and she handled an extremely tough job at HP.

Mr Sonsini, looking very debonair, in a well tailored light gray suit, spoke for almost as long as Ms Fiorina. He succeeded in establishing his presence at nearly every critical juncture of HP and Ms Fiorina's story. He was present at nearly every major decision making process. He said Ms Fiorina had to deal with changing company culture, the worst downturn in the tech industry, and executing the largest IT merger.

"Some called it two garbage trucks colliding, but I won't say that," he said, after saying it.

He was referring to a Scott McNealy quote from years back about the HP/Compaq merger. But why bring it up and embarrass two top guests? Because he can I would assume.

Ms Fiorina graciously took the podium and spoke for maybe ten minutes, the shortest speech of the night. She spoke of Silicon Valley in the terms HP people would recognize, that these things that we do here in Silicon Valley are about people, and that profits enable companies to do good thigs, invoking Dave Packard's philosophy.

[This might seem ironic to those ex-HP-ers thrown out by the tough decisions she had to make. But, they weren't the audience that evening, she was speaking to the people that create and profit from the Silicon Valley culture of expendibility.]

It was good to see Ms Fiorina celebrated by SDForum. But, when she was running HP, she had few friends in and among the mansions of Woodside, Silicon Valley's elite neighborhood.

[I have a video of her speech that I'll post as soon as I figure out how to do it!]

Next: SVW uncovers backyard plot by Microsoft loyalists

Previous post: Bill Draper, the godfather of Silicon Valley's oldest VC dynasty

June 16, 2005

Garden Party part three: Bill Draper, the godfather of Silicon Valley's oldest VC dynasty

. . . slams Bush administration over United Nations policy

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Bill Draper is a towering figure in the Silicon Valley VC community, and one of the most successful practitioners of this art.

He looked tanned and vital; and was eloquent on what makes Silicon Valley unique, and why the Bush policy towards the UN --where he served as head of the United Nations Development Programme-- is wrong.

He shared one of his secrets to finding succesful startups:

look for enthusiastic, passionate founders that will follow their dream no matter what, they just know it's going to happen. "When we see that, we follow their dream too," he said.

He also spoke about Silicon Valley's tolerance of failure (a subject that I've long regarded as Silicon Valley's secret sauce, and the reason why trying to replicate it by building a business park around a university won't work.)

Mr. Draper said that those who failed in their ventures deserve almost as much credit for establishing the American dream as those who succeeded, because they tried. That's the important thing: to have tried. (Silicon Valley punishes those that don't take risks, IMHO)

He said that his son, Tim (a very successful VC), missed out on a very early investment in Internet media giant Yahoo, ignoring pater's recommendation. "He could have had Yahoo, but lost out; he was too cheap, as usual."

Mr. Draper, a Republican, spoke about his time serving at the UN; and said that the Bush administration had the wrong policy towards the organization.

A gentleman of the old kind, he finished speaking by tipping his hat towards the ladies in noting that it was good to see SDForum celebrating their achievements.

Next: Larry Sonsini leads valley lovefest for Carly Fiorina . . .

Previous post: McNealy's tips for creating room at the top

Garden party part two: How McNealy creates room at the top...

By Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher

Part 2 of our tales from the annual SDForum Visionary Awards garden party in Woodside, at which the Valley aristocracy let their hair down and tell stories about each other.

Scott McNealy, Sun's CEO, introduced Carol Bartz, CEO of Autodesk and a former Sun VP. Mr McNealy played the familiar role of that irascible character we all know and love from many performances.

Mr McNealy was in classic form Wednesday evening, dressed in his signature jeans, light shirt and navy blue blazer, and sharing a vignette or two about Ms. Bartz, who used to work at Sun.

He recalls that Ms Bartz stomped into his office and resigned because of a generous rival job offer. 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.

Mr McNealy, encouraged by audience response, forged ahead and started to talk about Ms. Bartz spawning, at which point he was hooked off the podium. A gracious Ms. Bartz gave him a "you naughty boy" look.

Ms. Bartz said that the firing incident was her first introduction to how the valley works; but since then (1983) she has come to thrive on being here, relishing the incredible ecosystem, creativity, and describing the region as "nirvana."

She jabbed good-heartedly at SOX, investors, and over-zealous boards of directors, to much amusement; but she tore into "flat worlders" Thomas Friedman and his ilk (critics of globalization), saying that she didn't care much for that point of view.

Does anybody remember when we used to outsource to Huntsville and Kentucky, she asked?

Garden party part three: Bill Draper, the godfather of Silicon Valley's oldest VC dynasty

Garden party part 4: Larry Sonsini leads valley lovefest for Carly Fiorina . . .

Part 5: SVW uncovers backyard plot by Microsoft loyalists
(And read Part 1).

June 16, 2005 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Silicon Valley