BossTalks.com Tag: notes

white on "Introduction to Atomkeep -- the next big thing"

white — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:54:10 +0000

Hello everyone,

My name is Olexandr Prokhorenko. As you might already know, I was the one of two guys who started the BossTalks.com in the beginning of March 2007.

Today I'd like to share my next big thing with you. So, please, let me introduce Atomkeep - the service that solves the problem of information redundancy.

So what actually Atomkeep is? We're the first service that created to really share the people profiles. Either you're a social networker, or a job seeker or a professional - all of you are having the same problem of data redundancy. There are too many social networks around, too many job boards, directories and sites that want you to keep your profile there.

Being an active member of any community requires you to keep your profile up to date all the time. Nobody likes "dead heads". Once your Internet exposure is starting to grow, you're starting to spend much more time on keeping the things in sync. But we can take save your time. Don't waste your time on routine clicks, but have fun. This is what Atomkeep for.

Let me give you another example. Have you ever faced a choice if you should sign to one more (maybe, more interesting or narrow) job site, but was pissed off and decided not to do this when you saw how big is the resume profile in it? I bet you did. But we can help you here as well. This is a typical situation when Atomkeep becomes a priceless service to use (and stays free!).

Or might be you are a business owner and have listed your business contacts at the tens (or even hundreds) of different boards and directories, but it's time to move on and your contact are changing? Most of the time changes are good if everyone knows the new contacts. However, can you imagine the crowd of potential clients who got lost and choose your competitor over you just because they got the wrong phone number? Atomkeep is a good service to use now.

This is our first day of public release. Our team has been working on it for a while and now we are ready for a launch. So go ahead, take a quick look, register there, it's absolutely free and takes only a minute, and give us your feedback.

Atomkeep is built for users. Users are the most important elements in the Atomkeep design and we're committed to complete user satisfaction. Let us know, either you like something or not. Any opinion counts and valuable for us.

So, thank you and welcome to Atomkeep!

Sincerely yours,
Olexandr Prokhorenko,
Founder of Atomkeep.

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white on "TiE Meet the TCA Angels (event notes)"

white — Wed, 30 May 2007 08:19:46 +0000

This event was held at 5/29/2007 at the California State University in the Long Beach.

http://www.techcoastangels.com/Cal/PublicEvents.aspx?EventID=2541

It was leaded by John Morris who is past President and on the Board of Governors of the Tech Coast Angels (TCA) and Managing Director of GKM Ventures.

Here are some notes on the events.

It was an introductory meeting, it wasn't supposed to be very specific, it was detailed enough so everyone could get an answer for his questions. It was a pretty interesting networking for the first hour. And the very hot and spicy dinner -- it was nice, but only for those who can eat fire.

This is the first and experimental event on the Long Beach. Few words about the TiE (the organization which runs the event). TiE provides a range of opportunities for entrepreneurs and a mentorship programs. They have a regular seminary, TiEcon, and it is going to take place in the middle of September this year. Currently, TiE is developing close relationship with TCA.

When the time for Tech Coast Angels (TCA) presentation came, they started with the Key Trends:

VC Funds getting bigger, investment size increasing
Technology helping lower startups costs
Organized angel investing has become a national theme
VCs have grown t respect Angels, slowly
Angel bandwidth for coaching and mentoring is major value add for seed stage entrepreneurs
2006 nationwide Angel investments in 2006 topped $25.6 billion, matching VC investments in all rounds
VCs affiliate program is very important

Few words about the TCA:

TCA celebrates the 10th year
TCA is largest Angel organization in US
TCA has completed 41 deals in 2006, among them 20 new deals, 21 follow-ons
$11.4 millions from TCA, $96.4 millions from VCs
TCA organizes four groups (networks)
2005 was a break out time for TCA deals

The typical TCA Deal Flow Funnel:

Pre-screen
Network Screening Presentations -- 40% of opportunities
Due Diligence, Valuation and Terms -- 10%
Network Dinner Presentations -- 4%
Fund -- 2%

Typical TCA Investment Criteria:

Technology is a core
Located in Southern California (within driving range)
Addressing a compelling business need
Protect-able IP or barrier to competition
Validation from existing or potential customers or users
Market size enabling more 10x return within 5 years
Coachable and talented management team
Ability to attract future funding
More than just technology

Thesis from the event:

There are several Angels groups in the Southern California. They are often interconnected. In example, one of the speakers, Mr. Al Schnaeider -- one of the founders of LA Angels and Pasadena Angels networks, was one of the founder of Pasadena's one.
Angels don't like to do follow-ons, but TCA hit a lot of them last year.
Angels have a lot of VCs affiliates and sponsors -- can help you to get to the right firm and organization.
The recent TCA investments was made to Make It Work, Mindbody, Coda, etc.
VCs don't have as much time for you as Angels do.
Angel expect to do a lot of mentoring, because can really help, but not only write a check.
VCs can write a bigger checks and it's harder to reach them.
Most early stage companies fail because they make a failure mistake and they are very limited in possibilities.
TCA view of the entertainment industry -- they neither stay or go with entertainment industry. They work closely with the merger of Internet and real life social networking and entertainment media. But they are not always about technology component. Content development is very important. Entertainment is a tough industry and built on a risk pyramid and very challenging.
Nowadays it's not about a building your website, but it's about marketing it.
Angels try to act similar to VCs (in matter of investment rounds, etc).
It's awfully easy to take money from Friends & Family, but it's important to put it in writing properly. Every transaction should be properly documented.
Angels expect at least 12-15 months period of time for each funding round.
Valuation is not an academic science. Valuation depends on development stage, nature of market, risk, time range of the projects, reasonable projection, etc. In common, the valuation is a very complex question.
Angels don't want to mess with out-of-country and different-culture problems, but sometimes they do.
Business investor slides are for Angels, business plan for entrepreneur. Investor slides is the methodology nowadays, it's 15-20 slides and that's all. Written document (business plan) is not that important. Business plans are yesterday. Key elements of business plan should be included into investor slides. Substance is more important than a form. Quality of the answers is more critical than a business plan. Put up a chart in presentation and provide a reason why and how to get enough ROI for Angels. They take a high risk and want to get high ROI. You should be realistic in your calculations hitting the high revenues.
The ideal situation if the Angels loose money, the founder should feel badly, too.
Angels expect to see confidence in your business.
The pre-screening could be a session, when you are not ready with the slides, but know the core thing, so Angels can advice you what are you missing, because they suppose to do mentoring.
TCA have a very deep relations with UCLA, Caltech, etc and they provide mentoring and coaching over there.
Management vs governance. Angels want to help on opening the path to customers and clients. They offer help to management, but try not to force it.
You've got to have some customers who are interested. Needs to be a high enough pain for the problem which you're solving and a potential customer needs to want to work with the startup. Only 2% of business are willing to work with the startups.

In total, it was a pretty interesting event, which helps to build a great networking.

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green on "Remarks and notes written down from Startup School 2007"

green — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:02:40 +0000

Afterpost for my own post -- here is Paul Buchheit's blog - where he is sharing his thoughts on what startup school is. ;-)

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green on "Remarks and notes written down from Startup School 2007"

green — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 21:17:58 +0000

Hi there,

As you could see, white shared his review of Startup School 2007, and added few photos, even if I am there too, and don't look too pretty :-) Although, it's nice to share this with people here, because experience for me was invaluable.
Just in case, I decided to put here my own short notes and remarks which I wrote down while listening for speakers. They include my own notes, but obviously, most of part of them is just record of what people were talking about. Frankly speaking, anyway, I am not sure it's possible to learn something from such notes. The best expeirence can be appreciated if you could be there. Nevertheless, enjoy ;-)

---
A lot of people. All seats are taken, and some people are on the floor. Macs definitely rule - 80% of people are with Macs. And bad thing we have is no free WiFi. :-(

It's just about to start - and first one is going to be Mark Macenka from Goodwin Procter LLP with "The Great Value of Avoided Mistakes". Right now we have short introduction by Jessica, and Mark comes on stage to speak on corporate law for startups.
Moments:
- Don't underestimate the competition - spend more time on study and market analysis.
- Be focused, stay focused.
- Really, don't try to calculate your future profit. Forget about money. The product and the problem. Run business.
- Build network, take part in network. Invaluable by all means.
- Entity - partnership/LLC/corporation (Sub S vs. Sub C). Some make harder to invest in you. LLC is more complex.
- Importance of proper documentation - who owns company, intellectual property, etc.
Big questions:
- Do you own it?
rights of former employers - nondisclosure, non-competition, non-solicitation agreements.
don't use you laptop for business, don't use it for work.
if you hire a consultant - and you didn't sign a paper - it's consultants code. his rights.
also don't forget about non-commercial research (sponsors of it, like universities)
third party claims of infringement (open source! - pay attention to third party libraries)
don't share secrets with people which you even trust (former employee) - only confidentiality agreement should be there.
- Founders issues: who owns what?
vesting
transfer restrictions (rights of first refusal, co-sale, ipo lockup)
rights of re-purchase
loans (rarely good idea - usually bad idea)
KISS (keep it simple)
Advices:
- Start organized and stay this way
- Interview lawyers, but talk to them. Ask advice, but from advisors who know what to do. Network!
- Someone in the company has to be compulsive (absolutely 100%)
Mark also shared his e-mail and said that questions are welcome. That's nice to hear!

Other speaker goes on stage. It's Paul Buchheit, creator of GMail. Starting with the formula:
limited life experiences + overgeneralization = advice. Kind of true.
List of advices follows shortly. I do uppercase, because it's how stress is being put.
QUIT YOUR JOB. Advice for you. You are in Startup School, so this applies to you.
YOU HAVEN'T FOUND IDEA, CO-FOUNDER? Just pick one.
And now SECRET TECHNIQUE TO SUCCESS. Redefine success. Sometimes it's not money, but knowledge.
STARTUP HAS A PRETTY ANSWER TO LEARN. You never know how it will fail.
Usually, they are GREAT PLACE TO LEARN. Things happen a lot faster.
HOW TO CREATE GREAT PRODUCT. Build fundamentally different. iPod, Google, GMail. Even if someone things they are not unique or new. But. iPod - no mp3 player, but "device which holds all music, fits in my pocket and easily syncs with computer".
How can you tell PRODUCT IS FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT? Just see how people use it.
Continue of advice - try adding the words THAT ACTUALLY WORKS. Take something, but make useful, "that actually works".
Please remember. BEING USELESS IN NEW WAY does not make you fundamentally different. Useless is useless.
Now - quick tips on scaling your web service.
- disks are not really random access. capacity increases, but seek time remains the same. if your design involves a lot seeking - think about sequential access.
- now about data: big data and small data. big data = photos, video, mp3. small = tags, names, meta data. big data --> disk, probably amazon s3. small data --> dram.
- db updates must avoid causing seeks. updates go to transaction log. all writes are sequential.
Questions?
What answered and noticed: Paul doesn't work at Google - quit last year, so like took his own advice. Build product for everyone sucks, and really hard. Let's build it at least to some people. GMail was trusted because of Google. But with startup - people probably couldn't trust that much. Try your strengths - which Google can be afraid of doing. Think YouTube and Google Video.
Overall - loved it. That was fast - but extensive and interesting. Funny and relaxed. All at the same time.

Show goes one, and we have Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine. Starting with showing March 21st, 2000 album of N'Sync "No Strings Attached". One million in first. Demand distributes - more people have choices, less share every choice gets.
What also noticed - Chris gives a bunch of names, like NYT, LAT, etc. - but between them he shows bloggers, or web site owners, who posts and has more links than dozen of high printed big scaled publishing magazines.
Reddit - two smart guys can develop it without crazy management, no spread sheets, lowering tools of production, using RoR, they keep the project and ideas in mind, developing application. Cost of production, cost of distribution and search costs are getting lower and lower. Projector breaks (crap!) - and Chris just continues without slides trying to cut things short however it takes like five or ten minutes only, and we are back again on the big screen.
Overall - it's pretty much interesting, but like a general lecture. I was not able to write down anything more, just was listening.

Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator is here, and really starts fast. He hates Powerpoint, but todays is with slides by Zenter.com which is about to be released soon. Nobody really failed with Y Combinator. Well, may be Kiko - web calendar which failed, but they have being sold on eBay for 250k, and paid off angels, and have year of salary left... starting new startup.
Paul wants to raise our self confidence. And he wants to be negative. He doesn't want to scream "you can do it".
Why don't more people do it?
1. Too young. (But who do you know? 18 is legally for corporation).
2. Too inexperienced. (Even if he insisted before to wait till 23, then wait for few years for experiences - now he doesn't agree). Kiko's started after college. And year later again.
3. Not determined enough.
4. Not smart enough. If you smart enough to worry about it - you are smart enough. Just forget about it. If you are not smart enough - write enterprise software. Because it's just sales.
5. Don't understand business. But it's hard in technology. Once you build something good, you can realize business part on fly. People buy startups for strategic values. Not for revenue.
6. No cofounder. It's a real problem. Investors prefer cofounders.
7. No idea. All investors say: it's not idea, but team. But really - there is always some practical problem. Look what's missing in your own life!!! Is it perfect? No. Find it. No matter how specific is it to you.
8. No room for more startups. A fallacy it is.
9. Family to support. If you have a family - Paul doesn't advise to start it. But it doesn't mean not to do it. It means Paul doesn't advise that. Too much of responsibility.
10. Independently wealthy. Enough money? Enough is enough. Really.
11. Don't fence me in.
12. Need for structure. Nice way of saying: (photo of russian army :-). Don't work for it. Don't start it. Because nobody tells what to do there.
13. Fear of uncertainty. I can fix it. No uncertainty. You are going to fail. Expect worse, hope for the best. At least it would be interesting.
14. Don't realize what you are avoiding. You want to know how much job suck? Ask friends. (photo of cubicle)
15. Parents want you to be a doctor. Treat as a feature request. Parents are too conservative.
16. A job is the default.
Awesome speech. It's like a friends talk, nothing even close to lecture or anything like that. Awesome.

Michael Mandel, Chief Economist, BusinessWeek. "I have no advice", "I am powerpointless" - this is how he starts his speech.
I'll be putting just his quotes:
- You are the reason US market is still competitive.
- Not worried about SS and Medicare (and bunch of others not worried).
- Worried about creativity growth. Need as much innovation as possible.
- We need more need.
- ..and political system - with politicians favoring innovations. They can make it important.
Also Michael shares his e-mail and welcomes all questions, promises to reply all of them. :-)
One nice question from auditory: H1b and local people. Answer: doesn't matter are they here, or in India. Really. Move up - don't necessary to become lawyer or IB (investment banker). Start a company. That is adding new information. And by definition these things are getting paid well. Do innovating, risk taking... that works.
Other question: why BusinessWeek has nothing on startups? Because it is in BusinessWeek's addition - SmallBiz.

Waiting for the next speaker, which suppose to be Max Levchin, founder of PayPal and Slides. He lives in San Francisco (what he shares with us and says that Paul forc.., well asked him to come. What he is going to share - is a talk about Product Management. Max started his new company - Slide, and he shares his e-mail.
85% startups fail first year. Why is that?
You will go through ideas. 6 different. And 6th will be good. But it can fail. Why? Most likely it's good. But UI is wrong.
If something not working - dig deeper. UI. Name. Something else.
Do out of body experience. Be able to observe user which you are going to target.
Block the thought "that's cool, that works, wow, ...". But measure stuff. Every banner. Every click. Everything. Every single thing you can. Build graph from logs. See what users ARE doing. This is what they want.
Colors - blue is better. A+ -- your product is within dead sins.
Don't just do very simple. Do few steps. Let user investigate. Continue. And then do the button. Because at least the person really is about to do something. Not just clicking because button is big.
Overall: Max was great. Young, impressive, very funny. Perfect and real entrepreneur! It's pretty understandable why he was and is successful.

Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi (founder and president of iLike and bunch of other companies before) are next speakers. They are brothers - twins, though, they are pretty different. Background: started with Microsoft and Oracle, then IE, then started LinkExchange, TellMe, then working to Microsoft and MSN, starting GarageBand, and now together started iLike.
- Can I easily explain the customer need in one or two sentences?
- Does the business scale? It's worth pointing out - can you double your revenue without doubling your staff and costs?
- Am I creating added value?
- Will the users naturally recruit new users?
- Will the value delivered to customers increase as the number of customers increase?
- Am I passionate about it?
DO: Listen to customers; Stack rank the top problems that are core to success; Make frugality and profitability part of your culture - avoid luxury and cut spending anywhere possible; Move quickly, make decisions fast - no 12 month development projects; Have a strong CEO; Focus; Hire great people;
DON'T: Be distracted by press; Take your company culture for granted; Be greedy in negotiations; Ignore you gut feel about employee or candidate; Do anything to get in market in time; Forget to have fun.
Pretty okay, but too serious and not too many of things which I didn't know.

Rahoul Seth, CFO of Adteractive talks on "Financing for Startups".
0 (seed)) Represent idea from the view of consumer (customer problem your are solving). Business plan - strategy, market requirements, cash requirement. Founders 1) Strong expression of interest. Beta product; Go to market plan; Initial team 2) Successful client deployments; Roadmap to growth and profits; Complete team; 3) Expansion of business.
[Debt] - Borrow money, pay interest, have to repay (private OR banks);
[Equity] - Sell a share of your company; Investor makes $ from liquidity (VCs);
Equity Financing
- common stock: founders (stock), employees (options);
- preferred stock: investors (stock and warrants), preferences over common at liquidity event; protective provisions (participation preferred, board representation, dividends, redemptions, anti-dilution).
Equity Dilution (not necessarily a bad thing). Value: $2M (owner 100%) ->seed-> Value $2.5M (owner 80%, seed 20%) ->biz growth-> Value $10M (seed 20%, owner 80%) ->team expansion-> ..
GOAL FOR OWNERS/FOUNDERS own 2-10% on liquidity.
Founders: purchase stock before investor money is received, cheap stock 0.001 per share
Investors pay FMV: angels - preferred/common, VCs preferred
Employees: FMV of common in early stage, ...
Acquisition: most likely outcome; frequently strategic partnership in place; deal structure: stock for stock; tax efficient (tax free exchanged), large potential upside with stock; stock for cash;
IPO - another financing - provides liquidity/currency; market conditions; sarbanes-oxley impact ($2.5-$3.5 annual cost); senior executives (high risk in today's legal environment, difficult to get liquid).
Available financing:
- fixed assets - hardware, software (capped)
- security deposits - letters of credit
- accounts receivable-factoring;
- working captial - usually available once profitable;
Other considerations:
- early stage must have VC/angel backing
- financial covenants (min cash balance, working capital, ...)

Mitch Kapor, president of Open Source Applications Foundation, previous founder of Lotus.
In two words - general history lecture. I am not found of such, and I need much more intensive amount of information now.

Greg McAdoo, partner from Sequoia Captial.
Sequoia Capital does seed (quite few), early, growth. IT Ecosystem - services, software, systems, semiconductors.
Tend to look for:
- Clarity
- Competition
- Solution
- Problem
- Founders
and all to Market.
Clarity - why bother? yourself (to believe), management (to focus), employees (to hire/motivate), VCs, customers, bankers, lessors, service providers.
Founders - define the problem & solution. Some guys started to solve their own problem!
In business plans - get out early and iterate. Demo, but start right away.
Very important - to know your competition. Be honest about it.
Understand the market - ecosystem, trends, dynamics, leverage, speed, distribution, customers.
With small company - cannot create big wave. But can be around.
You've got to size the market - TAM, SAM, SOM. Who will be your customer. Who will not be.
And know yourself - Function contributor; Interim executive; Go the distance; -- Need to explain whom will you see yourself.
YOUNG COMPANIES DON'T EXECUTE ENOUGH WELL. But as startup you don't need to compete feature by feature. But you need to find your customers. And satisfy their needs. Don't take some piece of market. Get your own.
Greg also shares his e-mails.
Short. But very informative. We had a huge line of people for questions.
I.e. good one about "money making strategies?": don't need really to be scare of this. Have a bunch of them, reasonable them. Not necessary to fit some proven and specific like advertising. Or other one "when and what to do before approaching VC capital?" Half of million views is nice to e-mail and let know. But probably you will not be able to get attention of VCs. But hit angels, they are looking for such opportunities.
Greg was impressive - he incredible well speaks on IT, business, and all things around. He know the field from the inside out.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. Starts with: "Be technical, be young".
But actually I didn't get anything more. History on startup? A little bit. Advices not to have family, etc.? May be. Suggestions to be technical only? Yup. Does it all help? Hardly. I really didn't get his speech, and I am not sure if I liked it.

Joel Lehrer, associate of Goodwin Procter.
"The Do's and Don'ts of Patents for Micro-Startups". 1998 - business methods are patentable. Tick starts from there and then grows.
- Something inventive (high bar) and useful (low bar)
- Have not been publicly disclosed for one year (low bar)
- You should be the inventor
- Will take a long time (~4 years) and can cost a lot of money (~15-20k)
- Does not guarantee that you can actually practice the invention.
Overall: lawyer talk. Interesting, but not understandable sometimes.

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