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Picking Your VC Carefully, from an entreprenuer's point of view

an off-topic post on raising Venture Capital -

Jeff Nolan at SAP Ventures has put together a good post on picking your VC carefully which makes some good points on how entreprenuers should be careful in selecting who they get their money from, and who from the particular VC fund they allow to be on their board.

When we were funding FeedBurner with a VC round (after really funding the first round ourselves) we had a couple different term sheets at different times in front of us - when something curious happened - both VC firms pulled a "bait and switch" as to who they wanted to be on our board. That is, we had gotten to know one partner well, and in the middle of discussing terms, both VC firms decided they needed to put in other partners for what are still unknown reasons (explanations were given, I'm not confident in the genuineness of those explanations).

That was okay, but at that point, I absolutely called up CEOs of the companies in which these candidates particpated on their boards and asked what they thought. In one case, the candidate got nothing but bad recommendations from multiple sources. In the other case, I called up a ex-CEO that had been unwillingly pushed out by his board (including this VC) but got glowing reviews of the VC partner.

Weighing all the terms, we had to back to one of the VCs and say "no thanks" - it was only one of the factors for turning down the deal, but we didn't need any dead weight on our board.

Needless to say, entreprenuers, you don't really want any investors on your board if you can help it. Investors will give you tons of reasons why it will benefit you, but please remember they are selling something here, and their number one obligation is to their LPs, not you. Try to get away with giving your investors "Board Observation Rights" - which allows them full access to the goings on, without a vote. You probably won't get that from VCs but it can definitely be done with "angel investors." There's no reason to give an angel investor a board seat, but everything is negotiable.

When we sold spyonit.com we were lucky enough to have no investors on our board, and it really made doing deals and selling the company a lot easier.

In this build-and-flip economy, you have to keep that in mind. Some large companies will try to push you around and demand warrants to do deals with you (and it can't always be avoided, and you have to weigh each situation individually) but again - every outside party who has their hooks in your company will just slow things down when it comes time to exit. It will slow down the due diligence process of the company that wants to acquire your team and/or technology, not to mention dilute your equity! For every legal document you have on file, you can tick off a day of some first or second year attorney's time to look for that one term in every standard NDA you signed that could cause a problem with the deal.

In general, take the cheapest money on the best terms.

This may seem obvious, but it's easy to get wowed by the big names and all the promises people will make you who are selling something to you. It's easy to forget VCs are salespeople too.

Like who you work with. It will make things a lot easier when things go south if you have good personal relationships with everyone involved, including your investors and board members - so do take the time to investigate references, perform your own due-diligence, and get to know them.

It will become important later, whether things go extremely right, or extremely wrong.

interpol antics

i don't know why this is cool, but i was one of the first to jump on the Interpol bandwagon, before anyone had heard of them and before 80's revival was all the rage. lucky me. Antics is the second full length album by Interpol, and so far so good on this one. the reverb on the vocals is turned down to 5 from a 9, and the guitar is a little crunchier and cleaner, which just proves the band doesn't have to hide behind a DOD processor to sound good. perhaps the novelty has worn off a little but Antics is pretty good, not great. it's definitely a listen in the background album for me, but the good news is, i've kept it there on repeat in the background for two days straight.

the heavenly states the heavenly states

i saw The Heavenly States open up for Sebadoh a the bottom of the hill about a month ago, and their live show got me hooked. you don't hear a violin (or viola?) used much as a lead instrument in rock, but these guys and gal amek it work. the album starts with a bang, but if some say it loses steam, i would understand that. a good indie find to add to your collection.

ProfiMail for Series 60 [via Russell Beattie Notebook]

an awesome Symbian Series 60 application.

not that russ needs any more link love, but i couldn't concur more with his post on ProfiMail for Series 60. the custom ui kicks ass and this definitely fills the need of the really lame Symbian Series 60 email client. yes, too bad T9 isn't supported (since they aren't using native widgets) but i really use my 7610 for reading email and not responding anyway. thanks for pointing this one out, russ.

while we're at it, i have been hooked on triz, a great freeware tetris clone for series 60. try it out.

seymore butts goes mobile [via avn]

razorfish mobile gets into Porn. are they related to razorfish? a spinoff, i hope. funny.

read all about it

p.s. is there really a porn star named seymore butts? c'mon, hasn't that name been taken>

give people a good cameraphone...

one of the most popular tags at flickr is 7610 which of course is the tag associated with the phone shown above, the Nokia 7610, which has a really good megapixel camera.

but it goes to show you, when you give people a decent camera on their phone, it's hard not to use it all the time.

(my photos tagged 7610)

no, i do not race motorcycles

every once in a while, someone googles me and comes up with this link. no, i've never raced motorcycles - i've never even ridden a motorcycle. i'm also not an enemy of scientology.

i have no idea if i am related or not to Polish presidential candidate Andrej Olechowski.

i am related to Scott Olechowski at PostX formerly of nCognito, but i have never met him.

the power of a search engine is amazing, i would have never heard of any of these people, or tried to be connected with any of these people with people looking me up...even with a pretty unique name.

i can't imagine being John Roberts.

richard cheese lounge against the machine

don't laugh, but this is one album i just cant get enough of. yup Richard Cheese, Lounge Against The Machine is one of those novelty albums that is just done so well you forget it's a joke. All covers of mainstream hits such as "Nookie" by Limp Bizkit,
Guerilla Radio (Rage Against the Machine), and Closer (Nine Inch Nails) done in lounge jazz fashon, but done really, really well. you can't stop laughing, but you can't stop diggin' the tunes either. the perfect transitional album for the post-grunge parent to start easing into their older years....

chevelle this type of thinking (could do us in)

ah Chevelle, a good 'ol chicago band once known for being a bad tool copy band, came into their own, so to speak, with the strip-club anthem "the red", so i have been told.

despite titles like "get some" i don't know if any of the tunes on This Type of Thinking will be joining that revered line-up composed mostly of ac/dc and def leppard tunes, but it's a solid effort nonetheless that's worth a listen for fans.

the current single is Vitamin R which isn't that "singly" - it's gives you a good characterization of the rest of the album's crunchy guitars, syncopated rhythms, and angry yet melodic vocals that characterizes this genre of rock.

MyJeeves...pretty cool.

I've been trying out MyJeeves the latest take on persistent search by AskJeeves. I can see some potential here, but they'll need to make a firefox plug-in for the search bar for me to use it....unless....

the word on the street is that they are also trying to bring Bloglines in house, which seems to make a lot of sense when you look at where they are going with MyJeeves.

yes, the two of these things together would be nice.

web 2.0 coming up

the web 2.0 conference is a week from now - and i'm looking forward to it. if any readers are there and want to get together - drop me a line. also, make sure and drop in on RSS: Syndication Strategies and Business Models presented by one of my co-founders, Dick Costolo. Dick's a great speaker and I'm sure this session will be entertaining and informative.

J2ME and "missing" PUT/DELETE HTTP verbs

i've finally bumped up against this famed omission in the J2ME libraries, which as you might guess, quickly rears its ugly head when doing anything with the Atom API. the MIDP1 and MIDP2 libraries only support GET, POST, and HEAD with HTTP, which is totally idiotic, especially when you look at the reference implementation source:

from com.sun.midp.io.j2me.http.Protocol

    /** 

     * Set the request method of the current connection.

     *

     * @param method request method is GET, HEAD or POST

     * @exception IOException is thrown if the connection is already open

     * @see #getRequestMethod

     */

    public void setRequestMethod(String method) throws IOException {


        if (state == CONNECT_STATE)

            throw new IOException("connection already open");

        

        if (!method.equals(HEAD) && 

            !method.equals(GET) && 

            !method.equals(POST)) {

            throw new IOException("unsupported method: " + method);

        }

        

        this.method = method;

    }

okay, great, so for no particular reason you just call it "unsupported" and then just set an instance variable which gets used

        /*

         * Note: the "ref" or fragment, is not sent to the server.

         */

        if (http_proxy == null) {

            reqLine = method + " " + filename

                + (url.query == null ? "" : "?" + url.query)

                + " " + HTTP_VERSION + "\r\n";

        } else {

            reqLine = method + " "  

                + protocol + "://" + hostAndPort

                + filename

                + (url.query == null ? "" : "?" + url.query)

                + " " + HTTP_VERSION + "\r\n";

        }

by just writing it out to the HTTP stream. i think if this allowed PUT it would just work....

well, okay, plenty of ways to work around this at lower levels or by delegation (subclassing would be great, but class bootstrapping isn't standard, especially in the JBlend VM that is used by the likes of crappy motorola phones and such...i'll see what i can do).

i also love how there is no Properties object defined in the MIDP APIs, but the first thing SUN does in there reference impl is create one...why not just include that too? jeesh.

ah, the nokia 6670, what the 6620 profile should be

the wonderful mobileburn site has some good pictures of the new nokia 6620, which is basically a repackaging of the 7610 for the business user. c'mon nokia, you gotta squeeze an EDGE radio into this profile, stat.

nokia's official announcement

Blackberry Java and other thoughts

thanks to everyone who has been beating the hell out of our RIM Blackberry Mobile Feed Reader - there is clearly demand for this application on this platform so stick with us and the official release will be worth the wait.

we released this basically to test on which networks the blackberry can access the network and where it cant - and the good news is most enterprises do have their gateways configured to allow access, and consumers who puchase directly from the carrier are in good shape as well. Verizon is the one exception, but we have a solution for that which will be available in the next build.

Most of the comments have been around the UI, which was a straight port from our MIDP1 version for mobile phones with a couple key tweaks for the blackerry.

Although MIDP runs on the blackberry, i don't think it's totally appropriate. blackberry users expect the user interface to act a certain way based on their experience with the other blackberry applets, and a lot of these things you just don't have control over on the blackberry MIDP1 platform.

With that in mind, we will look seriously at putting a native blackberry UI on the application, which should give you a lot more control over the menus and defaults and such.

this is an emerging trend anyway - your UI has to be custom for the device whether you are developing on BREW, J2ME, Symbian, etc. I was at a meeting at Verizon last week where they were looking at a bunch of application prototypes - and any application that looks remotely like a WAP stack met with high criticism. custom studio looking UIs - apparently, the people have spoken.

holy new media day

the star wars trilogy on DVD, a new chevelle album, a new green day album, and maybe even star wars battleground (the commercials got me). this is gonna cost me.

deep into BREW

sorry for the lack of quality posts and reviews these days - i've been bogged down deeply in the release of our CNET co-branded BREW Mobile News Reader powered by FeedBurner.

I've been involved before in launching a BREW app, but this is the first time I've been responsible for it end-to-end, and let me tell you, this is one cumbersome process...not only on the NSTL testing side of things, but in all the documentation that has to be generated to deploy on the individual carriers. you can see why there are so few BREW app companies, the barriers to entry are huge, but we are almost there, and you'll be able to enjoy the app and content provided by CNET (as well as your own RSS and Atom feeds) very very soon.

on another note, we're really busy here at FeedBurner readying our ability for you to advertise in your RSS feeds. If you, my readers have your own blogs that you would like to trial advertising in your RSS feed with, email me and i can put you on the list of the priveledged few who will get to trial this service over the next few weeks before the official launch.

P910 J2ME capabilities

i found in the developer doc what's improved on the J2ME side of things between the sony ericsson P900 and the P910:

The P910 Series offers the following upgrades on Java functionality compared to P900:

• All mandatory parts of the Joint Technology for Wireless Industry (JTWI) R1 specification ( JSR-185) supported


• API support added for Full Screen Canvas, vibrator and Backlight


• Access to IMEI number and software version

All exciting stuff. for more info on JSR-185, see Understanding JSR-185 by Jonathan Knudsen

vodafone's oem of the rim 7100v

[via digital-lifestyles.info]Vodafone UK will be launching a new OEM version of the Blackberry 7100v with their own trim and detailing. looks pretty sharp and will be available Oct 1.

data-only GSM carriers

Did you know there were data-only GSM carriers in the US? most people don't - but for applications where messaging or GPRS data is used for industrial applications, and voice plans are not needed - you can often do better by deploying with a data-only carrier.

one such carrier is telemetrix who provides the backbone for a few interesting industrial uses - one large fast food chain uses them to control the temperature and lighting in all their warehouses by SMS, for example. you can actually get a SIM from them that roams on T-Mobile US.

why don't the big 6 carriers offer data-only plans? i think the answer lies in how they are judged on the public markets, which is largely ARPU based. ARPU is much higher for voice than data, apparently, so they haven't been quick to offer it. i'm sure these deals have been done on the enterprise side of things, but i can guarantee you that is not a swift process you want to endeavor.

Access the SIM card from J2ME applications [via Michael Yuan]

A huge pet peeve of mine is the fact that J2ME apps are crippled compared to native programming counterparts. I think the whole J2ME sandbox is an outdated idea that should just go away. You should be able to do anything in J2ME that you can do with C++, period, full stop. if you can write malicious code in Java, you can write it in C. Maybe the answer is that devices should implement the Personal Profile - but they don't so it's a moot point. J2ME is optimized for games, and building any other app is possible but an uphill battle.

Given this is a standardization layer- and it will probably take another year before manufacturers support JSR -177 - but there are certainly J2ME applications that can use this functionality now.

link:
Access the SIM card from J2ME applications

Sony Ericsson P910i works with HandsFreeLink

because this is somewhat big news, i'm crossposting from my other weblog

Many readers have been writing to ask if the P910 would support the Handsfree Blutooth profile, and thus work with the Acura TL HandsFreeLink.

The answer is, it DOES support the Handsfree profile, and does work with the Acura TL, with a few caveats:

• after pairing, you have to turn bluetooth on the P910 on and off to get it to connect
• i had to manually connect to HFL as in the pictures above - it didn't seem to connect automatically when i got in the car
• when making a phone call, the P910 did automatically connect and prompted me to transfer to HFL as in the screenshot above
• the P910 DOES NOT send battery strength and signal strength to the instrument panel

i know the next question from many folks will be "Is Sony Ericsson going to provide an upgrade for my P900?" and my answer is "I have no idea, but they don't seem to look back, so I doubt it."

Other than that - a few notes on the phone - it's not terribly different from the P900. the only differences i see are

• a more complete Java MIDP 2.0 implementation


• some new icons in the default theme


• memory stick PRO - you cann now expand to 1GIG of memory


• oh, yeah, the keyboard. I mostly didn't know it was there. can you hold the phone by the keypad with two hands and type? not really. you can. it's sturday enough - but the keyboard is small. i was more successful one hand typing with my thumb like traditional texting. it was hard when i had to use the Shift key, which was often.

back from mac...for now

i've finally given in and bought another windows machine to travel with. those of you in the know know i've been using an OG PowerBook G4 for the last few years, but there's just too many mobile tools, emulators, etc that can't run on it, or don't run on it efficiently. MIDP 2.0 is a big one...yes, there's a few ports, etc, none of them get anywhere close to what you can do on the pc. and BREW, fagitabouttit.

so for now, i went out and bought a fujitsu lifebook P7010 which will hopefully save my ever aching back at 3.1 lbs.

i really wanted to get a footlong mac powerbook as my next machine, but alas it wasn't in the cards. someday...when i can get back to a pure management job.

P910 tomorrow

sony ericsson dev program just notified me i'll be getting a SE P910 tomorrow. stay tuned...

rim releases blackberry 7100 phone, yes a phone

research in motion has announced it's new 7100 series phone, yes phone, that will first be available on T-Mobile US. looks very cool, can't wait to see how that keyboard works out. there's still no better way to get mobile email than a blackberry.

get notified when T-Mobile has this phone available

What happens in that Moffat hangar...

i never really had any idea what they use those big hangars for at Moffat along 101 in silicon valley...i mean, they are zeppelin sized, but when was the last time you saw a zeppelin? i guess this is what happens. same thing as at fort mason...

Philly Considers Wireless Internet for All [via eweek]

Philly Considers Wireless Internet for All

i'd really like to see more municipalities viewing wi-fi as a public utility like this. i'm not sure what the carriers would think of this (although a subcontract bid would certainly be possible) but i suppose they could still offer premium services like VPN and such.