Testing waters in Europe and China

"For serial IT entrepreneur Sashi Reddi, India has always been the backend.

“My first company was a venture way back in 1994 when the Internet was just getting big. I started it with old friends from Wharton, where I did my PhD, and IIT-Delhi, from where I got my BTech,” says Mr Reddi who’s the founder, chairman and CEO of AppLabs, a start-up that made news when it received $17 million VC funding from Sequoia Capital India.

Mr Reddi’s earlier two companies were EZPower Systems, which was acquired by DocuCorp International and iCoop. Of course, the earlier ventures did not receive the kind of funding that AppLabs, an IT services company specialising in quality management, testing, and certification solutions, has got."

Facebook Summer: It's Show time

ZDNET: "This is the summer of Facebook. The social network went from relative obscurity outside of college campuses to the next big thing, with a multi-billion dollar valuation and more than double number of users.
Some of my fellow travelers are questioning the (personal) role of social networks or suffering Facebook fatigue.
Jason Calacanis characterizes Facebook as a gesture bank, channeling Steve Gillmor, in which a social network feeds the need for people to receive and grant attention :
Facebook is a multilevel marketing platform where you agree to pay attention to people’s gestures in the hopes that those people will pay-attention to your gestures in the future. It’s a gesture bank."

Tiger Woods Golf Swing Analysis

Tech Trader Daily: Apple Still Expects To Sell 10 Million iPhones In Calendar 2008

"Posted by Eric Savitz
Apple (AAPL) CFO Peter Oppenheimer, speaking on the company’s post-earnings conference call this afternoon, said the company continues to expect to sell 10 million iPhones in calendar 2008.

Here are some other tidbits from the call.

Oppenheimer noted that FY Q3 operating margins of 19.2% were higher than expected, due in part to a favorable commodity cost environment.
Macs had their best quarter ever in units, by more than 150,000; Macs were 60% of revenue, with units up 33% growth year over year.
Notebooks were 64% of Mac sales in the quarter.
iPods were up 21% year over year in units.
Apple plans to launch iPhone sales in a few countries in Europe in the fourth calendar quarter, expanding into more countries into 2008.
Sales in Apple stores totalled $915 million, up 33% year-over-year; there are 185 stores; average stores in the quarter was 180, generated on average $5.1 million revenue per store, up from $4.7 million a year ago. "

MySpace to Generate $1B of Revenue in 2007 - Seeking Alpha

"Henry Blodget submits: In a lengthy piece on the trials and tribulations of UGO Networks, Forbes' Erika Brown drops in an interesting nugget: News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace is expected to do $1 billion in revenue this year.
Now, people have been sticking their fingers in the wind on MySpace revenue since the day Murdoch bought it, but Forbes has better insight than most. In December, Technology Editor Peter Kafka (now Managing Editor of Silicon Alley Insider) wrote a profile of Murdoch in which he put MySpace revenue at "$30 million a month", or a run-rate $360 million a year. Forbes's Brown presumably has similarly strong Fox relationships, and she's now pegging the 2007 number at $1 billion. Assuming solid month-to-month growth off the $30 million December number, the $1 billion isn't even a stretch."

Q2 venture financings reach $7.4 billion

"U.S. companies continued to attract significant venture capital investment in the second quarter, as venture financings reached $7.4 billion, a jump of 8 percent over the same period last year, according to the Quarterly Venture Capital Report released today by Ernst & Young LLP and Dow Jones VentureOne.
The quarterly deal count also rose 8 percent to reach 717 deals, the highest deal volume since 2001. "

Valleywag and DslReports.com: Ooma four times more expensive than alternative

"Valleywag notes that VoIP revolutionary Ashton Kutcher's Ooma device (touched on yesterday) looks strangely similar to a device already on the market that costs significantly less:
"Ooma's feature list -- 911 calls through regular phone lines, free calls to 'members' -- is so similar to PhoneGnome's that we can't help wondering if Ooma founder Andrew Frame, desperate to launch his long-delayed startup, didn't just crib Ooma's product plan from PhoneGnome. And jack up the price fourfold. Because everything costs more in Hollywood, of course."PhoneGnome costs just $99, and thus far has failed to revolutionize the telecom industry."

InformationWeek: Twitter Is The Future Of Presence And Collaboration

Stephen Wellman:
"I admit it, I've been spending too much time with Twitter. But as a result of my growing Twitter addiction, I have discovered all kinds of cool things about it.
When the buzz about Twitter first broke, I was skeptical. I thought it seemed like a lame compromise between IM and blogging. I had no interest in posting short entries about going to the restroom or buying mouthwash in Wal-Mart.
During the first few months this year I watched Twitter, largely from the sidelines. I noticed that Twitter evolved. It became something more than either blogging or IM. But I couldn't figure out what Twitter was turning into.
After playing with Twitter (and cool Twitter tools like TwitterVision), I realized that Twitter is really the future of presence, collaboration, and possibly even location."

Wired Blogs: Mike Moritz: The S&P 500 Beats 80% of Venture Funds

"Sequoia Capital's Mike Moritz, the uber-VC who earned his reputation backing Google, Yahoo, eBay, Cisco and Apple, was pessimistic about the future of the venture capital industry at a Fortune-sponsored conference Friday. "People would be far better off investing in an index fund," rather than putting their money into a VC fund, Moritz claimed, estimating that fewer than 20% of VC funds outperform the S&P 500.

That goes a long way towards explaining the low regard that many entrepreneurs have for VCs (privately, of course). The venture business has been having a hard time in the tech sector lately, forced to compete with angel investors for smaller deals ($1 or $2 million instead of $10 or $20 million) and making up the difference by funding dozens of early-stage startups where before they'd invest in just a handful of later-stage companies."

Sources: Apple set to grow iPhone family pre-holidays

AppleInsider:

"Apple Inc. this fall plans to accelerate its assault on the 1 billion unit worldwide cell phone market with a second incarnation of its iPhone handset that will likely appeal to an even larger audience, AppleInsider has learned.

The move is believed to be part of a broader, all-out blitz on the consumer electronics sector this holiday shopping season, in which a staggering array of gadgets from the Cupertino-based firm is expected to leave would-be rivals confused and unable to react.

Extremely reputable sources have told AppleInsider in recent weeks that the company's iPhone roadmap for the 2007 calendar year includes not one but two distinct models, the second of which is set to turn up just months after the first."

Private Equity HUB - Netezza Prices High

"Netezza Corp., a Framingham, Mass.-based provider of enterprise-class data warehouse appliances, raised $108 million from its IPO. The company priced 9 million common shares at $12 per share ($9-$11 range), which gives it an initial market cap of around $668 million. It will trade on the NYSE Arca under ticker symbol NTZA, while Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley served as co-lead underwriters. Netezza had raised approximately $83 million in VC funding since its 2000 inception, from firms like Matrix Partners (20.75% pre-IPO stake), Charles River Ventures (19.59%), Battery Ventures (16.82%), Sequoia Capital (15.2%), Meritech Capital Partners (6.8%) and Orange Ventures. www.netezza.com "

Google Earnings Up 28% but Miss Expectations - New York Times

"Sometimes what is good enough for Google is not good enough for Wall Street."

ZdNet: Jerry Yang's First 100 Days at club YHOO

"Larry Dignan (ZDNet) submits: Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang made his earnings conference call debut on Tuesday and said the next “100 days or so” will be spent mapping out the strategic plan for the company. Yahoo, which reported its second quarter results and cut projections for the second half of 2007 (statement), will unveil a new strategic plan in the fall, said Yang.
“The next 100 days or so will be spent mapping out Yahoo’s strategic plan,” said Yang. “We’re well underway in our review of the business. We will move fast in a focused way.”
Yang, who noted that he took the CEO post “not out of obligation but desire,” said he will be taking a “fresh look” at Yahoo’s assets and deemphasizing parts that are not performing well or don’t fit in. Yang acknowledged that he didn’t have all the answers Tuesday, but said he intends to get them. He said:
I believe Yahoo is too often defined by the competitive landscape. Yahoo is a deep and active market place. The way we will strengthen Yahoo is to strengthen the market place. There’s a gap of where Yahoo is and where Yahoo needs to be."

» Sun sets on SunRocket | IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband | ZDNet.com

"SunRocket, an innovative VoIP service that claimed 200,000 subscribers, announced today that it is closing for good this evening.
As of now, the site’s up but as if that tells us something. Could stay up for months as a frozen moment in time.
Yet meanwhile:
Om notes that this morning, Sonya Jefferson, then Director of Routing and Carrier Services for SunRocket sent out this memo:
Unfortunately this email contains very bad news. We have just been informed that any and all last ditch efforts to keep operations running as well as a potential sale of the company have not gone through and that SunRocket will cease operations at COB today. As such, today is my last day and everyone else you may have worked with at SunRocket. … Regarding outstanding and future invoices: Sherwood Partners out of Palo Alto will be handling the close down of all invoices, current and outstanding."

Merc: Venture capital is on the upswing, the deals are bigger and less risky, and the chances of going public are better. What's not to like?

"Venture capital is on the upswing, the deals are bigger and less risky, and the chances of going public are better. What's not to like?

For VC firms, it seems, not much. Sure, scarred investors from earlier in the decade always worry about a bubble, but there's little sign of that so far, according to most observers.

Yet the implications for valley entrepreneurs are profound. Increasingly, venture capitalists are pouring their money into late-stage companies. That could force some early -stage entrepreneurs to look harder for cash and perhaps bootstrap their companies if the trend continues, despite the $82 billion VCs have raised since 2004.

"The venture world is in some ways transforming itself," said Mike Cordano, co-founder and chief executive of the San Mateo start-up Fabrik, which received a substantial $37 million round of funding in April. "In some sense, it's going to change the profile of the entrepreneur."

BladeWatch: DataSynapse noted as a vendor for real-time infrastructure

"DataSynapse, the global provider of application virtualization software, announced today that Gartner listed it as a sample vendor for the real-time infrastructure (RTI) market in its recent “Hype Cycle for IT Operations Management, 2007” report. The report aims to separate “hype” from reality in the IT operations management space, which is crowded with vendors, solutions and processes that not only help enterprises achieve business results by delivering and managing mission-critical infrastructure and services, but also enable innovation. Gartner profiled RTI as an emerging technology that can significantly contribute to the success of IT operations management with its benefit rating of “transformational” and identified DataSynapse as a sample vendor."

The Daily Tube - Best New Videos of the Day

A tip from Carson Krislov, Freud Communications, Inc.:

"Michael Caruso announces the launch of The Daily Tube, a service that searches out the best new videos on the Internet and blasts them to subscribers in a free customized e-mail.

"I’m a big fan of YouTube, Grouper, Funny Or Die and other video websites,” says Caruso. “But who has time to wade through thousands of videos to find the hidden gems? If I have five or ten minutes, I want to see the best new stuff right away. I talked to friends and realized there were a lot of people who had the same frustration."


The idea of The Daily Tube is simple: no more haystacks, only needles. The site and e-mail service are designed for busy people who want to be the first among their friends and co-workers to know about a new must-see video—who want to be the one forwarding a hot new video to friends, not the other way around.

As the world of Internet video and video sites continues to explode, the need for a smart video recommendation service becomes greater.

The Daily Tube employs an Internet-savvy team of 25 websurfers, editors and writers to watch thousands of new videos every day, handpicking the ones that are the funniest, smartest, most surprising and most creative. These selections are then posted on thedailytube.com by subject category--Humor, Celebrities, Music, Sports, Late Nite comedy (Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Letterman, Olberman, etc.), Web Stars (web celebs and viral videos) and Campaign '08 (politics). "

Aruba plans late 11n AP launch - CBRonline.com

"WLAN infrastructure vendor Aruba Networks says it doesn't feel the need to wait for 100% ratification of the putative 802.11n standard for higher-performance wireless networking, hoping it to be 'near enough' that an AP launch should be possible in the November timeframe."

Red Herring: Facebook Gold Rush AND Facebook pimping out CrudWare

"Sensing opportunity on the social media frontier, Bay Partners is planning to formally launch a program Wednesday to fund software coders who can push out applications that ride on the back of the newly open Facebook platform.

The venture capital firm, based in Menlo Park, California, has cobbled together a business plan that calls for “tens” of investments in the $25,000 to $250,000 range—far lower than the typical early-stage venture round of several million dollars and up.

Though other venture programs like HitForge, backed by VC and entrepreneur Navil Ravikant, have moved toward a studio model by making small investments to jumpstart Web 2.0 companies, Bay Partner’s “AppFactory” is unusual in that it focuses explicitly on the Facebook platform. Facebook in May opened up its interface to third-party developers to write mini-applications, such as slideshows and video players, for users who want to deck out their profiles."

______________________________________________
Pimpware article:



Facebook has become the latest website to be found pushing services that deliver highly deceptive security warnings designed to trick users into buying software.

Purveyors of this scam are making use of Facebook Flyers, small ads that get posted on Facebook pages associated with a specific region. At 5,000 impressions for just $10, it's a bargain.

RED HERRING | He’s Richer Than Me

"In a public relations and lobbying offensive, venture capitalists are seeking to separate themselves from high-living leveraged buyout moguls and skirt Capitol Hill tax reformers who are seeking to raise tax rates on private equity fees.



The battle lines were drawn June 22 when Democratic Representatives Sander Levin, Charles Rangel, and Barney Frank introduced H.R. 2834, a bill that would more than double the tax on carried interest, the slice of profits general managers take in venture capital and other private equity deals."

WildBlueSkies » What Sequoia Cap wants from you

"Sequoia Capital has put up details which lays down what they look for, both in a company and in a business plan. An excellent resource for first-time entrepreneurs. Read it here."

Wired Blogs: Unlocked iphone

"Currently, Fred Wilson’s blog is the number one result on Google for the term “unlocked iPhone,” so the VC could be in for a windfall of ad dollars if those promising unlocked iPhones get the devices ramped up soon."


Click here for information from "DVD Jon" on how to unlock the iphone. Good luck.

Wired: Extreme Sailing: The Biggest Boat in the World

"Tom Perkins had done it all. He'd made a fortune, conquered Silicon Valley, even been Danielle Steel's fifth husband for a time. His venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, was an early backer of Genentech, Netscape, and Google. But when he turned 70 a few years ago, Perkins decided to do something even grander and a bit crazier: He would build the biggest, riskiest, fastest, most technologically advanced, single-hulled sailing mega yacht in the world. The 289-foot Maltese Falcon, launched in spring 2006, is that engineering dream come to life."

Happy Fourth of July: Thank YOU for reading!

iSuppli: Apple To Generate Margin Of 55% On Each 8GB

"Apple Inc. (AAPL) is expected to generate a margin of more than 55% on each 8-gigabyte iPhone it sells, a report from U.S. market research firm iSuppli Corp. said Tuesday.

The El Segundo, Calif.-based research firm said the 8-gigabyte phone launched in the U.S. late last month and retailing for US$599, has a total hardware bill- of-materials and manufacturing cost of $265.83.

The researcher said Infineon Technologies AG (IFX) of Germany is expected to benefit from increased sales of the iPhone. Infineon supplies the digital baseband, radio-frequency transceiver and power-management device for the new phone, which enable much of the core communications capability. iSuppli said Infineon's chip content accounts for $15.25 worth of the iphone's bill-of materials, representing 6.1% of the 8-gigabyte version of the product's total cost."



But the researcher said the biggest winner among the component suppliers for the iPhone is South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. (005930.SE)."

PC World's Techlog 49 Things I Now Know About the iPhone

"You can sit through multiple Steve Jobs keynotes about the iPhone. You can view all the demos on Apple’s site, and watch an infinite number of commercials. You can even read detailed reviews (like PC World’s). But in the end, the best way to understand the iPhone is to spend time with one. Which is what I’ve spent much of my time this weekend doing. And as I have, I’ve been taking notes. Lots and lots of them…
This is by no means an exhaustive list of every iPhone pro and con. I’ve tried to steer clear of simply repeating widely-reported factors like its lack of 3G data and limited compatibility with standard headphones. And my comments skew heavily to Safari, since that’s the app I’ve spent most of my time in."

Google Ventures

"Google Gadget Ventures is a new Google pilot program dedicated to helping developers create richer, more useful Google Gadgets. Inspired by the success of iGoogle, which has been driven by the creation by 3rd-party developers of a broad range of gadgets, Gadget Ventures provides two types of funding:

Grants of $5,000 to those who’ve built gadgets we’d like to see developed further. You’re eligible to apply for a grant if you’ve developed a gadget that’s in our Google gadgets directory and gets at least 250,000 weekly page views. To apply, you must submit a one-page proposal detailing how you’d use the grant to improve your gadget.
Seed investments of $100,000 to developers who’d like to build a business around the Google gadgets platform. Only Google Gadget Venture grant recipients are eligible for this type of funding. Submitting a business plan detailing how you plan to build a viable business around the gadgets platform is a required part of the seed investment application process. "

Other