Rafe’s coverage of the Churchill Club Top Tech Trends is worth sharing.
What are your thoughts on the 12 trends highlighted below?
Silicon Valley VCs don’t want Obama’s money, think Google is passe
by Rafe Needleman (via cnet)
I always enjoy wild hand-wavey prognostications about the future, so I was pleased to attend the 11th annual Churchill Club Top Tech Trends event last night, moderated by my former co-workers from Red Herring, Tony Perkins (now running Always On) and Jason Pontin (publisher of MIT Technology Review). Of the 12 trends, two really made me take notice. Most of the rest, which you can see at the end of this story, were pretty standard projections from existing market circumstances.
Trend prognosticators, left to right: Tony Perkins, Vinod Khosla, Steve Jurvetson, Ann Winblad, Ram Shriram, Joe Schoendorf, Jason Pontin.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET)
Interesting trend #1: Centralized search will fall
Venture capital whiz-kid Steve Jurvetson gave an impassioned pitch for this trend, which he called, “The triumph of the distributed Web.” He said the aggregate power of distributed human activity will trump centralized control. His main point was that Google, and other search engines that analyze the Web and links, are much less useful than a (theoretical) search engine that knows not what people have linked to (as Google does), but rather what pages are open on people’s browsers at the moment that people are searching. “All the problems of search would be solved if search relevance was ranked by what browsers were displaying,” he said.
Jurvetson believes that the future is “federated search,” in which the Web’s users don’t just execute search queries, they participate in building the index by the very act of searching, immediately and directly.
What I find most interesting about this concept is that we can see it already happening, although via a different technological vector. Twitter Search is real-time search. It tells you what people are saying right now, and on popular topics, it gives you far more current information than Google. I think Twitter Search also shows us that Jurvetson’s vision of search, while compelling, is incomplete. To get the real-time wisdom of the crowds for the purpose of search, you have to know not just what Web pages people are displaying, but exactly what is on those pages, and you probably also want to know what’s showing up on users’ computers in apps other than the Web browser.
I am not sure the Web’s users will want to participate in the creation of this search engine, nor am I convinced that there’s a lot of value in the concept for obscure or “long tail” search queries. But the idea is interesting, and I certainly agree that the value of real-time searching, as well as social-network-aware searching, will increase dramatically and quickly.
Interesting trend #2: Washington D.C. will prove to be a poor VC
Moderator Jason Pontin, a self-described liberal who “finds our president as dreamy as the next man,” broke party rank and echoed a popular sentiment in the room of wealthy (and traditionally mostly Republican) venture capitalists, to say that the Obama administration’s plan to invest in new technologies is doomed to fail. While acknowledging that the administration’s heart is in the right place, he pointed out that traditionally, direct investment in technology by governments doesn’t work out well. He said the United State’s subsidies on ethanol, France’s decision to skip the Internet in favor of the state-sponsored Minitel, and Japan’s direct investment in supercomputers as it tried to spend its way out of a recession were examples of poor investments. “Government is a particularly poor judge of new technology,” he said.
Other panelists agreed, including the strongly Republican co-moderator Tony Perkins. Panelist Joe Schoendorf of Accel said, “The VC model works. Tech doesn’t need more capital.” (Of course, nobody wants the government moving into their turf; Accel is a venture firm.)
While I agree that best role of government, when it comes to new technology, is to encourage ends and not directly fund means (you can encourage energy independence in general without paying for particular technologies), it’s not always the case that government can’t play well in this field. The CIA’s venture firm, In-Q-Tel, for example, actively fosters the growth of start-ups, and many of the technologies developed on those dollars have national security as well as economic benefits. In-Q-Tel portfolio company Ember, for example, has contributed to the development of the ZigBee wireless standard that will end up in the next generation of smart appliances.
Panelist Vinod Khosla’s earlier trend, “Maintech not Cleantech,” was in the same vein. Khosla doesn’t think government subsidies will drive down carbon emissions. (He also thinks that “fringe” environmentalists don’t make much of a dent. “Five percent of Californians will buy anything,” he said, referring to the Prius.) Khosla’s money is where his mouth is: His “renewable portfolio” has funded companies working on fuel technology, engines, building materials, and plastics. “Nobody wins betting against Vinod,” panelist Ram Shriram said.
All the trends
1. The millennials are here. Everything changes. The current generation of graduating college students won’t remember a life offline.
2. Advanced batteries will be most popular energy investment in ’09 and ’10 and will provide best returns in the medium term.
3. A deluge of unstructured data creates the next great information leaders. (“The dark matter of the enterprise is unstructured data,” said panelist Ann Winblad.)
4. Wireless broadband will be one of the only IT sectors to see increased funding this year and in the future.
5. Maintech, not Cleantech
6. Power and efficiency management services will see a flowering through investment and innovation.
7. The triumph of the distributed Web. (This is Interesting trend #1.)
8. Health care administration will be the fastest-growing sector. (The panelists were so bored by this trend they didn’t even discuss it.)
9. Consumption of digital goods on mobile devices is the growth story of the coming decade.
10. Electronic displays will prove the hottest investment in hardware this year and next.
11. Washington D.C. will prove to be a poor VC. (This is Interesting trend #2.)
12. The rumors of the demise of the reporter have been exaggerated.
The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) annual meeting kicks off today with a great mix of sessions and speakers. At a policy level, NVCA Chairman Dixon Doll is also announcing a four pillar plan to help increase liquidity via IPOs.
I’ve recently been coaching some entrepreneurs presenting at upcoming investor conferences. It’s something I’ve done for years and still enjoy. I remember the first investor pitches I gave and the first I heard, and can appreciate how “blind” many entrepreneurs are flying when doing their first investor presentation.
The combination of Google Chrome’s speed and a fatal Firefox bug has converted me to Chrome full-time. The biggest loss of such a switch is my treasure chest of great Firefox plugins.
javascript:var%20t=document.getElementsByTagName('a');for(i=0;i<t.length;i++){if((t[i].rel.toLowerCase()=='nofollow') | (t[i].rel.toLowerCase()=='external nofollow')){void(t[i].style.color='red');void(t[i].style.background='yellow');}}
Any of you that are friends via Facebook or Twitter may have seen that I started the year with my first skydive. It was a once in a lifetime experience I’d recommend for everyone.
I’m happy to say that my half-marathon went better than I expected (beat my goal by 5min) and it was sure nice sharing the experience with my wife, my girls, Ted and his better half Tara. As you’ll see in the video below I snagged from Ted, he also finished strong, completing his first marathon. Congrats buddy!
Congrats are in order this week for a couple visionaries, Sean Corcoran of Forrester Research and Ted Murphy of IZEA. Sean published a break-through research report on the value of sponsored conversations, continuing Forrester’s track record in leading-edge Interactive Marketing Research. The report, entitled “Add Sponsored Conversations to Your Toolbox: Why You Should Pay Bloggers to Talk About Your Brand” discussed pros and cons of sponsoring bloggers, and shared some key components of successful campaigns: 1) Disclosure, 2) Authenticity, 3) Relevance, & 4) Relationship.
A recent truemor about Google’s antitrust risk under the Obama administration raises what could become the most important technology topic of Obama’s administration. That may sound melodramatic, but as all citizens and businesses grow more dependent upon the internet so too does Google’s power grow to impact the lives and livelihoods of the world. It doesn’t hurt that Obama’s pick to head antitrust, Christine Varney, considers Microsoft “so last century” and Google a monopoly.
“With no notice, Google changed from cheerleader to tyrant when it realized we were a competitive threat,” said TradeComet founder and chief executive
“For example, Google raised my prices by 10,000 percent, which strangled our business, virtually overnight,” he said. “As a result of Google flexing its monopolistic muscle, SourceTool.com currently averages about one percent of the traffic it previously had and is no longer a competitively viable business.”
Google responded with a now-familiar claim:
“the advertising market in which Google operates is highly competitive, and advertisers have a huge range of choice”
Bob Rosner over at CNBC has suggested the following CEO Patriot Pledge:
In honor of FAQFriday, this post is about a bunch of questions our society wrestles with daily. I hope the example I share doesn’t trivialize the magnitude of the questions…although I usually try to answer questions on FAQFriday, I’m the one asking today — and I expect some answers!
Last weekend my family drove down to Tampa to see the Gasparilla Parade (there’s another next weekend). Having grown up in Tampa, attending the parade is a 30+ year tradition for me and we always have a great time. This year was a bit different, though. Both of my daughters had the opportunity to walk in the parade so my wife and I watched with our extended family. We had a blast, but without my daughters sitting with me I found myself paying closer attention to the capitalism vs. socialism struggle around parade seating.
You see, my family has always been the type to arrive early (10am) and create a great viewing area for the parade (3pm). Because we arrive early, we reserve parade-side seating in a chair-encircled area about 10 feet deep and 20 feet wide. We set out lawn chairs, blankets and coolers in anticipation of a full day of family, floats and fun — and beads!
If you’ve ever been to a parade as well attended as Gasparilla (half-a-million people), you may sense where this is headed…
Between 10am and 1pm, thousands of other parade goers arrive and follow the same tradition, with chairs, blankets, coolers, and family — creating a crowd of 50,000 about one-family deep along the entire route. I’ll call this group the “early-arrivers” class because they sacrificed their morning, arrived early and created a comfortable space for their families.
Then, between 1pm and the parade’s 3pm start, the other 450,000 people show up. I’ll call this group the “late-arrivers” class. The earliest of these are probably a “middle-class” of parade space who don’t get front-row seats, but still have decent space in between the early-arrivers and late-arrivers flowing in as the parade starts.
So what do you think happens?
First, the late-arrivers almost immediately start swallowing the middle-class because of their sheer numbers and because the middle-class didn’t arrive early enough to secure their space from plunder. That equalizes and aligns everyone off-street, envying the prime space held by the early-arrivers — even though the floats are large enough to be seen by all classes and there will be more parade beads thrown, to all classes, than anyone cares to keep. Then, for the rest of the parade, it’s open class warfare as the late-arriver masses slowly consume the prime viewing areas created by the early-arrivers.
It starts with the late-arrivers trotting out their saddest cases for “spreading the wealth” — their smallest kids. This is a very successful tactic, as most early-arrivers voluntarily reduce space for their own kids to pack the curb with the newcomers — even though it significantly alters the experience from a comfortable family gathering. Then, once their kids have space, the late-arriver adults either wedge themselves behind/beside their kids or they begin the drum-beat of “spreading the wealth” with others — full-scale class warfare is at hand. While some battle with words, many others physically start moving chairs, coolers, blankets to take more space. As some do it, it emboldens others until…eventually…the wealth has been spread to all. The parade ends with the late-arrivers having equal (sometimes better) space as the early-arrivers and the early-arrivers trying to find the lid to their cooler that was successively kicked behind the masses.
Although we had a great day watching the parade, catching beads and seeing our girls walk by in the parade (they actually missed us because they didn’t recognize our mixed group of family and late-arrivers), this social experiment was really intriguing to watch unfold. It crystallized, for me, a few observations and questions about society:
1) Why do the late-arrivers feel this is “OK” or appropriate behavior to teach their kids? What do kids from each class learn from it?
2) How would it all change if parade goers weren’t just splitting confined space, but early-arrivers actually “created” space by their arrival (more analogous to how entrepreneurs create jobs and wealth in society)? Would the late-arrivers feel any more or less entitled to equal space?
3) Does any of this feel different if we just change the labels from “early-arriver” to “rich” and “late-arriver” to “poor”?
4) How would it all change if there was a governing entity who announced that the early-arrivers were expected/required to share with the late-arrivers — the more you have, the more you have to share? Would it reduce the number of early-arrivers? Would it cause late-arrivers to be even more brazen in their takeover, because the “spread the wealth” mindset was sanctioned from above?
5) What would happen if everyone, early and late arrivers, voted just before the parade started on how to split the space and the majority ruled? Would such a vote alter people’s behavior in future years?
6) There will always be more late-arrivers than early-arrivers, it’s the nature of people and a bell-curve of personalities.
7) Is this one-day experiment an accelerated view of what brings down societies over hundreds or thousands of years? Is “parade day” coming for the world, with its own distribution of “early-arrivers” and “late-arrivers”?
I had the opportunity to once again attend the Foley Leadership Series sponsored by the Foley Lardner Law Firm meeting held a few weeks back at the CityArts Factory on South Orange Ave. in downtown Orlando. This facility is a way cool place to visit as it’s an old theater (built in 1916) renovated and converted into a number of art galleries on the first floor—complete with a working glass arts studio—and a full size theater on the 2nd floor with adaptability to hold and cater to a fairly large conference group. For those of you into interesting art and architecture—it’s a “must see” and a good reason to visit downtown Orlando.
The conference gave a nice update on current cancer research being conducted at the Burnham Research Institute along with an update of the progress on opening the Lake Nona medical complex (read more in a nice article by Robyn Shelton).
For those of you not familiar with the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, it’s a world class research center originally based out of La Jolla, California with over 600 scientists on staff on the west coast.
They are currently located in a temporary 14,000 square foot space in southwest Orlando, but plan to open a 175,000 square foot facility in the Orlando Lake Nona medical research campus (located between the Orlando International Airport and the University of Central Florida in southeast Orlando).
The institute is still on track to complete “phase 1” and open this April. They currently have around 65 employees and will expand to over 300 employees as the institute goes forward. Although Burnham does research in various biomedical area, the focus here in Central Florida will be on diabetes and obesity—a field that is relatively understudied in the basic sciences. Florida will provide an excellent source of patients for clinical investigation as our State has a fairly high rate of both obesity and diabetes. Current research being done at other diabetes centers around Florida will also provide opportunities for collaboration.
Burnham is poised to become a serious player in the life sciences with easy access to just about any other biotech center in Florida along with being adjacent to a good airport.
It’s good to see the biomedical industry really taking shape here in Florida. California and Massachusetts—take note!
“We are delighted to have been selected as the winner of the SEBIO Early-Stage Shootout as the win validates that there is significant interest in Sharklet and a pressing need for an environmentally friendly and no-kill strategy for bacterial control in the healthcare market,” said Joe Bagan, Sharklet Technologies’ chief executive officer.
The BIO/Plan Competition (which is intended to identify and support newly created venture-fundable entities in the life sciences) had 10 finalists this year with 3 involving
This is no small deal as the winner was awarded unrestricted, non-dilutive venture funds (valued at $100,000 in cash and services) to launch the enterprise and implement their business plan.
Here are the 3 from
Cardiac BioSolutions: A device company developing revolutionary percutaneous heart valve (PHV) products, such as a more durable artificial aortic valve with the beneficial properties of a natural tissue valve, and a catheter delivery system which can be used with any percutaneous valve (Florida International University).
Ribotheron: A discovery stage company employing hammerhead ribozymes that block replication of herpes viruses I and II as a novel anti-HSV therapy, initially for corneal infections (
NeuroPoetix: A new drug development company that combines insights and advances in stem cell biology and knowledge about the central nervous system (CNS) to significantly progress the development of drugs to treat serious diseases of the brain (University of Florida).
The winner of the BIO/Plan competition was Cerene Biomedics, from
Cerene Biomedics: A device company developing an implantable device to prevent focal epileptic seizures by delivering targeted thermoelectric cooling to the neocortex, anticipated to be first line therapy for many patients suffering from uncontrolled seizures (
For the very early stage life science entrepreneurs, it’s time to start thinking ahead as the BIO/Plan application process usually begins in February of each year. Readers can check out further details at the SEBIO website.
Despite my time off the grid for the holidays it was hard to miss some of the buzz around the recently announced Florida Opportunity Fund. It didn’t hurt that I’ve been following the topic closely for the last year — you can imagine it’s close to my heart. The origin of the Florida Opportunity Fund stems from legislative action in 2007 creating roughly $30M of capital focused on in-state early-stage venture capital: 2008->Chapter%20288->Part%20X”>The Florida Capital Formation Act.
Almost all investment literature warns you that past performance is no guarantee of future results. That disclaimer usually prompts, for me, a juxtaposition with Einstein’s definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So, which is it?
Ok, enough already! Amidst all the economic “doom and gloom” from the daily news feeds—I actually do have something encouraging to share (well, at least for the moment until the Dow plunges another 10%).
Dan’s Note: Short answer, if you can avoid raising a VC round in 2009, do so. Good deals will get funded, but given the increased macroeconomic and financing risks, valuations will take a hit — particularly during the next 6 months of uncertainty. The added creative innovation to bootstrap your runway to 2010 will also pay long-term dividends for your business.
Upon opening my office snailmail today I was surprised to find a brochure publicizing a “Webcast Auction” liquidating AdobeAir® products. I didn’t remember MasterCool or ArchCircle apps based upon AdobeAIR. As I looked inside I was even more intrigued by the opportunity to bid on intellectual property including the AdobeAir® trademark.
I happened to be at Barnes & Noble a few weeks back savoring my favorite grande Starbucks (yes, “I have to have it”—being the self-admitted caffeine junkie that I am), when the October 27th edition of Forbes, caught my attention.
The cover article, “America’s 200 Best Small Public Companies” piqued my curiosity as to which companies made the list—and whether any of those selected were from the life science sector and just as important—were any from Florida?
In fact, there was one company from Florida that I recognized immediately (there may have been others, but unfortunately, they were not sorted by location) and it was even in the life science sector (what luck!).
Located in Gainesville, Exactech was ranked in the middle of the pack at # 105. The ranking was based on ROE (return on equity), sales growth and profit growth over the past 12 months and 5 years compared with industry peers. The company’s metrics are reasonable with a 5 year average ROE of 12% and an increase in sales growth of 15% (5 year average as well). Revenue in Q3 was up 27% compared to Q3 2007.
Exactech is an orthopedic company that develops, manufactures, markets, distributes and sells orthopaedic implant devices, related surgical instrumentation and biologic services to hospitals and physicians in the United States and internationally. One of the distinctive aspects of the company is their product line of engineered bone graft for reconstructive applications. Exactech is one of those unique companies that blends both biotech (use of biologics) with med device applications. This is turning out to be one of the fastest growing areas in the biomedical field (think also, coronary stents—where you have a mechanical device delivering a specific therapeutic in a targeted manner). The company was also recently ranked (by revenue) in Florida Trend at #112 in the Top 150 Florida Public Companies and at #21 in Florida’s Top High-tech Companies.
For the life science golfers out there, Peter Jacobsen (a 32-year veteran of the PGA Tour with seven wins and a five-year member of the Champions senior tour with two wins, both majors) visited the company in September to sign autographs and show off his new Optetrak knee replacement system made by Exactech. According to the October 2, 2008 Gainesville Sun , Jacobsen is ready to return to the tournament playing. Exactech seems to be showing up everywhere these days—and making a difference.
Investors, employees, partners…everybody enjoys doing business with an entrepreneur who has successfully built multiple companies. If that serial entrepreneur kicks off a charity contest involving a bathtub full of cereal, even better.
Checkout what Ted is up to now. He’s announced a contest to give away a bathtub of cereal (52 boxes) to one lucky participant and, if his post generates 500 comments, another 52 boxes of cereal to his local food bank. To enter, just blog, comment and tweet about the contest — easy. Like many of the post comments, I also plan to donate anything I win to the local food bank. That’s over 100 boxes of cereal for some hungry kids and families as we head into the holidays.
More details are included in this video…he even has a “making of” video over at his post.
So, check out Ted’s post, comment, blog about it and retweet it. Everybody loves a cereal entrepreneur…
I’ve said it many times before, but people make or break any company. My “foxhole” post highlighted that teams grow in importance during the tough times. However, team cohesion doesn’t just happen, it takes work.
Thanks for stopping by. In case we haven't met before, I'm Dan Rua, Managing Partner of Inflexion Partners, an early-stage venture capital fund based in Florida and focused on the Southeast US. Prior to Inflexion I was a partner with Draper Atlantic, DFJ's first east coast fund based in Northern Virginia. Prior to that I co-founded an email software company and was an engineer with IBM's Networking Software Labs in RTP, NC.
This blog is for sharing stories and discussing entrepreneurs, venture capital, technology, and Florida -- particularly when I can provide perspective unique from the typical Boston (B) or Silicon Valley (S) view. Inflexion is my third fund and all my funds have focused on building world-changing companies in regions outside the BS...
All of the thoughts on this site are mine. Inflexion Partners, its affiliated funds, its portfolio companies and its personnel are not affiliated with this blog in any way. That said, you should understand that I have vested interests in: CallMiner, Capitalism, Celsia, Databanq, Family, GAIN, Grooveshark, GTEC, Inflexion, IZEA, Liberty, NVCA, Persystent, RedPath, Technology, UF, UNC, Visible Assets & WOMMA -- in other words, I'm biased when discussing those topics.
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