Jeff Clavier's Software Only

AlwaysOn Summit, BlogHer & IBD Network's Strategy Series on Enterprise 2.0

Busy week on the conference circuit (again). I am attending the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford which kicked-off last night. I will be moderating and judging a couple of sessions of the CEO showcase. You can watch the conference through the live webcast.

I really enjoyed attending the first BlogHer conference last year. Unfortunately, I have a conflict that prevents me from attending the full conference but I will swing by the Welcome reception on Friday to say hi to my blogher friends.

On Monday Aug 1st, I will moderate the second installment of the Enterprise 2.0 discussion organized by the IBDNetwork: Web 2.0 & the Enterprise - REVISITED. The session, for which you can register here, is hosted by Fenwick & West in Mountain View from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.

If you are attending any of these events, and want to meet, just come and say hi, or email me at jeff [dot] clavier [at] gmail [dot] com.

Tags: alwayson, blogher, ibdnetwork

Software Only is two years old

What a bizarre way of celebrating the two-year anniversary of this blog: my last post was eleven days ago, and I have not found the time since then to blog or comment on anything – I have been heads down on a couple of projects that I can’t talk about, met a few very interesting stealth companies and have held a number of private meetings. Not much material to blog unfortunately .

Anyway, looking back at the past two years, I have published close to 500 posts, had an average of 2 comments per posts, one trackback and interestingly – for each comment I get, I receive 2 or 3 private emails. It is not surprising since many of the things my readers discuss with me are the confidential kind. Ever since my FeedBurner feed sees all subscribers, the number of subscription has raised to more than 14,000, with Rojo being the most popular RSS reader for my feed – a very unusual case.

I decided a long time ago not to blog about my blogging, but I went through multiple phases, on both the read and the write side:

• Three to four years ago (when I was still a General Partner at a venture firm), I started following a few blogs as bookmarks I would visit every now and then, and then as RSS subscriptions (in Newzcrawler initially). It took me some time to comment.
• The first three months of the blog, following that initial post, were essentially an experiment: finding my style, themes, rhythm, length of posts, etc. What became clear after a while is that what seemed to “work” for my audience was a mix of financing tips and news, comments on the consumer Internet market – both trends, companies and M&As, and every now and then a bit of rants and thoughts. Also very popular are the reports of the numerous events and conferences I have been attending over the past couple of years.
• January 2005 is when I decided to seriously invest in blogging, both reading and writing. This coincided with the decision I made to focus the activities of my firm on investing and helping build early stage consumer Internet services. One of the key drivers of success of any investment firm is the depth, and of course quality, of its deal flow. This blog has been fantastic in that regard, enabling tens if not hundreds of interesting online and offline discussions – a handful leading to some of my 15 startup investments, or involvements, in the past couple of years.
• In 2005 and early 2006, I spent an average of two to three hours a day reading 200 to 300 feeds, commenting, and posting 5 to 7 times a week. I was hooked on Memeorandum (now TechMeme), and really tracked what happened through the blogs. During that phase, I would almost make a point to scan through all my feeds multiple times a day, going through all unread posts as much I could. And I would have difficulties to write short posts – less than 200 to 300 words.
• Then a couple of months ago, around April/May, I decided to be much more selective on my feed reading, switched aggregators to support that, and started spending less than one hour per day reading blogs – using TechMeme and Wikio (I am an investor) to track developing news and conversations, and switched from MyYahoo to Netvibes (I am an advisor) after 7 years to track the blogs that matter to me. At the eBay developer conference, Anil Dash – who had impromptuously joined  our panel – made the comment that he had almost quit reading feeds because “he did not want to spend all this time unbolding headlines”. And I realized I was getting to the same position, as a result of having way too much to read and way too little time.

What’s next for Software Only, and its French little sibling – Sans Accent ? A few more posts before hitting a well deserved break during which I will most likely go quiet. And when I return, more of the same content, with maybe less posts written at 4am . I also hope to overcome that tendency of mine of not posting short summaries or comments when I only have a few minutes – because I never ever have time to come back to these ideas and express them more fully. Sort of a “Blogge Diem” notion.

And of course, I am – as always – interested in your feedback on what works on this blog, what doesn’t, and what else you would like to hear about.

MySpace now top US Internet property in front of Yahoo (well, not exactly)

Reuters just relayed that, according to Internet tracking firm Hitwise, MySpace has surpassed Yahoo as the number one Internet property in the US. The piece does not indicate which metric is being used (unique visitors, number of visits, number of page views, etc) but it might be visits. Hopefully Hitwise will has released that analysis on their (very informative) blog: MySpace Moves Into #1 Position for all Internet Sites. The chart below shows the growth of MySpace’s market share against Google. It would have been nice to have Yahoo’s  plotted as well.

A few interesting data points:

• MySpace accounted for 4.45 percent of all U.S. Internet visits for the week ending July 8, pushing it past Yahoo Mail for the first time and outpacing the home pages for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft's MSN Hotmail.
• To put MySpace's growth in perspective, if we look back to July 2004 myspace.com represented only .1% of all Internet visits. This time last year myspace.com represented 1.9% of all Internet visits. With 4.45% of all U.S. Internet visits, myspace.com has achieved a 4300% increase in visits over two years and 132% increase in visits since the same time last year.
• MySpace captured nearly 80 percent of visits to online social networking sites, up from 76 percent in April. A distant second was FaceBook at 7.6 percent.
• Of the top 20 search terms driving traffic to Internet sites – over the past 4 weeks, 5 were related to MySpace (myspace, myspace.com, www.myspace.com, my space, myspace layouts) representing in aggregate 1.85% of all searches (and that’s just looking at these five keywords).

This makes NewsCorp's $580M buy of Intermix Media increasingly look like a bargain – especially as FIM improves the monetization of that massive audience and traffic.

Just so happens that Fred Wilson also featured the Comscore Mediametrix June numbers regarding top social networking sites. Per the aforementioned statistics, MySpace dwarfs other networks both in terms of actual audience and growth.

Update: I am late (very) late at publishing this, but Yahoo got very angry at the allegation made by Hitwise, and Tim Smith from Outcast PR reached out to bloggers with the following statement:

The report that Hitwise released today with the headline “MySpace Moves Into #1 Position for all Internet Sites” is misleading. The Yahoo! network is made up of many domains and it is not accurate to compare MySpace.com to just Yahoo!’s mail.yahoo.com domain. When taking into account all of Yahoo!’s domains together as an entire network, Yahoo! clearly remains the number one property in terms of audience share, duration share, page view share and days visited per month.

In the U.S. alone, Yahoo! attracts 129 million unique visitors per month, which represents 74 percent of the online population; in comparison, MySpace reaches only 30 percent of the online population with an audience of 52 million unique visitors. In addition, Yahoo! has the largest share of online time spent than any other property: Yahoo! accounts for 13 percent of users’ online time, while MySpace has only 3.2 percent share in users’ online time.

Yahoo! maintains its leadership position as the world’s most trafficked Internet destination online, with a community of more than 500 million unique monthly visitors from around the globe.

(These statistics are according to comScore Media Metrix, June 2006)

I thought I would ask my friend LeeAnn Prescott from Hitwise what they thought of the reaction, and Hitwise's public statement was:

Hitwise ranks over 500,000 websites on a daily basis, including individual sites as well as the domains and sub-domains of larger websites. The press release issued yesterday included the top-10 domains and at no time did we represent all MySpace properties compared to all Yahoo! properties. The table included in the press release listed the rank order of the individual domains and sub-domains as reported from our data.

Net net: Hitwise seems to have compared apples and oranges when publishing their report, and we (I) have not investigated quite enough before relaying the information.

Tags: myspace

Tags: myspace

MashupCamp II: Startup Financing - Tips, Tricks and Tales

I have led a session on or around that topic at BarCamp, TagCamp and the first MashupCamp – and was hesitating as to whether I should suggest it again. And then Rick Segal, Brad Feld and I did something slightly different at Gnomedex during which we (softly) critiqued host Chris Pirillo’s pitch on TagJag. The feedback on the session was really positive, just because it gave many people their first glimpse at how investors, Angels or VCs, look at investment opportunities – and how they should be presented.

I am therefore planning to lead that discussion again at MashupCamp II, inviting fellow investors (I have spotted Ken Gullicksen and Peter Rip on the list) to join me in answering the questions that MashupCamp attendees might have on the vast topic of Startup Financing. And it will be an unsession, i.e we’ll probe people joining us on their areas of interest, and will build the content accordingly.

I am not sure yet whether this will happen on Wednesday or Thursday morning. I will update this post when the time is set.

Hope to see you there if you are a MashupCamp-er. Feel free to leave comments on this post, or send me an email to jeff [dot] clavier [at] gmail [dot] com, if you want to suggest questions/topics.

I am also looking forward to the session led by Mashery's CEO Oren Michels (my latest investment).

Tags: mashupcamp

Congratulazioni Italy! And thanks for the dream France...

Penalty kicks are so random that it is a real  bummer to lose in that session after 120 minutes of a great game. But Italy prevailed, and so big congratulations to them. Both team played well and put their heart in that final match.

I am sad that Zidane ended his career on this vicious foul, and being kicked out. That is so not reflective of his talent and his career. And thanks to the French team for allowing us to live that 1998 dream again.

Back to your regular programming. Next post: the Startup Financing session of Mashup Camp 2.

Tags: lesbleus, worldcup, france+italy

Google celebrating the Worldcup final as well

  Google Worldcup logos 
  Originally uploaded by jeffclavier.

Google has kept with its tradition of customizing logos according to events: this morning I noticed this "Soccer Player" logo on Google.fr, and Google.it.

You'll notice that they even used the respective colors of the French and Italian teams on the player's jersey.

Tags:  lesbleus, worldcup, google, france+italy

VC Experts on the different types of angel investors

VC Experts produces a weekly email newsletter (no RSS feed :-) that often contains interesting tidbits of information on the Private Equity and  Venture Capital world. This week’s contains a piece that attempts to frame the different types of angel investors, suggesting an interesting classification. In a second part, the authors are trying to rationalize angel investing as alternative an asset class that potentially produces better returns than other instruments through a comparison of DCFs and IRRs.

I will say this: I don’t see angel investing as an financial instrument part of a diversified portfolio strategy. Either you have a passion to support entrepreneurs and help build companies – with a high kill rate if you invest very early – and you have enough dealflow to pick the right opportunities. Or you might want to find a safer asset class that does not involve putting your capital at risk of total obliteration. My 2 cents.

Coming back to the classification, the first part of the piece is worth the read, and I am reproducing a lot of it verbatim:

• Serial angels are perhaps the most productive angel type to the sense that these angels often add significant value to the companies in which they invest. A serial angel has done it before - he or she has put money on the table for an investment in an early-stage opportunity, cashed out (or "harvested," as they say) the investment, and then put the profits into the next opportunity.
  A subset of serial angels (also known as celebrity angels) consists of former entrepreneurs - people like Netscape's Jim Clark and Microsoft's Paul Allen. Although their fortunes take them way beyond typical angels, entrepreneurs who have built major companies and sold them usually retain their appetite for the game.

• Tire kickers are the opposite of serial agents. They lack a genuine commitment to angel investing - at least at present - but they're using the process as a means of educating themselves.

• Trailblazer angels are experienced investors, typically partners in investment banks and venture capital firms. Although their firms may not trouble themselves with any deal worth less than $50 million (the breakpoint for the VCs these days is a round of more than $8 million, which means a premoney valuation between $12 and $20 million), the individual partners, usually with the blessing of their employers, are often interested in incubating deals that show exceptional promise, with an eye on keeping a link to the company until it reaches adolescence and becomes a desirable client for the angels' host organization.
  Some venture capital firms and investment banks have rules against this practice because conflicts of interest can get tricky. For example, the VC firm and individual partner may invest in the same enterprise but a different price levels. However, many banks and firms encourage angel investing as a way to keep the pipeline flowing.
  These angels are often the most desirable because of the so-called chaperone rule, which states that the odds of a startup company succeeding are significantly enhanced when the company has a chaperone from the get-go, an experienced guide on the trip from the embryo to the IPO.

• Retired angels (the "Godfathers") are a common phenomenon. A number of business executive have been able to generate enough personal capital to enable them to quit their jobs and "retire." As a group, they are vigorous, in full possession of their faculties, sometimes young (in their late 40s or early 50s), and perfectly capable of keeping up in the so-called rat race.
  Often restless and looking for something to do - charitable and other pro bono activities soak up only a portion of their energy - many naturally turn to angel investing, but with a distinct point of view. They aren't looking to become passive investors; they're looking t add their skills and experience to the companies in which they invest, often serving on their boards and, in most cases, at least as advisors.

• Angel syndicates are groups who episodically invest together, joining their capital for more influence in more material deals. The best-known syndicate, the Band of Angels in Palo Alto, California, has 120 members, averages $600,000 per investment, and has invested close to $50 million total. Syndicates such as the Band of Angels have helped legitimize this particular form of collective investing. […]

Based on these definitions, I guess that I am between the Serial and the Trailblazer.

Another interesting data point can be found later in the piece:

Angels are significantly more entrepreneurial than venture capitalists, with 75 percent to 83 percent having operational start-up experience, compared with only about a third of venture capitalists. One study found that the average number of entrepreneurial investments made by business angels during the last five years was 2.45, while two West Coast studies claim that angels typically make two or three investments every three years.

Around 75 percent of angels claim that their principal source of wealth is their own past business, while the remaining 25 percent earned it from quoted investments. The size of angel investments ranges as follows: 20 percent of less than $25,000; 40 percent of $25,000 to $99,000; 25 percent of $100,000 to $250,000; and 15 percent of more than $250,000.

Image credit: Corante

Tags: angelinvesting, businessangels, angelinvestors

Typepad gets a few useful feature additions

Typepad New Features
Originally uploaded by jeffclavier.

Six Apart just announced a few new additions to TypePad that are worth noting:

• The most important one - by far - was the ability to link your TypePad feeds to your FeedBurner managed feed, which I blogged about upon release. For the first time, bloggers know exactly how many subscribers they have across their numerous feed incarnations – and that is important to their ego .
• I like the ability to feature a post temporarily. This one (related to the World Cup) will be up until Sunday. And then I stop blogging about sports - I swear. It would however be great to somehow mark the post as “Featured” since the current implementation does not make it explicit.
• Finally, the ability to edit multiple posts in one go, like closing comments or trackbacks, is pretty useful.

Next requirement: getting some of the Vox editing features in Typepad, like the picture insert widget, would be great.

Any other favorite feature request of yours ?

See you on Sunday Italy!

France-Portugal: Zizou did not miss the 1-0 penalty
Originally uploaded by jeffclavier.

Update: Congratulazioni Italy for your victory!

Phew, Portugal played very well today, and soccer Gods were with France.

Anyway: WE ARE PLAYING THE FINAL ON SUNDAY.

Need to play Italy like we did Brazil otherwise “les Bleus” are going to have their ass handed to them.

Also: Thanks to all my friends from Silicon Valley who are texting or emailing to congratulate me. Had nothing to do with besides the spiritual support!

Back to work now.

Tags: lesbleus, worldcup, france+portugal, france+italy

The Seattle Museum of Flight is amazing

 
The SR-71 BlackBird
Originally uploaded by jeffclavier.

One of the treats of Gnomedex 6 was a visit and a cocktail party organized at the Seattle Museum of Flight. The huge exhinbit features a stunning display of airplanes from different periods - including one of the Concorde previously flown by British Airways and an old Air Force One. My favorite, and the subject of this picture: the Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird". You can see more pictures in this set, or better in the set shot by the amazing Scott Beale.

If you are visiting Seattle (or Redmond :-), and have a few hours to spare, do visit it - it is really worth it.