Thoughts

Labels: Business 2.0, Dave, Magazine

DAD has now invested in 11 start-ups, not all of them are Spanish. As a matter of fact, 2 of the most promissing ones are based in the US. There are nevertheless, exciting opportunities in the Spanish Internet.

A few of the early 2000 entrepreneurs have been able to exit their original companies and are now again at it. They are young, very able and understand what makes Internet tic. It provides us with a very good background to back very exciting companies at a very early stage of development.

With the notable exeption of AMAZON, commerce on the net is, mostly, handled by your normal trader. The physical brands have learned to handle the new channel and they control their trade also in Internet.

Yes, I know, there is the digital formats like music and/or video where i-Tunes has re-invented the way music -paid for music that is- is distributed. But I am thinking of traditional goods like a suit. Why is not there yet a network to put together designers, manufacturers, users and distributors to create an environment where, for instance, a Brazilian designer has a new idea about how a suit must fit you, an Italian image consultant sees it and recommends it to an American customer and a Chinese tailor produces it to Fedex it to the customer, at about the same price as a standard suit in Macy´s.

We have yet to explore the possibilities of this type of new digital marketplaces.

We have been using a corporate Wiki for over a year now. It is a very good tool that all DAD (my Spanish incubator) investors appreciate and use to follow on new developments in the company. Recently, we created a second Wiki to provide an exchange Forum to all CEO´s of the 11 companies we have invested in. The result has been very slow to come.


CEO´s of Internet ventures are well known workalholics and a Wiki is not very attractive when you wish to promote dialogue. One of them has suggested we use Google Groups instead. The early results look very promissing. All CEO´s have already registered and the way the groups are handled allow to distribute content to all as continous stream of information, promoting their participation and, at least until you use 100 MB, they are free.

Worth a try.

Let´s face it. We all have very few moments of focused attention. Does your mind walk/flies away while your boss is past his 30th powepoint slide? The problem is that we still have the same minds as a hundred years ago and, the environment has grown with information noice at a pace we cannot cope with.

Is therefore the "Attention" our most valuable asset? How do we gain attention from friends or partners, privately or in business? Does the use of Visual Graphics help? Both Dave Gray and me believe they do. There are still very few companies out there that understand how Visual thinking can change the way they communicate with their employees and those with their customers.

We need to promote a Visual Thinking revolution that created companies with visual thinkers in their communication departments and teach employees to use visual graphics to gain customer´s attention, retain it and promote action.

This will also affect the way eBay, for instance, will deal with its "power sellers" or Amazon with its associated shops. The problem is, at present, too many general purpose social networks and very few "very focus" ones.

Red Herring informs us that the last Quarter has been a very interesting for IPO´s. They have rised 4,3 billon $ and this represents a 212% increase over the same period a year ago.

Does it represents a new flow of tecnology companies? It does not, in my opinion. While there is an increasing feeling that money is more interested in tech deals, the valuations are still well below expectations of 2000 and the demand for -short term- viability has increased.

It is a bit different in the US but, in Europe, the VC´s are still reluctant to pay top dollars for unproved business models.

I believe that the Telcos of this world should start worring...again. The purchase of Grand Central by Google can only mean that they are serious about convergence. With Google´s reach and Grand Central business model one thing is for sure.

Telcos are going to have a heavyweight contender for their prime customers.

Labels: Google, Grand Central, TalkPlus, Voice over IP

Pierre is a leader. He was the CEO of Kelkoo and the force behind an organization that Yahoo, after it bought the company, used to manage their business in Europe.

He was up to now co-CEO of Netvibes. The leading company in the space of getting your access page to the Internet organized in a very flexible manner using AJAX and very advanced modules that compite now with the versions provided by Google and Yahoo.

It is not good news for Netvibes. Without Pierre and lacking a clear business model it will be difficult to go forward.

In the new Internet, investors are not as pacient as they were before and seek results within a couple of years at the latest.

I left Portland on Saturday. Last Friday I was in San Jose with Dani Essindi, the CEO of TRIPJANE, the company that we have invested in recently. We also had a meeting with Alex Vieux, a good friend and the CEO of Red Herring. His publication is growing very rapidly and the ETRE events continue to have top visitors and contributors. This year it will be in Budapest.

From Portland I travelled to Chicago and then London. With stops and waiting times, over 20 hours trip. It is still complex to visit the Valley from Madrid.

Labels: Alex Vieux, Dani Essindi, ETRE, Red Herring, TripJane