April 2009

Spring Break

Apr 23, 2009 in Personal

I am taking one. Normal programming will resume at some point in the future. Near or distant remains the unknown.

Quote of the Week

Apr 17, 2009 in Quotes

"...spend the majority of your time getting to know your early users."

Sean Ellis

In this insightful article entitled "Indifference is Your Real Competitor".

I just stumbled upon the Startup Marketing Blog this week. It so loaded with excellent content that it immediately made its way to my blog roll sidebar. Sean coined a term that captures something that I have always believed and practiced, "metrics driven customer development." Marketing is much more about math and metrics than creativity. I am a big believer in metrics driven marketing. Basically applying measurement to every facet of marketing in the same way you would sales or operations.

But more to the point of the quote, I can not tell you how many times I have asked an entrepreneur what a customer or potential customer thinks about their product offering only to receive back a blank stare.

Launch something, get somebody to use it, and engage them to improve until you have something that a lot of people want.

How To Pitch

Apr 14, 2009 in Entrepreneurship, Presentations, Venture Capital

I bet a spend somewhere between 5 to 10% of my time listening to entrepreneurs give pitches, helping entrepreneurs create pitches, or providing suggestions for improvements to pitches. More often then not I point entrepreneurs to online resources such as the ATDC presentation template or a presentation that I gave at CapVenure on "Communicating With Investors" that made its way onto the Peachseedz Library. And of course Guy's infamous 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint is a mainstay as well. But yesterday Paul Freet pointed to this fantastic presentation by Canaan Partners called the "Entrepreneur Pitch Workbook" that instantly became a favorite.

The structure of the pitch section on slides 5 through 11 is a most excellent explanation of the key elements needed in any pitch. Very specifically follow slide 7. By the time you are finished with the intro slide everyone in the room should know the basic idea and the value proposition of what your company is doing. And at the end, the presentation has a nice summary slide of the structure before closing with a billboard slide with contact information. If you are pitching you want such a billboard up on the screen during Q&A.

An entrepreneur that follows Guy's simpe rules coupled with the objectives based structure laid out by Canaan will be well prepared for a successful pitch.

People's Choice Contest Voting Open

Apr 13, 2009 in Startups

The GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition has opened it's People’s Choice Contest. The top two companies receiving the most votes will become “wild card” presenters in the semi finals of the competition. Last year one of the company's that emerged from the People's Choice Contest Made it to the finals so it is a great way for a company to advance.

After viewing the presentations you can vote for your favorite. I went through them all. BeMyAd's catchy jingle got my vote.

Voting is open until April 29.

Quote of the Week

Apr 10, 2009 in Quotes

"Technology is changing the whole fabric of social interaction. We're absorbing our machines in a symbiotic way, evolving to become one with our own devices, and that's going to continue indefinitely."

James Cameron

In the current issue of WIRED where he discusses the Terminator series and his predictions of machines in our future. T4 is coming out in May. I am eager to see Christian Bale play the role of John Conner.

Map Reduce for the People

Apr 09, 2009 in Computing, Internet

This is a guest post by Russell Jurney, a technologist and serial entrepreneur. His new startup, Cloud Stenography, will launch later this year. The article is an extension of a simple question on Twitter asking the importance of Map Reduce. Some subjects take much more than 140 characters.

The Technical Situation in Brief

The advent of the personal computer and the Visicalc spreadsheet were the foundation for a revolution in computing, business and life whereby normal people could carry out sophisticated accounting, analysis and forecasting to inform their decisions to arrive at more positive outcomes. As Moore’s law has progressed and processors have become faster, and computers inter-networked, large volumes of highly granular data have been collected. Analysis of terabyte datasets on the same level as a spreadsheet has been limited by the disparity of acceleration between processor speed and computer I/O (input/output) operations. Intel has produced ever faster processor clock speeds without accompanying disk, RAM or bus speeds. Put simply: We have cheap and numerous computing resources and abundant data, but bringing those resources to bear on that data to generate real value from it has proven exceedingly difficult.

The widespread use of relational databases to access data in pre-defined static relationships has also limited our ability to discover and infer new and unique relationships among data. Dynamic analysis of large volumes of data in relational databases requires exhaustive pre-calculation of indexes and summaries of data for each relationship, and scaling relational databases to handle large datasets is a complex, painful and expensive process. As a result business intelligence systems relying on relational databases are prohibitively complex and expensive. Other methods of raw parallel computation, such as MPI, were exceedingly difficult. Such ‘smart kid only’ technologies have significant barriers of entry for mere mortals. In fact, multi-threaded, shared-memory computation in languages like C++ are considered some of the most difficult, arcane areas of computer science, leading to entire languages aimed at making concurrency easier.

MapReduce As the Way Forward

In order to extract value from large piles of data, we must escape the bounds of IO by going parallel and having many processors work on the data at once, without grinding our development to a halt dealing with complex algorithms and frameworks. MapReduce and platforms that implement it satisfy this requirement for a surprisingly broad set of problems. MapReduce is a simple way to process data in parallel among many commodity machines. You are already familiar with the power of MapReduce in your daily use of it - it is the pattern pioneered by Google to bring you the effective search on which we now all depend.

MapReduce is the design pattern that in combination with recent developments in cloud computing and cheap, plentiful broadband will bring us spreadsheet-style analysis of vast amounts of data ill suited to traditional database management systems in both scale and structure. MapReduce offers a cost-effective way for any business to harness massive amounts of computational power in the cloud for short periods of time to perform complex computations on large volumes of data that would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming on an individual machine, or that would require the construction of a data center to handle.

The Business Impact

What does this mean for your business? Knowledge of MapReduce has spread beyond Google, and it is now used by an increasing number of companies to extract value from web-scale data. Facebook, Yahoo, Cloudera and many others have embraced MapReduce in the form of Apache Hadoop, the platform around which most open discussion of MapReduce has occurred. As a result, a new generation of startups is rising that will take advantage of MapReduce to bring the same power that google pioneered on search to bear on a variety of datasets. New opportunities exist by ‘thinking big’ and extracting value from ever-increasing streams and volumes of data.

Example 1: Proving Global Warming

What does this really mean? It means that developers will have a clear way to reduce vast datasets to scales they can work with to extract information to inform your decisions. In this example from Cloudera, Hadoop and Pig are used to query a 138GB log of weather history for the last 100 years from the National Climatic Data Center to reduce that vast data to a scale the developer is comfortable working with. The result is this chart:

As a pile of data, the NCDC log informs nothing. When queried via map/reduce using Hadoop and Pig, we arrive at an informative chart that shows us an important trend. Would that chart inform a discussion about global warming? If you could get such clear visualizations about every minutiae of your business critical to your success, would it inform your decisions? Can you log and mine more data to streamline your operations?

Example 2: A Supercomputer for Every Biologist

When Amazon S3, EC2 and MapReduce via Hadoop are applied to the RMAP algorithm of genetic analysis, thanks to the work of one grad student, the result is a point-click supercomputer for every biologist that wants one in the form of Cloudburst for Amazon Elastic Map Reduce. Now any biologist that wants a supercomputer for this kind of genetic analysis can have one by the hour, and its as easy as point-click. More map/reduce genetic analysis algorithms are sure to follow. That's revolutionary.

Conclusion

We are constrained in our strategies by what we imagine possible. MapReduce and cloud computing open broad possibilities and business opportunities by placing a usable supercomputer by the hour in the hands of every startup that wants one. There is no problem which you lack the processing power to solve, its just a question of whether the hourly cost is profitable. That's a profound change from being bound to one machine. As a result of this shift, smaller companies can attack 'bigger' problems without a large up-front investment in hardware or software infrastructure.

A new renaissance in computing is coming that will be comparable to the business adoption of the personal computer and VisiCalc, and MapReduce will drive it.

Putting A Face On Your Brand

Apr 08, 2009 in Marketing

I am spending the week on spring break with my family being analog. FoG is being populated for the most part by a series of guest posts. The first is from Ron Huey of Huey Partners, a full-service advertising agency.

Entrepreneurs are inventors by nature. They, most often, have a clear, concise vision of the product or service they want to create. Where that vision can become a bit fuzzy is in defining the overall brand their product or service must live under.

Your brand is a living, breathing entity with its own personality and style. That brand persona is the critical entry point to your product or service. In fact, potential customers will form ideas and perceptions about your brand before they ever experience your product. I like to use the analogy of meeting someone at a cocktail party. Is your brand someone people are attracted to? Do they enjoy conversing with you? Do they walk away feeling that you’re smart, engaging, considerate and empathetic? Do they become an advocate, or better yet, an evangelist for your brand?

Conversely, we’ve all met the guy at the cocktail party who, while smart, can’t seem to talk about anyone but himself and his accomplishments. And while he may have very valuable information to impart, we’re not really in the mood to listen and walk away seeing him as an off-putting, self-centered, know-it-all. No sale there.

My firm was fortunate to work with MindSpring when they were moving from a regional ISP to a national provider. At the time, their advertising consisted of a cartoonish drawing of a man whose spring-loaded head was popping off his shoulders. It was an arresting visual, but the wackiness and crude, haphazard approach of the ad seemed to undermine the credibility and trust MindSpring hoped to instill.

We needed to create a brand persona for MindSpring that captured their quirky, non-corporate culture, but also positioned them as credible, reliable and sympathetic to the plight and needs of the internet user. The brand needed to come off as a friend who was there to help.

Another key to creating a successful brand image for MindSpring was the concept of simplicity. Simplicity can’t be stressed enough and its value has been covered in this blog in relation to the brand identity and brand promise. We used MindSpring’s iconic blue and yellow colors, but kept our thoughts and graphics incredibly simple.

Regardless of how amazing your product or service may be, remember that your brand image is the crucial entry point. If prospects are intrigued and attracted to your brand, you have a much greater chance of inducing trial and ultimately selling them on your product or service.

Start Strong

Apr 06, 2009 in ATDC

Spring is in the air and that means that it is once again time for the ATDC Entrepreneurs Showcase. It takes place on April 29th at 2:00pm at The Biltmore. The theme of this years Showcase is Start Strong.

Since it was first announced on Peachseedz last Wednesday over 200 people have registered to attend. When it is all said and done there will be over 500 entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders from across the Southeast attending this premier Atlanta event.

At the Showcase you will be able to see demos from ATDC and VentureLab companies, hear updates on the programming ATDC and VentureLab offer, and network with Georgia's technology leaders. All of this brought to you by a great group of sponsors including DLA Piper, Noro-Moseley Partners, Silicon Valley Bank, Bennett Thrasher, Habif, Arogeti & Wynne, Imlay Investments, Microsoft BizSpark, Morris, Manning, & Martin, RBC Bank, TechCFO, StartupLounge, TechDrawl, and TechLinks (hey anybody want to sponsor FoG?)

There is no cost to attend the Entrepreneurs Showcase, so register.

After the Entrepreneurs Showcase wraps up Georgia Tech cranks up its Digital Media Demo Day starting at 4:00 pm.

Quote of the Week

Apr 03, 2009 in Entrepreneurship, Startups, Venture Capital

"As soon as it's written, every business plan is wrong. Good entrepreneurs recognize this, and tend to build agile teams that can quickly respond to early market information in order to identify a real business model and minimize risk."

Josh Koppleman

In a great Yogi Berra wisdom for startups article. There are really two main points to the article. One, entrepreneurs need to "pivot" or change their initial strategy and vision. Two, you need to know what inning the game you are playing is in so that you can act accordingly.

And don't forget, venture capitalists do not read business plans.

On Alltop

Apr 01, 2009 in Internet

FoG has made its way onto Alltop's Top Startup News (with its humorous "See also Venture Capital and Egos" sub heading). I am quite honored. It's kinda cool though I don't think I qualify as one of the cool kids.

Alltop is an “online magazine rack” of popular topics. Alltop updates the stories every hour and users pick topics by searching, news category, or name. A few weeks ago Alltop launched their MyAlltop feature, which allows users to create a custom Alltop page that contains only the subscriptions to the websites and blogs they want.

Here's a nice little walk through.

With the new customization features I can see how the less technically inclined (the majority of folks who use the Internet BTW) might find Alltop very useful. At a higher level Alltop's apporach is part of the answer to the information overload problem. After all, info overload is merely bad design, which is exactly the issue for the way most RSS readers operate. Alltop says it is aggregation without aggravation. Perhaps.

You can find my Alltop page at my.alltop.com/lance. You might want to go grab yours.

April 2009

On The Side