Category Archives: Technology

Tech Education in NYC

If you have been following the activity in NYC, you have a sense of the grassroots movement of fixing the problem of the lack of tech talent in the city but also globally.

The NYC community continues to impress me on how it has taken challenges head on and does its best to address them.  Similar to other active startup communities, there is a lack of quality engineering talent in NYC.

The following NYC based organizations are DOING something to fix this problem, many of them are focused globally, not just NYC.

General Assembly - a global network of campuses for technology, business and design.

Girls Who Code - a new organization working to educate, inspire and equip 13- to 17-year-old girls with the skills and resources to pursue opportunities in technology and engineering.

Codecademy - the easiest way to learn to code. It’s interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends.

Flatiron School - school for passionate people who want to love what they do.  Students learn how to build awesome things with code.

SkillShare - a community marketplace for classes

Turing Fellows - matches top computer science students with outstanding summer internships at leading NYC Startups

hackNY - aims to federate the next generation of hackers for the New York innovation economy

Cornell / Technion Campus - educate the next generation of leaders who will advance technology, generate cutting-edge research that addresses critical issues

Academy For Software Education - a high school that provides innovative software engineering and computer science skills and knowledge

Enstitute – 2 year apprenticeship program for people who want to get into the startup sector

Startup Institue – an eight week program to train and place professionals in the startup sector

I genuinely believe that within the next five years, NYC can leapfrog both the Bay Area and Boston when it comes to having the best software engineers.

Instagram vs Indeed

I had a brief twitter chat with two active people in the NYC tech ecosystem, but wanted to further clarify my perspective in a blog post.

As a prelude, this post is not a reflection as to which company is better or which specific community is better but an example of how two separate exits can have a distinct impact on their respective tech communities.

Both Instagram and Indeed (rumored to be $750M+) were amazing exits for the Founders and early investors. That being said, the Indeed exit is much better for a tech ecosystem than the Instagram exit. Here are a few reasons why.

  1. Instagram had a total of 13 employees at the time of the exit. Per LinkedIn, Indeed has 553 employees. Indeed has created a lot more jobs.
  2. Indeed will continue to operate, grow their business and hire more people. Instagram was essentially a defensive acquisition by Facebook. I’m sure the Instagram team will continue to improve the product but I wonder how much larger the team is going to be and if they are going to be run somewhat independent than other teams at Facebook.
  3. Instagram was a no-revenue based startup with the focus on growing users and figuring out a monetization later. Indeed was built with the mind set of generating revenue in their early days and according to their investor, USV, Indeed didn’t need VC funding to grow their business. The Instagram exit propagates the idea that you can just build an application without a revenue model and become successful. Many entrepreneurs are trying to replicate an Instagram but sadly 99% will fail.
  4. Per Crunchbase, Instagram raised $57.5M, Indeed raised $5M. The Indeed acquisition provides a great example of how you can scale your business without raising a lot of money. The mindset of minimizing how much you raise is positive. VC funding is critical for many startups but raising too much money can have very negative consequences and I don’t want to see other entrepreneurs have the idea that raising a lot of money is some sort of badge of honor.
  5. To my earlier point, Indeed has a lot more employees, as a result, a lot of experienced employees will have the ability and money to start their own companies. My guess is that Indeed employees will create more startups than the Instagram employees.

As a last point that is not as relevant to which is better exit for a tech community, Indeed took nearly eight years to build, scale and sale their company.  Instagram was built,  scaled and sold in two years.  Startup Founders need to understand that building a valuable company takes a lot of time, like an Indeed and not an Instagram.

[View the story "Instagram vs Indeed" on Storify]

Yahoo’s Next Steps

If you follow the tech news, you heard that Marissa Mayer just became CEO of Yahoo!

The big question is what happens next, which products/services become a priority and what direction does Mayer take Yahoo.

We need to understand how Yahoo describes their business currently, here are a few quotes from their 10-K, Yahoo is a “premier digital media company” and “Yahoo! Properties currently fall into three categories: Communications and Communities; Search and Marketplaces”

Image

Their revenue is generated from three areas: Display, Search and Other.  Display generates $2.1B or 43% of revenue.  Search generates $1.8B in revenue or 37% of revenue.  Other generates $970M in revenue or 20% of revenue. If you look at the revenue trends of these areas, search revenue is decreasing, other is decreasing but display is roughly consistent the last few years.  It is not a surprise that search revenue is decreasing, they have been losing marketshare for many years, Yahoo is in third place when it come to search engine traffic, behind Google and Microsoft.

A few thoughts and suggestions as to what happens next for Yahoo:

  1. There are 14,100 Full Time employees at Yahoo (per their 10-K).  That is a lot of employees and provides a great opportunity for Yahoo to reassess and identify their star players.  There will be some additional lay-offs
  2. They have $2.2B in cash and short-term investments.  Similar to what Facebook, Google and Twitter are doing, they can make some acqui-hires or small acquisitions ($100M or less), mainly to bring on new product people with specific skill sets
  3. Hire 20+ highly competent/skilled developers to engage the startup communities in areas such as Bay Area, LA, Seattle, Boulder, Austin, Boston, NYC, Durham, Tel-Aviv, London, Berlin, Shanghai etc.  These would be developer outreach professionals, helping spread the word about some of Yahoo’s APIs (current and future) and scouring the communities to identify developer talent
  4. Bring on a handful of professionals to engage the investor community, specifically to identify emerging startups that could be partnership opportunities and/or acquisition targets.  These people would work with accelerators such as Y Combinator, Techstars, 500 Startups, etc. and early stage funds such at SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, 500 Startups, First Round Capital, True Ventures, etc.
  5. Ad-tech is an evolving sector and there are always some new technologies being developed, there is an opportunity to make a few acquisitions in this space, especially since display is their main revenue stream
  6. They need to make a big push on mobile, they don’t seem to have any strategy in this area, this includes viewing content, communication and ecommerce
  7. ecommerce is big opportunity and they should become a player in this area.  There continues to be a trend of content and ecommerce being done in unison.  Yahoo can integrate ecommerce to existing content
  8. They have some interesting things on high-end content (video) and would like to see them focus more in this area.  I like what YouTube is doing with its premium channels, could see Yahoo doing something similar
  9. Become specialized in a few verticals within search where they can become the number one player
  10. Flickr is a property that needs some immediate attention.  Either enhance this area and focus on people profiles (such as Facebook) or sell it off it is not part of their core offering
  11. They need to figure out what they do with Alibaba.  There has been some bad blood between both companies but Mayer might be able to fix that relationship

NYC Seed Syndicates

I wanted to understand who the most active seed investors are and which syndicates were the most prominent. For the purpose of this report, the search criteria were:

  • Startups based in NYC
  • First round of financing must have been between January 2010 and April 2012
  • Round size between $250K and $1.5M

The research yielded interesting results. The most active investors over the time period were SV Angel and Lerer Ventures, each with a total of 17 investments.  The other most active firms were RRE Ventures and Founder Collective with 15 while First Round Capital had 14.

The most active investment syndicate was SV Angel & Lerer Ventures with 9 co-investments. This is not a surprise as it was mentioned in May 2011, that the two firms would work together closely. Next was SV Angel & Founder Collective with a total of 7 co-investments followed by Lerer Ventures & Thrive Capital with 5.

When you see firms syndicating frequently, it could suggest that the firms know each other well and/or have similar investment themes; As an entrepreneur raising a seed round, knowing this information can be very helpful.

The two diagrams below help to illustrate the findings. The first is a venn diagram attempting to show some of the major investment connections while the second diagram gives a more complete view of the connections between the different firms. In each diagram, the total number of investments made by that firm is in parentheses next to their names.

All of data used for the diagrams below were from sources available to the public. The vast majority of the data was sourced from CB Insights (a NYC startup).  Some of the rounds of financing are not disclosed or file State documents, so these diagrams don’t represent 100% of all financings using the criteria mentioned above.

Thank you to our Intern, Jacob Laufer, for compiling the data and putting together the diagrams.

Top NYC Tech Companies

When I ask people about the NYC startup scene, most people can only rattle off a short list of startups, typically it’s Foursquare, Tumblr, Etsy, Gilt Groupe and Kickstarter. Those are all great companies but there are at least 60 additional tech companies in NYC that I think will have a substantial exit (in the next few years) and you should be aware of them.

  1. 1010data
  2. 10gen
  3. 2tor
  4. Aereo
  5. Appnexus
  6. Arkadium
  7. Blip.tv
  8. Birchbox
  9. Bit.ly
  10. Bonobos
  11. Boxee
  12. Buddy Media (update – acquired for $698M by Salesforce on 6/4/12)
  13. Buzzfeed
  14. Chloe & Isabel
  15. Collective Media
  16. Comixology
  17. DoubleVerify
  18. Enterproid
  19. Etsy
  20. Everyday Health
  21. Fab.com
  22. Fancy
  23. Foursquare
  24. Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG)
  25. Gilt Groupe
  26. HowAboutWe
  27. ideeli
  28. Indeed (update – acquired on 9/25/12 for $750M+)
  29. Intent Media
  30. Kaltura
  31. Kickstarter
  32. Knewton
  33. Learnvest
  34. Lot18
  35. Major League Gaming
  36. Makerbot
  37. Medialets
  38. MediaMath
  39. Media6Degrees
  40. Meetup
  41. MOAT
  42. Moda Operandi
  43. Newscred
  44. Offerpop
  45. OMGPOP (update – acquired for $180M by Zynga on 3/21/12)
  46. On Deck Capital
  47. OpenSky
  48. Outbrain
  49. Quirky
  50. Rent The Runway
  51. Return Path
  52. SailThru
  53. SecondMarket
  54. Shapeways
  55. Stack Exchange (aka Stackoverflow)
  56. SumAll
  57. Tapad
  58. TheLadders
  59. Thrillist
  60. Tremor Video
  61. Tumblr
  62. Undertone Networks
  63. Unified
  64. Vibrant Media
  65. Warby Parker
  66. Yext
  67. Yodle
  68. Zocdoc

There are ~600 NYC startups that have raised VC funding in last two years (per CBInsights). I wanted to keep the list closer to 50 but as you can see it is beyond 60 at this point. If there are any obvious breakout startups that I missed, please let me know.

NYC hasn’t had a large IPO ($1B+ valuation and/or raised $100M+ at IPO) in the last 10 years, yes, isn’t that shocking?! Assuming the stock market stays steady, I can see at least 10 of these startups mentioned above going IPO in the next few years.

Disclosure: This list of companies was put together based on insights gathered during conversations with VCs and other players who are an active part of the NYC startup scene. In addition, I used the following sites for research: LinkedIn, CBInsights (a NYC startup), Crunchbase, Compete, Quantcast and Made in NY.

Tech Trends for 2012

The 2011 tech trends that stood out to me were startups addressing education, healthcare, ecommerce, distributed workforce and marketplaces.  We saw vertically focused incubators pop up.  The seed bubble and Series A crunch never materialized, despite the prognostication of VCs and bloggers.  Startups led by Women founded grew significantly.  We had a fair amount of VC backed IPOs (most haven’t performed well): Zynga, LinkedIn, Pandora, Groupon, Fusion-io, Cornerstone OnDemand, Zillow, Zipcar, Angie’s List, Jive, Demand Media.

Here is a list of newer trends I expect to see in 2012:

  1. Microsoft builds momentum with developers: Windows Phone and Kinect will draw the attention of developers
  2. Startups are going to disrupt the book and magazine industry by allowing anyone to write longer forum content without having to go through the typical route of being “approved/accepted” by traditional publishers
  3. Startups are going to focus on gaming and education applications for young children, two to six year olds
  4. Applications specifically made for enterprise workforce, mainly for those in the field
  5. We are going to see more startups addressing the security space

Despite the fact that there are a lot of incubators/accelerators and co-working facilities, we are going to see more of them come online.  Although many pundits have been predicting a seed bubble for the past two years, I don’t see the level of funding for seed rounds diminishing in 2012.  In addition, there is plenty of cash available for companies who have the product/traction and want to raise a Series A.

The $240 Billion Opportunity

This is a great time to be a startup in the broader software sector.  The image below represents some of the largest public tech companies and the dollars figures shown is their respective cash on hand.  This cash will be primarily used to acquire private technology startups.  In total, these 10 public tech companies have $240 BILLION in cash!  Go get the money!

Bubble?

The blog post dejour for those in the startup community (including several VCs) is to discuss an upcoming bubble.  These folks who are mentioning the bubble are those in the software sector, which includes consumer, enterprise and infrastructure.  The cleantech, hardware, and life science sectors are not part of this conversation.

There have been two bubbles in past 10 years, both which I was a witness of.  I’m not going to go into great length describing the two bubbles as there have been plenty of articles written on the topic, but here is a quick summary.

2000-2001 : many VC backed companies did not have the proper financial basis to go IPO, research Pets.com and Webvan for details.  Essentially too much speculation.  This bubble was mainly driven by the valley, VCs, startups and I-bankers.  Rightly or wrongly, a lot of money was invested into enterprise/infrastructure for the potential Y2K bug.  This downturn was exacerbated by 9/11.  Over $100B was invested by VCs in 2000.  NASDAQ dropped from ~5,000 in March 2000 to ~1,500 in September 2001.

2007-2008:  a lot of VC backed companies were raising large Series A rounds of $6M, with not much to show in terms of customer/revenue traction.  Follow on rounds were being done at inflated valuations, $50M+. The stock market tanked, primarily driven by inflated residential real estate prices, which was enabled by loose underwriting guidelines and poorly collateralized investment vehicles.  The difference is that the 2007 market crash was not the fault of tech companies, as it was in 2000-2001.  $32B was invested by VCs in 2007 (compare that to $100B in 2000).  NASDAQ dropped from ~2,800 in October 2007 to ~1,300 in November 2008.

2011?: Folks are saying there will be crash, the problem is that they are not providing specific data points as to why they believe this is going to happen.  What I hear from VCs is “it feels like a bubble is going to happen”.  I also hear, “valuations are too high for Series A deals”.  In 2010, we are on pace for $22B to be invested by VCs (compare that to $32B in 2007 and $100B in 2000).

We are not in a bubble, here is why:

  • Stock market is already depressed, so it will not pop as it did in 2000/2001 and 2007/2008
  • Overall economy continues to be very poor (except for tech) and unemployment is very high (except for tech)
  • There is a lot less supply of VC money.  In 2000 and 2007, there was too much supply of VC dollars.  In 2007, there was roughly $35B invested and 2010 it will likely be $22B.  Many VC firms are going out of business and follow on funds are typically much smaller (ie DFJ $650M to $350M, Menlo $1.2B to $400M, and many more)
  • Angels/Micro-VCs/Super Angels in aggregate equal ~$600M, that is roughly the size of one VC fund
  • Series A/Seed rounds or initial rounds of financing are much smaller.  In 2007, there were ~$6M, now they are ~$1.5M
  • Valuation of Series A/Seed rounds are much lower, In 2007, they were $6M Pre on a $6M raise, so $12M Post.  Now they are $4M Pre on a $1.5M raise, so a $5.5M Post
  • There is a lot of money sitting on the sidelines by startup acquires such as: Apple, Google, Oracle, Amazon, Cisco, Microsoft, HP, etc.  This cash will continue to be used to acquire startup companies 2011 as these large public companies need revenue/product growth, which is what acquired startups provide.

A point of emphasis, some VCs are saying there is going to be Angel/MicroVC/Super Angel bubble.  As I mentioned previously, if you add all these dollars, it is likely to be $600M, which is less than one VC fund.  Lets do that math Floodgate ($75M), SV Angel ($20M), 500 Hats ($30M), OATV ($51M), Lowercase ($8.5M), K9 Ventures ($6M), SofttechVC ($12M), Felicis Ventures ($40M), Harrison Metal (?), Baseline (?),Y Combinator ($8.25M), TechStars ($2.5M), Founder Collective ($40M), IA Ventures ($25M), etc.  The majority of the firms I mentioned have funds, of which many were raised in the past 12 months, so they still have another 12 to 24 months of runway, as most funds are deployed within three years.  In addition to the $500M, lets add another $100M for individual angels, some of who are active on AngelList, so in total $500M + $100M = $600M in the seed/angel category.  The seed rounds also include traditional VCs (funds larger that $100M) such as Sequoia, CRV, Trinity, Redpoint, Polaris, True, Greylock, First Round, Union Square,  etc.   It is difficult to know how much money from these funds are allocated for seed rounds, but it total, I would guess it it close to an additional $500M.  In total we there is $1.1B available for seed rounds ($500M + $100M + $500M).  In the big scheme of things these seed rounds make up a very small part of total VC dollars invested, which will likely be $22B this year. 

There is certainly an argument to be made about the challenges of finding great engineering talent, but that will not result in a bubble occurring.  Yes, there are a lot of incubators that are popping up, if those fail, that will not create bubble, they would be collateral damage.

There are a lot of companies that received seed funding this year who will not be successful, but that is not a definition of a bubble.  These companies are raising much smaller rounds ($1M compared to $6M) and they are lot more capital efficient.  Only a small percentage of startups become successful, this is true now and was true 10, 20 and 30 years ago.  Yes, many of the seed funded startups will not raise a follow on round of financing.  Seed rounds are meant to allow the startup to make a go of their business and if they fail to execute, they will not get additional funding, the next round of funding is never promised in this business.  In addition, there is a great emphasis for startups to get to cash flow positive and that a revenue model must be proven.

In summary, 2011 will be a good year for startups who are raising seed rounds, there is sufficient cash available, so go get it!

Sites that provided some of the data I used for this post:

http://www.chubbybrain.com/blog/a-guide-to-super-angel-investors-who-are-they-what-do-they-invest-in/

https://www.pwcmoneytree.com

http://www.businessinsider.com/who-are-the-super-angels-a-comprehensive-guide-2010-10?slop=1

Is the iPad a game changer?

So, I’m writing this blog post while flying on Virgin Atlantic, going to London for a week.  Given that I’m flying from San Francisco, it is going to take 10 hours to reach my destination, so I was thinking of how I was going to keep myself busy, especially since there is no wifi access on my flight.  The answer was to read for most of the time, so I went into one of the stores in the airport and bought 4 magazines to keep me occupied.  I spent at least $20 on these magazines (unlike Sara Palin, I will list what I read :) Fortune, GQ, The Economist, Entrepreneur).  I started reading an interesting article by Fortune called “The Future of Reading” (Josh Quittner, March 2010), talking about how and if, the tablet, specifically the iPad will change journalism.

In the Fortune article, Marc Andreessen, a well-known entrepreneur and investor is quoted “…to think tablets will essentially be the new newspaper or the new book or the new magazine, and that all the economic for the newspapers, magazines, and books will carry forward on the tablet, is really dangerous.”  To a certain degree, I disagree with him and believe the tablet is a step in becoming the new form of consuming books/magazines.  There are several startups (Nanolumens) that are creating really cool flexible/bendable screens and I suspect that in a few years will enable tablets to have a flexible screens, which will bring it one step close to feeling like a magazine.

I’m not an Apple fan boy, but in our household, we have at least 5 Apple devices….maybe I’m an Apple nut, but I really wouldn’t describe myself as one (Steve Jobs in not my god).  In any case, I’ve been thinking about the Apple iPad that is coming out in March/April 2010 and whether it is a device that will be a “game changer”.  For the last few weeks, I’ve down played the importance of the iPad, but as I spend more time thinking about it, I’m starting to realize that is going to be a huge disruption for several reasons.

While there are several readers (Kindle) and many other tablets in the marketplace, none of them have had the proper mix of features to really take off.  Here is what I’m looking for as a consumer in regards to a digital reader or tablet:

1) has to be affordable, needs to be in the $300 range

2) has to be very light, equal to the weight of several magazines or books

3) needs to be able to download magazines and books via wifi

4) actual battery life needs to be at least 12+ hours, preferably 24+ hours

5) touch screen with full color is must

6) purchasing the content needs to be one-click, so my financial info (credit card) needs to be stored

So with those parameters, the Apple iPad is the closest device to fulfilling my needs.  My concern with the iPad is battery life (10 hours) and the cost (starts at $499).  Once I see the iPad in person and speak with several people who own the device, I will make a decision as to whether I buy it or not.

I do believe the iPad will change the market for book/magazine publishers, here is why:

1) the Apple App Store already has many consumers credit card information and allows them do buy digital media instantly.  This is a critical point, as destination sites have a lot of difficulty building trust with consumers regarding their credit card information

2) the App Store doesn’t control the market of supply and demand, meaning that consumer and publishers will decide what the value of content should be.  I just spent $20 on magazines that I will likely throw away at the end of the trip, even though I could benefit from referring back to the content from time to time.  I would prefer to spend $20 on content that I can access at any time.  In addition, the publishers can continue to have a good margin, as there are no printing costs or retail marks ups.  Sure, the App Store will get their piece of the pie, but could be win-win for publishers and Apple

3) the combination of touch screen and HD quality screen, will allow the iPad to closely resemble the physical action of flipping through a magazine of book.  This is an area that the Kindle has not addressed yet.

4) advertising will be in full color and will be very interactive.  If you are a smart advertiser, you know that many magazine publishers currently inflate subscription numbers and there is zero visibility into how many readers are actually looking at your ad.  The iPad will provide the analytics that smart advertisers are looking for

Some of the counter arguments that I’ve heard are:

1) If the iPad is connected to the web, where a lot of content is free, why would I pay for it?  The answer is simple I believe, if the application (app) that is created closely resembles the look and feel of a magazine, consumers will pay for it.  If you haven’t seen what the Sports Illustrated would look like on the iPad check this video out.

2) Why do I want to carry another device?  The point is addressed with one of the comment above; if the product is light, people will carry them, especially when traveling.  The Kindle has shown that consumers will carry another device.  The other related question is battery life and the Kindle does a great job with this as a charge can last a week.  The battery life for the iPad is a big question mark for me as well.

Would love to hear your comments and thoughts on this.  Twitter: @shaig

RIM/Blackberry Killer?

There are many conversations taking place, questioning whether the Google Android Operating System (OS) will be an Apple iPhone killer.  My belief is that iPhone will continue to have the best hardware devices for the next few years  and they will always have one of the best devices in the market.  I think the company that is in biggest jeopardy with the influx of Android devices is RIM (Blackberry) and that the Android will begin taking a lot of U.S. market share from Blackberry.  There are a few reasons why this will take place.

1) Google enterprise applications are getting a lot of traction with large, mid and small enterprises.   The momentum of Google’s relationship with enterprises will allow them to have a direct channel to sell their Android devices, specifically the Nexus One.   Side note: The Nexus One is a 1st generation phone and future versions will provide additional features which will allow them to be in favor with enterprises.  I suspect that future models of the Nexus One will have a physical keyboard, a must have for many enterprise workers.  HTC, who manufactures the Nexus One, has several phones that have a physical keyboard and have touchscreen functionality.

2) The Blackberry App Store is relatively small with 2K applications.  Compare that to the iPhone which has 150K apps and Android with 25K apps.  The Blackberry device is not suitable for heavy usage, primarily due to the form factor of device, screen size, and lack of touch screen functionality.  The Blackberry does a great job for simple tasks such as email and calendar access, but many enterprise workers don’t use much of the other functions on the Blackberry.  I predict that the enterprise workers will demand access to more applications and additional hardware features that Blackberry doesn’t do well.  The lack of Blackberry’s success with their app store, provides an opportunity for Android to step in and become the destination for enterprise mobile applications.

3) IT managers have been reluctant to try the new smartphones for the enterprise.  Blackberry has had a long relationship with IT managers, as the Blackberry has been in existence for 10+ years and the IT managers are used to working with these devices.  It will take several years for Google to build a relationship and trust with IT managers.  Part of the challenge is that IT managers don’t get comfortable with 1st/2nd generations phones where there are still some bugs to be fixed.  Remember, the IT mangers want to reduce the amount of time they spend fixing things, so their perspective is that the Blackberry work fine, so why switch.   IT managers need to have remote access to the devices, something that both Apple and Android are lacking, but are working on providing.  There has also been some security questions as to whether the newer smartphone devices are safe for enterprises.  There are several mobile security startups that will assist IT managers with security issues, such as Lookout and EnMoDa.

Blackberry has 36M subscribers, so they are certainly the leader for enterprise smartphones, but in 2011 I see Google Android OS smartphone getting a large adoption by enterprise IT managers.  I found an article indicating that Gartner predicts the Android will be #2 player in global smartphones by 2012, so this supports my prediction to a certain degree.  Yes, I know that I left out several major mobile players such as MS Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian/Nokia.  The iPhone is a great consumer device and will get limited traction with large enterprises.

As of now I think it is two-horse race to win the market share of enterprise workers with Blackberry and Android; in the long-term Android wins!