You Be The VC contest

Damnit, we were just brainstorming about this same idea a few weeks ago!

High failure rates and low average returns suggest that too many people may be entering markets as entrepreneurs. Thus, anticipating how one will perform in the market is a fundamental component of the decision to start a business. Using a large sample obtained from population surveys conducted in 18 countries, we study what variables are significantly associated with the decision to start a business. We find strong evidence that subjective, and often biased, perceptions have a crucial impact on new business creation across all countries in our sample. The strongest cross-national covariate of an individual’s entrepreneurial propensity is shown to be whether the person believes herself to have the sufficient skills, knowledge and ability to start a business. In addition, we find a significant negative correlation between this reported level of entrepreneurial confidence and the approximate survival chances of nascent entrepreneurs across countries. Our results suggest that some countries exhibit relatively high rates of start-up activity because their inhabitants are more (over)confident than in other countries. ^{link »}

(Via Marc Andreesen) link »

tags: sep 07, sciencedirect.com

– http://www.sciencedirect.com/…(source)

During coffee last week, Om Malik said to me “You haven’t blog about VoIP for a while…”

We know each another when we were invited to be on the blogger panel at VON several years ago. Om, now has a blogging empire, in all business and tech (not just VoIP).

I replied him “There isn’t any interesting to blog!”

I haven’t see any innovation in VoIP for a while. Sure, there are some new VoIP gadgets, a new Skype phone, some new businesses rehashing a business model with a twist. But there aren’t any ground breaking disruptive technology or business model for the last two years.

Skype has done excellently initially but growth has slowed down since acquired by eBay. Despite doing fantastic well for the founders, I believe the acquisition is bad for the industry. Since then, Skype has not innovate much but has being focus on monetization.

There is nothing wrong with the switch from innovation to monetization – all companies need to do that at some stage – but it swing so far that Skype has stop gaining any new customers in significant numbers. In other words, it grows rapidly through the innovators, early adopters, early majority but never really got to the late majority.

We have Vonage that suppose to bring VoIP to every home. It was exciting as it is a glimpse of what the future might be. But alas, poor execution, lawsuits brings it downs to the knee. Not only the lawsuits brings Vonage down, it also setback the entire VoIP industry for at least a couple of years as investor shy away from VoIP.

Truphone (or the Singapore version Pfingo) provides an interesting twist to Vonage by bringing the concept to the mobile phone. But this won’t fly until you have seamless wifi coverage. That is an heavy investment few willing to take on.

Jajah was one of the more interesting VoIP players. It is growing rapidly but I see this as a niche technology, stuck in the hands of the innovator and early adopters until they figure out a way to make it easy for the mass consumer.

PhoneGnome is an interesting hardware play. It was an idea David and myself talks about several years ago, except he went on doing it and I didn’t. It could potentially reach every household with its simplicity. But as in all hardware play, distribution is the key and until that got sorted out, it wouldn’t move in any significant numbers. OOMA which is a very pretty version of PhoneGnome just launch and it remains to be seen how well they do.

Most of them are old companies which we see several years ago. There is nothing really new and exciting. So what’s there to blog about?

Perhaps the setback from Vonage drys up any investment into VoIP. Perhaps people really stop thinking about VoIP.

But I believe in VoIP. It is the future of voice; I cannot see us going back to SS7 and circuit switching. So I refused to believe this is the end of the VoIP innovation.

I am still eagerly waiting for someone to come along to surprise all of us.

30 hours and finally back home in Singapore. It has being a good trip and I have a lot of fun! :-)

Now unlocking the iPhones I bought back. Who wants one?

Update:

Okay, I was joking when I say “Who wants one?”. These are for friends who asked me to bring it back for them. Sorry, I am not about to start a parallel import business (nor have the time).

Incidentally, for the hackers out there, these are things you can do to make it more usable in Singapore.

1. If you have data plans (3G or GPRS) with your provider, goto Settings->General->Network->Edge and then enter these settings depending on your provider

2. The incoming callerID is kind of screwed when in Singapore. But luckily, you can download this hack/fix (instructions in the zip file). You need to know sftp or ssh so if you don’t know what I just said, ask your nearest geek to help you with it.

3. Call *3001#12345#* on your iPhones to access really field test menu. You can check your firmware using this too:

03.12.06_G is firmware 1.0.0
03.14.08_G is firmware 1.0.1 and 1.02
04.02.04_G is firmware 1.1.1

People I met in Bay Area:

Bruce Schena – Founder of Immersion. Cool guy to hang out when I am in Bay Area again.

David Hornik (August Capital) – One of my favorite VC blogger. Finally got to meet him and I hope to invite to Singapore to talk to the startups here.

Dewayne Hendricks – Finally catch up with him for lunch on Friday after the mishap on Wed. Thanks for the insight on spectrum in US.

Don Park – Very smart guy! Read his blog for years, play WoW with him and finally get to met him.

Jeff Clavier – Ross say he is in office and I drop into his office uninvited. Catch him at a bad time and didn’t have much time. (He remembers me from Supernova 2005)

Keith Teare (edgeio) – Old friend and very smart (business) man. Partner of M. Arrington. Always value his advice (he asked me to move to Bay Area :-)

Lee Felsenstein – Gosh, I didn’t even know I was speaking to THE MAN until someone mentioned the word Osborne!

Loic Le Meur – Old friend. Glad to see him doing very well.

Marc Andreesen (Ning) – No, he don’t travel outside Bay Area :-(

Michael Arrington (Techcrunch) – Need to follow up with him from our short conversation.

Michael Montgomery (Montgomery & Co) – Excellent speaker at the panel of TC40. Another person on my invite list (not sure he needs it tho, since he probably knows more people in Singapore than I do)

Om Malik (GigaOM) – Had coffee with him on Friday at SF. May be in Singapore in Dec.

Shel Israel – Old friend. Wish I have more time to spend to talk to tho but he is busy with family. Family always first of course :-)

William Reichert (Garage.com) – Wonderful discussion. I am sure we can figure out something to do together.

Ross Mayfield & Phil Wolff & David Beckemeyer – Already covered them in my previous post. Wish I spend more time with them.

Thank you for spending the time with me. I hope to be back soon.

On a separate note, people I wish I have met:

Michael Moritz (Sequoia) – Sadly he left town immediately after Techcrunch

Ron Conway – Brilliant angel who made wonderful investments like Google & Paypal.

Perhaps next time I am in town. They are one degree apart so I need to make more preparation.

Meng Weng reminded me to share this story on my blog.

I arrived in SFO on Sunday and took a cab to downtown San Francisco. I have a very jovial cab driver and we have a wonderful conversation. Started innocently with “hows your day”, we slowly move to weather and what do I do for a living.

Then I pop a question: “So whats exciting in the Bay Area”.

He answered: “Well, I think VMware is going to do very well. Their virtualization software is saving a lot of money for the entreprise”.

He then gave me a good 10min talk about what’s so good about VMware software, what the company is doing right, what they doing wrong, and what’s should be their strategy forward.

No, I am not kidding. Only in Bay Area…

Had a wonderful lunch with Phil Wolff and David Beckemeyer at the Silk. I haven’t have so much fun having conversation talking about voip for a while. The industry landscape has changed a lot bu certainly lots of moving. But one take away from lunch is no one has found the “killer” in VoIP yet.

In case you are thinking of “Skype”, Skype has done excellently well for the founders but we aren’t sure it is doing that great for eBay. eBay and Skype could have being two separate company for all intend and purpose. They have two years to integrate….

After lunch, we adjoint to the lobby to wait for Dewayne Hendricks only to discover my rental car disappeared. I was really in panic since everything I have (luggage, laptop and passport) is in the car. I have a sigh of relief when I discover my car has being towed but it didn’t last long when David tells horror stories of stolen stuff from towed car.

To cut it short, I recovered my car with all my stuff (phew!), paid a US$250 fine (that is more expensive than the rental) and missed my meeting with Dewayne :-( I am really sorry.

After that, I drove down to Palo Alto and catch up with Ross Mayfield. He is one of the few people I wanted to meet (we raided together in WoW) but never got around to so I am glad we catch up. He is one of the few people that really knows the vibes of the valley. I heard many good things about BarcampBlock so I am kind of disappointed I missed the event.

Incidentally, I love Palo Alto. I remember very fondly of University Ave when I was staying here in the valley in the late 90s. Coming back bring back a lot of memories…Also pick up a few iPhones yesterday. By “a few”, I mean a “dozen”.

I am now crushing in at Meng Wong place.

Techcrunch already has a great coverage of the Techcrunch40 event so it is pointless for me to repeat here. Beside, I was busy running around, speaking to people, catching up with old friends and making a lot of new ones and not really paying attention.

So instead, I will cover a few companies I saw which I really like.

1. First on my list is Cubic Telecom. Okay, I like them (no sorry, I love them) not only because Pat Phelan reads my blog but they have a killer idea. Imagine having a sim card that gives you numbers up to 50 countries; no more carrying multiple sims and phones for different country; Then imagine anyone can call you on any of those numbers (paying local or international calls charges as appropriate) but more important, you, the recipient pays only local charges. NO MORE ROAMING CHARGES!

How many of us who travel around often get hit with a $1,000 roaming bill? Imaging all of that all gone, with all the multiple sim cards! I love them so much that I got 5 simcards from Pat. I can sending this sim to someone :-) And don’t get me started with what they going to do with their own branded phones and wifi.

It is pretty sad that most people in the audience don’t really get them since they aren’t web 2.0. But if there is an billion dollar idea from the event, this is it! Simple technology (little technology risks), high-entry barrier (this cannot by two guys in a garage, not with at least 20 years of telco experience between them), great business proposition and a clear path to profitability.

2. MusicShake has the killer presentation on day one. I was dozing off due to jetlag and their showy presentation puts me off initially. Then I hear the music, I open my eye and my jaw dropped.

When they say that they have a tool that allows anyone, even without music background, to create music, they really meant it. The demo blew the audience totally away.

Nevertheless, I am a bit skeptical that they will be big. Although it does not requires any music background to create music, there is a lot of trial and error so it is extremely time consuming. It is a cool tool of cos, but like Comic Life, I probably use it once or twice and forget about it.

3. XTR3D makes me wonder why they aren’t at Wired Nextfest. Using a camera to capture hand gestures, it translate the hand gestures into inputs. It is difficult to explain it (already failed the elevator pitch) without seeing it in action so here is the demo

I missed a few presentations as I was running around but I was told Powerset and Mint are really good. The feedback is that Powerset seem to have a very smart team of people who knows what they are doing, considering they are taking on Google with a nature language search, sound like a good thing to have. And Mint, well, won the US$50,000 award. Congratulations!

Incidentally, I am crushing in at Andreas Weigend house the last few days. I have a lot of fun with all the conversations we have the last few days. Thank you!

ps: I finally managed to shake hand with Marc Andreessen! After all these years!

I am at Techcrunch40 (will blog about it later) but like to share this now

via Phil Wolff

Disparity between broadband haves and have-nots limit and focus Skype’s market opportunity.

Frank Bures’ Wired magazine story looks at Internet Telecommunications Union data to compare raw prices of 100 Kbps broadband access by country. In some parts of the world, broadband costs two months’ of a family’s income.

Bures lays most blame on governments for high rates; artificial scarcity, censorship, and economic discrimination through tariffs only the richest afford put money and power in government pockets.

This is going to be a very long post based on the 250 photos and a dozen of Youtube clips I just uploaded.

Read the rest of this entry »