Plug & Play Expo Fall 2008

The Plug and Play expo continues to grow in size and scope. The Sunnyvale expo featured keynotes by Scott McNealy and Tim Draper. A total of 43 startups provided 2 minute turbo pitches.

The highlight of the event was Scott McNealy's keynote. Scott is wealthy and many years removed from the nascent days of Sun. Still you can see the fire of a Silicon Valley entrepreuner burns inside him. He is passionate about open-source software and Sun's strategy to contribute to the movement. He is also motivated to harness the capability of the Internet to educate bright minds in third world countries. Scott spoke fondly about the early Sun days and his time at Stanford Business School. The Sun founders included Scott, Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy and Vinod Khosla. Quite an impressive group. All leaders in their own right. Yet Scott was the leader of leaders at Sun and his contrarian views, confidence, and drive were key to providing a winning culture. Scott's ability to gain the loyalty and admiration of brilliant colleagues is one of his most impressive qualities. Scott's 20-minute speech was full of sage advise and humorous anecdotes. When Plug and Play founder Saeed Amidi introduced Scott, he mentioned that Scott must be working hard, as they belong to the same golf club, but he never sees Scott there. Scott's response, "That's because I'm in the fairway." I guess you had to be there.

The vast majority of the companies presenting were Internet-sector plays. The three Expo winners:

• Apprema: Friend-to-friend gifting. People can setup profiles at Apprema so their friends can find out a person's shopping preferences and birthdays. People can use the Apprema site to send a gift card and message to a friend. They can also setup a group gift in order to split the cost of a friend's gift. Although the idea of e-gift cards seems simple, the business is complex. Apprema has a nice simple user-interface, and seems to have a good back-end implementation. If they are able to use socialing features to create viral adoption of their solution, Apprema can build a robust business.


• Paxterra Solutions: IT Energy Management Solutions.


• Travelfli: Airline Miles Management Program.
  

Some other interesting presentations included:

• Everywun: Click-to-donate system. People looking to support a cause can use Everywun to let people know about their cause and click-to-donate to their cause. The system works by allowing advertising sponsors to support a person's "badge". The sponsor's name is listed along with the cause. Once a customer clicks the badge, the sponsor will then pay $.30 to the cause. Everywun takes a percent of the transaction to support their business venture. The rest goes to the chosen cause. Nice simple idea which should be able to grow virally through social networks such as MySpace and Facebook. The key will be to get the "badges" out in force quickly while signing on sponsors and charities to donate to.


• Dixero: Vocalize RSS feeds. Competes with pimpmynews.com. Turn your RSS feeds into a podcast. The difference between Dixero and pimpmynews is that Dixero allows unlimited RSS feeds and different voices to be associated with the RSS feeds.
  

The event was well organized, the food was excellent, and the venue was standing room only. Plug and Play continues to impress as a center of startup activity in the South Bay.

Need a Nudge?

Facebook has won the social network wars by understanding the "nudge" theory better than its peers. Facebook is tenaciously nudging its customer base in order to provide a more robust and engaging experience.

Hall of Fame Facebook nudges:

• Friend's feeds,


• Friend suggestions; and


• Invite all friends to install new fbook apps.
  

Facebook has also overnudged with its controversial and unpopular "beacon" program.

Facebook customers have been surprisingly receptive to privacy compromising features. The reason that beacon was not well received is that it violated a basic tenet of the nudge agreement. A nudger must provide the nudgee a positive benefit from the proposed nudge.

When a nudge is implemented, there will always be a level of mistrust and anger from a percentage of the nudged. Before nudging, a nudger should be confident that a high majority of the nudged will be ok with nudge, and that a significant percentage of the nudged perceive a high value from the nudge.

Without nudges, there would be significantly less innovation and progression in general. For one, Facebook would have a significantly slower growth and engagement rate without its nudge innovations. Imagine a Facebook without the ability to throw sheep at your college hallmates. Happy nudging Mark.

Naming Web 3.0 - Every Web

Funding trends in Silicon Valley are getting faster. A hot startup or a leading VC will blaze a path which others quickly follow. VC's and startups collaborate to simplify the description of a company's concept. Valley startups develop 10-second elevator pitch to quickly explain their business to VCs. Examples of such include:

"Social Network for dogs" - Dogster.

"SaaS-based customer support" - HelpStream.

"User-Generated business reviews" - Yelp.

The Web 2.0 wave is subsiding and the current en vogue companies are of the green variety. However, a new consumer Internet trend is picking up where Web 2.0 left off. The current moniker gaining traction is the "distributed web". I am hopeful that this pedestrian name is replaced with a more interesting label. I am proposing an alternative name for Web 3.0 -"every web".

The "distributed web" supports the idea that mobile computing will expand at an exponential rate requiring that consumer Internet companies provide content and services for desktop and mobile web platforms. "Mobile web" is another term being used for Web 3.0. The only problem with the term "mobile web" is that suggests a pure mobile play. "Every web" works as it suggests that the web is everywhere you want it to be - with apologize to Visa. It also sounds a lot cooler than "distributed web".

Mobile applications can take advantage of the inherent location-based, always on usage of mobile phones. At the same time, screen, keyboard, and connection-speed limitations require special consideration for mobile applications. As 3G and 4G networks become more widely available, the connection-speed limitations will become less impactful. However, the screen and keyboard limitations will continue to provide design and UI challenges for the foreseeable future.

Twitter is a good example of a Web 3.0 success story. Combining web and mobile technologies, Twitter has gained a huge, loyal following. More impressively, Twitter is becoming a platform where other startups are setting up shop. Expect to see some big funding in the "every web" space. Over the course of the next two years, the "every web" will deliver on the promise that mobile computing offers.

Just Right

"Blink" is not as cohesive or convincing as "The Tipping Point", but Gladwell does stimulate some interesting ideas with this follow up.

Try walking through a fine arts museum. There are works that are asthetically pleasing, others that are provocative, and still more that appear commonplace. The rhetorical questions, "what is art?" surfaces. Perhaps the easy answer is to simple resign to the fact that "art is in the eye of the beholder." That answer is too simplistic.

Recent research shows that infants as young as 6 months old have the ability to recognize and gravitate towards "attractive" faces. So although beauty is highly subjective, there is a reason that museums exist. Art historians and experts are valued for their ablility to recognize in a "blink" of an eye, what constitutes a great work. As well, they are able to study the work and break down the unique qualities that distinguish the work as that of a master. There is no shortage of aesthetically appealing paintings, yet the number of masterpieces are few.

The same can be said of great literature. "Goodbye Columbus" by Philip Roth is a simple story about a young man who has a summer affair with a young socialite. The book is all of 136 pages. After reading this novel, it is clear that Roth possesses a level of genius in his writing that puts him in league with literary greats such as Salinger and Hemingway. Every sentence is masterfully crafted and the result is a novel that is powerful and moving.

Although only a small number of people are true geniuses, we are fortunate to have easy access to the greatest literature, fine art, music and cinematography. The gift of genius is that it provides inspiration to others working to refine their craft in order to achieve a superior impact. Those working in the technology field can point to Cupertino or Mountain View for our inspiration.