Startup One Stop

Good morning, All,

We’ve been seeing pieces on this so-called make money or serve humanity dilemma more and more lately and we’re frankly baffled, if not gobsmacked. Where’s the fire?

In case you missed it, Twitter ‘quietly’ announced their plans for an IPO. It’s twitter, and how long did it take before it was headline news and trending on you-know-what. There’s no doubt that twitter has disrupted the world, 140 characters at a time, since not too long after its inception, although it was hardly an overnight success. Still, soon enough, keeping messages short and to the point, it disrupted the way we share news – and break it. It also helped to change human history, from the global (Arab spring) to the local (US Airways Flight 1549’s emergency landing in the Hudson River was first reported on twitter and emergency rescue was quickly dispatched – no lives lost). Read More...

Good morning, All,

Tech companies always go on buying sprees, but when Jeff Bezos shook out the loose change that fell between his sofa cushions and bought the Washington Post, it literally stopped the presses and came as a surprise to everyone. If there is one thing that Bezos has proven over the years is that he is the consummate disruptor. A Steve Jobs without the sound bites and with a far stranger laugh. For those of us who were there when Tom Brokaw held his televised Town Halls with the tech leaders of the day and Bezos, who was very much the upstart, Bezos would always contend that it would take five years for Amazon to turn a profit (it took six). Amazon were booksellers at the time and not the behemoth online shopping portal it is now, what to speak of the kindle, the studios, Amazon Local, AWS. We can stop there. For now, it seems. He is very much cut from a similar mold as Jobs, but much more diversified; with a preference for staying off the radar; and with a focus on customer service that has never wavered. The company’s purchase of discount shoe e-tailer Zappos surprised many: Amazon already sold shoes – why cannibalize their own business unit? Because Bezos believes in giving the customer what they want, not what you want to sell them. As usual, he took the long view.

Amazon is not the world’s best employer. It has the second highest employee turnover among the Fortune 500 (for the record, despite the free lunches and all of the in-house services, Google is fourth on that list), but Bezos is very clear about who is keeping the lights on at the end of the day, which is a note to self to the tech behemoths who don’t believe that privacy is an issue to their customers. Read More...

Good morning, All,

Of course, that was Google’s original tag line/mission statement, although they seemed to have changed it up a bit. In case you missed it this week, AT&T is out at Starbucks and Google is in; and Google is no longer in favor of net neutrality, now that they’re in the broadband game. .

Anyone who doesn’t think that net neutrality is a big deal does not live in an area where Time Warner Cable blocked CBS programming on Friday, which included the CBS Network – which is not a subscription channel – as well as the company's pay services. The services were blocked over all Time Warner properties, including the ability to be able to watch full episodes online. (We do know that there are alternatives, like Netflix, Aereo, FIOS and in the case of the CBS Television Network, a good old fashioned antenna. Of course, you can find free wi-fi somewhere and watch as well and honestly, how many of us watch a television show in real time, anyway? Read More...

Good morning, All,

We saw this story this week and thought we’d share: “Back in the 1970s, liquid hand soap was sold by one guy: Robert Taylor, and his small company Minnetonka.  It was his invention, and he knew he was on to something big. Test audiences loved the product and, despite barely having enough resources to do so, Minnetonka decided to go all in and make a push to take the  product nationwide. There was only one problem: Nothing he was selling could be patented.  The concept of liquid soap wasn’t new, and simple pumps had been around since the dawn of civilization. As a result, Taylor knew several huge soap manufacturers were ready to happily steal his idea the very moment it looked like it could succeed on a large scale. Armed with superior resources and the ability to quickly R&D an imitation product, the industry giants were ready to crush tiny Minnetonka.

Taylor, however, was ready for this. Before any other company had the chance, Taylor decided to go shopping one day and bought a few plastic pumps. And by a few we mean FUCKING ALL OF THEM. There were only two companies nationwide manufacturing those little pumps, and Taylor ponied up $12 million — more than the total net worth of his company at the time — and ordered 100 million of them,  effectively buying every single pump these two companies would be able  to manufacture for the next year or two. Read More...

Good morning, All,

We all go to meetings all over town, all the time. It’s exhausting, to be sure, and invariably, upon arrival, we’re asked if we’d like a beverage: coffee, tea, water, soda. Since many a meetings are morning meetings, and since this is New York, one of the undisputed caffeine capitals of the world, and since we work in tech, where caffeine is de rigueur, many of us request coffee and some of us like it white. Or beige, to be precise.

When did a staple like whole milk hit the no fly list? We went to at least half a dozen meetings this past week where we were offered coffee with our choice of almond, soy, hemp, fat free, 2% fat or skim milk, or half and half or fat free half and half. Read More...

Good morning, All,

Here’s the link to RSVP to our event this evening, and hope to see you there. It starts at 6 pm, open bar for the first hour, and we will be packing truffles.

Last week Elon Musk unveiled his plans for the Hyperloop, a transport that can potentially carry passengers from LA to SF in 30 minutes, traveling at just under the speed of sound. It’s expected to cost $6 billion – a pittance next to the $70 billion the state is paying to build a “high speed” rail system along the coastal corridor that will make the trip in three hours and isn’t expected to be finished until 2029. For the record, China’s Shangai Maglev Train could make that trip in just under an hour and 20 minutes. Musk says that the Hyperlink can be up and running by 2020. Of course, he’s a bit busy running Tesla Motors and Space X, so he does need someone to run the project. Read More...

Good morning, All,

We attended yet another pitching event recently. Five companies pitching to a handful of investors, many of whom we knew. One of the companies blew us away. Smart cofounders targeting a space that’s certainly heating up. A bit crowded, but no clear winner yet. They’re  taking a unique approach and have good and growing traction in their market. It’s a potential winner. We spoke to one of the investors – one whom we’ve known for quite a while – afterwards who asked us if any of the companies impressed us. We mentioned the one team and while he liked the technology/approach, he was not going to invest. Why? Inexperienced team. They were not twenty-somethings; both cofounders did have a background in their space. What he meant was that this was their first foray into entrepreneurship/they weren’t successful serial entrepreneurs.

We were not the only one in the room who realized the potential of this team and their technology. They were besieged afterwards by people who worked for companies that could be potential partners; people who knew people who worked for companies that could be potential partners; and people who knew investors who invest in their space, and who offered to make introductions. Read More...

Good morning, All,

It’s the height of summer. Investors are out at their summer homes. Things have quieted down. We know that startups never rest, so what’s an entrepreneur to do, when sitting it out until September is just not an option? Here are some suggestions:

1.     Work on your deck. We know you’re sick of it and can recite it backwards and forwards. Test it on friends. Find an industry sounding board and get his/her feedback. He/she might know something or see something that you might have missed/never realized that your product/service addressed. Read More...

Good morning, All,

In our industry, pivoting is not only perceived as a positive: it’s often seen as a necessity, if the plan is to innovate and grow. Boxee started out as a software company and pivoted into a set-top box developer (Boxee Box) that would allow anyone to stream media from their television or computer, and which would play practically any format. It was non-techie friendly – very important : you could watch a friend’s ripped DVD’s via a USB drive, or watch the streaming services, like Netflix, Spotify, et al. Then they pivoted again into Boxee TV / Cloud DVR storage service, and basically followed in the footsteps of all of the major cable providers. In other words, they stopped innovating and started copying off their neighbor’s papers. Never a good idea: they lost a lot of their audience – and their mojo. Consequently, they couldn’t raise their next round, and since they had put themselves squarely into competition with a number of companies for whom they might have been a potential acquisition, well, those doors were pretty much closed to them, too. Someone did acquire Boxee. At the time of this writing, buyer unknown; details undisclosed. Moral of the story: If you’re going to pivot, innovate: develop something that a potential buyer might want, not what they already have. Pivot if you must, but be careful not to paint yourself into a boxee. Onward and forward.

Housekeeping: Read More...

Good morning, All,

We’ve mentioned the importance of mentors before. FastCo just came out with an excellent piece on the subject. We recently attended an event where we were asked to critique a handful of startups that were pitching. They were early stage. Most had co-founders; a few did not, and there was a distinct difference between the two, so without further ado, our list of reasons why it’s important to have a co-founder:

Having a sounding board – You don’t know everything, and not everything you think is right for the company/product, is. Good to have feedback and another opinion - from a partner. Employees are not the same. They’re getting their marching orders (and paycheck) from the top – you – so it’s just not the same as a bouncing ideas off from someone with as much skin in the game as you. Read More...