The honeymoon’s over AT&T – VZW to get the iPhone in Jan.

June 29, 2010

For all those sad, sad folks waiting for the quality of their network to match their beautiful iPhone – the wait is almost over. We’ve all seen it coming, and yet postponed for far longer than we thought. But here it is – Verizon is reportedly going to release their iPhone in January 2011.

While this will undoubtedly help boost Apple’s sales in the US, I do think they will have missed a reasonably big chunk of the market to Android by sticking with AT&T for so long. By the time this hits the market, Android will be running on scores of different platforms, some of which will even be powered by 2 GHz processors, for well over 18-24 months. The early teething pains of Android, like the poor UI of the market, scant app offerings and poor battery life, will be a thing of the past.

Which means this will be a much more fair fight between the two OS ecosystems, and we will all benefit as a result -

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Posted by Paul

The femtocell shakedown – AT&T sinks to new lows

June 18, 2010

I have always had a philosophical problem with femtocells. Your carrier has awful coverage in your house, so they SELL you a box to plug into your home network. Maybe they charge you a monthly fee as well, maybe not. But of course the best for them is that while you are using your own bandwidth, you are not using their network. No matter.

If you use AT&T, while you are off-net and using your fixed line DSL or cable bandwidth via the femtocell, any data you consume counts – wait for it – toward your monthly data caps on AT&T. Truly this is one of the ballsiest moves by a carrier to charge you for something they didn’t give you. To be fair, I haven’t checked if Verizon does the same thing, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

More here -

2 Comments | Wireless | Permalink
Posted by Paul

John Stewart reminds us of the fallacy of energy independence

June 18, 2010

As is often the case, John Stewart manages to neatly and bitingly summarize what’s wrong with things. In this case, it’s the quixotic effort to achieve US energy independence and the perennial push for renewable energy. Although there has been some recent progress on the renewable technology front, oil is here to stay, and efforts to wean ourselves off of it only seems to lead to a greater percentage of foreign-sourced consumption over time.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
An Energy-Independent Future
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

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Posted by Paul

Will iPad really be the keyboard killer?

May 6, 2010

Interesting post from Fast Company about whether the iPad will be another nail in the coffin for virtual keyboards, and lays out several alternatives:

1. Swype, which for my Droid has been a lifesaver. In case you haven’t seen it, the makers of T9 have combined predictive algorithms and on-screen finger dragging to markedly speed up text entry in a reasonably intuitive way. I continue to use it despite the clunky Android beta, which requires me to Force Stop the application every time I turn on the device. Still worth it, though, and beats the heck out of the Droid’s awful slide-out keyboard.

2. ThickButtons, again on Android. I have to admit I haven’t tried this out yet, but demo videos make me dizzy the way the keyboard morphs every time you touch it.

3. Phonetic typing system. In my view, this has Epic Fail written all over it. There is a good reason QWERTY continues to exist, and no amount of ergonomic rationalization will ever get users to adopt something completely foreign and unfamiliar. Typing in phonemes? Even speech scientists would tell you to go pound salt!

4. Other. The author hopes that someday people can ‘type’ with their eyeballs, and perhaps there is an optimal layout that is more visually organized. Maybe, but just for kicks try this little experiment – imagine you are typing out a sentence by rapidly glancing key-by-key on your physical keyboard. If you don’t have eye strain or a little dizziness after a sentence or two, bravo. As for me, I wish I hadn’t just eaten.

The other obvious alternative is voice, and both Dragon and Google/Android work reasonably well in quiet environments (and of course Yap for more typical noisy ones). Speech is not a universal solution of course, but between this and something like Swype, beats tapping on glass by a country mile -

And yes, I finally got my iPad today. Haven’t unboxed it yet, but all in good time.

1 Comment | iPad, Wireless | Permalink
Posted by Paul

VC advice: show up with your shoes tied

April 28, 2010

With the thousands of pitches I hear for startups, I see best practices and not-so-good ones. The latter have created a few pet peeves that make me want to pull my hair out – repeatedly. So forgive me for venting, and if you haven’t pitched me yet, please bear these in mind.


Don’t use crappy free conference call lines. If I could bank the number of minutes I have lost trying and failing to dial into those 712 area code Utah lines, I could retire a decade early. More to the point, if I can’t hear a word you’re saying, or it sounds like you are talking in the bottom of a pool, guess what – I am not getting the gist of your pitch. Even if it’s a good idea, you’ve lost me. Why take that risk?

Don’t use WebEx or other screen sharing services if you’re just walking through slides. Similar to the above point, don’t force investors through a longer workflow than necessary. If you’re just going through your slide deck, email it ahead of time. Firstly, I’ll be better informed and can ask better questions, and secondly we won’t have to wait for everyone to log in (which always seems to take an extra five to ten minutes).  I won’t share it outside of my partnership, and in fact need it to share inside the partnership, assuming I want to get them interested in investing.  If you have a software demo that can’t be seen within a browser, by all means let’s screen-share. But otherwise you’re creating friction in the process.

Respect my time, and I promise to respect yours. We’re all busy folks, and don’t have time to wait around for stragglers. VCs are often notorious for showing up late and leaving early, whether in person or remote, or worse, they’re not engaged when they are there (“blackberryitis”). You don’t hear about entrepreneurs being guilty of the same things, but it happens. I try really hard to be punctual and attentive, so I get annoyed when someone isn’t.

Get to the point. You may have a fascinating life story, or great anecdotes about how much your customers love what you’ve done, but there’s plenty of time to chat about that after we do a deal together.  Your job in the first 30 minutes is to get me hooked, and the best way to do that is to succinctly explain what you do, what problem you solve, how big the opportunity is, and what customers if any are already on board. The next 30 minutes is about how you will grow, how much capital it will take, and how you can defend yourself against capable competitors.

Do a little homework ahead of time if you can. Can’t always happen, but in a perfect world, try to carve out a little time to figure out what our firm does, and whether we might be a good match – I will certainly do the same. I am always blown away by entrepreneurs who can note the similarities in their business with elements of our own strategy or portfolio.  It shows you’re making an effort, and that you are trying to find the right partner to maximize your growth, not just a pile of cash.

If you can stick to the above, I promise to do my utmost to give you timely feedback, and not leave you hanging in the wind waiting for a decision. And if it’s taking too long in your view, there’s absolutely no harm in hounding me for an answer. I promise not to get offended -

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Posted by Paul

WiMax RIP – Clearwire is definitely joining the LTE bandwagon

March 31, 2010

Between comments last week at CTIA and the 3GPP approval request to use their spectrum for TD-LTE, it is now only a matter of time before all of the mobile WiMax players hop on board the LTE train. Economies of scale are just too big to ignore.

So although there will still be fragmentation at the OS layer, we are finally, finally moving toward a common RAN platform. No more religious wars in wireless – could it be possible?

As pretty as that new EVO WiMax phone is, I wouldn’t buy one unless you plan to chuck it out in a year or so . . .

(D') Evo - Pretty, short shelf life

2 Comments | Wireless | Permalink
Posted by Paul

CTIA recap

March 26, 2010

Although there were a lot of complaints about how dull the show was this year (um, is it fair to ding a show that you didn’t bother attending?), I thought it was just what the doctor ordered. Maybe it’s because this is the place where anyone in the wireless industry is going to be every year, like clockwork.

Here are some of the things that caught my eye:

Android, Android everywhere

Little ones

I’m almost tired about how much Android is in the press, but it really is worth mentioning again – this is the new Windows OS paradigm for mobile computing. A little chaotic, perhaps, lots of fragmentation, certainly, but omnipresent (and Apple is still Apple – closed, well-groomed and in control).  The newest manifestations on parade included the HTC/Sprint EVO (lookie no touchie), Samsung Galaxy S, Kyocera Zio, and the list grows longer. The new Windows Phone 7 was being shown off, but like the Palm Pre/Pixi, it is clearly too little, too late. Both OS’s are nice, but I just don’t see them gaining that much traction.

Big Ones

Handset Winners – Samsung, HTC

LG had a massive Iron Man 2 display and a hot DJ spinning club tunes, but I wish they spent the money on something useful, like decent phones. Blackberry had the same rows of kiosks to download apps that they had at CES and CTIA last year, which unfortunately says a lot about how hard it is to “appify” a BB. Yes, it is easier to fly to a trade show, go to their booth, grab a contactless card and wave it at kiosks than it is to use Blackberry App World on your phone. Yeesh.

My favorite OEMs were Samsung and HTC - Samsung in particular. They had a plethora of cool stuff – a very nice HP picoprojector embedded into a phone, the amazing AMOLED screens (see Galaxy S above), interesting multiscreen home media solutions, and so on. HTC seems to have really broken out – they are transitioning from an anonymous white-label contractor to a decent brand in their own right. All of a sudden, they are everywhere, making the bulk of the coolest Android phones.

To be fair, Motorola is also making cool phones again, and given the post-RAZR dry spell, that’s saying something. However, my favorite thing at their booth was this intriguing wearable computing device called Golden-I (Bond will be suing them I’m sure).  Sure, lots of folks have been trying to build something like this, but this one seems to work well. Voice-driven commands, decent Kopin microdisaplay, and bluetooth/WiFi connectivity with remote desktop means you don’t need to have too much storage on-device. 800MHz OMAP processor, and you’re good to go. The team says the intial focus is on industrial uses, or guys in hardhats who need their hands free to fix things.

(I wish Droid camera didn't suck!)

LTE/WiMax

Like Android, I’ve overdone this one so will keep it short. The carriers are all chugging ahead, and even Clearwire wants in on the game. It is clear to me that LTE will also provide the impetus (excuse?) for carriers to implement tiered pricing for data. In a competitive frenzy, they goofed on all-you-can-eat data plans, and will have to adjust. Users won’t be justified in complaining, especially if they are using their device to download bit-torrent files or providing connectivity to everyone in their dorm.  Anyway, I’m looking forward to it, and it will be interesting to see if folks jettison their cable modems and DSL lines the same way they are dumping land lines, once LTE is in place.

Sprint is hoping to exploit that short window when WiMax is the only “4G” game in town this year. I am starting to wonder if maybe WiMax might get some legs after all – Cisco announced they are pushing WiMax for smart grid applications, and pricing for Sprint/Clearwire is starting to get more interesting. Time will tell -

Femto-sells

For the love of God, when will carriers understand? The reason femtocells aren’t taking the world by storm is that even when faced with crappy coverage, people don’t want to PAY a carrier for a box to fix it, while doing them an enormous favor of OFFLOADING TRAFFIC onto their fixed broadband connection!!  Change your pricing fellas – give the damn things away if you have to. The end result is happy customers and less traffic on your network – isn’t this a no-brainer?

And to finish, a word of caution – don’t punch an Olympic star, especially at a trade show. They have bodyguards with bad tempers!

Dude, that kinda hurt!

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Posted by Paul

Verizon/Google spat over AdMob – the pundits are wrong again

March 16, 2010

Poor Google – embattled on all fronts. In full-scale retreat on the China front, they now are facing a newly-invigorated post-Bush FTC, helped by no less than their old friends at Verizon Wireless!

So many people continue to think that Google wants to get into the carrier business – they were wrong when Google bid on 700MHz spectrum, they were wrong again when Google invested in Clearwire, wrong a 3rd time with Android, a 4th with the Nexus One, and at least a 5th with this ruckus.  Google does not want to be a MVNO (mobile virtual network operator), or a real one. At least as far as I can tell. Running a network is a hard, crappy business with ginormous capex and slimmer margins than software, search, and ads in general. Why buy the cow when you can just get the cream?

What Google does want, and has wanted with every strategic decision it has taken in wireless, is to dominate the third screen (mobile). Verizon’s greatest fear is not that they have to compete with Google, it’s that Google will use their networks in a way that completely marginalizes them. The carriers are like ISPs in the early 90s – despite being forced to open up to the internet, they still believe the best way to monetize their capex-heavy assets is to own and control the customer experience. Wrong – Google will help them to monetize those assets by turning them into dumb pipes.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me repeat myself – Google will help carriers make money by turning them into dumb pipes. Dumb. Pipes. Is. Good.  Don’t fight it – embrace it.

Let them hollow you out – let them provide all the luscious, AdMob/Android-fueled, location-based goodness – leave them alone to do their magic. Your users will become voracious consumers of data in ways they couldn’t even imagine in front of their PCs.  And you will have data ARPU well north of $100 a month. It will happen.

Unless of course you help the FTC to hold Google back. But then Apple/Quattro and Microsoft/Bing will simply get more market share and the same thing will happen regardless.

So carriers, negate the hate – embrace the AdMob. You’ll feel all the better for it -

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Posted by Paul

Bloom Energy – out of the closet

February 22, 2010

Ahh, finally. This week Bloom officially exits stealth mode, with a press conference on Wednesday and a great segment on 60 Minutes last night -

60 Minutes Video – The Bloom Box

It’s been hard to sit tight on this, but now the results will speak for themselves. This one is special.

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Posted by Paul

iSlices! iDices! (or how to parse the iPad hype)

January 28, 2010

As an investor, whenever a major consumer electronics launch creates a fuss (especially when it’s from the master himself), I try to step back and see the bigger picture. Is this a game changer in any way? Does it create real investment opportunities that didn’t exist before? What companies or technologies will be impacted by this? Can I make a buck here or not?

The other challenge is to try to minimize your own personal bias, and remind yourself that “I am not the market” (something VCs often have a hard time doing). Being a gadget-hound myself, this can sometimes be hard. So let me get my personal bias out of the way first:

I like it, I might buy it (if my wife lets me), the $499 price will get me into purchase mode, but of course I will buy the model with 3G. I might go for the cheap data plan at first, but will blow through it and move to the unlimited plan. I will certainly no longer be watching movies on cross-country flights on my puny iPod Touch. I will ditch my girly-man HP netbook that my friends tease me about. I will never again try to review a spreadsheet on a smartphone. I will use this on the couch while watching TV instead of getting up and walking over to my Mac (I will not use it in the loo, and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t admit it).


Whew. Glad to get that out of the way.  So what’s the iPad’s impact on my investment thesis?

MG is right that the installed base of iPhone/iPod users will naturally migrate to this platform; hopefully that customer base is sufficiently large to attract the developers to create new and heretofore unimagined applications that take advantage of it.

I don’t think this will significantly impact the Kindle’s prospects, but I do think it bifurcates the e-reader market. Other e-readers are going to struggle mightily against two incredibly strong alternatives – one, the leading, lower-cost, elegant e-ink book platform, and two, the leading, higher-cost, aesthetically gorgeous, multifunction tablet platform. The only tablet/reader that has a chance of breaking into this market will be the long-imagined magic scroll (and let’s face it, Apple will be releasing that at Macworld 2011). People have been predicting the outcome for months. But now it’s here, and no nooks or crannies can hide the painful truth that the duopoly is upon us.

This is another giant leap toward the new human-machine interface paradigm. It sounds obvious but makes it no less important. Apple is leading the charge on touch, Microsoft is doing the same on gesture with Natal, and Google and others (including one of our portfolio companies, Yap) are driving the bus on voice. All three are critical interface elements in my view, and there may be room for new ones.

Although I do believe there will be many successful apps on the iPad, I don’t believe they are generally venture-backed material. As with most of the iPhone apps, this will be a hits-driven business with little capital intensity; most of the successes will likely be angel or self-funded.

There are some obvious vertical segments that could be completely dominated by the iPad: Healthcare, education, design, architecture, basically any field in which someone carries around a clipboard or simply has to move around a lot while working. Startups developing a holistic approach to such vertical solutions might indeed be worth investing in.

Of all the potential impacts, though, the evolution in the human-machine interface is the most intriguing, and the one I will be watching most closely.

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Posted by Paul

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