Kaiyzen Group

After leaving my post at SugarCRM last February I set my sights on launching my mobile start I have been developing over the past 3 years, with roots back to a 2003 project before my Sugar days.  After a few months of cranking away full time on the mobile project, I quickly realized that it was still a tad bit early to be pushing my solution in the market place.  I took a step back, decided to add some new technologies to the concept, and wait for the next couple generations of devices to be pushed into the marketplace.

As part of this “down shifting” on my mobile project, I had a whole lot of un-used time on my hands.  With my skill sets as in software, and deep knowledge and experience across web, mobile, IPTV, enterprise, consumer, etc, etc, I figured I would start advising to other projects.  I figured I would focus on two types of projects.  One being idea/early stage startups still getting their projects together to fully launch.  The other would be existing companies that have empassioned/visionary founders, and good technology and IP foundations, but missed the mark and are looking to reboot things.

I started passing word through my network and hitting up as many events as possible.  After about 4 months I had a pretty good pipeline of orgs I have been helping out.  After another handfull of months of having a few fall off the map choosing different paths of development, I am proud to announce that I have filled up what I am calling my “Advisory I” slots.  These are orgs that I have been working with for the past six or more months, and are nearing ready for product launch/re-launch, and/or ready to go and raise capital.

I am calling it Advisory I, to borrow concepts from the VC community that has various funds they raise and they have different classes of companies in each funds.  This, coupled with the fact that I am currently only a single person and cloning technologies are not up to snuff yet, I am pretty much tapped out on being able to spend quality time with any more companies, on top of my continued mobile master plan.

The four companies are a good mix of orgs.  One is a mobile software startup that is being launch by an experienced entreprenuer who is self funding and bootstrapping his first phase of the company into place.  Second company is a fantastic software platform solution for the Consume Electronics space working on interactive inputs.  Next is a fantastic play in the Enterprise/DataCenter space which has been in development for the past year.  The last org to join on just a bit ago is a reboot candidate in the meeting/collaboration space.

Hopefully they continue to progress and I will be able to share more details about my experiences.  The post lagging on this site is still pretty rampant with most of my posting time focused over at SiliconAngle.

If you are, or know people looking to get help with their startup, I would still like to hear about the projects, and possible point them in the right direction or match make them with someone within my network.

Technology has always evolved at a pretty rapid click.  The advent of the internet has taking things to a whole other level though.  I dont know if you would say things are evolving exponentially or geometrically quicker than before but everyone has to agree, it is definitely not a linear path.

With the internet we saw people rush to make a quick buck much like back in the good ol California gold rush days.  Innovation was happening all over the place since everything was new and we experienced the wave of “first to market” players which gave birth to some of the most valuable businesses and brands on the planet.  From eBay to Amazon, Yahoo! to AOL, and of course there Google, or the ‘Big G’ as I like to call them, we now have our Big 4, 5, 6 or whatever you want to call it, equivalent of the accounting world.  Oh.., I almost forgot to mention the little up and comer in the web space, Microsoft.., sorry, I always forget about those little guys.

A few of these big players are looking to bring the web and desktop closer and closer together.  Eventually they want to get to the point where pretty much everything is delivered strickly over the web via a brower based applicaiton, or powered/augmented by the web via the desktop.  We have been seeing the first wave of these applications come out in the past year+ as well as new technologies and frameworks that are making life easier for developers to create new solutions.

Commodity, commodity, commodity is the theme of today.  With the Open Source software movement, the LAMP stack, cheap hardware, cheap-er bandwith costs, etc, it is becoming very easy.., almost plug and play…, to create new web sites/services/businesses.  Look at Guy Kawasaki’s tuemors site.  It is kind of lame in my opinion but is a great example of this.  Guy wanted to show by example how quick and cheap it is to launch a web service.  Take a look at this Venture Beat coverage.

True “web computing”.., or “cloud computing”, is very much in it’s infancy.  If the general internet is the older brother in his teens then web computing is the new born just learning to walk right now.  The king of the space right now is Amazon.  Through their Amazon Web Services offerings they are offering a pretty amazing suite of offerings for truely on-demand elastic services which take the whole commidity play to that next level.  Unfortunately, even though this stuff is in its infancy people are already throwing around the stupid cloud computing tag so much that I am already annoyed.  A lot of the time people are using it to describe normal web site/applications that have API’s into them be it SOAP/REST/etc based.  Microsoft and Google will be the next big players getting into this space and we will most likely start to see the first of their offerings pretty soon here, probably before the year comes to a close.  The Big G, MS, and other players have A LOT of work to do to catch up and exceed what Amazon is doing and ultimately the developer will win out as competition pushes feature sets further and keeps pricing as low as possible.

Covering all these topics and more is what the Web Computing Series is all about.  From event coverage, to technology/company/service reviews, to interviews with key players in the game, I will be throwing it all under this series.

I welcome your comments, feedback, and recomendations.  I hope you enjoy this coverage.

Seems like you are not a “serious” web 2.0 company.., sick of the web 2.0 tag nowadays by the way.., until you open up your “platform” and launch your API.

A few up and comers have done so in the past couple weeks.

Imeem, the online media, social network, palylist manager service that is growing at quite a rapid click boasting over 24 million users.  They have launched an API for developers who want to build media and social aspects into their products/services.  Think of it as a facebook/myspace with the focus of just music.

FriendFeed is the friend news feed service launched by a few former Google employees.  They will keep tabs on your friends from all your diferent social networking sites and bring the data together for your viewing pleasure.  Their API aims to open the data they are aggregating , and of course get others to plug into their engine and feed it with more friend info.  Just think.., if they are successfull we will have a giant version of Facebook’s Beacon, and we know how much we all love that.

Of course we cant wait for these guys to infuse the wonderful Open Social standard into their setups as the vapor trail is shortening finally as Google is finally getting their shit together with it.

Just getting over some sickness from last week that caused a lack in the postings…., a quick roundup of some tidbits:

Of course there is the continued Microsoft/Yahoo! drama.  The latest being that MS is STILL sticking to their guns that their offer is fair.., impending proxy battle coming up as Yahoo!’s board comes up for re-election.  This should get interesting, or at least entertaining from a public perspective.  It has been more of like the cold war days recently with each side either publically stating things, or sending out internal communications that they know will be leaked to the press.  First was Yang and company’s move to setup crazy severance plans in the case of a take over and layoffs.., then came MS sending an internal email about how important the top performers are and that the deal will be mostly about the people and the best will be rewarded handsomly.

Funding, funding, and more funding.  Even with the economy technically being in the shitter VC activity doesnt seem to be slowing down.., handfull of new companies getting their $$$ on, as well as some later rounds to help through these possible tough times.  Some notables are:

New blog recomendation site Outbrain closes $5 Million.., do we really need another blog recomendation/search site?

Tiny Pictures nabs a $7 Million Series B to help consumers share and comment on eachothers camera phone pics.  Seems like an awefull lot o cashish for what their service is.  This brings their total funding to $11.2 Million.  Radar.., parent company, is claiming to serve up 15 million pics a month.

Glam finally gettin that HUGE funding they have been talking about for months.  This brings their total funding + debt to around $115 million.., frickin nuts, BUT, they are having projected revenues of $150 Million for the year with $40 Million in profit.., they have their glam.com site which is a HUGELY popular site among women.., and a handfull of offshoot site.., they claim around 1.1 Billion page vies.

Mixx.., the Digg clone + competitor, closes a “Series A1″, whatever that is, at $2 Million.  This seems like a good amount of cash for them to grab.  They have been getting some good press and seem to have some growth going.  They are run by Chris McGill who is the former GM of Yahoo! News.

TrialPay.., have a friend that works there.., supposedly kickin some arse and closing a $12.7 Million round bringing their total honey pot to around $16 Million.  David over at VentureBeat has a writeup on them with some screen shots.  Supposedly looking for around $20 Million in revenue this year which is great.  It would be nice to see how their expanding roster of merchants shapes out throughout this year.

There is lots of stuff going on in the world of patents.  The USPTO under the onslaught of technology, and specifically software patents, is drowning in getting patents reviewed and approved or rejected.  People are complaining that the USPTO is hastily granting patents that are obvious and should be rejected.  Most notable and public of the obvious patents is the continued case of Amazon and their One-Click patent.

The Amazon story has been going on for some time.  A re-examination was filed by blogger Peter Calveley. If you search on Yahoo! for “amazon one click patent” you will get a ton o hits.

I am kind of torn on this subject.

In one area I am all for patents.  I am currently working on a couple and thinking about filing them.  I view them as a great value add and protection when entering a market where large players can easily steal and mimick your ideas and put you out of business before you can even get going.  This day in age.., especially in the tech sector, patents dont seem to provide too much protection.  It seems that companies will just infringe on your IP until you sue them.  By that time they will usually just slap you with some $$$ and continue on their way.  I recently had a couple friends work on a project with a handfull of patents filed.  They had a big tech company signed up as a beta and consulting project.  The customer declined to fully sign up to use their technology at the end of the project.., then turned around and re-engineered everything they had done and release a product as their own.  Its scenarios like this that make you think.., “why should I be wasting my time and $$ on this if someone is just going to rip me off anyways?”

On the other side of the fence.., I cannot stand patent trolls that just file patents, or acquire IP that they are never going to use and go around forcing people to pay them stupid sums of cash.  I equate these bastards to the squaters that take domain names, dont use them, then try to sell them for $10,000.  This practice needs to be stopped and I hope some of the patent reform will help out in this area.

The next few years are going to be interesting once some of these cases like Amazons are finalized and we are getting some more precedence from the reform act.  There are also some new companies and concepts around IP creation, valuation, and monetization.

One very cool company is Ocean Tomo.  These guys are doing some pretty cool things around IP portfolios.  From valuation, to testimony, to helping out during M&A actvities they have built up a fantastic suite of services.  The most interesting to me right now is their three trading indexes around patent value and growth.

Another new project that has started up that I just came across.., actually what prompted me to write this story, is Peer to Patent.  This is a fantastic project that I hope can get some traction and lots of exposure.  This project approaches patents in a similar manner that medical research is done.  It focuses on peer review as part of the filing process.  The notion is that you submit your patent, it is reviewed by a community of peers that are experts or pretty knowledgable in your field the patent covers.  The community can than comment and submit prior art regarding the IP.

Ad Age released their report on the Top 100 marketers for 2006…, the numbers are impressive when you see individual company spend despite AdAge’s resonance that the spending for the Top 100 constituted a “scant 1.1% increase over 2005″.

King of the hill once again are the folks over at P&G.  Consumer packaged goods supplier Proctor and Gamble continue their rampant appetite for advertising of all forms with a total spend of $8.522 Billion.., thats right Billion with a big fat “B”.  To put that in perspective…, P&G is spending approximately $1 Million per hour, for every hour, of every day, during the year.

Top 10 Graphic Here:

When you see this type of $$$ being thrown around its no suprise that VC’s and the private equity firms are loving companies with a solid take on the advertising space and providing unique solutions.  Shoot.., all you would need is to account for a mere 1% of P&G spend and you are looking at an astonishing $85 Million in revenue.  Now get a tiny piece of some of the other Top 10 and you have yourself a healthy $$$ machine.

I have been following the CPG space for a little while now.  Its branding, packaging, and especially marketing and promotions are the 3.., well I guess technically 4 pillars that help set apart the annual winners from the losers.  More on that 3 and 4 pillar thing in a later post.  With such fierce competition in the space and ever shrinking margins due to competition and the big box retail factor, CPG players are doin whatever they can to stay engaged with the consumer and maintain that conversation.

Another interesting data point from AdAge which strengthens the stance of the U.S. being gluttons of all sorts, we accounted for 47% of the adverstising spend in the Top 100…, while the U.S. population accounts for only 4.6% of the global population.

I just goes to show that enough we have subprime fallout, people crying recession, and a flacid dollar, the U.S. is not only home to the majority of great tech innovators and leaders, but also companies that put out the simple products we use in our every day lives and mostly take for granted such as detergent, razors, lipstick, and of course chocolate.