- IN THIS ISSUE:
- * Companies at PC Forum
- * Heard at PC Forum
- * Thoughts from PC Forum
- * And Even More Companies…
- * Room33 Is Pushing Ahead
- * New Venture Funds
I just had a ten-minute corridor meeting with my neighbor. He was back from a business trip from Hawaii, leaving for another one tomorrow morning in Tokyo. So we had a corridor meeting at 10:30 pm - pretty cool, huh? If Ericsson would ever set up a venture fund this guy be the dream candidate to run it: 32 years old, he has ten years of experience from the top in the high tech industry. But he is doing like most in his position: he is contemplating setting up a $200 million venture fund himself with a couple of friends. The fund would focus on datacom, wireless Internet, B2B, ASPs - you know… But he says “Ericsson would do incredibly well by entering the venture space now, much better than Siemens whose fund has grown over ten times”. Looks like location-based services will be the next hype and it will come soon. My neighbor is doing the IPO of AtRoad (http://www.atroad.com) and they just passed on another one, SignalSoft (http://www.signalsoftcorp.com/) because they .considered it to be too early stage (”but probably they will do really well”).
PC Forum in Phoenix, Arizona, was a very good event - not so much the program but the networking. There were 750 people, 200 had been turned back. My greatest achievement on top of the sales leads which I don’t publicize here was that I was able to talk entire 20 minutes with Mary Meeker, Chief Internet Analyst at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. She is also called the “Queen of Internet Stocks” and “the second most influential person for Internet stocks after Alan Greenspan”. Mary is apparently not very well updated on the mobile Internet market, she looks at things from the Internet industry perspective. How will the Internet business models develop when we move into the mobile Internet era? Who will own the end user? “I would like to know more, could you please arrange a teleconference with our analysts.” Mary thought T28 World was totally cool, she made a call, with it and programmed her number in it. I felt like having talked to the King of Sweden…
COMPANIES AT PC FORUM
TeraBeam launched their “fiberless optics” gigabit Ethernet wireless last mile technology and service with deployments starting in 3Q00. They claim it to reach 40 times the capital efficiency of LMDS. The technology will give gigabit speeds downstream and 100 MB/s upstream. They have hired Dan Hesse, ex-head of AT&T Wireless, as their CEO. “Were you the guy who gave our execs a hard time?” “Yes, I’m the man.” (laughs). http://www.terabeam.com
FireDrop launched their messaging service which integrates web, email and instant messaging into a collaborative application environment through “Zaplets”. A dozen patents pending, this Kleiner-Perkins backed Stanford alumni startup is very, very hot. Due to their coverage in Wall Street Journal, their presentation was packed and people were sitting on the floor. Craig Mahany from BCT is already on this one. http://www.firedrop.com
Forget BMW and Daimler! German web engineering seems to be all over the map these days. One of the coolest companies I saw is Twest, kind of a homepage-enhancement-ASP-service. The founder Lars Thomsen wanted to know how to extend this to wireless. A look at the company web page reveals that Lars’s trip to PC Forum paid off: he has since then secured a DEM 8 million venture round. http://www.twest.com.
Cordless networked game devices are emerging. Cybiko (http://www.cybiko.com) enables you to download new games into the device and play multiplayer games and chat using high frequency RF transmission. I think Ericsson should buy a bunch of these companies when they grow up a bit and define them as the “my first Sony” offering of mobile gaming. What is very appealing to me in this is that kids can play with real networked applications (without voice) and prepare for becoming advanced users of networked applications faster. A great branding opportunity!
Fresher Information Corporation is my new favorite for a caching solution For the WISE Portal. In early 1997 I pointed out Inktomi, last summer there was Akamai. Fresher is a newcomer with a strong management team and currently still a low valuation. At Demo in February they s,till did not have a wireless strategy, now they do. They could be used at WISE Portal particularly in the ASP version as a content parsing service to create optimal service bundles for end-users in real time. http://www.fresher.com
“Amazon.com became essentially the tracking stock for e-commerce. We will become the tracking stock for mobile e-commerce.” These were the concluding words in the presentation of ViaFone, a new mobile commerce ASP service and private label solution provider. This is a second-generation mobile Internet startup from an experienced Silicon Valley team. Well thought out and well funded. “We said no to Nokia because it took them too long to decide.” http://www.viafone.com
HEARD AT PC FORUM
Living Systems in Germany has achieved a lot since last PC Forum. Kurt Kammerer was currently occupied with B2B trading platforms for WAP. Another idea he has under development is a telecom carrier trading platform (trading telecom services for the B2B market). The CTO for that company will come from Ericsson, he did not want to say who. http://www.livingsystems.de
Lee Stein is one of the Internet pioneers, I met him first at the Stockholm IETF meeting in 1995. Then he had a pony tail and he worked for an e-commerce pioneer First Virtual. Now he is a business angel and looks like he lives on carrots and other health food. “We will come up with a very relevant mobile Internet announcement in about 150 days, you will be happy you gave me your business card.” We’ll see.
Michel Bera from Grolier Interactive in France was promoting a new company called Kxen which is doing knowledge interaction engines, looks really relevant for telcos in data mining and CRM, they have Vodafone-Airtouch as a reference… http://www.kxen.com/
THOUGHTS FROM PC FORUM
PC Forum is an event with the purpose of provoking new thoughts and creative thinking. Some of the presentations achieved this.
The session on navigation was very interesting. I have been thinking of how navigation could be enhanced in a mobile Internet context. Could the sites that fit current network performance be automatically prioritized in searches? Could Ericsson benefit from naming-related innovations to improve WAP navigation (ICANN)? Could instant messaging be knowledge-enhanced by embedding it in work flows, project management systems and corporate internal naming conventions?
AND EVEN MORE COMPANIES…
Argo Interactive Group (http://www.argogroup.com) is one of the wireless content conversion technology companies, featured even in the latest Red Herring. They recently received a $17 million venture round.
ValiCert’s Digital Receipt Solutions enable organizations to securely generate, exchange, archive, and reconstruct e-Transactions in a legally binding and auditable manner. Lucent Ventures led their latest financing round, supported by France Telecom Ventures and Gemplus. You might want to check it out. http://www.valicert.com
Spotlife is running an ASP service for individuals who want to put their life on the web as streaming video through web cams. They say 50 million web cams will have been sold by 2003. They are very interested in 3G. http://www.spotlife.com Another company I ran into in this space is http://www.cameraplanet.com
How will users be able to store information in web based databases and give access to it to their community? Can this be somehow connected to community and e-commerce portals they are using? Sure, go to http://www.bitlocker.com and see!
Mobile Internet is all about personalization and permission marketing. Maybe we should work with companies who help merchants gain eFocus? Can a mobile phone be part of a personalization interaction to enhance this focus? I am sure it can! http://www.recipio.com
ROOM 33 IS PUSHING AHEAD
The Swedish Room 33 WAP portal service, previously called Palm Reach, is pushing ahead with full speed. The company is close to having secured a $40 million financing round, mainly European venture money. Their latest of their predatory moves was to hire Jacqueline O’Hale from Ericsson Spain to run their operations in Southern Europe and Latin America. Room33 is also featured in the latest issue of Red Herring. The lesson to Ericsson: NEVER underestimate the small guy. Imagine what Disney must have thought about Yahoo in 1995… http://www.room33.com
NEW VENTURE FUNDS
In the last newsletter I mentioned that I knew of BT planning a venture fund. In order to get all the information, I had dinner with Mike Carr, one of the BT execs who have moved to Silicon Valley to set things up. There is indeed a decision to set up a $500 million venture fund for BT for investments in the US. Parallel to this, AT&T will set up another $500 million fund which will share deal flow with BT along the lines with the Concert alliance. Moreover, BT has allocated another $250 million for venture investments outside of the US. These venture activities are headquartered in Silicon Valley. In order to access the deal flow of venture capital firms, teh company is currently interviewing six leading firms to choose the preferred partners to work ,with. The interest for Ericsson in this is that a company like BT are very interested in sharing their deal flow with Ericsson, their vendor. I must also mention that someone who has worked in Silicon Valley for two years seems to be able give some valuable guidance to our “newbie” customer in terms of how to build their professional network in the Bay Area ;-).
QUICK TAKES
The latest startup of Bill Gross from IdeaLab is called MakeanOffer.com, It allows people to walk around on a Sunday afternoon, note down that neighbor’s house you always wanted to buy - and make an anonymous offer! Talk about increasing liquidity in the economy… Lycos and Puma will partner on wireless tracking services… Airtouch and Phone.com are rambling on their emerging cooperation. When I met Sonera last week they said that Phone.com’s PR policy allows them to send out a press release for saying (’good morning - it is sunny in California today and we all came to work’ (Finnish humor)… Women.com is going wireless…
(To view the embedded hyperlinks, view this section online at http://webacademy.ericsson.se.)
- SELECTED THOUGHTFUL READING
Do not forget to read the latest Red Herring, it has a massive special report on European Wireless. Some how the following link does not work yet: http://www.redherring.com/77/news-wireless.html so you might be better of going to the international newsstand and buying the paper version. This is must reading since Red Herring is one of the main channels through which the US investment community get to better understand the wireless market. There are five European companies profiled: WapIT (Finland), Argo (UK), Iobox (Finland), Webraska (France) and Room33 (Sweden)… - (go to http://webacademy.ericsson.se for links to stories)
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This is a weekly newsletter describing the non-confidential part of my work during the past week and how I see market evolution affecting Ericsson (as interpreted my me in my role working for LME/DMA in San Francisco as a business developer with a focus on Internet applications and enablers). The report will be published every Monday. For subscriptions go to http://webacademy.ericsson.se/elists.
