10.30.06

Video Market heating up

Posted in Observations at 10:15 pm by Peter Kay

I just read the TechCrunch post on BrightCove’s launch and it looks like a pretty appealing avenue for those somewhat serious about monetizing their video content. Seems to me they just leapfrogged what YouTube+GoogleVideo is supposed become. They don’t have their content base anywhere near Goog’s but do have a tighter, more defined financial model.

If Google takes too long to get their act together, BrightCove could pull ahead. Watch this one closely for sure.

10.26.06

iCracked the iPod

Posted in Observations at 12:56 am by Peter Kay

(Well, I didn’t crack the iPod myself, but the headline was cool).

Imagine this: in 1999 you’re 15 yrs old and you are the one that cracks the DVD copy protection scheme which subsequently enables people to copy their DVDs.

So what do you do for an encore?

Well, today in 2006 at 22 yrs old you crack the copy protection of the iPod, allowing rivals to sell competing products that play music from iTunes and offer songs for download that work on iPods as they seek to take a bite out of Apple’s dominance of digital music.

Congrats Jon Lech Johansen! Wow.

10.24.06

Microsoft Zune player getting the right model

Posted in Observations at 10:41 am by Peter Kay

I’ve always felt that “share the love” models that turn every customer into a paid sales rep are the future of distribution. Amway representatives will be quick to point out that they’ve been doing this for years and they are right.

Microsoft’s Zune isn’t exactly MLM, but if you share a song (which it allows you to do so legally) that influences your friend to actually buying that song, you get “paid” in the form of credits to buy more music. Very cool.

10.18.06

Will it pay to have Pals in Honolulu?

Posted in Observations, Posts I've read at 11:57 pm by Peter Kay

Greg Kim, Honolulu attorney and founder of Vantage Counsel, sent out an email to his contacts and with his permission I’m reprinting the email here:

Dear Friends, here’s an interesting article ,”It Pays to Have Pals in Silicon Valley“, from today’s New York Times regarding the YouTube phenomenon and the numerous other PayPal spinoffs. Some reflections on relevance for Hawaii:

  1. There’s nothing like having a huge success like PayPal to jumpstart multiple spinoff companies and the acceleration of tech development and creativity. To follow this example, Hawaii should aim for a few huge successes that will ultimately generate spinoffs and accelerate critical mass.
  2. Startups are hard work and they need to be. The strong will survive. We shouldn’t make it easy for entrepreneurs to fund their companies if we are to complete globally and find sustainable businesses. If we make it too easy for them, then we are actually hurting them in the long run.
  3. Hawaii should thus be careful about taking risk away from entrepreneurs and investors. As Reid Hoffman (PayPal alum and founder of LinkedIn) is quoted at the end of the article, “Nothing focuses your attention quite like losing money and the sense that you are going to die soon.”
  4. Entrepreneurs want things to be hard. That’s why they are entrepreneurs. The article makes numerous references to the bonding that occurred through the stress and hard work (nights and weekends) of employees of PayPay in its early stages as a struggling startup. It states: “The long hours, sleepless nights and intense pressure of life inside a start-up often create strong bonds among its employees. In its early years, PayPal was all about pressure and the struggle for survival. The company was losing millions each month.”

    5. We should nurture this type of environment for entrepreneurs.

10.03.06

Plenty of room for another Google - of video search

Posted in Observations at 11:02 pm by Peter Kay

“CastTV Will Revolutionize Video Search”

Arrington writes some pretty strong words about this one. I’m bummed I couldn’t play with it too. How will a Google-level video search engine change the current paradigm? Talk about the outdated program guide!

09.29.06

Is podcasting a business?

Posted in Observations at 1:27 pm by Peter Kay

I have a personal interest in podcasting and so Podshow’s recent $15M B-round definitely raised my eyebrows. Assuming that purchase was for 20% of the company, that’s pegging their valuation at about $75M. That implies that they think they will be worth $750M in 5 years. (These assumptions are just taking basic VC rules of thumb like a 10x return in 5 years and never sell more than 20% of the company at any given round).

Assuming that DAG Ventures is not stupid, this seems to indicate that Podshow may in fact be on to something. It must also mean that advertisers are happy with their podcast advertising ROI.

I always wondered how well a podcast audience responds to the right kind of advertising. This seems to indicate that people aren’t hitting the fast forward button (as I do).

07.11.06

Still watching broadcast TV?

Posted in Observations at 1:03 am by Peter Kay

Scanning through this TechCrunch post Whither Television Programming? drove me to jot some quick thoughts on the future of TV:

I rarely, if ever, sit through an entire broadcast TV program. I do, however, watch about 2 hours of recorded TV a day and probably another 1/2 hr of Internet-downloaded videos.

I can easily see a day when you will simply subscribe to your favorite video entertaiment via vodcasting (video clips delivered to your computer via podcasting technology) and never go near your cable TV again.

In fact, many will argue that day has arrived already, with the ever-growing lists of vodcasts one can subscribe too. Maybe so, but those are still in the amateur category. I want to subscribe to my favorite news program and watch it on my laptop/pc/media center.

I think the big question/challenge for the traditional media is how to not lose ad revenue. How do you stop people from FFing through the ads?

Easy, but hard: Make the ads relevant to the viewer. Develop a 1-1 with me and what I’m looking for. Do that, and I’ll probably hit rewind and play the ad a few times.

06.24.06

Do you really need a superstar executive team for your startup?

Posted in Observations at 7:02 pm by Peter Kay

A startup needs a small, lean team where every person can perform some key aspect of product development. This lets you get to market cheap and fast. What you don’t need in the startup stages is a superstar CxO team (CEO, COO, CFO, CxO).

Why? Several reasons:

  1. High level executives are used to directing, overseeing, and building teams of people around them. They don’t usually do the actual work. I once hired a “Marketing VP” in one of my small companies, assuming she would do it all and save me money, but I quickly found out that she herself couldn’t really do the work and was used to having the “Agency” get the job done. I got far less than what I needed but it cost me way more.
  2. CxOs don’t *really* want to do a startup, blood-sweat-tears-wise. They want to leverage their contacts and experience and direct *everyone else* to get the work done. This is a very needed skill, later on in the game, but not at the very beginning.
  3. CxOs want (and perhaps deserve) to get paid a lot, but your company might be too small or to nascent to take advantage of what they can really do. It’s like using a steam shovel to dig a small hole. Sure, you can do it, but you could have also dug that same hole with a hand-held shovel that’s sitting in your garage.
  4. True CxOs consider themselves mercenaries, and if the tide turns the wrong way, very little holds them back from jumping ship. I remember talking to a potential strategic buyer one day who was super proud of this awesome Fortune 1000 CEO he had hired, only to see the shiny new executive leave the company holding the bag less than a year later.

    5. If it’s your startup, remember, it’s really up to you and your small band of brothers to get the job done in the early stages. Get your product up and running with some customers and ideally some revenue. Then get a *list* of potential CxO candidates who are interested so that when you start building up relationships with your investors, you’ll still be lean and mean, yet have a pool of talent you can pull from when you need to.

    Thanks to Ed Sim’s “Top-heavy teams” which motivated me to write mine.

06.14.06

xb0x 360 rocks, but not for the games

Posted in Observations at 12:58 pm by Peter Kay

I recently received an Xbox 360 as a gift from a new family member and so far I am loving playing my favorite console/network mulitplayer game, Battlefield2 Modern Combat

But that’s not why I love my 360.

Truthfully, the games just ain’t there yet. Sure, the HD resolution is cool but so far I’ve not seen any games that have really taken advantage of the new power. But what is totally awesome is the 360’s ability to tap into my media library.

Over the years, I’ve collected hundreds of gigabytes of music (legally!) and digital photos. Up until now they’ve been relegated to being viewed on my computer screen or heard through my computer speakers. The 360 has changed all this.

Using Media Connector (a free MS download) on the XP boxes in my home network, coupled to the 360 via our home wireless lan, I can now listen to all my music and watch all my photos via our home theater system. The 360 easily connects to our Media Connector-running PCs, accesses all the content it needs, and streams it to the TV & HiFi.

So now when my wife and I have a coffee and talk, I fire up the 360, play my fav. tunes, and run a random shuffle of family photos. We get the perfect backdrop to whatever we end up talking about, and finally the thousands of kid photos we’ve taken are given their just deserve: Center Stage in the family living room.

I would highly recommend you look @ the 360 if you have a similar situation, that being:

  • Tons of digital music & photos stored on XP machines.
  • Wireless Lan in the house
  • Home Theater

04.18.06

Really piss off your windows friends with your Mac’s Vista interface

Posted in Observations at 2:34 am by Peter Kay

If you love the Mac, you’ll LOVE this video which has taken the audio from a Microsoft presentation about the new Windows Vista inteface and overlaid it with a demonstration of Mac OS-X.

I’ve not had a Mac since ‘84, but I’m going to take a serious look at one now, since it runs XP.

But when I look @ this video, it’s extremely (painfully) clear that the Mac is lightyears ahead in its interface. wow.

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