The afternoon session is focusing on infrastructure and enabling technologies. Fusion-io was one of the brashest presenters, saying its silicon-based ioDrive "will turn disk drives into boat anchors." It has a capacity of 640Gb and does 100,000 seeks per second! 
The CTO and cofounder, David Flynn (on right), said a disk drive only does about 100 IOs per second — so, his ioDrive is 100x of that. "We talking about the equivalent performance of 1000 disk drives," echoed CEO and cofounder Rick White, pointing out the mechanical drive is just inefficient. The solution, he said: "Put it on silicon!" With this product, "we can now put the performance of a SAN onto every server." And, holding up the product, he said it "puts the power of a SAN into the palm of your hand." For more details on what Fusion-io is up to, check out the press release.
Tag: DEMOfall 2007 (Page 3 of 4)
So you shoot crappy videos, too, huh? Okay, then does MotionDSP, another of the first session’s presenters, have a deal for you: FixMyMovie.com. It dramatically improves videos you upload from your phone, your digital camera, or your webcam. It’s based on patent-pending military technology — so, it makes sense that one of their investors is InQTel (as in CIA). The company’s raised less than $1 million, but already has more than $1 million in revs. The demo of their new consumer service was extremely impressive — the technology increases resolution, reduces noise, and corrects color and lighting, said CEO Sean Varah. "It’s one click to enhance."
Well, what a cool beginning — Digital Fountain, the first presenter, uses some cool surf videos shot in Hawaii to show off its new Splash content delivery. I was lovin’ it. Though it won’t be available till January, it sure sounds great. 
It will deliver entertainment-grade video over any network, eliminating common problems like poor video quality, small picture size, slow loads, and frequent buffering. Splash uses Amazon Web Services to "deliver a low-cost, extraordinary consumer experience," said CEO Charlie Oppenheimer
The Bayview Lawn at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina was buzzing bigtime starting at 6:00 last evening to kick off DEMOfall 2007. Georgeous weather, sumptuous food, great friends, new people from all over the place, and tech talk flying in every direction. Does it get any better than this? I was so busy meeting new people and getting pitched, I didn’t even have a chance to shoot many photos. 
Okay, one decent shot, and here it is: (from left) Marc Orchant, newly of Blognation…Aaron Fulkerson, cofounder of Mindtouch (who just who strolled over from his offices)…Shel Israel of Global Neighbourhoods…and Luis Villalobos, founder of Tech Coast Angels. [Man, I love the mixes I can put together at these events!] But if you want to see more photos, just check out these from Brian Solis, who does much better than I ever could. (Brian, you da man.)
But what new stuff did I hear about at the party that I like? Well, for starters, Naomi Wall, content dev chief at MetaRADAR, told me they’ll be introducing a "media masher" that brings all your rich media content together, bridging the gap between websites, desktop apps, and mobil devices. And I also was glad to run into the guys from mSpoke in Pittsburgh (yes, some of those smart Carnegie Mellon dudes) — Sean Ammirati, VP biz dev (a colleague from Read/Write Web, who I’d only met online up till now), and Dave Mawhinney, CEO. They’re launching FeedHub, a whiz-bang new technology to help with your RSS information overload. We’re talking a personalization engine that dynamically adapts to your reading habits. This is a space I’ve been following, and I just knew we’d be seeing some solutions to this problem soon. Bring it on, baby. A bloke from Manchester, UK, told me about YuuGuu, which lets you instantly share your screen in real-time with anyone, anywhere. Blimey, dude! The founder of LongJump told me about his firm’s online catalog of apps for small business, which can be customized via drag-and-drop. Then, lo and behold, I met a storage startup! Fusion-io of Salt Lake City I learned will be introducing a revolutionary stroage architecture that puts SAN or NAS on silicon (high-density NAND), with access rates comparable to DRAM with the storage capacity of disk. DEMO says it "may prove to be among the most important products ever to launch" at their events. Yikes! Then, on the way back into the hotel bar [yes, the party continued inside, till God’s knows when], I ran into the the founder of iForem, which has a subscription-free service to store,protect and share intellectual property — an online safe deposit box for businesses and consumers, with a trust account. And then the folks from ideablob (site to
go live later this morning) caught me — we were the last ones on the lawn! — and told me their new venture is funded by
Advanta in Philly [how do all the PA startups find me?] This site is an open
community for small businesses, where members vote on new ideas and get
valuable advice and feedback from one another. And get this: you can
actually win cash for your idea.
As the evening continued, I had a great chat with my longtime buddies Steve Larsen of Krugle and Shel Israel of Global Neighbourhoods, solving all the world’s problems. Then, it was beddy-bye time so I could get up early and write this post. More soon!
Great piece in the Boston Globe yesterday by Scott Kirsner: In Venture Capital, a Growing Rift Over Blogs. It’s the best look I’ve seen so far into why some VCs blog and why others pass. Makes some excellent points about the main advantage for VCs — better deal flow — and the main advantages for entrepreneurs — leveling the playing field, including from a geographic standpoint. That latter point is one I’ve written about a lot, and a very real issue for founders not lucky enough to be located in one of the VC hotbeds.
I like the way Kirsner characterizes VC blogging as the "new parity in the world of venture capital."
The article quotes one of the best-known VC bloggers out there, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures in NYC, a guy who’s invested in many Internet and Web 2.0 deals. Here’s an excerpt from the article that quotes Fred:
Venture capitalists who blog say it isn’t just about helping pump up
their firm’s reputation and show how market-savvy they are. Blogging,
writes Wilson via e-mail, is "the best tool for VC investing that I’ve
ever seen, and I’ve been in this business for more than 20 years."Wilson
says his blog not only helps him meet more start-ups, but it brings him
companies that are "more targeted and more relevant" to the areas he’s
interested in. Wilson also likes it when his readers argue with him or
tell him about companies he might not already know; it’s not unusual
for one of his posts to attract 25 or 30 comments. "You can’t buy that
kind of education," he writes, "and I get it every day for free."
Later in the piece, an opposing viewpoint is put forth:
"My gut says that there’s no correlation between VC blogging and
financial returns," Spark Capital’s (Bijan) Sabet says, noting that blogger
Fred Wilson has done well with his investments – but so has John Doerr
of the Silicon Valley firm Kleiner Perkins, who doesn’t blog but has
put money into Amazon, Google, and Intuit.
The trouble with that characterization, however, is that those latter deals were done long before blogging was popular. Granted, it’s hard to argue that big-kahuna KP needs to blog. But there’s a whole universe of newer, younger VCs out there who are finding it benefits them.
IDG Ventures’ Jeff Bussgang adds this great thought:
…as entrepreneurs increasingly maintain blogs of their own, Bussgang
says, "they want to see that the VCs are their peers and are wrestling
with similar issues and thinking through things."
I wonder how many VC bloggers will be at DEMOfall, starting later today? I’m looking forward to talking with them.
What do you think about blogging representing "the new parity in venture capital"? What are your experiences?
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