Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: Seth Levine

Startups: Apply for Your Free #Gluecon Demo Pod (Deadline March 24)

Can the Glue Conference get any better? This will be the third annual, and I can honestly say this year's event will blow the roof off. Listen: if you're a developer or tech startup founder, get your ass to Denver, May 24-26. You will kick yourself over and over in said ass if you don't! The quality of the programming and attendees is the best of any cloud/developer/big data/mobile conference out there. Trust me — I go to a lot of conferences. I know these things. And the #Gluecon crew is making it even easier for a bunch of startups to get visibility there this year…

Glue-DemoPavilion-banner How? Thanks to the main event underwriter, Alcatel-Lucent (and its OpenAPIservice), the Glue Conference is awarding 15 startups with a free demo pod at the event. Here's the post on the great Gluecon Blog that will tell you all about this oportunity.  You have till March 24th to apply, so go for it!

What will the conference program offer?  Well, that's taking even more shape as we speak, but check out this post on the Gluecon blog for juicy details about just some of the Gluecon sessions.

A quote from event organizer Eric Norlin: "We're working our butts off to make sure that Gluecon is the single most impact-filled conference for cloud/API developers this year. I hope you'll choose to join us."

[UPDATE: In a previous post, I wrote this: 'Glue' is a Cloud Conference That's Different – It's for *Developers* (and some interesting new twists on the next one)]

For basic details on this year's event, hit this register page and read the summary. Omni-BroomfieldThen register while the price is the lowest! (Try this code and see if it still gets you an even lower discount: alu12.)  And make your hotel reservation. The venue is a very cool place called the Omni Resort in Broomfield, and the rate is quite reasonable. Gonna be tons of great learning, killer networking, and it's always lots of fun, too!  See you there.

 

GlueCon 09: My Interviews with VCs Brad Feld and Seth Levine

While I was reporting from the first-year Glue Conference the past few days in Denver, I had the opportunity to interview two of the guys behind the scenes in launching and planning this great event: Brad Feld and Seth Levine, partners in VC firm Foundry Group, which is based in nearby Boulder, CO. (Actually, of the two, Seth was more involved in Glue, while Brad was the main guy behind launching a sister event called Defrag, which is held in the fall in Denver, the first one being in November 2007.) 

I had noticed in the days leading up to Glue that Foundry Group had announced a new investment (Gist, whose founder was at Glue), then I saw two more investments they announced on their blogs while the event was going on (Medialets and CloudEngines). So, I decided to see if I could interview both Brad and Seth during breaks on Day 2 of Glue to learn about these latest new portfolio companies of theirs.

Brad (left photo) and Seth typify what I’ve called before The New Face of Venture Investing — a post I actually did in December 2007, which specifically called out Brad. BradFeld   I’ve also written previously about Seth, in a post from June 2008 called The Best Advice I’ve Seen Lately on Using Startup Advisors. They are both really nice guys, wicked smart, and doing great work helping many entrepreneurs build successful startups in a place that…well, is not Silicon Valley.  Yes, they’ve proved in spades that it can be done. SethLevine And, unlike your typical VCs, they do believe in investing outside their own backyard — as is the case with all three of their latest investments.  Sure, many of their portfolio companies are in Colorado, where a lot of innovation is going on (which they’re involved in on a day-to-day basis — including the TechStars program, which they helped launch).  But they’re also smart enough to know great ideas and great teams can live anywhere. I love the way they get involved in these events of theirs — they’re right in the middle of it all, very much a part of the “community” that each of these events they’ve launched really has become. It doesn’t take long to realize that both these guys are “people persons” through and through.

I spoke with Brad first, about the Gist investment, which had been announced the week before, and in particular about the investment they had just announced early that morning, on Day 2 of Glue: CloudEngines.

Download the MP3 of my interview with Brad Feld.

Later the same morning, I spoke at greater length with Seth, primarily about Foundry Group leading a $4M Series A investment in Medialets, which had been announced on Day 1 of Glue.  We also spoke a bit about an earlier investment of Seth’s in the advertising space, AdMeld.

Download the MP3 of my interview with Seth Levine.

For more about the Glue Conference, see my Twitterstream for the past three days.  I must have tweeted darn-near a couple hundred times!  And I saw this morning after I was back in Minneapolis that conference organizer Eric Norlin said he’d just read through all the tweets on the event — 62 pages total!  You can find the whole shebang by going to search.twitter.com and entering “gluecon” in the search box. It was a very successful event by all accounts.  I’m really happy I was part of it, and have already said I’ll sign up for next year! 

The Best Advice I’ve Seen Lately On Using Startup Advisors

Seth Levine is a VC in Boulder, CO, a partner with Foundry Group. I kinda know Seth, through his connections to the Twin Cities (he’s a graduate of Macalester in St. Paul), though we’ve never actually met.  We’ve emailed quite a bit about goings-on here in Minnesota, after having just missed each other at the Defrag conference in Denver last November.  Seth and his fellow partners are quite the bloggers. One of his sidekicks, Brad Feld (whom I did meet at Defrag), has a very popular blog called Feld Thoughts. And they also run another blog that has high readership in the entrepreneurial community called Ask the VC.

Seth’s blog is called Seth Levine’s VC Adventure. And, recently, he began a series of posts on startup advisors, a topic near and dear to my heart. Advicedefinition
In a departure for Seth, the posts are actually written by a guest poster, Gerald Joseph.  Part I was good, but Part II is even better: The role of company advisors (Part II).

Here’s how Seth explained how these posts came about:

“One of the things I enjoy the most about writing this blog is the discussion I engage in with readers – both through blog comments and in direct emails.  Over the past month I’ve had a particularly enjoyable exchange with Gerald Joseph.  One of the topics we’ve discussed is the role of advisors in the life of a start-up.  I generally think of advisors as non-paid ‘friends of the company’ and as you’d probably guess, advocate a pretty deliberate organization and use of advisors.  Gerald’s view is a little more expansive as he thinks of ‘advisors’ as the larger ecosystem that surrounds (or should surround) a start up company – one that includes people you pay (attorneys, CPAs, etc) and the people who pay you (your angel investors) in addition to the business and industry experts that are the typical ‘advisors’ to young companies.  I like this line of thinking and offered Gerald the chance to put his thoughts into a post.  He took me up on that idea and came up with a four part series on the topic that I’ll put up over the next few weeks.  After the final post I’ll summarize some of my thoughts as well as comments from readers.”

For entrepreneurs at any stage, I think these posts are excellent. I encourage anyone who could use some…uh…advice on how to use advisors to read them all, including Parts III and IV yet to come.

Widget Summit, Day 2: Platform Mania

So, how many platforms do we need for widget development, anyway?  And how many will survive, or thrive?  That’s surely an open question — one that will likely get answered in the next year or two. And then there’s the question of what is a widget, really?  Or "mini web app" … "social media app" … "gadget" … or whatever we call them. Or does the name really matter?

This post is my final coverage of the Widget Summit conference — specifically, the last five breakout sessions, which extended through end of day Tuesday. (All the rest of my Widget Summit coverage is here.) I thought the best sessions to catch on the second day would be those devoted to widget/web-app platforms from the majors. So, two sessions I attended were about development on (guess what?) Facebook, while the other three were on Apple’s iPhone, Microsoft’s new Popfly platform, and Google Gadgets. Here’s the way the rest of Day 2 played out, in the order of appearance:

Redmond Wants a Piece
Popfly is a new plug-in for Silverlight, Microsoft’s new Flash competitor. It’s now available on the web in private beta — and, according to Dan Fernandez, Popfly product manager and evangelist, the goal is to "democratize development." He said there’s a huge world of non-professionals using MySpace and other sites and doing some amount of HTML and Javascript to build web apps or widgets. "There are 7 million ‘pros’, but 107 million ‘non-pros’," he said.  MIcrosoft wants a piece of that. [Like they want a piece of everything else in the Web 2.0 world if they can get it, no?]  Popflyslide
"Users are the stars," said Fernandez, noting that it’s all about "embracing expression."  He mentioned a recent study that found people spend more than an hour a week changing their online profile. He showed how, with Popfly, non-pro developers can snap together different "blocks" to build an app. They’ll be able to make what he called "Popfly gadgets" for Windows Live Spaces. In the audience questions following, someone asked when the product will actually be released, but Fernandez indicated he had no idea. Another obvious question came next: "What about Adobe AIR?" To which Fernandez said, "That’s a different audience."  As in real developers. He did say that Microsoft is looking at the possibility of going open with Popfly. He also said that cross-platform support is being addressed. "Support for Mac is in the Silverlight runtime," and Linux support is (or is coming), too. [By the way, here’s some coverage of the Popfly demo at Web 2.0 Summit, which Steve Ballmer did a day or two afterwards — with Fernandez at the keyboard; he told me that morning at The Palace Hotel he was hoping his demo would work so he didn’t get shot…  🙂 ]

The Facebook Gurus Speak
Tyler Ballance of Slide is the developer of some of the most popular apps on Facebook — including Top Friends, Fun Wall, Fortune Cookie, and Famous Quotes.  He of course talked about FB’s favorite term of late — the "Social Graph" — and about the concept of "Social Utility."  Slidestats
Tylertitleslide
To develop a successful Facebook app, you need "real social interactions," Tyler said. "Helping users interact is what makes a good app."  But how about what we commonly know as widgets, other than Facebook apps?  "Little biddy things you drop on a page," as Tyler called them. Socialgraph
He said using those on Facebook "isn’t too brilliant…they might work on Facebook — some do — but it’s probably not the way you want to go." On the other hand, he was happy to tell us that his Fun Wall app is "the best implementation of the widget idea on Facebook." [How humble of him.] He also said that "just porting apps to Facebook doesn’t work" and "just putting an RSS feed on your profile, for example, isn’t that interesting."  The point is that FB users use this platform differently — "it’s unique." He talked about a new app he’s working on (or has just completed?) called "Why Are You Awesome?"  He said it let’s you tell your friends why you are and — a key point he stressed — "it gives them a reason to check back."  A couple of other key points Tyler made were these: "Notifications" are important, because people "crave these updates"….and the "Feed" is the "highway on Facebook — put things there that are interesting and relevant."  He talked about the pros and cons of FBML (Facebook’s own markup language). It gives you the native look and feel, making the app "indistinguishable from the platform," he said. On the negative side, FB’s bugs become your bugs, "and you’ll always be the one to get blamed." The other option for developers is the "embedded iFrame" approach. On the plus side, it gives you "near complete control — you’re only constrained by space and the terms of service."  However, you must call the Facebook API "lots"….and if an iFrame app is done wrong, "user experience suffers." So, what do you do? "Pick the one that you’re most comfortable with, and what you can ship the fastest. If it’s more than three days, forget it." Perhaps the most interesting insight was this: "Figure out how users interact with your app. And don’t take things so seriously. Facebook users don’t sign on to do work."  [I’m not so sure FB’s leaders would agree with him there, as they try to make the platform attractive to more adults — meaning those active in the workaday world, concerned about things like, oh, productivity, business networking, and the like?  Employers are already cutting off Facebook from their corporate networks because it’s perceived to be all about screwing off. So, the notion that FB users don’t care about work can’t be something FB’s investors like to hear.]  The audience questions began with "What about useful and fun apps — are there any"?"  I didn’t hear a good answer. "Is there any way to link to several pages within an iFrame app?" Tyler said it would be better and easier to use FBML in this instance. [He did note, in passing, that Top Friends is an iFrame app. And, later, he noted he works on this app "all day long."] Another general tip Tyler gave was to make an effort to stay on top of Facebook changes. "They’re definitely building out the platform." He also said metrics of what what people do inside the app are very important — "not so much their whole social map."  But be careful you don’t violate FB’s terms of service: "You can only hash someone’s data for 24 hours."

Dave Fetterman is the creator, lead engineer, and a founding member of the Facebook Platform project.  He was formerly with Microsoft and has a master’s in computer science from Harvard. He opened his talk by telling us how many Facebook developers there are now. Davefetterman
Are you ready?
It’s more than 50,000! He also said the site gets 54 billion page views a month. Yes, that’s a "b." 

Fetterman launched into his advice for aspiring Facebook developers — the first and most obvious being "Make your app social." To be quite blunt about it, he said this: "Your content’s not interesting unless it’s interesting to your friends — or my friends." He also stressed the benefits of privacy. "It’s not a burden — it’s an asset."  So, how does one get viral distribution?

Fettermanslide_5
Fetterman talked about the Facebook News Feed, and also about adding an app from the Profile (he said to develop with FBML for this), and he stressed the importance of Notifications "from granular updates." He said that mass distribution in "now easy."  But he noted that "spreading an app is entirely different from spreading
a widget."  The latter, he said, is like "mailing HTML."  He gave his take on how an app is different from a widget [see his slide here: "Widgets, eh?" you have to forgive Dave — he’s a Canadian  🙂 …] Fettermanslide2_3

Facebook’s goal is to make developers as comfortable building on its platform as on your own site, Fetterman said. He added that FB has its own flavor of Javascript now, called FBJS — "to help you play in our environment." The goal is to give you JS while ensuring that you "remain safe" on Facebook.  He also said they have "MockAJAX."  New solutions he named as being in the works now are: message attachments, fb:mobile, and fb:ref. For more, Dave said to go to developers.facebook.com and wiki.developers.facebook.com.

iPhone Calling
Matt Drance was next up, the "Sharing Technologies Evangelist" at Apple.  How’s that for a title?  He does a bunch of stuff, and one of those is helping third parties develop for the iPhone platform, which was his topic this day. Matt said the iPhone was only 109 days old, and that it’s already had three updates in three months. He reminded us that the iPhone’s Safari browser is the same one for the new iPod Touch. Last week, Matt said a new iPhone web apps directory went live. "Apple is very serious about the web development platform for the the iPhone." [What Matt didn’t let us in on was the news that Uncle Steve was about to drop, the very next morning, that Apple was planning to open up the iPhone to third-party apps. Can’t blame him, I guess — he’d like to keep his job. But, c’mon, Matt — we wouldn’t have told anyone! 🙂 ] Mattdrance

Matt talked about the Safari "WebKit," which is a web development engine. And he gave a bunch of pointers for those who plan to develop for the iPhone: understand the browser prefs (JS can be turned off, popups disabled, etc) … you need to separate your page content (JS, CSS,and HTML), and "be well formed and standard" (he specifically recommended the CSS Zen Garden site for inspiration) … know your resource limits … know your scripting limits … understand windows and dialogs (window.open and target="_new") … use supported content types, including Word, Excel, PDF, Quicktime (no Java, Flash, or SVG for iPhone, at least not yet) … use native fonts … test and bug with Safari 3 … and remember that the iPhone’s input device is a finger — which is a lot different from a mouse! Matt reminded us that the iPhone does not have cut & paste, drag & drop, or selection — at least not yet.  Finally, he advised, even if you don’t yet have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you should get Safari 3 and see how your site or app looks in it.

GOOG Got It Goin’ On (Oh, Really?)
We were lucky to have presenting, in the very final session, Adam Sah, the architect for Google Gadgets. The most common place to find them, said Adam, is on iGoogle start pages. Google Gadgets is a platform for multiple sites, not a plug-in. Adamsah
"The end-user owns the page," said Adam. "Why do they like gadgets? Because they’re just remote HTML, cached by Google."  And why do providers like them? "Because it’s an easy, cheap way to create interactive content," he continued. "You can write one in 30 seconds. And it’s high leverage — write once, run all over. Whataregadgets_2
You get free, effective distribution to tens of millions of users." He showed a slide identifying all the distributors of Google Gadgets. He said Gadgets are "frictionless and scaled…you don’t have to cut a deal with Google." 

Adam also spoke about the newest type of Google Gadget — "Gadget Ads."  He said they’re paid-placement gadgets that reach hundreds of thousands of sites. "A Google Gadget ad is nothing more than buying traffic for your gadget," said Adam. "They’re great for time-sensitive content, like movie openings," he said, " and great for ‘seeding’ viral distribution." What percentage of Gadget Ads get syndicated by others?" someone in the audience asked. Adam said it’s still too early in the game to talk about that. But, speaking of virality, he recommended that "putting an ‘Add to Google’ or ‘Email This’ button inside your gadget will get you free traffic." He said "It’s been hard to get initial virality started, but not so now with Google Gadgets." 

In closing, he said what makes a good Gadget in general (not necessarily the ad type) is a very small or no logo, usefulness or utility, and no registration required. He also put up a slide (shown here) with a whole bunch of resource links. Googgadglinks_3
One link he didn’t mention, which I found on my own, was this one: Google Gadget Ventures, a page that tells you how you can develop new gadgets with the financial support of Google. 

That’s right — yet another company is stepping up with a financing program for widget (gadget) developers.  Life is sure good if you’re an entrepreneurially minded developer these days, wouldn’t you say?

A recent interview of Google’s Adam Sah was just published on this ZDnet blog.  It drills in further to some of the topics I touch on here in this post.

UPDATE (10/23): To make a couple of clarifications regarding Dave Fetterman’s presentation.

UPDATE (10/24): I didn’t mention in this post yet another platform: MySpace. It announced, after Widget Summit ended, that it, too, was opening up its platform to developers.  But I figured most of you had already heard that. For some perspective and links on the topic, however, including developments at Web 2.0 Summit, here’s a recent post from Seth Levine’s blog.