I love it when a presenter confidently struts onto center stage and does a big, bold shout-out to get people to sit up straight and listen. "WebEx is history!" D.D. Ganguly, DimDim’s CEO, yelled to start his presentation — which brought applause from a lot of people. And DimDim just might be a credible challenge in the web conferencing or screen-sharing space, with its free, open-source, hosted service. It already has 125,000 customers, I was surprised to learn. 
There’s no software to download, and anyone who uses a browser, said the CEO, can very easily show their slides and/or their desktop, plus talk, listen, chat, and broadcast via webcam. The service is free to consumers, though the firm will sell an enterprise edition — but at a fraction of the cost of other web conferencing apps, the company said. What’s more, since it’s an open-source app, it can easily be customized and enhanced by developers. To date, DimDim has raised $2.9 million from the founders and VC firms Draper Richards, Index Ventures, and Nexus India Capital. The CEO played a video of Draper Richards’ Howard Hartenbaum saying that, after investing in HotMail and Skype, this was an "obvious next investment." That’s some pretty heavy endorsing he’s doing there! Makes me think we should be paying attention to DimDim.
Tag: Tech-Surf-Blog.com (Page 35 of 43)
The first presenters this morning are aimed at small business users, focused on making your life a lot easier to manage when it comes to meetings and conference calls. Tungle calls itself a "fast and easy meeting coordinator." It’s a lightwieght plug-in, currently for Google Calendar (others coming). 
It uses "the magic of P2P," said the CEO Marc Gingras, to share your data only with your contacts. It has a feature called the "Tungle space" so you can easily see the availability of others to schedule a meeting. The demo was impressive, with a great UI. "It’s free and will remain that way," said Gringas. Use promo code "DEMOfall" to get it in limited release. Full launch is later this fall.
Vello is the conference that calls you. You just select the participants, hit send, and everyone’s phone rings and the call begins. Imagine that! No more stragglers calling in five or ten minutes late… The COO, Mark Dzwanczyk, invited the audience to turn on their ringers and did a demo, and multiple phones immediately rang. The service boasts high-quality audio, Outlook integration, flexible billing, and a true business-class solution.
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.
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."
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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