Twitter’s new digs, Life at Google, Good Examples for Capital Region companies
November 25, 2009 | Tech Worth Talking About, Venture Capital and All That Jazz | 0 Comments
This week I saw pictures of Twitter’s new office space. What was once a relatively bootstrapped start-up is now backed by mega-VCs and moved out of the LORI and onto Third Street in the SOMA district of San Francisco. For a tech start up, this is a win. Check out these digs!
Upon review, this reminded me of one of the major disconnects I observe when I head into Capital Region tech offices. I see a lot of the same places – offices crammed with boring cubes, no harvest to collaborate or for colleagues to talk freely to each other in the spirit of morale. Walls are often bare, lobbies are stark and formal and when you walk in you smell that whiff of staleness instead of young professionals thriving to make a better product.
One question I get asked a lot is how to recruit Bay Area talent to the Capital Region. A great PR campaign will help, but it’s going to take a lot more than just a cheaper cost of living and better public schools to get talented engineers, developers and executives to uproot families from Silicon Valley and plop them on 87.
Silicon Valley professionals love their jobs, they pick them carefully and they often evaluate the culture over anything else. Today’s biggest tech companies prioritize the perks of working at a company to help maintain a good environment and employee retention. I’m not saying everyone has to be Google but don’t be Intel either:
Steve Lohr from the New York Times wrote an article last week on a business intelligence company called SAS that seems to offer a happy medium.
Think about an office space where people want to come to work and stay. It’s ok to offer even paid services like haircuts and dry cleaning if it means you may get a couple more employees to stick around past five o’clock. Working hard and being innovative doesn’t come easy in a stark cubicle or mahogany desks, it comes from being vibrant and passionate and working in an environment similar.
If there’s any indication of growth for Tech Valley, this is it.
November 20, 2009 | Great PR, Today's Headlines, Venture Capital and All That Jazz | 3 Comments
This week’s edition of The Business Review has two front page headlines regarding venture capital coming to the Albany area.¬† DeltaPoint Capital Management LLC has closed on a $50 million fund targeted for companies in New York. The Rochester venture capital firm has already invested $25 million in two Capital Region companies and is eyeing at least two more potential candidates here. This article highlighted more activity in the space using companies like Apprenda as an example for their recent $5 million second round funding from High Peaks Venture Partners in Troy.
Like the latter article mentions, VCs are more likely to further invest in their existing companies amongst their portfolio than take a large risk with a unknown entity or first round funding.  The good news is that the three local venture firms mentioned by The Business Review seem to have deeper pockets than one would expect.
To get a larger second round, often you’ll find that venture companies will double or triple up, as was the case with Apprenda and Baltimore-based New Enterprise Associates.¬† Diversity in your company’s funding has its pros and cons — but most entrepreneurs will say that the added voices to your board are really worth the added capital to see your vision come to fruition.
This is a great feature for The Business Review and a reminder to all of us Capital Region tech geeks that smaller companies will also support the economy here in the short term and our entire Tech Valley existence doesn’t rely on just the IBM, GlobalFoundries and other brick and mortar shops here locally. A flourishing start-up environment means plenty more High Peak Ventures and DeltaPoint’s coming to our area and in turn that means jobs, innovation and a global presence for our area.
Courtesy of The Business Review
Quick info
Located: Office in Glens Falls; headquartered in New Orleans
Founded: 1992
Capital raised: $1 billion total; $88 million targeted for NYS companies
Some investments:
Golden Goal Youth Soccer & Lacrosse Tournament Park, Ft. Ann; Monarch Machine Tool Co., Cortland; iCardiac Technologies, Rochester; Kionix, Ithaca; Chapman Instruments Inc., RochesterHigh Peaks Venture Partners
Located: Troy
Founded: 2004
Capital raised: $46 million
Some investments: Apprenda Inc., Clifton Park;
Auterra Inc. (formerly Applied NanoWorks Inc.), Malta; ReQuest Inc., Ballston Spa; SmartPill Corp., Buffalo; Flat World Knowledge Inc., NyackLocated: Albany
Founded: 2000
Capital raised: $100 million
Some investments: Auterra Inc., (formerly Applied NanoWorks Inc.), Malta;
Autotask Inc., East Greenbush; Mechanical Technology Inc. (OTC: MKTY), Colonie; Plug Power Inc. (Nasdaq: PLUG), Latham; CoreSense, Saratoga SpringsBusinessWeek and the Bloomberg Effect
November 19, 2009 | Blunders | 1 Comments
Today the first waves came crashing down as several layoffs and departures were announced at BusinessWeek since Bloomberg won the bid to purchase the weekly business magazine. Sources report that legendary reviewer Steve Wildstrom and social media writers Steve Baker and Shirley Brady are gone as are reporters Damian Joseph and Jon Fine.
According to multiple sources within BW as told to PR guru Sam Whitmore, Bloomberg has put transition rules into effect as it weeds through the reporter list and editorial board. Here are the transition rules:
* If Bloomberg offers you a job, you must take it. If you don’t, you’re fired. No severance.
* If Bloomberg doesn’t offer you a job, you are offered severance, which we hear has been generous.
Steve Wildstrom told SWMS this morning, “Tell your folks I’m on the prowl. No reasonable offer will be refused. In fact, even unreasonable offers will at least be considered.”
Earlier in the week, Josh Tyrangiel, a young executive running Time.com was named editor of BusinessWeek and made this statement about the future of the publication: “Look, I’ve edited plenty of business stories — there are sectors that I know quite well, including technology — but I wasn’t hired to be the great business editor. There are tons of editors at BusinessWeek and tons of editors at Bloomberg,” Mr. Tyrangiel said in an interview. The important thing, he said, is for BusinessWeek to beat competitors “by being better, faster, smarter, more comprehensive.”
Bloomberg wants to use the magazine, which it expects to rename Bloomberg BusinessWeek, to write directly for consumers, rather than just subscribers to its financial terminals. It is also aiming at readership among, and interviews with, government officials and chief executives.
The same article announcing Tyrangiel’s appointment as editor mentioned that BusinessWeek writers were asked to submit essays on where they saw the magazine going ‚Äî in 250 words. Interesting tactic for a newbie.¬† Was the direction of BusinessWeek ever at the hands of the writers?¬† Probably not.
Lots to come as the layoffs continue. But BusinessWeek is not alone. AP and others will follow in the same footsteps.
Consult your peers IT executives
November 18, 2009 | Tech Worth Talking About, Today's Headlines | 0 Comments
On the first day of Interop, one independent research company called TheInfoPro [note: this is a client] released interesting data regarding where IT executives say their intentions are for spending, priority projects, technology implementation and vendor selection for 2010.
These insights should be particularly interesting to our local tech market, meaning, if you’re an entrepreneur or an IT decision maker – better make sure your priorities line up with those who are in the same boat.
IT folks are always asking us if they’ve got it right…no better way to know than paying attention to the F1000 and other MSEs who are in charge of the budget dollars and making like decisions.
Based on interviews with more than 1,000 information technology decision-makers from more than 800 organizations in North American F1000 and MSE spaces, TheInfoPro’s research outlines where IT departments within these organizations stand in terms of budgets, technology roadmaps, and technology provider choices and ratings. Key infrastructure areas are covered including: storage, servers, networking, information security*, virtualization and cloud computing.
The release says, “Almost all respondents will see a continued halt on new IT projects, with available dollars being geared toward optimization projects and refresh components of the existing storage, networking and server infrastructures to support growth in virtualization.”
The emerging spending trends for 2010 may shock you.  For example, TheInfoPro says spending will focus on increasing existing infrastructure needs versus IT departments embarking on new projects or pilots. So if you’re a tech solution that demands an entire switch out or infrastructure change, you might have to hold your horses for 2010.
Also, technology purchases will focus on the optimization of existing server, networking and storage assets, requiring a six- to 12-month ROI and new trends in technology will be prioritized if they’re easy to bring on and if they demonstrate a quick ROI. Get excited cloud, virtualization and anything SaaS.
Pulled from their release, here are more critical data points that IT pros should pay attention to before writing their next PO:
Storage
- After a year of consolidation, F1000 storage pros forecast a positive budget for 2010; however, new application demand remains uncertain.
- In 2009, MSE budgets fared better than F1000 budgets. In 2010, the F1000 budgets are expected to increase more.
- Deduplication, both backup and primary, solid-state disk, and 8Gbps refreshes top end users’ storage hardware priorities, while thin provisioning, archiving and e-discovery top end users’ storage management priorities.
- NAS activity continues to expand for business analytics, application optimization and virtual server adoption.
Servers and Virtualization
- Server spending turned net positive, with 30% of respondents indicating increased spending and 22% noting decreases for 2010.
- Companies will need to invest more in hardware, but not all vendors will reap the benefits of those sales; respondents point to Dell and Hewlett-Packard as first-choice vendors.
- Desktop virtualization will see an major increase in pilot programs and installations in 2010.
Networking
- Early projections indicate fewer significant networking budget cuts in 2010 as compared to 2009, with 58% of respondents expecting spending to have flat to 10% growth.
- High-ROI projects like WAN optimization continue to be deployed. To a lesser degree, unification of voice and video onto the enterprise backbone network is also moving forward when it can be accomplished without large infrastructure upgrades.
- Fifteen percent (15%) of organizations are planning future adoption of IP video conferencing solutions. The increased use of this technology is meant to offset travel expenses and improve organizational effectiveness.
- Citations for future adoption of unified messaging remain strong; an additional 29%, or nearly 75% of the current adoption rate, have unified messaging solutions in their plans for the next 12 months.
Cloud
- While nearly 60% of server organizations are not evaluating or planning to use cloud computing, the percentage of these organizations indicating interest in adopting cloud computing has nearly doubled in the past year, going from 20% to 40%.
- Thirty percent (30%) of respondents indicated they would be slow to adopt cloud computing due to immaturity of technology. Concerns over security followed closely behind, with 25% of respondents indicating this as their number one concern for adoption.
- While internal models are favored (53%), there is a substantial number of organizations looking at a hybrid of both internal and external models (34%).
Renegade of the week: Josh Silverman, CEO of Skype
November 15, 2009 | Tech Worth Talking About, Venture Capital and All That Jazz | 0 Comments
You know I secretly crush on young, smart tech entrepreneurs. The more I can help breed these folks locally, the better. My renegade of the week for you to follow is Josh Silverman, the now and still CEO of Skype, despite legal problems and a multi-billion dollar spinoff from eBay. We love Skype and highly recommend you follow Josh on Twitter @joshatskype.
If you have been living under a rock, Skype is a wonderful way to talk to your customers or potential clients free over the Internet.  You can get a paid subscription for landlines and cell phones, but why bother.  Today’s laptop technology and/or affordable WebCams make chatting easy, clear and hello FREE.
Skype is great because wherever there is an Internet connection, there’s a phone and video conferencing capability.  When traveling, Skype is a companion like no other.  We video conference with clients from tradeshow floors, hotel rooms, airports – you name it.
Skype is growing at such a rapid pace that Silverman has his company back (albeit with a fight) with VC powerhouses like Niklas Zennstrom (founder, investor) and Marc Andreessen at the table providing further investment and guidance as the company expands to mobile devices and more OS platforms.  My guess is we’ll see Skype on the IPO block really soon.
According to the company in a recent interview with Michael Arrington, here are Skype’s latest stats:
- Over half a billion users.
- Adding 300,000 new ones every day.
- 1/3 of usage is video, despite the fact that video calls can only be 1-1.
- Voice calls are multi-party.
- And revenue is cruising along at $185 million/quarter with 24.2% margins.
- Up to 20 million people are using Skype at any one time.
If you aren‚Äôt using Skype to talk to your customers, think about using Skype to talk to your kids away at college or who live abroad.¬† Check on the grand kids who don‚Äôt live in the Capital Region. Either way, just try it.¬† You’ll be wildly surprised how great it is to talk over your laptop.
Sometimes the burbs suck @foursquare @dens
November 13, 2009 | Tech Worth Talking About | 0 Comments
Last March I sat in an East Village Mexican restaurant with one of my favorite friends Healy and her lovely man toy Rogers. These are some of my original Clifton Park crew I am fortunate to still be friends with making our new destination of Saratoga Springs less lonely.¬† I’ve been friends with these cats for decades so what they tell me is cool I’ll listen too.
Healy showed me a web app in beta called Foursquare designed by Dennis Crowley, the brother in law of my other CP girl Jaclyn.¬† What initially appeared to be just another web app got surprisingly cool as she showed me the badges you get from logging in and showing where you are. Healy had just gotten a “four night binder” badge, clearly a sarcastic nod from founder Crowley.
If you haven’t read about it, catch up on Foursquare now, because it’s a phenomenon. Less than a year ago, Four Square was demonstrated at SXSW, not it’s in all over the map…well EXCEPT HERE. While our relocation from Silicon Valley has had its ups and downs, we mostly hate having to be the last to join a trend — for example when Fly92 is still calling Timbaland’s last CD his new one nearly two years later.
Anyway, Foursquare isn’t currently available here in the Capital Region, but it should be. In fact I’d like to propose that you open up the Foursquare platform and let us insert our own places, GPS and all and bring Foursquare wherever we want.
Here’s what mine would look like if I left my debit card in a random bar and needed to find out perhaps where:
Grey Gelding – for sparkling shiraz
9 Maple – for a dirty martini
Wine Bar – a little port
D’Andreas – for my buffalo chix pizza weakness
C’mon, aren’t we worthy of a Foursquare.
That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for…fish.
November 13, 2009 | Today's Headlines | 0 Comments
There’s much to be said about major events that changed our world forever, only to find out some decades later we were wrong. Up until recently, NASA and the other countries trying to catch up to the US were under the impression the Moon was a completely dry environment.
Now as this article suggests, new data caused by an in space collision in October, shows there’s an abundance of water on the Moon.
What I find interesting in today’s headlines is how a collision caused the discovery, a collision I venture to guess cost NASA millions. Sure, this “collision” will most definitely lead to further funding, but I see it as a perfect example of where PR did its job.
Shortly after NASA’s LCROSS probe slammed into a crater in the polar region of the Moon, the Agency held a press conference to announce that it had obtained significant amounts of data from the collision.
Today, NASA held a press conference, stayed true to its word, and discussed the data. Critics of the NASA space program were silenced when the NASA data promised delivered a monsoon to the science community. No pun intended.
Sure, NASA and every Apollo mission didn’t uncover this “on purpose,” despite many efforts and studies, but when it did find the water it reported it quickly and in detail.
While the scientific community scratches their heads, I think the PR community should applaud NASA on a great crisis communication situation that not only promised and delivered but provided a major contribution to science.