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 SpringsRenegade 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.