VentureBeat

---

• Entrepreneur Corner Roundup: Surefire ways to get rejected by an angel investor and clearing up lean startup myths
• Chip design firm Stream Processors shuts down after plowing through $26M
• Windows 7 sells 234% more copies than Vista
• Announcing DiscoveryBeat: an event on how to get your apps noticed in an age of noise
• ClickFuel provides internet tools to small businesses
• MSN changes the butterfly
• Smart Meter maker Landis+Gyr lands $100M for epic rollout
• Broadband chip maker MaxLinear files for IPO
• LinkedIn gets a cleaner layout
• NXP’s sensors for smart Band-Aids, smart bottles, and pay-per-use cars
• Happy Droid Day!
• Australian Geodynamics wins $90M to make hot-rock power a reality

Entrepreneur Corner Roundup: Surefire ways to get rejected by an angel investor and clearing up lean startup myths Posted: 07 Nov 2009 08:00 AM PST Here's the latest from VentureBeat's Entrepreneur Corner: Shoestring marketing for startups – Young companies typically don't have the budget for a substantial marketing campaign, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. As you search for your niche and your company evolves, serial entrepreneur Scott Olson offers advice on the best ways to get a big marketing bang for your buck. Lean startups aren't cheap startups – Too many entrepreneurs assume the lean startup methodology is a way to save money. It can be, but that's not the idea behind the philosophy. Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank clears up some of the confusion, clearing up some commonly held misconceptions. 4 ways to get automatically rejected by an angel investor – Angel investor Jason Cohen has been on both sides of the table – both seeking money as a business owner and handing it out as an investor. It's a unique insight and he runs down four of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make when they're trying to raise funds. Hey VCs, it's not your company! – It's great when your VC has a lot of pride in your company and shows a lot of interest in what you do. But, as angel investor Brad Feld points out, they sometimes need to be reminded that they're not the ones running the business. The 5 biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make – The formula to entrepreneurial success changes constantly, but the formula to failure in a constant. Serial entrepreneur Jerry Kaplan runs down some of the dumbest moves start-up owners make.

Chip design firm Stream Processors shuts down after plowing through $26M Posted: 07 Nov 2009 07:30 AM PST Stream Processors, a chip design firm focused on video processing, is shutting its doors after burning through at least $26 million in venture capital, and is engaged in an asset sale, VentureBeat has learned. The closure is a blow to one of the bigger efforts to push parallel processing, which uses many different processing cores, or brains, on a single chip. However, rivals such as Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Intel have all adopted some of the parallel processing techniques that Stream Processors had talked about producing. Jack Horng, an officer for the company, said that Stream Processors (see VB profile of the company) will be formally shut in a month or so. The former chief executive, Chip Stearns, is forming a new company to acquire all of the assets from Stream Processors, so it’s possible its technology will live on. The new company is expected to continue to supply its current generation Storm-1 processors but it isn’t clear what will happen with the Storm-2 second-generation chips. The San Jose, Calif.-based company was founded in 2004 by  Bill Dally, dean of the computer science department at Stanford University. Dally left Stanford in January to become chief scientist at graphics chip maker Nvidia. The company churned out its first chip samples in 2006 and began shipping its Storm-1 series chips in 2007. Attempts to reach the company were unsuccessful.  The company focused on making video surveillance and high-end consumer electronics chips. Rivals include chip makers such as Stretch and Texas Instruments. Stream Processors had funding from Austin Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Woodside Fund. The recession has not been kind to chip startups. Few chip makers are getting funding these days, since it can take tens of millions of dollars to fund a new chip company.

Windows 7 sells 234% more copies than Vista Posted: 06 Nov 2009 05:58 PM PST It looks like all the positive buzz round Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system paid off in sales. Windows 7 sold 234 percent more copies during its first few days on the market than Vista did during the same period of its release, according to research by the NPD Group. NPD’s data covers the week of Oct. 18 to 24. Windows 7 only launched on the 22nd, but these numbers also include pre-sales from the days before. While the reviews weren’t universally positive, Windows 7 was seen as a huge improvement on Vista, the operating system so hated that it became a punchline of almost every Microsoft joke. The day before the launch, Microsoft’s Brian Hall said Windows 7 and the company’s new search engine Bing, as well as a concerted a advertising effort, are doing a lot to repair the public’s perception of Microsoft. Not all of the sales numbers were quite as impressive, though. It looks like more people were buying the cheaper versions of the boxed software, rather than a new PC with Windows 7 (PC sales didn’t increase as much as they did for Vista) or the more expensive Ultimate edition. Microsoft’s revenue from Windows 7 sales beat Vista’s, but only by 84 percent.

Announcing DiscoveryBeat: an event on how to get your apps noticed in an age of noise Posted: 06 Nov 2009 04:39 PM PST VentureBeat is throwing a new mini-conference and networking event, DiscoveryBeat. DiscoveryBeat addresses one of the biggest conundrums for Silicon Valley’s most dynamic startups and developers: How to get your social game or mobile application noticed in an age of noise? It will be held in the afternoon of Dec. 8 at the Automattic Lounge on Pier 38 in San Francisco, a hip location with an ocean view. We’ll discuss the “secret recipe” for getting discovered in an age when getting discovered can mean huge viral growth and the difference between profound success or prompt failure. We think there are five main ingredients to the secret recipe for viral growth: 1) Social networking and marketing, 2) advertising, 3) web design, 4) partnering and 5) measurement. We’re inviting the masters of viral growth so that we can learn from them. Speakers include Sebastien DeHalleux, president of Playfish (above), one of the hottest makers of social games. We also have Roy Sehgal (below, middle picture), general manager at Zynga and executive producer of Cafe World, the fastest-growing social game in history. And we also have Julian Farrior (bottom picture), founder and CEO of Backflip Studios, a Boulder, Colo.-based iPhone game studio that has launched No. 1-ranked hits (Paper Toss, Rag Doll Blast) thanks to a clever combination of creativity and marketing. We’ll announce more speakers — including those from non-game companies — in the coming days. The recent controversy surrounding the advertising offer industry (OfferPal, etc) shows there are ethical issues around tactics. There’s clearly a trade-off between getting noticed and making money. Social game platforms such as Facebook and MySpace, and the iPhone,  Android,  and other app stores are great places for app developers to get growth, but these platforms also need to maintain the trust of their users. While there are no gatekeepers, each of these platforms have their own rules or etiquette guidelines, and moving quickly to respond to changes in these rules can make or break businesses. There’s tremendous opportunity to gain momentum if you focus on the platforms best for you, but the terrain keeps changing. Like any of VentureBeat’s events, this will be an opportunity to network. Entrepreneurs will be able to forge the relationships with advertisers, social networking companies and game developers. These partnerships are needed to succeed to survive in this competitive industry. The event will be followed by a networking reception with key participants from the ecosystem, from investors to CEOs, developers and platform makers. The agenda is subject to change. Here are the moderated panels we have planned: Discovery 1.0: Starting from scratch If you’re a two-person garage development shop, and starting from scratch, how do you create an app that can go viral? With 75,000 apps in the Apple AppStore, discovery is a huge problem. Facebook is just as tough. You’re at a disadvantage because large networks have an advantage due to their built-in knowledge of how the game works and also because of their ability to more effectively promote. How do you exploit your newness and focus, using the key ingredients of success? How can smaller developers team up with bigger brands that have name recognition? When should they go it alone? How do they build a company that bigger investors will notice? Discovery 2.0: Moving to the next level The social app companies — those successful application companies that came of age on Facebook and the iPhone — have created their own ecosystems with successful titles that feed on each other. Now what do they do? How many different types of monetization schemes do they need? What can they learn from the bigger companies? Should they recruit executives from the old-world companies, to help with partnering or organizational discipline? What sort of analytics process should they have in place? Can anyone catch up with them? Discovery 3.0: Bringing in the big guys Established video game companies and entertainment giants are eyeing the social networking and mobile platforms as a source of future growth. For success, the big guys need to apply the secret ingredients in different proportions. How much should they invest in these areas, and how should they do it? Which kinds of partners should they recruit? Which business models are the best? Who has made the transition already? What mix of social networking, marketing, analytical measurement, advertising and web design ingredients should they apply? For sponsorships contact Andie Rhyins, andie@venturebeat.com. To sign up to attend, follow this link. Sign up by Nov. 20 and you can get 25 percent off the price. Early bird pricing is $114, and after Nov. 20 it will be $149.

ClickFuel provides internet tools to small businesses Posted: 06 Nov 2009 04:34 PM PST As a web generation, when we’re looking for a dentist, plumber, or other small business, our first instinct is to go online when we need these services. Sure, there’s Yellow Pages that can find a name, number and address, but as consumers we are used to more and these small businesses usually lack a formal online presence. However, there are several companies that have emerged with the tools to help. ClickFuel, a Boston startup that designs, manages and tracks marketing campaigns, has recently launched a set of Internet marketing tools designed to help small businesses to promote business through attracting new customers. Some of the services include: web site design, pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, email marketing and social media. An appealing service as many times these businesses lack the resources and knowledge to get online. Fuel Station, a web-based ClickFuel application, is the main muscle helping to track results including leads generated, clicks and consumer calls made to a phone number listed online. Through a strategic partnership with Intuit, Fuel Station was recently added to Intuit’s App Center which appears in QuickBooks 2010 — a longtime go-to financial tool for small businesses. The Intuit App Center provides QuickBook users with tools to help solve any business problems that might arise. Help from ClickFuel isn’t cheap, though it’s hard to put a price on generating business. The typical monthly fee runs between $1,500 and $2,500 and usually entails Web site building and managing online marketing campaigns. If you’re a small business owner and the thought of shelling out a large amount of dough every month frightens you, there are other options. MerchantCircle, a growing Silicon Valley company, is offering a local business social network where business owners can promote their business by uploading pictures, writing blogs, publicizing events, creating coupons and newsletters, and connecting with other merchants, all for free.

MSN changes the butterfly Posted: 06 Nov 2009 04:33 PM PST MSN’s new home page, which you can see at preview.msn.com, is the first one that doesn’t look like it was designed by Microsoft. The new page has the same cheery look and feel as the Bing search box that perches at its top, waiting to grab your next search away from Google. The MSN butterfly logo has been redesigned to match the new look. It’s pretty, but I doubt many users will notice the change. It still pushes the NBC peacock button in my brain, and I’m sure I’m far from alone. The big surprise is the new design of the “verticals” as they’re known to advertisers — News, Money, Sports, Entertainment, Lifestyle — plus a catch-all “More.” Microsoft corporate vice president Erik Jorgensen told me the biggest change is that they threw away 25 category links that had piled atop the page. They’re gone. Not redesigned. Gone. The verticals are much more visible now. But more important, the page finally gets to breathe. I’m sure there was some serious office politics required to get many managers to give up their spot atop the home page. Microsoft is “more evolutionary than revolutionary,” Guidewire Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang said in a phone call.” To be revolutionary, they should show you custom content based on your profile.” The Huffington Post already does.

Smart Meter maker Landis+Gyr lands $100M for epic rollout Posted: 06 Nov 2009 02:48 PM PST Last week’s announcement of $3.4 billion in stimulus funds for utilities was big news for smart meter makers. Almost every recipient of the money said they would be using it to add millions of advanced meters to their coverage areas. Now major meter maker Landis+Gyr has proved that the government grants will stimulate private investing in the sector, raising a new $100 million from its current backers. The Swiss company says it will use the funds for a fast and dramatic deployment of smart meters, and not just in the U.S. — it will look at rolling out its hardware in Asia, Australia and Europe as well. Smart metering in the European Union is actually far ahead of U.S. initiatives, due in part to an aggressive mandate that 80 percent of homes must be equipped with smart meters by 2020 and 100 percent by 2022. Landis+Gyr might actually be facing its toughest competition in the U.S., where Itron is giving it a serious run for its money. The latter emphasizes that it offers the same networking infrastructure as Silver Spring Networks, while also providing the metering hardware and now home energy management interfaces since its September partnership with OpenPeak. Echelon has also captured a slice of the market, tapped by large Duke Energy to provide meters. Landis+Gyr is looking to add these services and more as it produces more meters than it ever has before. It will be interesting to see if it innovates its own solutions or turns to an acquisition strategy to diversify its technologies. VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Kleiner Perkins' John Doerr. Register for your ticket today at GreenBeat2009.com.

Broadband chip maker MaxLinear files for IPO Posted: 06 Nov 2009 02:26 PM PST Broadband communications chip maker MaxLinear has filed to go public in another indicator that the good times are back for tech stocks and exits. Carlsbad, Calif.-based MaxLinear makes analog or mixed-signal radio chips that can be manufactured in standard chip factories. The chips enable devices to display broadband video. The chips are used in a wide array of electronic gear: cable and terrestrial set-top boxes, digital TVs, cell phones, PCs, netbooks and car entertainment systems. The company has more than 35 customers, including Panasonic, Murata, Alps Electric and Sony. MaxLinear was founded in 2003. Since shipping its first products in 2006, the company has shipped more than 65 million radio chips. For the nine months ended Sept. 30, revenues were $36.1 million, up from $23.6 million a year earlier. Net income was $2.4 million for the period, compared to a loss of $1.1 million a year earlier. The market for radio frequency, digital signal processors and analog chips used in set-top boxes, mobile phones, autos and TVs was $7.6 billion, according to market researcher iSuppli. Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank Securities are handling the offering. Co-managers include UBS Securities, Thomas Weisel Partners and Needham & Co. It’s good to see a chip company filing to go public. It often takes so much investment these days that chip makers have a hard time finding venture capital funding.

LinkedIn gets a cleaner layout Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:54 PM PST Professional networking site LinkedIn says it’s experimenting with a new layout. The redesign has only been rolled out for some users, so I’m not seeing it in my own account yet, but the company’s blog post suggests it’s making subtle improvement. Right now, the site’s navigation is split between a box on the left hand side of the page (with collapsible menus for things like your groups and contacts), and a navigation bar at the top of the page. Now all of the navigation occurs at the top of the page. When you click on any of the navigation options, you get a list of all the different pages you can jump to or actions you can take. Judging from the screenshots that LinkedIn has shared, the changes won’t be as immediately noticeable as, say, some of Facebook’s more dramatic redesigns. But they should make it easier to find your way around the site and let you see more content on your screen before having to scroll. Now, I rarely do anything more on the site other than confirm connections, so the clumsy navigation hasn’t felt like a big pain for me. But maybe I’ll start exploring LinkedIn’s full functionality now that I can find my way around. ReadWriteWeb spotted another aspect of the design that may be a plus for LinkedIn: Ads show up more prominently. Oh, and if you have any comments on the redesign, the company says it’s still tinkering, so you can leave feedback at the blog post that I linked to above.

NXP’s sensors for smart Band-Aids, smart bottles, and pay-per-use cars Posted: 06 Nov 2009 12:03 PM PST Forget about smart phones and smart computers. Cheap and plentiful sensor chips are making possible everything from smart Band-Aids to smart bottles. NXP Semiconductors, a chip maker that spun out of Philips in 2006, showed off prototypes for these cool applications at its headquarters in San Jose, Calif., yesterday. Based on the working products and prototypes there, it’s clear we’re headed for a wonderful world of wireless sensors. Pictured above is a smart Band-Aid, which has sensors that can detect whether a wound is bleeding or is getting infected. It can also send out a signal notifying a caregiver when it’s time for a bandage change. The bandage prototype from Urgo Laboratories uses a sensor chip to detect humidity and pressure. It also has a self-powered stretchable antenna to communicate wirelessly to a caregiver. NXP can package a digital signal processor with it to process data from the sensor. NXP also makes magnetic induction radios (left) that consume a very small amount of power. These can be used in hearing aids (right) that can wirelessly communicate with each other, from ear to ear. The benefit is improved sound quality and a better ability to discern the direction a sound is coming from. Sensor chips and other analog and “mixed signal” devices — which capture data from the real world and process it into computer form — are going through their own revolution now as miniaturization advances and costs drop, says Mike Noonen, senior vice president of marketing at NXP, which makes chips for 13 different markets from consumer digital devices to smart sensors. Another cool application is the “smart bottle.” The company showed off how a second-generation radio frequency identification (RFID) tag embedded into the plastic bottom of a pill bottle can identify whether the pills are authentic, counterfeit, or expired. And here’s a new business model for cars: What if you could get a car for free, and pay only for usage? OK, that’s my idea, not theirs. But yo can see how this kind of nutty business idea might make sense, if you get people to pay for usage rather than make a big upfront purchase. NXP’s Automotive Telematics on-board unit Platform (ATOP) is kind of like Lojack, OnStar, and Fast Pass all combined into one system on a chip for your car. ATOP can use the wireless phone network and the global positioning system (GPS) navigation to locate your car and figure out which toll roads you’re traveling on. It can automatically deduct the toll from your FastPass-like account as you pass by toll locations. The good thing is there is no need to have toll booths or sensors in the roads, since the GPS location app will determine when and where to deduct tolls. And if you need roadside emergency service or your car is stolen, it’s easy to fix the location of the vehicle with ATOP. NXP’s working to improve power efficiency in lighting, too. The company makes drivers for light-emitting diodes, the colorful LED lights that illuminate everything from TVs to laptops. It has made progress in creating drivers for white-light LEDs that can be precisely dimmed or brightened without flickering. The LEDs can also be used to drive lots of power-efficient lights in densely-packed devices like this Japanese Pachinko machine. How’s that for progress? LEDs save a lot of energy usage — as much as five times more efficient than incandescent bulbs — so that we can just use a lot more of them to light up the world. NXP makes 26,000 different chips. And it has 6,000 research and development engineers and an R&D budget of $175 million per quarter. So you can expect a lot more of this in the future.

Happy Droid Day! Posted: 06 Nov 2009 11:45 AM PST After weeks of speculation, followed by a real announcement, followed by more waiting, Motorola and Verizon have finally released the Droid, the supposed iPhone-killer which is the first device using version 2.0 of Google’s Android operating system. The reviews have been positive so far, with gadget king Walt Mossberg calling it “a more credible alternative to the iPhone” as well as “the best super-smart phone Verizon offers, the best Motorola phone I’ve tested and the best hardware so far to run Android.” MobileCrunch’s Greg Kumparak said it’s “the very first phone in over two years that I would consider carrying for day-to-day use instead of my iPhone.” The VentureBeat team hasn’t managed to play around with the device long enough for a full review, but the demo I saw was super-impressive, and I’ve heard positive things from other writers on-staff too. Oh, and you can practically see my boss Matt Marshall drooling as he lists the Droid’s different features. (By the way, Matt’s birthday was yesterday, so if you’re wondering what to get him, I don’t think he’s made it to the Verizon store yet …) As a reasonably satisfied iPhone owner, I don’t have any immediate plans to switch over, but I’ll definitely be listening closely to what my friends have to say about their Droids. And even if I don’t switch, it’s exciting to finally see a device that seems to be generating as much excitement from tech geeks and app developers as the iPhone. Of course, it remains to be seen whether all the early buzz translates into sales. It helps that Google will be reminding everyone to buy a Droid with a message on its home page. At the same time, it looks like Verizon can’t compete with Apple when it comes to bringing out the first-day fanatics.

Australian Geodynamics wins $90M to make hot-rock power a reality Posted: 06 Nov 2009 11:28 AM PST Geodynamics, a company that draws emissions-free power from hot fractured rocks beneath the earth’s surface, has just won $90 million from Australia’s Renewable Energy Demonstration Program. The Hot Fractured Rock (HFR) technique is basically the extraction of the earth’s heat from broken granite over three kilometers deep in the planet’s crust. The rocks are astoundingly hot — making it sustainable to siphon off some of the heat for electricity (assuming the earth’s core doesn’t cool down anytime soon). Geodynamics’ process is largely based on previously developed technologies. The oil industry, for one, has made drilling to these depths something of an art form. And standard geothermal power systems provided the theoretic background for HFR. The simplest HFR power stations would use one injection well and two production wells. Water is pumped under high pressure (in very stout pipes) into the heat exchanger 3 kilometers or more under the earth’s surface. The water is then heated beyond its normal boiling point while remaining a liquid due to the pressure and the pipe. At 200 degrees centigrade, it is piped back to the surface into another heat exchanger. At this point, the superheated water is introduced to liquids with low boiling points — similar to what is used in air conditioners and refrigerators. These liquids quickly turn to gas and expand violently, driving turbines that churn out electricity. This is a closed-loop system with two loops. The water and low-boiling-point liquids never leave the system and are recycled over and over. The benefit of HFR over wind and solar technologies is that the rocks used are always hot –24 hours a day — so the electricity isn’t intermittent. With Australia already making enormous investments in transmission infrastructure, it wants to have a reliable source of renewable power. Geodynamics has received $235 million in government grants total to be disbursed over the life of one of its installations in the southern part of the country. The last installment is slated for 2013. The only reason the company’s technology can’t go global is that Australia is unique in its supply of hot rock beneath the ground. However, the U.S. southwest may be a viable candidate, considering how successful traditional geothermal developments have been. VentureBeat is hosting GreenBeat, the seminal executive conference on the Smart Grid, on Nov. 18-19, featuring keynotes from Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Kleiner Perkins' John Doerr. Register for your ticket today at GreenBeat2009.com.

You are subscribed to email updates from VentureBeat To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610