Archive for December 26, 2011

Today’s article regarding Arnon Kohavi’s departure from Chile has struck a cord with many in the start up community, and I am one of the many disappointed from the message conveyed. While timing is arguably a factor in any entrepreneurship endeavor, Mr. Kohavi’s arguments for the most part were a blame game and little on actual failure of his own efforts.

As a Start-Up Chile Round 1 participant, I’ve met Mr. Kohavi (pictured below) and even “pitched” to his fund along with other Start-Up Chile participants. While some of the statements made are legitimate (i.e. monopolistic hold on capital and a cultural shift was needed), Mr. Kohavi’s departure from the Chilean scene will– in the end– better serve the Chilean, and effectively South American entrepreneurial environment.

Time Horizon Expectations

Any experienced entrepreneur knows overnight success is a rarity. With a 6 month time horizon, Mr. Kohavi was expecting to raise US$40m after arriving to Chile to meet with business school friends, and conveniently meeting government representatives eager to create a startup scene.

I’ve worked on entrepreneurial efforts in India, Spain, and Singapore, and in any country, establishing a personal brand is not a simple 6 month effort. The acknowledgement that Start-Up Chile is starting the process but isn’t far enough along to change a culture, coupled with his own history as an entrepreneur, should have prepared Kohavi for the tough road that Chile has ahead.

As a Start-Up Chile participant finishing my round, it’s only recently that I feel at ease within the community and my brand in Latin America, and this is with the support of Start-Up Chile government representatives and my own business school network. In a region where business relationships are paramount, is six months really enough time?

His early departure brings to question Mr. Kohavi’s actual commitment to Latin America. If he understands the time horizon for entrepreneurship why did he commit to only six months? Currently, Yarden Venture Capitalis “leverage [in] our Silicon Valley and Latin American relationships to help startups in Asia”. As of writing, I am not aware of Mr. Kohavi having raised any money in Latin America.

Never fully committed

Choosing to be an entrepreneur is a silly decision. It’s a hard life. One of the many things entrepreneurs must do is to show your supporters that you will do whatever it takes to succeed. You must do all you can to alleviate your supporters of fear of failure while you yourself must accept possible failure.

Mr. Kohavi’s efforts in Chile were not successful. In the interview, he argues that the culture and the environment is not ready, yet takes little proactive measures to help boost and foster a community that is looking for change. While what he says may be accurate in regards to generation gaps, this also exists in many countries– including many Asian countries.

Chile is a country that is working to change this, that is why programs such as Start-Up Chile exist. Mr. Kohavi participated in only 3 months at the beginning of my Start-Up Chile activity. In the remainder 3 months, many of us heard little from him and even wondered about the fund he started. If in fact Mr. Kohavi did come to Chile and quickly received government support, he definitely had an advantage over many other entrepreneurs who struggle to get a meeting. He also recognized the pain problem in the Chilean style VC system; but offered no solution.

There are 110 teams in my round of Start-Up Chile, and over 100 in Rounds 2 and 3 for 2012. This is the making of a culture shift supported by the Chilean government. Mr. Kohavi had the opportunity to be part of this positive effort and failed. Now he points fingers at the culture and its people for his failings.

In the last few months of the program, the only information Start-Up Chile participants received from Mr. Kohavi were emails selling personal possessions. It was evident that he was looking to move. Did Mr. Kohavi really plan on 6 months or did he already have his foot out the door upon arrival?

Cultural Shift

I come from a family that lived the American dream. My father moved at the same age I am now (33) with a family of four from Taipei, Taiwan to Memphis, Tennessee. He spoke no English (and even still struggles today) and opened an Italian sandwich shop. The comedy is not lost on me.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kohavi’s thinks the Chilean startup community must “get used to talking English” as changes that will further along a startup environment. But cultural shift is a two way street. I know my father never asked any of his customers to speak Chinese to order an Italian sandwich.

An investor looking for a “commitment from the elite” of US$40M beyond government support might want to reconsider asking to conduct business in English when living in a Spanish native speaking country. In making a statement that a cultural shift is necessary, I see little effort in change from Mr. Kohavi’s side of the coin.

Mr. Kohavi’s next move is Singapore. A city where foreigners are easily welcomed and money is flowing. It is itself a city created by entrepreneurs in recent history. While I don’t know what Mr. Kohavi’s exact intentions are in Singapore, I know that in my experience as an entrepreneur, most investors would like to see some commitment to your efforts– and that commitment works both ways.

In a leaving comment, Mr. Kohavi admits it openly: “I will spend at least a few months in Singapore, although I’m not attached to a location”.

Good luck in Asia, Mr. Kohavi. I speak Mandarin too. It’s harder than Spanish.

In my last post on ReadWriteStart, I talked about how, in many cases, it wasn’t an advantage to build your start-up in stealth mode. As a continuation of that theme, I thought it would be interesting to explore five tools you can use to iterate and improve your startup idea before writing one line of code. There is nothing worse than building a tool no one is interested in, so I’d encourage you to consider these options before starting down the path of building your next startup.

Specifically, these five tools can help you do three critical activities before starting to write a line of code: create a wireframe, get feedback from the target market and test value proposition through multiple landing pages.

You know who got a lump of coal in their PR stocking this year? Domain registrar GoDaddy. Its most recent stumble? The company’s presence on a SOPA supporter list sparked an impromptu user exodus last week, with already tens of thousands of domains being transferred in the fall out.

Sensing a communications disaster (GoDaddy has gotten really good at this) the new CEO Warren Adelman then reversed the company’s official position on SOPA, well kind of.

Despite the ambiguous reversal, the ramifications of the continuing PR disaster are huge, and “Dump GoDaddy Day” is still slated for the 29th”  Perhaps that’s why GoDaddy reps are calling customers in order to make sure they understand the company’s new, reversed position?

If thing’s weren’t bad enough for GoDaddy, competitor NameCheap accused it of blocking domain transfers this morning, “As many customers have recently complained of transfer issues, we suspect that this competitor is thwarting efforts to transfer domains away from them. Specifically, GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process. This practice is against ICANN rules. “

Namecheap said that its solution to the incomplete WhoIs returns was to manually process the requests, which it was doing.

Accusations like these should not be taken lightly, and GoDaddy responded to Namecheap in a statement emailed to TechCrunch, saying that the WhoIs transfer delay time is normal procedure.

Namecheap posted their accusations in a blog, but to the best our of knowledge, has yet to contact Go Daddy directly, which would be common practice for situations like this. Normally, the fellow registrar would make a request for us to remove the normal rate limiting block which is a standard practice used by Go Daddy, and many other registrars, to rate limit Whois queries to combat WhoIs abuse.

Because some registrars (and other data gathering, analyzing and reporting entities) have legitimate need for heavy port 43 access, we routinely grant requests for expanded access per an SOP we’ve had in place for many years. Should we make contact with Namecheap, and learn they need similar access, we would treat that request similarly.

As a side note, we have seen some nefarious activity this weekend which came from non-registrar sources. But, that is not unusual for a holiday weekend, nor would it cause legitimate requests to be rejected. Nevertheless, we have now proactively removed the rate limit for Namecheap, as a courtesy, but it is important to point out, there still may be back-end IP addresses affiliated with Namecheap of which we are unaware. For complete resolution, we should be talking to each other — an effort we are initiating since they have not done so themselves.

-Rich Merdinger
Sr. Director of Product Development – Domains
Go Daddy

One side says the practice is “against ICANN rules.” The other side says the practice is “standard.” Any DNS experts want to weigh in?

Image via: AdJab

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Image: AP

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AAPL Still Battling XOM For Market Cap King
Last week was good to Apple, which closed above $400 for the first time since early November. But the stock gained little ground in its running battle with Exxon Mobil for the market cap championship, as the rise in crude prices has pushed the oil giant up as well. Catalysts for Apple include iPhone upgrade cycles and adoption; update to the iPad in early 2012; continued market share growth of the Mac business line; penetration in China and emerging markets; the evolution and potential re-conception of Apple TV; and platforms such as Siri, mobile advertising (iAd), books and publishing, gaming, mapping and social (Ping). Shares of Apple trade at 8.9x Enterprise Value / Trailing Twelve Months Free Cash Flow (including long-term marketable securities).

Will Apple Make The Perfect TV While Google TV Continues To Disappoint? (The Perfection Paradox)
The single biggest reason Google TV didn’t work was it didn’t solve any of the biggest shortcomings of our living room television viewing experience. Apple, meanwhile, will approach the market with the aim of making TV simple again, by making the “perfect” TV. Henry Blodget at Business Insider says that TV users just want to press “on” and watch what they want to watch. That’s it. Steve Jobs probably figured out how to allow TV users to press “on” and then say, “The Jets game,” or “Addams Family” or “The next Sopranos episode” or “our Hawaii vacation videos” and have the TV just play them. If Apple can do that, they will have a massive hit.

iOS Mobile Devices Accounted For Over 90% Of December Mobile Retail Sales (RichRelevance)
iPads and iPhones accounted for over 92% of online retail sales not originating from a desktop device for December, according to RichRelevance, easily beating out Android. Shoppers on Apple devices were also willing to spend more, with an average order value of $123 versus Android’s $101 (that’s 19% more). Mobile shopping is still a drop in the bucket compared to desktop shopping, with just 3.7% of total online retail dollars spent in the U.S. Goes to show that the browsing experience is key to mobile commerce.

Why Isn’t Safari Growing Like Chrome? (TechCrunch)
Remember Safari? While Google’s Chrome has skyrocketed from obscurity in 2008 to over 25% last month, Apple’s web browser lingers somewhere between 5-8%. But Why?

• Windows? But Safari has actually been available for Windows quite a bit longer than Chrome has been.
• Speed? Chrome is know for being the fastest browser available in terms of both page rendering and JavaScript performance.
• Promotion? Or lack thereof. Google does quite a bit of promotion for its browser. However, Safari being bundled by default with iTunes should have helped it gain massive Windows market share.
• Extensions? Safari has had them as well since mid-2010. That said, Chrome’s extensions are better and much more plentiful.
• Neglect? Apple is more inclined to throw resources at native work rather than web work.

Of course, this could all change if devices like the iPad really are the future of general purpose computing.

A New Era Is Coming For Apple In 2012 (paidContent)
Apple will remain the most compelling story in tech not just because of the iPhone and its cousin, the iPad, but because of the immense pressure on CEO Tim Cook and Apple’s management team to live up to the standard set by a legend. This quarter will be the first full quarter that Cook and his lieutenants will have been in charge of Apple. And the company has never been stronger, and Cook has been auditioning for this job for several years. The company could make or break mobile payments this year and revolutionize the way we watch TV. It’s hard to imagine Apple losing steam in 2012.

Get Ready For Apple’s Monster Quarter, And The Stock To Soar (Seeking Alpha)
Apple is unique among America’s mega caps due to the company’s ongoing rates of revenue and earnings growth. That said, the rate of Apple’s share price appreciation has fallen behind the rate of earnings growth over the past four quarters. Despite the 83% growth in earnings per share in fiscal 2011, at Apple’s closing price of $403.33 last week, the share price has risen only 25% year-over-year. There’s a disconnect between the perceived limits to Apple’s continuing strong growth and the reality of the company’s potential for growth.

Image: iDownloadBlog Walkthrough on YouTube

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The U.S. Patent Office in Alexandria, Va., has set a row of giant iPhones up in the building as a tribute to Steve Jobs.

You’ll see about a dozen giant iPhone displays, each with 12 of Apple’s most famous patents — ranging from the Mac to the company’s magnetic power cable. iDownloadBlog has a great video walkthrough of the patent exhibit.

You can check out the full video below:

Editor’s note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we’re re-publishing some of our best posts of 2011. As we look back at the year – and ahead to what next year holds – we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It’s not just a best-of list, it’s also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2012. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

Mason outlined in a series of workshops the tools you need to get started with manipulating Big Data and understanding the basics of machine learning, something she does everyday as she sifts through each one of those shortened URLs that we all create furiously. (You can read about her latest revelation here which we wrote about earlier in the month.) You know when she says, “this is a hard problem” that she is really saying “this is a problem that I haven’t yet figured out the best answer to.” To each problem, her credo is Obtain, Scrub, Explore, Model, and Interpret. I’ll review each of these steps.

The first step is setting up a proper environment, and for Mason it is a Linux machine with a variety of tools on it that you can find on her Github page linked above. She is a Python programmer, and so this reflects that interest. She uses Python with JSONview’s Chrome extension, NLTK, numpy, Pycluster, hcluster, and mathplotlib. You can use most of these tools on other OSs too.

Second, you need to obtain a few test data sets that you can start to manipulate. Even if you aren’t drinking out of the Bit.ly data fire hose, there are ways to get access to lots of great data around the Internet. Mason mentioned a few places, including:

• The New York Times. Each and every article that is posted on the main NYT Web site going back dozens of years has oodles of metadata and tags galore. Just view the source on any news article to see how the human editors have classified it. You’ll need to start off by registering for an API key here and then select “Article Search API”
• Mason has put together several dozen different bundles of research-quality data sets at this link here
• Pete Skomoroch’s various sample datasets that he has collected, and there is always the epic reference
• Data Source Handbook by Pete Warden

Some of these datasets have gotten almost urban legend status, such as the email collection that was part of all the Enron court cases: this is useful for testing anti-spam programs, even though it is several years old. Because of how people use Bit.ly, Mason said that they usually see malware and other bad stuff several hours before anyone else has picked it up around the Internet.

Third, you need to start thinking about how to make your data sets smaller. “Big Data usually refers to a data set that is too big to fit into your available memory, or too big to store on your own hard drive, or too big to fit into an Excel spreadsheet,” says Mason. This is the “scrub” section. The smaller the dataset, the easier it is to manipulate and analyze.

Now comes the fun part, exploring your data. You want to ask questions and figure out patterns. If you are using the NYTimes data for example, you could look at words that are most frequently used to describe political candidates, or are particular words more often used in the technology section than in the sports section.

Next comes the mathematical modeling portion of the program. If you don’t have a lot of depth in probability or statistics, you are going to need some help here. Mason rolls off the math almost as if she is speaking fluently in a foreign language. And given that I was an undergraduate math major, I can only understand your own frustrations here when you see something with the Greek Sigma sign (hint: that means a sum of things). She let slip the words “fourier transform” which brought me to the Wikipedia definition before I could try to remember what it was. But the essence here is to write code to get the answers of the questions that you are asking in your explorations.

Finally is interpretation. You want to put the answers that you obtained from your modeling into the context of why they are important. You may need to do some visualizations or reporting so that your results can be understood. Or you may choose to omit this part if your answers are sufficient for your particular purposes. Mason mentioned her spam-fighting tactics that she uses to cleanse the shortened URLs from evil doers. “As long as our routines seemed to be working, that was good enough for us and so we just stopped,” she said. Part of this process is understanding when you have the best answer that you are going to have to your questions, “knowing when you have won” as she says.

If you are looking to learn more, a good place is to sign up for one of Stanford’s free classes on AI, Machine Learning, and databases here. The classes start October 10 and continue until mid-December. They are free and you submit homework assignments and do everything that you would normally do in a typical CS class, including getting help from teaching assistants too.

Mason is lucky to have such a large playground to operate in, and we are lucky when we can sit at her feet and try to understand the totality of her experience. I hope I have given you a taste for the world of Big Data here and some of the best ways to get started at your own analysis. And if you need more motivation, she tells me that just about everyone is hiring their own “data person” these days, so if you get good enough at you probably have your pick of employers for years to come.

Image: Business Insider / Matthew Lynley

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Path is already an awesome social networking app for keeping track of your closest friends — and now it looks like it’ll soon replace your exercise tracking apps.

Dave Morin, co-founder of Path, today indicated a new feature is coming to Path (on Path, no less) that will keep track of your exercise and your running circuits. That’ll replace apps like Nike Plus, Runkeeper and others that track and record your distance and running speed.

One of the huge advantages Path has, if you allow it, is that it will automatically publish where you are. It’s a logical evolution of the app to have even more in-depth location tracking when enabled.

Either way, time to get excited.

We’ve been banging on about how critical this holiday sales cycle is for Windows Phone for so long that we think it only fair and reasonable to bring you a few of the methods that we are going to employ over the coming week to measure just how well the handsets have sold. If the phone line has had a strong performance, we can expect Microsoft to show off the numbers. If not, we have to take things into our own hands.

Search Trends

Google Trends is a fantastic tool. By providing the world with graphed data about the popularity of various search terms, it is possible to track the momentum of various products.

We have an eye on the following searches: Windows Phone, Windows Phone 7, Zune, WP7, Windows Phone get started, Windows Phone support, and Windows Phone help. Of course, Zune is in there as it is the software client that the phone line uses.

In short, if we see spikes of search traffic, it implies that there are a host new Windows Phone owners, which could mean strong sales.

Twitter Chatter

While Twitter Search is broken, has been broken, and will likely be broken until the end of time, it does have some use. We have one eye on Search.Twitter.com for any noise that may crop up around Windows Phone. We’re looking at a slightly different set of keywords than we are with Google, but the idea is the same: more talk likely means more sales.

Talking to Developers

We are going to be tapping our usual network of developers over the next few days in hopes of gathering enough anecdotal evidence to see if there has been a surge in app downloads. If there has been, especially on Christmas Day and the day after, it might indicate that Windows Phone handsets were a well-gifted device.

Of course, this can only get us so far, but if we hear far more good stories than disappointments, it could be quite indicative.

Increased @WinPhoneSupport Efforts

We are ready to call this one right now: The official Windows Phone Support Twitter account is dealing with a much higher than normal spate of complaints that require its assistance. You can track it yourself. Just wait, a few new updates will pop up.

Of course, we expected this. Windows Phone most certainly sold a grip of units in the past few days, the question is how many, but this particular metric does appear to be trending positive.

And finally, we are going to have a constant knock running on the Redmond door, digging for information. When we are ready to make predictions, we’ll bring them to you. Sit tight.

The topic around the olives and cheese plate last week at an extended family Christmas gathering was, interestingly enough, Microsoft distancing itself from CES. My family, not ordinarily given to tech gossip, was alarmed, thinking that perhaps there was a grand re-ordering of things that they should know about. It’s a remarkably straightforward move, far from the conspiracy theories the last few days have spawned, but when you’re dealing with bruisers like Microsoft and CES, everything is swathed in diplomacy as would be ostensibly amicable divorce proceedings. But Microsoft’s grievances are legitimate and the move is a smart one.

“Our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing.” How true that is, and as others have pointed out, their product news generally didn’t align with products, either. And they’re aware that their news is propagating in a completely different way than it used to.

Technologizer had a handy round-up of the keynotes, which generally have highlighted products that never shipped, or didn’t work well on stage. It’s a bit embarrassing to go back and watch some of these, knowing as we do how these products turned out. Why did Microsoft ever participate in this?

Part of it was Bill Gates, who was much more of a keynote kind of guy. If you’ve seen him speak, you know that despite his natural nerdiness, he’s an endearing presence on stage and his enthusiasm for the broader mission of technology is infectious. Ballmer is certainly bombastic, but for years we’ve heard over and over the growth stats on Windows, heard from a few partners mumbling carefully-rehearsed platitudes, then seen a few features of the next version or a prototype (last year’s ARM surprise, to be fair, was the best thing they’ve had in years). It’s become rote, and rote is what Microsoft fears most now.

The company is desperate for a reinvention of how it presents itself, and these doddering CES keynotes are exhibit A in the Case of the Dull Microsoft PR. Their booth, too, is filled with old devices and people halfheartedly selling services that anyone in the market is already well aware of.

Meanwhile, year-round on the internet, we see astonishing things being done in Microsoft Research and Labs, beautiful and powerful demonstrations of advanced technology. And the Building Windows 8 blog is the surprise Microsoft hit of the year, with nearly every single post (detailed, revealing, and technical) creating a storm of discussion on the web. The new Explorer interface, for instance, spawned thousands of articles (not necessarily positive) and others have done nearly as much. The way Microsoft gets word out of its innovations, its products, its business performance, has been changing for years, but they and CES have clung together out of habit. I’m pleased to see Microsoft doing what it does worst: breaking a bad habit.

CES is a show for product builders, people who ship devices, where you need to be there in real life to see how it works, how it feels, and most importantly, how it compares to the guys in the next booth. Microsoft simply isn’t a part of that world, and the show hasn’t been about them for years. They’ll still have a booth, and I expect them to stay around for a while. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they stopped using CES as a focal point for announcements, and use it instead (as many other large companies do) to present a snapshot of the company through and through, prototypes, research projects, traditional devices, servers, and all. They’ve made more room on the stage for companies that truly want to show off impressive things and talk about where the tech world is heading. I look forward to attending the keynotes of whoever steps up.

When one company steps in poo, another company sees an opportunity. Since Go Daddy hasn’t had the best week ever with PR, one domain registration company wants to capitalize on it.

Namecheap has been going after Go Daddy companies for the past few days with rabid ferociousness, publishing its own stance on SOPA, in which it says it is absolutely against the act and everything it stands for. Go Daddy on the other hand, supported the act, and then retracted its position.

Richard Kirkendall, Namecheap CEO, made this statement last week:

While we at Namecheap firmly believe in intellectual rights, SOPA is like detonating a nuclear bomb on the internet when only a surgical strike is necessary. This legislation has the potential to harm the way everyone uses the Internet and to undermine the system itself. At Namecheap, we believe having a free and open Internet is the only option that will continue the legacy of innovation and openess that stands for everything we all value in our modern society.

In its efforts to get as many Go Daddy customers to transfer to its service as possible, the company and its seems to have hit a snag and is crying foul. In a post today, the company claims that Go Daddy could be purposely blocking transfers away from its service, which as Namecheap points out, is against ICANN’s rules.

Here’s what Namecheap had to say on the matter:

We wanted to give our customers a quick update on the status of domain transfers associated with one of our competitors, GoDaddy.

First, we’re very sorry that some of you in the past 24 hours have experienced delays in transferring domains over to us.

As many customers have recently complained of transfer issues, we suspect that this competitor is thwarting efforts to transfer domains away from them.

Specifically, GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process. This practice is against ICANN rules.

We at Namecheap believe that this action speaks volumes about the impact that informed customers are having on GoDaddy’s business.

It’s a shame that GoDaddy feels they have to block their (former) customers from voting with their dollars. We can only guess that at GoDaddy, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Don’t worry – each and every transfer request will be processed manually by our team. Every request will go through. We won’t rest until everyone who wants to join the Namecheap family can do so!

That’s a pretty wild accusation if you ask me, but with Go Daddy customer service reps calling customers in hopes that they stay, I wouldn’t put it past them. However, this could easily be a PR stunt in and of itself. When a competitor makes a misstep like Go Daddy did, it would be stupid not to pile on to make a profit.

We’ve reached out to Go Daddy PR on the matter, but have yet to hear back. We’ll most certainly keep you updated.