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Enter Zenter, Google Office is now complete
Google has snapped up yet another start-up - Zenter, which is building online presentations. This is yet-another-exit for YCombinator, the madrassa of the Web 2.0 crowd. In Microsoft world those are known as PowerPoints. Google had earlier bought Tonic Systems, a start-up that was working on similar technology but was more focused on backend technology. With this acquisition, Google has completed its online productivity suite - Docs, SpreadSheets, Calendar, Mail and Presentations. Now they are on equal footing with Zoho. (Check out the comparison between various online office suites over on ReadWriteWeb.)
The problem is that unless Google figures out a way to create a seamless integration between these online apps, these will all have limited utility. The other aspect of the Google Apps which the search giant needs to address is usability and interface. A lot of people like their minimalist approach to UI, but not me personally. Similarly, like many GMail users we are still unconvinced about Google’s ability to provide an always-on service, and ensure the safety of data.
With Covestor, everyone is a money manager
So you think you are a smart investor, the kind who always beats the market, and tells your friends and family what stocks to invest in, and what stocks to sell. You think you can out perform the money managers and investment advisers who collect hefty fees. If yes, then you might be interested in a new service from New York-based start-up, Covestor, likely to launch sometime tomorrow.
Here is how it works:
You sign-up for the service, and plug-in your online brokerage account information and your portfolio shows up on the site, and the system creates its relative performance to the broader indices, sector indices and also creates a risk profile. It’s not a fantasy game; instead it is your real portfolio, where real money is at work.
The site, while no-frills has all the elements you would see on say Morningstar fund screen. You can see a person’s holdings as percentage of their portfolio, with relevant charts and other relevant data. Lets say, you are good at picking broadband stocks; others on Covestor can track your investments. There are shades of social networking, with a built-in reputation system. There are other features that help you gauge the quality of investment information you are getting from a person.
If the “covestors” agree with your investment style, then these covestors can allocate say a small portion of their own investment dollars to mimic your investment style. The more successful you are, the more followers you get. Think of yourself as their virtual money manager – an attractive proposition for those who take (very vocal) pride in their investing prowess. It is not that different from a blog, where unique voice or view points lead to a ‘following.’
“The idea came to me, when I heard from my contacts in the investment business, that hedge funds were asking research firms to put their ideas on the web so that they can track them,” says Richard ‘Rikki’ Tahta, who has co-founded the company along with two other co-founders, Perry Blacher and Simon Veingard, a few months ago. They have raised $1 million in funding from angel investors.
Tahta is a repeat entrepreneur who has been involved with four start-ups in the financial information sector. “With the advent of zero commission brokerage accounts, the friction of replicating six people in my own portfolio has vanished,” says Tahta, pointing to new offerings from Banc of America. One of the first thoughts that crossed my mind after hearing Tahta describe his company: isn’t this a system ripe for being gamed, especially when the site is a tear away success, and the portfolio’s following becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The followers’ actions can have a negative impact on a highly illiquid stock, pushing it higher, making the system prone to manipulation.
“Since you actually need to spend to build a reputation, and all your information is with the brokerage, the potential of gaming the system is pretty low,” says Tahta. I still remain unconvinced – and that’s a challenge Covester will have to overcome before it can be deemed a success.
eBay to announce StumbleUpon buy today
Update: So, it’s official, eBay has bought StumbleUpon for $75 million. Here’s the release.
eBay, the San Jose, Calif.-based auction giant is likely to announce its acquisition of Stumble Upon after the close to markets today, according to informed sources. The news of a pending deal was first reported back in April 2007. The acquisition price is said to be $75 million. StumbleUpon has raised close to $1.5 million in seed financing
The rationale behind the deal will emerge in time. There have been some who have disagreed with my hypothesis on why eBay wanted to buy StumbleUpon, a social book marking discovery service.
By marrying the toolbar to Skype client, eBay can do an end run around Google’s dominance of the search business. A simple search box inside Skype client is all it would take. It is not that far fetched: Skype has been slowly integrating various different services (including PayPal) into its client, and slowly becoming eBay’s desktop backdoor.
Our readers and others around the web furiously debated this theory, and offered alternative views.
TechCrunch is reporting on the pending announcement as well.
What’s that Ooyala about?
A couple of ex-Googlers, Bismarck Lepe and Sean Knapp, have teamed up to start Mountain View-based stealth-mode startup ooyala which is “focused on delivering a high-quality, interactive, video-viewing experience.” The alarm:clock sums it nicely, when it writes, “ooyala is not saying who or how much nor what the hell they are doing other than video.” NewTeeVee got in touch with one of the founders who says that ooyala has raised “a large round of funding” and it plans to release a beta version of its online/offline video application in early July. Is this the start of the former-Googlers competing with Google trend, that Cringley was talking about?
Full story at NewTeeVee.
Warner Goes for IMEEM KO
Warner Music sued media-sharing site IMEEM Tuesday for infringing the copyright of its artists, building a base of 16 million users by capitalizing on the “illegal use of ‘free music,’” according to Reuters. The label is asking for up to $150,000 in damages for each instance of infringement, the maximum allowed under copyright law.
IMEEM allows members to upload their MP3 collections and stream them to other users. Other companies such as Streampad, Project Playlist, and MediaMaster have followed on this model, apparently hoping it was a loophole in the law.
We were holding this story after getting tipped off to it this afternoon, waiting for replies from IMEEM or its investors at Morganthaler Ventures. Now that it has broken we update this piece if any of them get back to us.
Calacanis’ latest, Project X, Kokua?
Jason Calacanis, co-founder of Weblogs Inc., and now an entrepreneur-in-action at Sequoia Capital is working on a new company called, Project X. Valleywag published some details about the company earlier this week, that has the apparent backing of Mark Cuban, Jon Miller (ex-AOL) and Sequoia Capital, amongst others.
An anonymous tipster tells us that the new company could go under the moniker, Kokua. Kokua, apparently means to help or guide in Hawaiian.
When we checked Calacanis does own the domain and we also saw some interesting screen shots of the new company, though it is hard to say if they really are authentic. While Calacanis didn’t deny the fact that he owned the domain, he declined to comment on further speculation about the nature of his business. (Disclosure: I am one of the dozens of advisers for TechCrunch 20, a conference being put together by Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington)
An unconfirmed outline of the company appears after the fold, and please treat it like that - unconfirmed speculation.
The new company apparently is said to be a blend of Wikipedia and podcasting with a focus on highly lucrative segments like automobiles and video games. Each segment is likely to have a host (compensated perhaps) just like About.com. The host would do a show and build a community that will also help populate the Wiki.
Highly-focused niche content is becoming more valuable these days where Google’s search results leave you clicking in confusion. From a more practical standpoint, the videos and contextual content can generate better AdSense dollars and higher video advertising revenues.
Given that Calacanis has built two studios - one on the left coast and one in New York — our tipster may not be that off the mark.
Why is Scribd so hot?
Last couple of days from many different sources we have been hearing about this little company called Scribd. A funding frenzy is taking place around the company, with some of the top name venture capitalists jostling to invest in the company. There has been talk of an acquisition offer as well.
What we have heard from multiple and reliable sources that the company was offered $5 million on a post money valuation of $10 million, but passed on that offer. Someone offered to buy them but for now our sources say that Redpoint Ventures has invested a substantial amount of money at twice the valuation of the initial offer.
We asked Chris Moore, a partner at Redpoint Ventures, about all the hoopla, and he offered a “no comment.”
Scribd had previously raised about $300,000 in seed funding, on top of $12,000 it received from Y Combinator. What is Scribd anyway? As per their FAQ:
Scribd lets you publish and discover documents online. It is like a big online library where anyone can upload. We make use of a custom Flash document viewer that lets you display documents right in your Web browser. Part of the idea behind Scribd is that everyone has a lot of documents sitting around on their computers that only they can read. With Scribd we hope to unlock this information by putting it on the web.
The technology behind the company is pretty impressive, and the traffic growth according to Compete.com and Quantcast has been pretty impressive. though one has to wonder if it merits such high valuation. A sign of the times?
Twitter Leaves the Nest
A little South by Southwest love, a lot of mainstream press ink, and some overloaded servers have convinced Obvious to turn Twitter, its little hotshot web and SMS service, into its own company. Evan Williams’ Obvious Corp. said this week that it’s spinning off the tool into its own firm.
The time has come for Twitter to make that leap. We’re happy to announce that Twitter is graduating from the home of Obvious and becoming its own company—appropriately named, Twitter, Inc.
Williams said Twitter creator Jack Dorsey would serve as the new company’s CEO.
Liz’s story from Found+Read last week indicated Williams’ plans: “Twitter hasn’t raised any outside funding yet, though Williams says ‘It’s likely we’ll need to before long, but we’re past the point where I think it would be too early.’”
When your service name gets that much more high profile than your company moniker, its time to send the kid off to college. Williams says:
Twitter continues to grow, it will gain less from being under the Obvious umbrella and perhaps even push that umbrella until it flips inside out. Which doesn’t make the umbrella happy, and just gets in Twitter’s way. Perhaps I took the metaphor too far.
Perhaps, but we know what you mean.
Akamai goes P2P, buys Red Swoosh
Akamai has just announced that it is buying Red Swoosh, a peer-to-peer based service for about $15 million in stock. That’s not that much for a start-up that counts some heavy weights as its customers.
The rumors of this deal had been floating around for about two months and Travis Kalanick of Red Swoosh has been avoiding us for a while now, ever since we asked him about the deal. Anyway the deal should make Akamai naysayers pause a little. Many had said that P2P caching could dislodge Akamai from its current dominant position. Fat chance - Akamai, it is clear, is more fierce in protecting its turf than say Microsoft. It just uses its hefty stock market capitalization to buy out possible competitors.
I would post a longer post later today once I get through the email-hell!
Hot or Not Goes Free
Hot or Not, the online dating and rating site, is about to end its main revenue stream — subscriptions — and focus instead on online ads and transactions, like selling virtual flowers. Hot or Not founder James Hong, who has gotten rich off of the subscriptions of his cash-cow, emailed us to say that the company plans to soon make its subscription-based ($6 per month) “meeting” section free to users.
Why would they kill a service that 15 percent of people who try are willing to pay for, and has resulted in “multi millions of profits per year”? Hong tells us free is the future.
Free sites are destroying pay sites (at least the ones that do not have extremely powerful network effects.. which dating sites generally do not because users can (and often do) join multiple services.). . . Sites like Match.com, Yahoo Personals, etc.. are going to be in a lot of trouble.
Hong explains it as when the company started out in 2000, subscriptions were the only way for a tiny site like theirs to survive. But as ad-targeting improved, and ad dollars moved online, ad pricing has reached the level where an individual or a streamlined small company can make a significant profit.
Hong says the online dating industry is reaching a “strategic inflection point” as the growth of the amount of paying subscribers for these sites becomes saturated and are forced to generate more revenue from existing subscribers. Over the long run, the result is fewer new subscribers, and a disappearing userbase, Hong says.
It’s not necessarily a new idea. While subscription-based online dating is still the dominant business model, we have covered free online dating sites PlentyofFish, OkCupid, and Iminlikewithyou.com. And Hong admits that they are a little late into the free ad-based game, but that “we are optimistic that it is not too late for us to change, as long as we have the courage (or insanity) to do so.”
Hong has made enough money off his site to afford to take risks. And the employee base is small enough, with no venture capital, that the company has some room to monkey with the recipe.
And what is Project Agape?
Earlier this month we had reported that Sean Parker, an entrepreneurial fella whose past affiliations have included Napster, Plaxo and Facebook, was working on a new start-up, that was looking to apply viral marketing with activism.
We met with Parker earlier this week for dinner where we discussed how viral growth could be applied to “activism.” That is the premise behind the Berkeley, Calif.-based start-up, currently named, Project Agape, Parker explained.
He pointed to the Facebook group for Barack Obama that has helped the Democratic Presidential Candidate build a supporter base in campuses across the country. But why limit this to just politics, for there are more more worthy causes that could benefit from viral networks, that can become effective fund raising mechanisms, with the right incentives of course.
Michael Arrington got to see the working prototype and has more details on the new start-up.
A mysterious CEO change at Stoke
A few months ago we had heard some rumblings that Stoke CEO Randall Kruep was on his way out of the company. Kruep, whom we got to know well when he was running Procket Networks, assured us himself that he was going nowhere.
A couple of weeks later the networking start-up announced a big round of funding, taking the total to about $50 million from investors like Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital.
A surprise awaited us when we check the Stoke management page, following an anonymous tip. Kruep is listed as a founder, but not as the CEO. Instead, the management page points out that Dennis Barsema, a director is now the acting CEO. We wonder what changed between the time when Kruep gave us his assurance and now. Curious, don’t you think.
Just in case you were wondering what does Stoke make, an excerpt from an old post:
The carrier-closet box, which Stoke says is already in trials, is designed to help service providers better manage subscribers from multiple types of emerging access technologies, including WiMAX and dual-mode Wi-Fi/cellular handsets.
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HP goes web 2.0, buys Tabblo
Now this is one Web 2.0 acquisition that makes sense! Hewlett-Packard has acquired Tabblo, Massachusetts-based company that makes it easier for consumers to upload and printing their photos from the web. Think of Tabblo as iPhoto rest of us - allowing folks to print their photos as calendars or albums, layered with all sorts of social web features.
It was only in May 2006, I was introduced to Tabblo founder Antonio Rodriguez by Jason Shellen, formerly of Blogger/Pyra Labs and then with Google. Ten months later his start=up has been acquired for undisclosed amount of money. Why did that happen? They made a tool that incorporated the best of social web and built a layer of usefulness on top of that. And focused their product on mainstream users, with one simple message: make your photo printing cool and chic.
It makes perfect sense for HP to acquire them because first, it gives a good strategic fit with printer business, the bread (if not the butter) for the computer maker. Secondly, HP owns Snapfish.com, another photo site, which could use some of Tabblo’s sensibilities, and can also get more people printing their photos.
HP is a bit more ambitious with this deal, and it seems, wants to get into the on-demand printing business. There are quite a few start-ups in this space, that should be worried. I mean seriously worried. A spokesperson emailed us with this information:
HP’s plans are to bring the technologies developed by Tabblo in-house, and use them to make it easier for customers to seamlessly manipulate, format and print the Web-based content that’s important to them in the real world. Fundamentally, Tabblo’s server-based technology makes arranging and printing text, graphics and photos from the Web easy and compelling. Tabblo uses a custom template engine, utilizing an AJAX-enriched interface, to manipulate and reformat Web content for easy printing. While today Tabblo has been focused on using its publishing technology in the photography arena, HP plans to repurpose this technology asset with its partners to enable printing for all types of content across the Web. This goes beyond photo printing to include Web content of many kinds, including personalized maps, travel guides, books and posters to auto shopping guides and social networks, etc.
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Glu Mobile, Aruba giddy up for IPOs
The slow resurgence of the technology IPOs - Clearwire and BigBand Networks - has raised the hopes of many Silicon Valley companies that are hoping to use this window of opportunity and tap the public markets. Even those with shaky financial are looking at the market more optimistically.
Take Glu Mobile and Aruba Networks, two wireless companies focusing on different segments of the mobile ecosystem. The two companies are still bleeding red, but are hoping for mega-million dollars valuations, that could make even a raging optimist pause for a minute.
Aruba Networks, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company that makes and sells enterprise WiFi equipment is looking to sell 8 million shares and raise between $64 to $80 million. At the high end of the offering price, the company could be valued over $750 million.
Ambitious for a company that had $51 million in revenues for six months ending January 31, 2007 and with a net loss of $11.7 million. As of January 31, 2007 - the company had accumulated deficit of $88.5 million and has always been in the red. Aruba’s competitors: Cisco Systems and Motorola (Symbol Technologies,) not to mention a potpourri of other start-ups.
Glu Mobile is another one hoping for a home run. The San Mateo, Calif.-based mobile games company is looking to sell 7.3 million shares and is looking to raise between $73-to-$87.6 million from the public markets. One of the big players in the fast growing mobile games market, it is still bleeding red. Their revenues for fiscal 2006 were shade over $46 million and a net loss of over $12.3 million. Yikes!
Now we are all for return of the public markets - after all they are still the most effective way for achieving liquidity, but taking unprofitables public might actually kill the golden goose. But hey, then market did value Clearwire at $4 billion, for ever so briefly!
Sean “wild boy” Parker Returns
Silicon Valley’s bad boy Sean Parker is back in the start-up game. The 28-year-old, who in the past has been associated with fast growing Internet phenomena such as Napster, Plaxo and Facebook, is working on an ultra stealthy start-up that is going to be tackling the “activism” space.
We picked up this rumor over the weekend while chatting with some Silicon Valley insiders. We admit we are short on details, but are digging hard for more information, and will be updating the post as we find out more information. The company hasn’t decided on a name just yet, and will launch later this summer, our sources say.
Parker was a co-founder at Napster and then at Plaxo, and later founding president at Facebook. He left the college-focused social network in 2005, and recently joined San Francisco-based The Founders Fund, a venture capital fund started by Peter Thiel, who in past life had co-founded PayPal.
Though he is still a managing partner at Founders Fund, Parker is currently rumored to be devoting all his energies on this new company. Parker is a colorful fella, often subject of speculative gossip in Silicon Valley. Why else would we be talking about him on the weekend, right? Regardless, there is no denying that he has a knack for smelling opportunity, especially when it comes to the consumer Internet.
He often finds viral-growth business opportunities – a trait three of his more known endeavors share. If he has figured out a similar opportunity in the “activism” space, then it might turn out to be a worthy cause.