The iPhone Market Opportunity

It's standing room only in this session. I guess there are a lot of iPhone afficianados out there. The panel includes: Raven Zachary (raven.me), Bill Dudney (Gala Factory Software LLC), Matt Murphy (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), Tom Conrad (Pandora Media).

Raven Zachary - (www.raven.me) product management consultant for iPhone. Helped with the Obama iPhone app.The iPhone is unique for three reasons

1. It's persistent: mobile broadband, always-on, in your pocket.
2. Mobile web: 13M iPhone units (source: Apple), 3-6M iPod touch (estimated by Zachary)iPhone OS generates 74% of all mobile web traffic. Beats Windows mobile, Symbian, sidekick. Blackberry is great at e-mail but generates the least mobile web traffic. The Sony PSP generates twice as much web traffic.
3. Application distribution. Over 6,000 apps in US. 1/3 are games and entertainment. Revenue share: Apple keeps 30% of revenue.

Matt Murphy (Kleiner Perkins)

• June 2008 - 6M iPhones (sold 1M 3G iPhones in 3 days, 7M 3g iPhones in 90 days)
• Sept 2008 - 13M iPhones
• Dec 2009 - expecting 50M iPhones
• 500 apps at launch, 7200 apps now.
• 90% of people download apps. Other phones: 20%
• 5 iFunded companies: whrrl, pelago, iControl (control appliances in home), BooYah! (from world of warcraft guys), ngmoco
• >3000 proposals received so far, met with >200 companies, >5 actively engaged, 5 funded. This is 20x other platforms/spaces. Looking for companies that can scale, rather than lifesytle apps.
• Plans: business vertical, consumer vertical are the largest, healthcare (12%),
• Would like to see more enterprise apps for the iPhone. 40% of all Fortune 500 have iPhone app in trial.
• 12M iPhones (250M phones total in US). iPhone app downloads: 14M/week, rest of US: 3M/week
• iPhone is changing behavior: browsing news, playing games.
• iPhone developers in short supply.

Kleiner Perkins iFund success criteria:

1. Inherently mobile use cases
2. Context over content
3. Real-time, immediate utility (apps that need 3-5 mins of training, the usage drops off)
   
4. Simplicity
5. Frequent usage
6. Inherently viral
7. Massive scale possible (address a large audience)
   
8. Natural business model
   
9. Cross platform with mobile integral (attract web users and mobile users)
   
10. Take advantage of iPhone platform.
    

mmurphy@kpcb.com kpcb.com/ifund

Tom Conrad (CTO, Pandora Media)

• Largest Internet radio broadcaster. ClearChannel has 20% of all radio.
• Apple reviews all app-store apps. Takes 24 hours to 7 days. Brew takes 1-6 months to review, at a cost of $2500, and uses NTSL for testing.
  

Tech Hunch Thrifty: Web 2.0 Companies Started on a Hunch and a Prayer

Just finished my first session at the Web 2.0 Summit-- a panel session hosted by Guy Kawasaki. Nine different start-ups, each given 6 minutes to demo their product. Most of the panel members appeared to be twenty-somethings. Eight of the 9 presenters were using Macs. The central theme: the days of $2M in funding with only a business plan and no product to demo are over.

WuFoo – Kevin Hale

• Online HTML forms builder
• Can embed form directly into website, including CSS.
• Can process online payments: through PayPal, Google Checkout,
  
• Business model: hosted, monthly subscription fee: free - $199/month.
• Y-Combinator seed funded: $18k + angel money $100k. Profitable. Based in Tampa, FL

Yoics - Instant networking

• Built into various devices to network-enable them. For example, surveillance cameras.
• Can load the yoics client onto other PC’s
• Business model: license the technology to manufacturers.
• Bootstrapped by 2 founders. Raise money from there.

DropBox – founder Drew

• Share files across computers. Synchs files across computers. Files show up in a folder, using standard file management. Files are synched across network.
• Can easily “export” files by dropping them into the dropbox folder.
• Files also available over web. Files are automatically versioned. Can restore to previous versions of files or undeleting.
• 9 person start-up: Windows, Linux, Mac.
• 2 gigabytes free. 50 gig: $20/month or $100/year.
• Developed prototype in 4 months (while working at another start-up). $15k in Y Combinator + $5k loan for 9 months total.

Disqus – Jason

• Management system for blog comments.
• Central place to track all my comments on web sites. Can also follow comments from other disqus users.
• As a publisher, can manage/moderate/view comments from all websites.
• Supports blog platforms, but needs a plug-in that you drop into
• Biz model: subscription model. Also looking at going to bigger publishers.
• Financing: Y Combinator funded 1 year ago: $15k in summer 2007.

Mighty Quiz - Kelly Bennet

• Trivia site – you can make your own quizzes.
• Can plug into blogs or social networks.
• People can create questions. Other people can rate questions (thumbs up/down)
• Authors can write questions. Can add questions to categories. Automatically pulls in images from Yahoo images.
• Portable, available as a widget.
• Cyworld (social network) imports Mighty Quiz widget.
• Y-Combinator funded: $10k. Raised few hundred $100’s K. Based in San Francisco.

SlideShare – Rashmi Sinha (CEO)

• Share power point presentations online.
• Space on the web to upload and share presentations.
• Presentations converted to YouTube-like video format. Users can comment on presentations.
• Typical use case: people upload a presentation, then link to their website/blog.
• “Meet Henry” presentation: a preso format for advertisements. Has created a category
• Can also synch presos with audio. (mp3 file or podcast) to create a slidecast.
• Traffic: 9M unique visitors last month. SlideShare avail on LinkedIn. Some traffic from organic search.
• 2000 presos uploaded / day (not counting LinkedIn)
• Funding: $0 funding. Built prototype while working at other companies. Launched, written by TechCrunch. Revenue from other funding. 2 years into company, secured angel funding then Series A.

Posterous – Garry Tan (co-founder)

• Blogging by e-mail. No sign-up required.
• Blog directly from e-mail account. post@posterous.com.
• Automatically expands links into pictures/video widget.
• Zip files automatically expanded into a JavaScript picture viewer.
• Use it as a way to share pictures and videos with family.
• Raised $50k from Y-Combinator from Boston session. Launched in the summer.
• Biz model: premium services.

Rescue Time – Tony

• Time management software
• Measures which software and websites you’re using. Provides aggregated stats to manager. Lets people know how they compare to their average team member.
• Tracks apps (Word, Excel) and individual web sites (active use).
• Can also block different websites
• Lets managers get data by dept, group, etc.

Poll Everywhere - Jeff Dunap

• Text participation during presentations.
• Realtime participation by people sending SMS messages.
• $0.30/participant/month for size of 100’s of people
• For 250 person audience, costs $65/month. Monthly charge =
• Financing: $9k (self-funded), $20k (Y-Comb), cash flow positive, based in Chicago & Boston.

Live from San Francisco... It's the Web 2.0 Summit

Now that the election's over, it's time to return to real life. Okay, sort-of. I'm at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Over the next few days, I'll be blogging live from the conference. So watch this space!

PayCycle: In the News Again

Forbes just published an article about my company, PayCycle. In these turbulent times, the small business sector is weathering the storm much better than Wall Street. And having a SaaS sales model is definitely the way to go. For all the details, check out the article.

The Luster Wears off Google Chrome

After a week of browsing with Chrome, I've switched back to Firefox 3. I did used to Chrome's rather unusual UI layout, but it wasn't the missing menu bar that did in Chrome. For me, there were two missing features that caused me to switch back to Firefox:

• Chrome doesn't support the TinyMCE editor, which is used by Atlassian Wiki. As a big Wiki user at work, the lack of support for the rich text editor was a big deal.
• Chrome doesn't support plug-ins ala Firefox. Although I didn't miss my Alexa plug-in, I did miss the Selenium IDE.

Oh well, I'm sure Google will continue to evolve Chrome at a frantic pace. In the meantime, Chrome remains installed on my laptop. It's just not my default browser.

All of a Sudden, Browsers are Hot Again

Tuesday afternoon, I downloaded and installed Google's Chrome browser on my laptop. Although I had just upgraded to Firefox 3 last week, I figured I'd see for myself what's up with all the buzz around Chrome. My first reaction was "Where's the menu bar?" A few of us at work downloaded Chrome, and we did have some "water cooler" talk about the new browser.

Chrome claims to have a faster JavaScript engine ("V8") and a faster rendering engine, based on WebKit. Each tab also runs in its own process, for better security and reliability. I turned to the video from the Google developers to learn about Chrome, but Paul checked out the cartoon. See for yourself to get the inside scoop.

I've switched my default browser from Firefox 3 to Chrome. I guess an extended test drive is in order. Check back in a week to see how Chrome holds up...

A Stroll along Pebble Beach

In the spirit of celebrating Labor Day, I will not blog about anything work-related this weekend. Earlier today, we met several friends at Carmel-by-the-Sea for a day at the beach. This was a cozy little beach, tucked away behind the cypress trees and quaint shops along Ocean Ave. And the beach offered magnificent views of Pebble Beach Golf Links. As it turns out, there was a Champions Tour event at Pebble Beach, and we did see the cameras on the course.

After mid-day, the fog cleared, the sun came out, and the weather warmed considerably. It was a fun day of catching up with friends, throwing the football around, playing catch, and of course eating. Throughout the day, we munched on assortment of Indian dishes, pasta salad, sandwiches, and snacks. And after we watched the sun set over Monterrey Bay, we headed home for Silicon Valley.