So much good stuff tumbling around up in the attic. Conversations have resumed and an opportunity is manifest. To be ever more cryptic, I’ve isolated a beat, and hope it resonates… then there will be some very cool haps.
(via jacob)
For those who may be wondering what the story is with zonio at the moment, let me just say that my focus on new opportunities with zonio have ended up in a full time consulting arrangement that for the foreseeable future will keep me gainfully employed and working on applying platform integration strategies in hardware and software. The really exciting part for me is the I will be working on technologies that I love and that if executed correctly will have a direct, measurable impact and change what consumers think about one of the most successful brands in the market today.
A wonderful opportunity indeed.
In the meantime zonio will house my other hairbrained schemes. One never knows how and when with these things, but in this moment, the zonio endeavor has proven a success for me personally.
There is an interesting tension these days between open and closed services when it comes to quality of service (when I say “quality of service” i mean that in the broadest possible sense).
Consider the following:
1. Phone service. Compare skype vs landline or vonage vs comcast voip
2. Email. Consider gmail (ads, no techsupport etc) vs “pro email” from Exchange or ISP email.
3. Video. compare video from the open internet vs from a telco or cableco
4. Blogs or publishing. host it yourself with Moveable Type vs 3rd party hosting (ie hosted WP or Blogger)
5. Web services. Own your own hw vs managed hosting vs amazon s3/EC2.
(There are plenty of other examples)
On one end of the spectrum is a best efforts service quality and on the other end is something that approaches bulletproof status or carrier class. There is a price tradeoff. Quality tradeoff. And there is an innovation curve tradeoff.
In many cases in comes down a “quality of signal” vs speed/execution of features, functionality and user experience.
Why don’t more people use email from their ISP where there is tech support and no ads. Instead many of us prefer gmail. Same thing with web services that use Amazon’s infrastructure. Amazon may go down and it’s outside the control of the developer but the tradeoff is capital efficiency, time to market, etc. Amazon is working just fine for many of our portfolio companies.
On the other hand, Vonage never worked for me. But Comcast VOIP is rock solid.
The same is true for video. High def television from directv or comcast or verizon is stunning. Web video doesn’t look like that yet. But the convenience and user experience of web video trumps quality for some people. Not for others.
Here’s another example. WHen you pay Comcast you expect it to always work. If they don’t call you back you get upset. When Facebook goes down what is the user reaction? And what is the relative value?
Open platforms like the internet is bringing innovation faster than ever to new markets and applications. It is shrinking & disrupting many markets (ie telephony, newspapers, advertising, etc).
It also changes the quality of the signal.
At least for now.
Open platforms can always innovate faster than closed networks (think open internet vs the historically closed mobile network pre-iphone). But open platforms also bring along tradeoffs vs managed services.
The race is on. And the stakes are higher than ever. As our networking pipes get fatter and web applications get richer it will be interesting to watch it play out.
When I said “Fuckit” a few days ago, it really should have been a small “f.” I’ve received a few inquiries trying to understand if my skunk works had in fact been skunked, or not…
The cleats aren’t hung up, but the strategic focus is changing even as we speak. I went into this zonio experiment with a pressing need to get a particular product concept built. It was a cool product too. I am still a big believer in the design, but I am not sure there is the right kind of capital ready to be put to work in a fashion I am willing to move forward. Honestly speaking, there was such a temptation to build a product concept based on technologies that I knew intimately, but now I am finding that a lot of that desire came from the safety of it. I was also spending an awful lot of time and mental energy trying to move too many partners who did not share my urgency or risk assessment of the opportunity. Therefore it was a challenging nut to crack. Top it all off, and my largest competitive advantage was first-mover advantage… not terribly robust in the CE market.
Another confounding issue was that within the next month or so, the likelihood of getting an early 2010 product built and placed is prohibitively slim. Making this an even more weighty condition is the fact that there has been an incredible amount of movement and progress in enabling technologies for a competitive architecture that will be hard to compete against. I will talk more about this later. I am actually leaning towards documenting exactly what I believe the initial product concept should be based on these evermore market-ready technologies. It won’t seem groundbreaking to those who are familiar with the technologies, but it may prove to be a unique perspective on a set of technologies that are currently targeted at a totally different set of consumer use cases.
My recent learnings and acceptance of some harsh economic realities will weigh on what kind of marketing strategy and partnerships will need to exist to pull it off.
I’m believing more in the power of Android. I suspect that in 5 years, there will be an android-enabled device in every room of my home.
The CE world as we’ve known it is gone. I actually think MS and Apple have lots of be concerned about.
“Fuck it.” — Me
This week has been filled with a lot of out-of-box thinking… and I’ll tell you why.
I’ve gotten some very good feedback that has made me rethink how I should go about funding my idea. There are basically a few paths I can go down:
Without getting into too much detail and giving up too much irrelavent specifics, let’s just say I am leaning toward 2 and 3. I have a company in mind, and if we can agree on a deal that makes sense it is probably the best way to get a piece of hardware built. I think 4 could work, but it would obviously depend on the partner and their willingness to bring me into their house.
For completeness sake, option 1 would be problematic, as I am becoming less attracted to the prospects of trying to launch a new hardware brand that is going after the market I am focused on. The amount of investment and goodwill required to have an effective marketing channel is something that takes a long time and large amounts of capital to build. I am not sure this economy is ready to support such ventures. The alternative of self-funding and building a solo operation invariably means you will have a small direct channel and a niche market. While this is one path that I admire and have seen work for certan folks, I am not prepared to operate something like this at this stage… I would prefer doing so at a time where I could rely on fewer outside dollars, and have only myself to be held accountable to. These smaller types of operations are suited to labors of love, and I guess I am not entirely done with the larger rat race… for now.
Another fact of the matter is I am running out of runway. Certain developments will or will not occur in the next few weeks and if they don’t go their way to kicking me off, but rather kick me out… then I need my plan B lined up. So I am budgeting a certain amount of time to that end and have seen a couple paths that are indeed attractive. I was telling a friend tonight that I have 3 options… 2 in the CE industry, 1 in another industry, and I guess a 4th if you include moving to an island and becoming a bartender.
Trying to create a startup venture can be a gut wrenching process. I remember in the founding days of Avnera, some VC we were courting came into the lunch room and wanted to speak to the entire team. A totally ego-maniacal thing to do in retrospect — more on that later — but it was his chance to tell us an anecdote that stuck with me, though it was put quite melodramatically… and it went a little something like this:
“in startups, you will experience life’s highest highs and lowest lows”
Let me add my take on this:
Delicate, delicate.
Today, I had a chat with a very seasoned and accomplished guy in the space. He currently invests (VC-like), but realistically not at the stage and amounts I am currently seeking. His feedback was heartening and disheartening… but all fair and balanced, even if charted by his own battle scars. A stimulating event.
So today has become a day of digestion. My thoughts are finally coalescing to where I see more clearly the chunks of value that are out there to monetize. I am just trying to get my products built in a way that returns enough of that value to myself and my investors. A key part of this process is identifying and convincing the right investors. I have a pretty good of who that might be… now for the convincing…
Today was a day of email and phone tagging. One investor, one design consultant, and one supplier. Hope tomorrow I have better luck connecting.
I sent on my financial forecast and investment requirements to my lawyer who is helping me draft a term sheet to offer potential investors. Basically there are two capital raising options, one which is more equity up front, with no need for any trade credit or short term debt in year one, or less equity up front, with some need for ST debt. We’ll see what the venture capital markets are willing to bare.
I also had some fun tweaking my logo a bit. I am no graphic artist, but every now and then I stumble onto something that serves the purpose. Right now, I like my little alien for the more ethereal applications of zonio’s brand identity. For professional purposes I have a cleaner, simpler, and perhaps more sustainable logo.. to be shared another time.