Internet Radio in My Car

So I finally have Internet radio in my car and it's working great. It's not exactly the way I thought I would get it, but it works great nonetheless.

Background: I love Internet Radio! Ever since Anders Kruus and I discovered it working for a little-known web wealth-management company in the Avenues in the early '00s. No ads, better music, virtually no downside, EXCEPT that you need a wire.

When I bought my car, I spent a long weekend tearing the dashboard apart and wiring it so I could play my iPod. Ironically, Audi had no iPod solution, so I had to buy various pieces-parts and assemble them per the instructions on some obscure European website.

A week ago, I bought the new 3G iPhone which has the same connector on the bottom as the iPod. When I plug it in, it works the same way the iPod does. But here's the interesting part:

The iPhone supports Pandora and AOL Radio over it's wireless 3G network. Both applications stream Internet radio. When I fired Pandora up in the car it worked great and the sound was wonderful!

The only downside is that our friend Steve decided that non-Apple applications (like Pandora and AOL) could not run in the background on the iPhone. So.... when I check my mail or tweet-stream in the car (both probably now illegal in California) I lose my music.

I think he will reverse his decision on non-Apple applications in the future (due not in small part to all my badgering). But who knows with Steve, he can be... how do you say in English... persnickety on his best day.

Oh, well. I still possess the Holy Grail, Internet Radio in my car.

Notes from the IBF Venture Conference - Part Deux

For those of you interested in global VC investment trends:

It's official: with the VCs these days, the consumer is king.



According to Morgan Stanley, 2008 looks like the year, after trailing by a significant margin, that consumer global IP traffic gains parity with business traffic and by 2011 consumer traffic will be three times that of business traffic.



VC investing is following (rather, enabling) the trend. For investments in 2007:



Internet / Consumer media is up over 90%

Both IT Services and Application Software off about 10%

Enterprise Networking Equipment investment is off 60%



In the Software Application space



Web based software (SaaS) is up over 90%

Mobile Consumer Apps up 80%

and Web 2.0 and social media applications are up 60%



In communications and wireless



Video on the Network is up 50%

while VOIP, RFID, WiFi and Optical Networking are all off 25-35%



To those of you trying to figure out what business to start next, the most venture money is going in to:

• Rich Media (video)


• Web 2.0 (assuming that means social-media enabled stuff)


• Cleantech


• Gaming: both mobile and on-line


• Mobile applications (see my previous post re: iPhone)


• Software as a Service


• Global Outsourcing


• and next generation network services (we'll always need bandwidth).

Random additional notes:



VC cleantech investments, according to our friends at E&Y are up globally 25% CAGR since 2001, up 21% CAGR in the US, Europe and Israel and up 195% CAGR in China (from almost nothing in 2001).



Since their respective peaks in 2000, the Dow is up 11% (13,063 vs. 11,723) but the tech-heavy NASDAQ is down 50% (2,525 vs. 5,049) as of Q2 2007.

News from the IPO Watchers

Per my previous post, here is an interesting article. The second quarter numbers are coming in (or not coming in):

U.S. venture-backed IPOs absent in second quarter

Notes from the IBF Venture Conference

I recently attended the IBF Venture Conference at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco where there was enough information on the global technology markets to sink a battleship and one overarching theme:

Global, Global, Global.


Wow! I can't say I had no idea, but the numbers I saw were more staggering than I'd expected.

Here are the numbers for venture investment growth in mature markets in 2007 (B):

• United States grew from $US 27.7 to $US 29.9 (8%)
• Europe grew from €4.5 to €4.6 (2%)

In comparison,

• China grew from $US 1.8 to $US 3.2 (83%) and
• India grew from $US 0.3 to $US 0.9 (195%)

The good news for US companies is that the US remains far and away the largest market for invested venture capital.

The bad news is that as it stands it is much harder for equity holders to find liquidity. Venture backed tech IPOs which were having a nice run: 11 in 2003, 40 in 2004, 27 in 2005, 25 in 2006 and 47 in 2007 look completely stagnant in 2008 (crossing our fingers for one, so far). The median time from initial equity funding to IPO nearly doubling from 4.5 years in 2001 to 8.3 in 2008.

Also both M&A and LBO activity are off significantly in 2008 despite corporate cash balances remaining at an all-time high.

One of the reasons for the significant fallout of the US IPO market is the adoption of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. One of the panelists said that they don't even think about taking a company public if it's got less than $300M in revenue, maybe a bit extreme, but as Dwight Badger of Advanced Equities artfully put it, the $50-$80M IPO is on constant life support.

IPOs are diversifying around the globe. From 1997 through 2007, as a percentage of global IPO proceeds, the US declined from just under 60% to just under 20%. Japan, China and India all experienced moderate growth while the category of Other expanded from 20% to 40%.

So much for globalization... As Zakaria points out in The Post American World, we promoted capitalism and capital markets around the world and damned if they didn't listen. It's less about us falling as it is about "the rise of the rest" and we've got a lot of work to do, policy-wise and otherwise to keep the pace...

Next post: VC investment trends

Pivotal Labs and Twitter

I hate to do this, but the cat is already out of the bag.



http://tinyurl.com/3v5amd

Our friends at Pivotal Labs are starting a project this week to stabilize one of the highest profile (and now most infamous) web 2.0 offerings, Twitter (www.twitter.com). It's a perfect example of a company building a wildly viral product, then breaking under the strain.

I was in Rob Mee's office, taking a break from the IBF Venture Capital Conference when he found out that the project had been leaked to Venture Beat. "Bummer" was Rob's first comment, not knowing if he wanted the press. His second comment was "they should have developed it in Java!"

Rob hires only the best of the best and is a brilliant developer himself. They'll do fine as long as they don't let the flak jackets and night-vision goggles get in the way.

Like Madonna used to say "any press is good press" Party on, Rob. Party on Pivots.