Sunday, January 28, 2007

MIT on prospects of Geothermal energy

Of course, this is not strictly about Silicon Valley or technology, but news from MIT always excites me. Not only because of the alma mater status, but usually because the ideas are fundamental in their potential to change the status quo. The latest is on an MIT-led panel on the prospects for geothermal energy. Geothermal energy, is not new, actually, its as old as the planet itself :-) But, its rarely tapped as a source for energy. What most surprised me in this particular report was the comment from Prof. Nafi Toksoz that the electricity produced by geothermal energy systems in California, Hawaii and Nevada currently is comparable to that produced by wind and solar sources combined. The challenges with this source of energy are signficant. Drilling has to exceed depths of 5000 feet even in the most promising areas. But, at least it does not increase greenhouse gases or radiation :-)

Saturday, January 27, 2007

SJ Mercury News on Silicon Valley Wireless Network

Well, ARMA Group seems to be on a roll. Today's San Jose Mercury News discusses the question of who funds the Silicon Valley Wireless Network. If you recall we posed the same question in our coverage of the WCAI event from January 19th. In general, this has been a question which has dogged fixed and mobile wireless networks over the years. Some may recall Metricom which tried to deploy a mobile wireless network, Ricochet, in 2000. They had significant experience in wireless and good technology, but the revenue recovery posed a problem which was too much to overcome for the company in a short period of time. But, maybe technology has advanced over time and costs have come down and there are more interests willing to pitch in to develop a wireless network for the Valley.

Friday, January 26, 2007

Reuters on IPO outlook for 2007

Its not often that one gets ahead of Reuters in the news business. But, ARMA Group would like to claim a small victory on this one :-) See our coverage of the CSPA event earlier. Today there is a Reuters article on prospects for Tech IPOs and it looks very strong for 2007. Of course, if it turns out to be true, this could mean a very strong year for tech stocks in general. Shades of 1999 ! Hopefully, this time we avoid the subsequent bust. Time will tell whether SOX compliance cleaned up the corporate act.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

CSPA VC Outlook for 2007: Looking down the Money Trail

CSPA held its first event for 2007 at the offices of Wilson Sonsini at 950 Page Mill Road in Palo Alto on January 17th. It was a VC panel titled VC Outlook for 2007: Looking down the Money Trail. It was apparently so popular that it was oversubscribed. I was one of the lucky ones who happened to make it well and early to the event in addition to preregistering. The CSPA usually does an excellent job of its events, the last one I attended in 2006 being an evening with the legendary Vint Cerf, who can legitimately claim to be one of the inventors of the Internet. This event was no exception. The panel was moderated by Steve Bengston of Price Waterehouse Coopers with John Steuart of Claremont Creek Ventures, Eric Dunn of Cardinal Venture Capital, Gus Tai of Trinity Ventures, Pete Moran of DCM Doll Capital management and Tom Rosch of Interwest Partners as panelists.

To me, the most interesting part was Steve Bengston’s presentation on the MoneyTree Report – Update for Q3 2006. The MoneyTree Report is jointly produced by Price Waterhouse Coopers and the National Venture Capital Association and is in its 12th year, and as such can be expected to be based on fairly reliable data. The presentation focused mostly on US venture capital, with some interesting comparisons to the ROW (Rest of the World). 2006 looked to be on track to show total investments of about $25B, with roughly $6B a quarter for the first three quarters. This would make it the best year since 2001 ($40.5B) and higher than 1998($20.7B). Its almost as if the boom years are here again. Of the Q3 2006 investments (~$6.242B), 32% or ~$2B (250 deals) was invested in Silicon Valley and nearly 50% of the total was invested in California if you add the San Diego, LA and Sacramento areas. What was more interesting was the comment that Silicon Valley's share of VC money has not gone down over the years. Of course, in comparison for most of the ‘80s and till 1995 the total annual investment was only around $3B. 2000 of course, the year of the big boom showed total investments of $104.4 B. So, even after the tech bust of 2000, the showing of ~$19B till Q3 for 2006 indicates faith in technology and Silicon Valley to generate the next big thing.

The bulk of the money went into Series E or later rounds. Median deal size was $5M. Biotech accounted for $1.14B (95 deals), with software following at $1.095B(186 deals) and telecommunications at $848.3M (72 deals). Clean technology (industrial/energy) accounted for 9.2% of the Q3 2006 deals tripling in two quarter from about 3%. So, probably the perception that clean technology may be the next big thing from Silicon Valley may indeed have some credibility. Surely, my friends at the Gunther Portfolio can take heart from this trend. However, today's coverage of the Clean Tech Summit in Palm Desert, CA by CNET points out that despite the influx of VC money and strong demand for solar technology, hurdles remain to widespread deployment.

The top three most prolific VC firms for Q3 ’06 in terms of investment were Intel Capital, New Enterprise Associates and Draper Fisher and Jurvetson. In terms of exits, the IPO market was weaker in 2006 than in 2004 or 2005. However, 2007 is expected to be a hot year for IPOs, with several high quality companies waiting in the wings. SOX compliance was ensuring the quality of the companies.

The VC panel gave their opinions on what they looked for in funding startups. Areas of interest ranged from internet search, click fraud, RFID, casual gaming, internet advertising, intersection of IT with healthcare, pharmaceutical, biotech, medical software, digital media, software as a service, powersaving technologies and ultrawideband wireless etc. In the panel’s opinion its as easy (or difficult) to get funding as ever. Though some of the VCs suggested that it may be possible to get funding with a brilliant idea on a whiteboard, others stressed the need for an unfair advantage, a strong team who has done it before, market or customer traction and a strong business plan. A rule of thumb was that 1 in 200 (0.5%) deals get funded. So, even in times of plentiful venture capital, VC investments are fairly selective.

The panel felt that private equity firms which also provided capital, operated in a different space than VC firms and sometimes even provided exits for VC funded companies. Web 2.0 companies tended to be weak on technology and customer acquisition was important and difficult. Purely digital semiconductor companies were increasingly rarely funded. Analog and mixed signal semiconductor companies are being selectively funded. Biotech investments tended to be longer term due to regulatory issues. Medical device investments offered the opportunity for absolute monopoly.

On advice to entrepreneurs, the panel recommended keeping the rounds of financing to a minimum (preferably three), allowing 18 to 24 months between financings. In general, one could expect 15 to 45% dilution in each round. Company structure could be a mix with people in Silicon Valley and overseas, with the key ideas and customer relationships being driven from the valley, while execution could be based elsewhere. Some of the VC firms with investments in China and Japan were seeing liquidity of their investments.

As with the opinions of the WCA VC panel, the VC sentiment appears more upbeat than in previous years. What was startling was the comparison of US VC investments of $19B for the first three quarters of 2006 compared to $1.2B for China and $0.4B for India. Of course, the same money buys a lot more in India and China, but, the comparison highlights the advantage that Silicon Valley companies have in terms of capital access. Of course, there's always some place else in the world which says they are the new Silicon Valley. Surely, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery :-)

What's Hot, What's Not in Wireless

The annual WCA sponsored “What’s Hot, What’s not” VC panel was held at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose in conjunction with WCAI’s 13th Annual International Symposium and Business Expo on 17th January, 2007. This year’s panel was moderated by Tim Chang of Gabriel Venture Partners and had Dale Pfau of enVia Partners, Dan Rosenthal of Mayfield, Fred Wang of Trinity and Eric Zimits of Granite Ventures as panelists. The panel gave us their view of the Silicon Valley VC scene and their thoughts on trends in wireless technology and investments. What follows is my summary of the discussion. Errors and omissions are entirely possible and readers must use their judgement in assigning any value to any predictions or assertions made here.

The effects of the tech bust of 2000 are still lingering. The amount of VC money spent in 2006 was roughly the same as about 10 years ago. However, the number of deals have gone up about 10% from last year. ( There are more concrete numbers on VC funding trends in my account of the CSPA meeting which I will talk about shortly). A significant fraction of the total VC funding in the US (over 25%) goes to Silicon Valley companies and about 1/12th of that goes to wireless investments. In 2006 the trend was to fund more consumer wireless investments as opposed to enterprise investments.

The panelists opinions on what’s hot showed some variation. Consumer applications, cellular carriers leveraging data networks, WiMAX, broadband, power saving technologies, multimode transceivers were Eric Zimits’ choices. Consumer applications, especially online applications like gaming, mobile video, mobile advertising (slow growth, but lots of potential), backhaul (slow development, but new growth) were Fred Wang’s choices. Dan Rosenthal’s picks included WiFi, including mobile and WiMAX. He suggested that carriers would make bold moves to drive ARPU (average revenue per user) growth as with Sprint/Nextel’s Mobile WiMax deployment in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Dale Pfau’s comments indicated that the handset market had become commoditized with over 1 billion handsets being sold. Replacement has become more important than new customers except in markets like India and China. Opportunities in the handset market were therefore limited for startups. Infrastructure suppliers might see consolidation. New spectrum licenses and WiMax may be areas for growth. Handset suppliers were mostly from the Far East due to cost constraints. Semiconductor opportunities were few for startups. Exceptions like Portalplayer riding the coattails of the Apple iPod are a possibility. Some of the VCs saw opportunities in analog or mixed signal semiconductor startups. Dale Pfau felt that 2007 would be a great year for public semiconductor companies because expectations are low. Many companies are below the norm for public market valuations. This is driving private equity buyouts.

In the carrier infrastructure space, some of the VCs saw opportunities for growth as with the Sprint/Nextel. However, with Motorola, Samsung, Nokia, and Intel being suppliers for this deployment, opportunities for smaller players may be fewer. VCs are worried about investment for this reason [AG comment : We believe that there may still be opportunities for semiconductor suppliers like Beceem to supply some of the larger players] Though the mobile WiMax trials are going on now, full scale deployment may only happen in 2008/2009. There are some comments in the press that WiMax may be forced to take a secondary role in the larger broadband rollout. One of the VCs pointed out that it may also not be too late for WiFi with companies like Aruba filing to go public. The panel felt that the fixed/mobile convergence space was not a startup friendly space. Infrastructure, especially EDGE shows growth possibilities.

The panel was asked about VC investments in China and India. The answers varied widely. Mayfield invests in China with a local VC partner and leverages local R&D tied to top Universities in China and sees many exciting possibilities in China and India. Granite and enVia fund companies which have significant presence in other countries, but do not fund companies solely based in other countries, while Trinity focuses exclusively in the US.

Some of the contrarian investments which could be successful may be in the GPS space, infrastructure components, RFID and backhaul if mobile data applications ramp. On the question of strange deals, some of the panel believed that Web 2.0 was overhyped, valuations for WiMax deals were too high and handset component companies were risky. Funding deals like the 17th photo blogging company would also be considered strange.

The panel was positive on applications, content and services on cell phone. However, the VCs don’t always know which of the applications will succeed, so they ask for evidence of traction and this can be frustrating to the startups. Just porting the internet to mobile is stale and will not be well received by VCs. Many of the cool applications are developed and deployed in Europe and Asia first. This may have to do with cultural differences in cell phone usage. Some of the application possibilities are instant messaging on cell phones, social networks on cell phones, search, mobile media apps, HD radio, FM tuners, aggregate content on cell phones etc. One of the panelists quoted someone as saying that the 3Gs that you can charge for on a cell phone are “girls, games and gambling”.

The panel also responded to some audience questions. Arma Group posed the question on whether the Apple iPhone would be a hit and whether there would be startup opportunities deriving from it. Some of the panelists believed that the iPhone would be a hit, while others believed that it was a defensive move on the part of Apple to cover for the eventual loss of the iPod market. Battery life and other issues remain to be solved. One opportunity for startups could be iPhone like services ported to lower end phones for Rest of the World (ROW) applications. Another could be a Portalplayer like supplier of components to the iPhone.

On the prospect of success for mobile video, the panel felt it could be a success, but it may be a greater opportunity in Korea, China and other Asian countries than the US. The DVB-H demos by LG at CES 2007 were impressive. The WiFi+ cell phone is a promise yet to be delivered. Currently there are less than 2M handsets with WiFi enabled. The panel disagreed with an ABI prediction of 100M WiFi enabled phones by 2009. [AG note: Maybe the Apple iPhone will change this ?]. The panel was also negative on the prospects for profitability for MetroWiFi.

As one of the panelists commented “ VCs are often wrong, but never in doubt”. Time will tell whether the thoughts and predictions from the panel will hold true. However, as with most years, the panel was comprised of a knowledgeable VC panel and presented some interesting thoughts.

WCAI’s 13th annual Expo

Attending the WCA panel above also gave one access to the WCAI’s Expo and reception. The Expo is focused on wireless broadband suppliers. In prior years this tended to comprise of a large assortment of proprietary wireless solution providers. This year it was billed as Silicon Valley’s WiMax showcase and the Expo was dominated by WiMax system, semiconductor and service suppliers. The proprietary broadband wireless suppliers were less prominent. Of course, the only service provider to date to announce WiMax deployment is Sprint/Nextel with Clearwire. To be certain this will be watched very closely as a metric for the success of WiMax. However, it will be a while before one can judge the success of this, since the deployment is expected to go beyond the trial phase only by 2008/2009, by most accounts. The trial deployments are in Chicago and Washington, D.C. Sprint’s progress announcement for 2007 can be found here. However, not everyone supports the view that WiMax will be the primary broadband solution. The proprietary broadband wireless suppliers believe that WiMax has to cross several hurdles before mass adoption. They expect this to take some period of time, during which they expect to continue their success in the niche markets. Furthermore, they expect the broadband wireless networks to be a combination of multiple solutions. The advantages of WiMax may be most pronounced for broadband mobile solutions. From talk on the show floor, one could gather that WiMax deployment was gathering steam outside the US, with WiBro in Korea and BSNL and VSNL planning WiMax deployment in India. Could this be a case where the WiMax infrastructure growth is primarily driven from outside the US ? Here's a view that WiMax is relegated to a minority position in the 4G race.

Silicon Valley’s Smart Valley Showcase

WCA panel attendees had the benefit of access to a special program session on Friday, January 19th, 2007 on Silicon Valley’s Smart Valley Network. This is a joint public/private initiative to rapidly deploy next generation communication infrastructure and provide pervasive public access to information. The program sessions ran for half a day and covered the public service vision and business model, partners plans for execution, community case studies and a panel on community services enabled by broadband wireless access. I attended only part of the program and hence my account here may not be complete. Further info on the Smart Valley Network can be found here.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

New Year, New Blog

2007 seems like a good year to start a blog on Silicon Valley and technology. After all, I live in Cupertino, CA, home of Apple Computer, and, arguably, the center of the creative universe that is Silicon Valley. These are exciting times, what with Steve Jobs promising that 2007 would be the best year yet for Apple. The year started off with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) which ran from Jan 8th till 11th in Las Vegas, NV, but was quickly upstaged by Steve Jobs and the iPhone announcement at Macworld in San Francisco which ran concurrent to CES. I made the hour plus plane ride to Vegas for CES, but may have found more excitement closer to home in San Francisco. Of course, Vegas is always fun and I met several old friends and made some new ones, but it made it clear to me that there was much to write about in Silicon Valley.

So, I decided to start this blog on Silicon Valley, technology, people and places. I have lived here since 1994, seen one tech boom and a bust, a few small earthquakes and met some of the most interesting people anywhere in the world. Living at the leading edge of technology is very exciting to me and so I thought I would share these exciting times with others.

I won't write much about CES or Macworld, for they have been amply covered elsewhere. However, I attended two very interesting events this week which I will write about. The first was the Wireless Communication Alliance's (WCA) "What's Hot, What's not" VC panel held in conjunction with the WCA International's 13th annual symposium and expo at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Jose. This very interesting annual panel sheds some light on what some of the VC community in Silicon Valley view as the opportunities (or not) in the near future for various wireless technologies such as WiMAX, 3G, handset technology, infrastructure, Metro WiFi.

The second was the CSPA's "VC Outlook 2007: Looking Down the Money Trail" held at the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati offices in Palo Alto, CA. CSPA stands for the Chinese Software Professionals Association, a nonprofit organization, which very generously tolerates people like me who are neither Chinese or software professionals at their meetings. This is a panel of a different set of VCs with a focus on a broader portfolio such as biotech, software, search, Web 2.0, semiconductors, alternative energy among others. I will give you my observations on both of these events in a couple of days, once I have had the time to collect my thoughts and notes together.

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© 2007, 2008 Madan Venugopal    All rights reserved.