Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts

Saturday, June 21, 2014

The next Facebook may not be found online after all

It’s not very often one comes across an article, a cover story at that, in Newsweek on the start-up scene & VCs – So there was no which way I could have let-up an opportunity to read through, read in between the lines, postulate, extrapolate and generally make my own merry conclusions on stuff the article never intended to dwell on - Call me extreme, that’s okay – like the partners at Greylock, I don’t back down easily either :-)

It isn’t perhaps about trying to find/ fund the next Facebook at Greylock

While the title has enough oomph to grab eye-balls, it could be fundamentally misleading. A quick look at the recent investments (mentioned within the article) of Greylock partners shows it is bullish on startups that are waltzing back into the realm of real-life albeit through cyber gateways – i.e. ones that have built revenue models on O2O commerce platforms;  think Airbnb; Coupons; OneKingsLane; Shopkick (all Reid Hoffman investments..); Sprig; (Simon Rothman) – Though it’s just one subset of investments primarily by one partner, the sheer millions pumped in indicate there’s a lot of enthusiasm at Greylock on O2O commerce.

Just may be David Sze should display a real apple (besides Apple Newton & Apple iPhone) in his timeline collection of technologies – a sweet reminder that any technology’s ultimate potential lies offline

Incubate a potential acquisition? – Sounds like a nice strategy or is it?

It is perhaps a strategy/ wish to utilize the (insider) knowledge of a current investee companies that are avid deal-hunters themselves by way of incubating a few custom designed startups & facilitating (evetually) their acquisitions by the aforesaid companies – Consider the investments in Nextdoor, Path, Jelly, Medium, Pandora (all David Sze investments..) & the likelihood of these companies getting acquired by either Facebook or Linkedin at some point of time.

Startup scene in USA is raining Asoks* – and they’ve been raking in some moolah, finally

The article starts with Gagan Biyani (Sprig), dwells on Aneel Bhusri (Greylock) and mentions the likes of Nirav Tolia (Nextdoor) – not an inconsequential acknowledgement of the increasing presence of Indians in the American entrepreneurial scene.  
*’Asok’ is used in the context of any techie of Indian origin rather than just the IITians.

A final dig I can’t help – The article by Katrina Brooker is far superior to anything related I’ve come across in HBR magazine till date.

Friday, February 28, 2014

Not wanting to sell-off is key to being bought!

19 billion dollars for a company with one app & 20 million in revenue is of course a frickin’ big deal - No wonder that everyone from entrepreneurs to VCs to analysts want to have a go at cracking the code called WhatsApp.

Suvir Sujan in his latest blog post broached this quintessential topic & attributes the success achieved by WhatsApp to its founders keeping disciplined focus on superior product offering with an eye towards building a profitable and sustainable business – True, but I wished to be more direct and say an enterprise that starts with the intention of selling-off will probably never get this kind of supreme pay-off, my comment on Suvir’s post is as follows;   


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WhatsApp indeed pulled-off a coup and got this eye-popping valuation. While I agree they keeping the product no-frills helped in making its adoption viral, I'm not sure it'd have helped the acquisition costs - after all a 19 billion pay-out would cover any quantum of unreasonable asset stock-pile (bells & whistles..)   

In my humble opinion where WhatsApp scored is on how it did not go after the formulaic 'Built to Sell' strategy and instead adhered to it’s probable original idea of 'Built to Solve/ Differentiate' - Let's not forget that most of us got attracted to WhatsApp primarily since it offered what FB mobile chat denied/ couldn’t assure viz., communication & data privacy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Afterthought:

Communication & data privacy, precisely what I’m edgy about right now as a WhatsApp user - Will this remain intact when FB eventually attempts to integrate the app with its own & monetize the user-base? If I were Zuckerberg, I’d be worried sick thinking how to prevent the edgy half-a-billion junta from waltzing towards Snapchat & likes - that would be a real bummer, wouldn't it be?