VCball

Get a Kindle

I've been hearing about this e-newsreading and book nirvana ever since I was an entrepreneur servicing the newspaper industry over a decade ago.  The talk back in the mid-90s is how people were not going to buy newspapers but were just going to read them on a thin film of ePaper.   Like in that Harry Potter movie.   

Well that tomorrow is finally here.

Yep, it's true.  I've been playing with my Kindle for about a week now.   I am totally digging it.

For those of you who don't know (and apparently a LOT of people don't know about the Kindle outside of the techno blogosphere bubble), the Kindle is a new handheld electronic reading device with a more readable screen than your CRT or LCD screen, as it doesn't refresh, and looks more like paper.  In other words, you can read it for hours without eyestrain.

Unlike other eReaders, the Kindle wirelessly enables users to download electronic books, newspapers, magazines and, yes, blogs.    The unit costs $399; books run from $1.50 to about $10; newspapers, magazines are $10/mo about; and blogs are $1 per month about.  If you send yourself a document, it costs $.10 to have it translated to your Kindle via their service, as you get your own Kindle email account.  These content charges subsidize the wireless element so there is no monthly wireless fee. 

I think it's going to be a lot bigger than people realize.  Steve Jobs is totally missing the boat on this one saying that "40% of Americans don't read"; Americans are e-reading more now that ever before.   Between surfing the web, blogging, texting and emailing, Americans have cut their TV time down dramatically.  If you work in an office, you are mainly ereading; it's likely you are ereading right now.

Jobs is spreading FUD about Kindle is my feeling; he stragetically misled people about not releasing an iPod phone if you recall, as well as the video iPod and my guess an iBook is not too far off (hmmm... wonder who owns that URL?).  Jobs knows that being able to carry around in readable format thousands of electronic books, as well as wirelessly accessing newspapers, magazines and blogs, and being able to email yourself large documents is a killer app.   Jobs is scared that he missed the boat hanging out with the cool kids with AppleTV which has been a flop, only to be out totally geeked by Jeff Bezos.

The Kindle ergonomics are not quite right, but I'd say they got about 80% right, about what it takes to get it mostly right enough for early adopter.  You might recall that it took Apple a few iterations to perfect the iPod, and it fell down flat with the Newton, only to see Palm and RIM take that market by storm.   

Guy Kawasaki, the former Apple Evangelist, suggests a 10X is the improvement you need for a new product to really take off and replace the old regime, change the world.  Historically, the argument against eReaders is that books are sooo portable, so technologically simple, why wouldn't I carry 20 or 30 pounds of paper versus 2 pounds of electronics that can carry the library of Congress?  Come again?

There is no question that the Kindle is 10X better than lugging around 20 pounds of paper versus lugging 2 pounds of electronics.   You might ask: why would anyone lug 20 pounds of paper around, and you'd be right.   However, I can now eread the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and the New York Times, anywhere-- and I don't have to choose just one.  I don't have to schlep to the book store to buy that book or audio book anymore.  And I don't have to squint at a computer screen reading blog readers.   I can look up stuff on Wikipedia right away or the Dictionary.  I travel and commute a great deal, do a tremendous amount of reading, of books, newspapers magazines, newsletters, and business plans.  As we get thousands of business plans a year, and there is so little time to get through them all this is a huge boon to me. BK (before Kindle!) I'd print them out stuff them in my bag and try to get to them.  Often I fell behind. In addition, I am finding I surf through newspapers faster, as well as get to blogs and newsletters that I haven't had the time in the past.   

Frankly, I think that there are a lot of back and knee injuries from carrying around so much weight; $399 and some monthly subscription fees (which are cheaper than the paper products!) are a lot better than back surgery or physical therapy or missed work.

Here's something else that I've noticed: pretty much everywhere I go in the subway or the train, if just pull out my Kindle, about 6-7 people are staring at me.   Over this last weekend, I mentioned the device at an extended 50 person family gathering and showed it to several people; by the end of the party, nearly everyone had come up to me to learn more. None of them had seen one, and pretty much everyone was going to get one.  With my extended family, that type of geewhiz reaction I see only with truly dramatic disruptive consumer electronics.

I think people are underestimating how much potential demand there might be.  My expectation is that Kindles and ereaders will be mainstream in 5-10 years, just as Blackberries are now.  It might not be Kindle itself that wins out, but it will be something similar.   And if you think Amazon is just going to stop at just selling eBooks, emagazines and enewspapers, you're wrong.  This is going to be a handheld shopping unit where you can order anything on Amazon anytime.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if Amazon gave these things away like the mobile cell phone carriers do cell phones now.

You heard it here first.  Get in line for Kindle, see what I am talkin' bout.

The Essential Small Business Tool

In a my prior post of similar name, I ranted about the necessity of BlackBerry (or equivalent remote wireless email access), and I mentioned in passing an outsourced admin service called ASP-One.

Anyone who has started a company or runs a small business (or I'd argue big business) knows what a huge headache setting up and maintaining email and other IT admin functions are.  Well, after a couple months using the ASP One outsourced IT admin service, I've become a believer.  While I am not sure about companies that have over 40 or 50 users or entities that require FDA regulated or SOX related security (which by the way is the objection a CEO will get from your tech guys as they rather be doing IT admin vs real work in some cases), I'd say that just about all early stage companies should be using this or similar service.  Basically, it allows for full MS exchange server email administration and web-hosting for $59/month; that includes a free copy of MS Outlook 2003 for all users, (a $109 software value right there!), which means remote desktop access to your email on any desktop.  For an additional $3/month and $10/month they provide anti-virus/spam blocking and a connection to any carrier's Blackberry service, respectively.  For $500/month you can have your own remote LAN with access to corporate files just as if you had a local LAN. 

For companies under 10 people that don't have the technical talent time available in-house, and need calendar sharing, Blackberry support and email hosting, this service is a total no-brainer, and I highly recommend it versus trying to hire an independent consultant or wasting time doing it yourself regardless of your skill set.    (Personally, I think much larger entities should consider such a service as well-- anyone use ASP-One or similar service for bigger enterprises out there?)  I found the customer service to be very responsive 24/7.  And the best part is that the shift was seamless, quick, and intuitive to use.  If you know of other similar or like outsourced services, like Mi8, please do share in a comment and your experiences with these products.

The Essential CEO Tool

For an entrepreneur, not "carrying" a Blackberry is just stupid. A lot of business people and start-up CEOs think they save money by not having them.  Many CEOs have adopted, but a lot still are on the fence 5 years after the Blackberry's introduction.

Time is awasting.   A Blackberry is just a tool so that instead of making a 5-10 minute phone call to an assistant or an associate or a customer, oftentimes a 1 sentence or one word email response from a wireless Blackberry is plenty.  The time one saves avoiding playing the voice-mail retrieval game is worth it alone.

My estimate is that an hour or two everyday can be saved, and that's money in the bank. It has been saving me at least 40 hours a month for years now.   Complete return of investment is about a 2-3 days, a week at the most, by my estimate, if you value your manager's time to the extent that you pay them.  And on the intangible side, it's amazing what happens to your credibility when within minutes you can respond to a key customer, manager, board member or investor.

I've contemplated making all our CEOs carry a Blackberry as part of our term sheet, no joke. I know that might sound harsh, as you might think that I require entrepreneurs to be working all the time. That's not the case, and I don't expect my portfolio company entrepreneurs to be responding to emails by me at all hours of the night, weekends or holidays. I just want them to work smarter, more efficiently, get more done, including more sleep and seeing their families. A happy and rested entrepreneur is a productive one and will make investors more money in the end, as they will make better decisions.  I understand that the average white collar worker spends an hour plus at their desk answering email.  If they can answer that email in a shorter form in quick bursts on their commute, during a lull at work, a conference or on their way down the elevator, better use can be had for that office time.  I'd rather have the CEO or manager sleep an additional hour or relax than waste his time answering emails at his desk.

I know a lot of people who think their snazzy PalmOS Treo or PocketPC PDA is better, but frankly, it ain't.  The email is not instantly available, something I believe Blackberry has a patent on, which dramatically cuts down on these other units' utility.   [Note: comment below, which I appreciate, suggests that's I am incorrect on this for those with Exchange Server and use Treos, but I still like the Blackberry.]  Don't get confused and waste time worrying about which unit to get-- just go with Blackberry or it's equivalent.  Even if you don't want to spring for a server, it's better just to run it from your computer.  If your system admin can't handle it, for great outsourced service, try Mi8 or ASPOne.

So please, do your investors and yourself a favor this holiday season and start the new year with a Blackberry for you and your team, especially those that travel or commute. 

Bigger than the Web

The popular press (well OK, IT Utility "Grid Has No Commerical Lock" and the Economist "One Grid to Rule Them All") this week bashed Grid Computing as the next big hype.  I don't get it.

Grid Computing to me is just a fancy way to say: more computing power at a fraction of the cost.  By leveraging 10s, 100s or 1000s of computers one can create a massive supercomputer.  As you read this blog, your computer is wasting 99.9%+ of it's computing cycles.  What can the world do with all that computing power?  A lot.

Since the dawn of time, whenever mankind has discovered a way to harness more computing processing capability (think back beyond the abacus), s/he has figured out a way to use it.  For instance, Intel, year after year, produces more and more powerful processors with their Pentiums I through IV. Each new chip begat a new application and billions in wealth starting with wordprocessing, then spreadsheets, databases, music, and finally video and telephonic applications.  With every uptick in computing power businesses and consumers have figured out how to use it and profit by it. 

In 2000, my fund seeded Datasynapse, a grid computing company based in New York.   I've been tracking their success for 4 years, as they won commerical customer after customer initially in their core market of financial services then on to energy, industrial and government sectors.   While some customers do research, most are just trying to make a buck.  Why buy $10 million in hardware when $1-2 million in software does a faster, more accurate and all around better job?

I will give the Economist some credit as they say in their final paragraph of the story, referring to CERN's (a nonprofit organization of scientists) grid research efforts:

"Yet sceptics beware. Twelve years ago, at a previous edition of the Interlaken conference, a young CERN engineer named Tim Berners-Lee gave out T-shirts advertising a new and rather obscure scientific-networking tool of dubious economic value: it was called the world wide web."

What they don't say is that it was an actual commercial company, Netscape, that profited the most immediately from that WWW discovery, and truly changed the computing landscape by commercializing it.    Press rewind and play for Datasynapse and their commercial application corporate for profit brethen on grid computing?  No offence to research institutions as they are big contributors to humanity and world knowledge, but I wouldn't bet on the CERN guys.

1990s Redux? Nope, just Free Telephone Conferencing

Check out this service called FreeConferenceCall.com. Ron Reed at Endurance Ventures suggested I try it out.

It is what the URL says it is. I thought free phone to phone calling would take a while to get here, but it's here.

There are no fancy control or other features, but heck for free, who cares? It seems to work just fine. So to all the startup and early stage CEOs and CFOs out there: Want to impress your cheap bastard investors? Use this service.