Guidewire » DEMO

Just Say No: What the Venture Guys Really Mean

chrisshipley — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:56:28 +0000

I had a delightful lunch yesterday with Howard Hartenbaum, a general partner at August Capital. The lunch was offered as a “prize” during Lunchster‘s six-minute product launch at DEMOfall. I’d agreed to have lunch with whomever won the draw, even these are the sort of promises that can pretty rapidly go bad. You have no idea who you’ll end up sitting across from, wishing that you’d suggested Taco Bell drive through as a speedy alternative to the white-linen dinning you had to endure.

When I got the email that Howard would be my lunch date, I felt like I was the winner. I’d first met Howard as part of the team that launched Public Minds’ response aggregation system at DEMO 2001. Since that time, he’d made the move from entrepreneur to VC and scored his “big win” – an early investment in Skype. His choice of Palo Alto’s Tamerine Restaurant only confirmed that Howard still picks winners; it’s a local favorite of mine).

Most charmingly, Howard didn’t seem to want to monopolize the conversation with shop talk. Instead, shared restaurant tips, swapped medical mystery stories, railed on litigation-happy parasites, and concocted an elaborate story of long-suppressed love unleashed by a chance encounter courtesy of Lunchster.

Since I was pretty sure no one would believe that last yarn, I asked Howard what he didn’t like about being a VC. “I don’t like saying no,” he responded without hesitation, adding that it’s made worse by the fact that as a VC one must “say ‘no’ 99% of the time.”

Okay, I’m a bit cynical when it comes to what venture guys say and what they do, and in my experience, most VCs don’t say no. They say things like “I need you get more customer traction” or “this deal is too early for us but come back in six months” or “I’ll need to get my partners on board with this” or a couple dozen variations on these themes.

Howard seemed to sense what I was thinking. “Venture capitalists have two responses to entrepreneurs,” he said, “yes and everything else.”

To his great credit, Howard decided to take on “no” head on. “In life and in work, when there is something that makes me really uncomfortable, I make a point of doing it in the hopes that I’ll become inured to it.”

So when he decides to take a pass on a company, he calls the entrepreneur directly and tells him no. Has it gotten any easier? “No.”

But he does it. He does it because he respects entrepreneurs. He does it because he isn’t going to waste their time. He does it so that entrepreneurs know the why behind the no.

A “no” is such a rarity in the venture hunt that entrepreneurs may not know how to act. Here’s my advice: don’t argue, don’t debate, don’t tell a guy like Howard that he’s wrong.

Listen for the no and be glad for it. That VC is saving you time and heart ache. Listen to it, accept it, and move on.

DEMOfall 09 is Nigh

carlacthompson — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:21:56 +0000

Happy Friday, all. Never fear, a snarky Vortex approacheth. In the meantime, I want to take care of a little business and remind you that DEMOfall is coming up September 21-23 in San Diego and you don’t want to miss it for several reasons:

-60 fantastic new technologies launching

-Chris Shipley’s last DEMO and Matt Marshall’s first as executive producer – there’ll be lots of fun happenings around both

-A once-in-a-lifetime gathering of 20 years of DEMO alumni for the Lifetime Achievement Awards, including Donna Dubinsky, Diane Greene, Jeff Hawkins, Shai Agassi, Ben and Mena Trott and many others

Friends of Guidewire are eligible for an exclusive discount, so click here to take advantage. And if you’re an unfunded startup, drop me a line at carla@guidewiregroup.com and we’ll see what we can do to get you through the door.

Hope to see you in San Diego!

Finding Support from Women Entrepreneurs

chrisshipley — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:37:08 +0000

Sometimes, I don’t exactly know what I think until I read what I’ve said or written in someone else’s media. Such is the case with this interview with TheNextWomen, the London-based media startup that bills itself as the “business magazine for female Internet heroes.”

The site describes itself as. . .

the first Women’s Internet Business Magazine, with a focus on startups and growing businesses, led, founded or invested in by women. We bring news on business, events, funding and tech from a female angle and interview and profile Female Business Heroes, make them notable and quotable.

We are the female Business Week, the female Techcrunch and the business Red.

We [are] compiling a database on female founders, CxO’s and VC’s of internet companies.

Among the site’s heroes (thank, you, God, that they haven’t reclaimed that horrific feminist label “sheroes”) are women as diverse as Esther Dyson, Catherine Fake, Arianna Huffington, and Queen Elizabeth.

But enough about them. . . this was an interview with me. Site founder Simone Brummelhuis’s questions were wide ranging, but the one that jumped out, asked what European women entrepreneurs can learn from their U.S. counterparts.

My simple-to-say-but-apparently-complex-to-do answer:

There are still far too few women who take the path of technology entrepreneur. No doubt there are many subtle and obvious reasons for that path.

I think at base, though, the best thing women entrepreneurs can do for each other is to challenge them to perform at exceptionally high standards, to create businesses with meaning and impact.

If women drive women to be the best entrepreneurs they can be, supporting their unique talents and limitations, then I do think we’ll see more women choose the path of startup CEO.

The fact is that women entrepreneurs do support other women entrepreneurs. And we need to because frankly we often don’t get the kind of support we need from women who are outside the startup world and don’t understand the life choices that entrepreneurship requires.

Building a business is hard work (for women and men) and there is really no “balancing” of work and personal life in the earliest days of a company. We need strong support systems: of other entrepreneurs, of family members, of our friends, and of communities both inside and outside the startup world.

Which reminds me: Thank you, Nancy, Mom, and all those friends I don’t see often enough. You all, as much as my colleagues inside the company, allow me to do what I do.

A Message to the Guidewire Community

carlacthompson — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:40:12 +0000

It’s been an exciting morning around here, with the news of Chris passing the DEMO Executive Producer baton to Matt Marshall and DEMO’s new partnership with Venture Beat. Chris has detailed her personal feelings on leaving DEMO after 13 years, but we also wanted to take a moment to share a bit more about where Chris and Guidewire Group are going.

Over the next six months, we’ll continue to work on vetting and selecting startups for Chris’ final DEMO in September. At the same time, we’ll be starting a new chapter at four-year-old Guidewire Group, energized by the thought of having Chris’ undivided attention in the not too distant future! Most of you know Guidewire Group as a partner to DEMO. We are also the world’s leading analyst firm focused exclusively on startups and emerging markets. In that role, we work with young companies at key transition points, when every idea looks good on paper and every decision counts, to deliver unparalleled counsel on a variety of topics – from business and monetization strategies to market validation and competitive analysis delivered through custom and retained projects, events such as Innovate!Europe and our intensive in-residence program for young companies, Guidewire Studio.

And the best part is there’s a growing movement in the entrepreneurial ecosystem that believes “thinking is cool again” – that building companies that deliver long-term value through technology and business innovation trumps the “be here now – be gone tomorrow” mentality of pop culture startups anytime. As this movement gathers steam, we’re finding that Guidewire Group is in demand for our insight into emerging market trends, best practices, and common mistakes and for our ability to bring clarity, focus, and decades of emerging technology experience to the art of transforming ideas into successful enterprises.

Our wonderful experiences with DEMO allowed for short, intense opportunities to engage with startups. We now look forward to extending those engagements, working more closely with companies to help them validate and strengthen their critical opportunities. We’re passionate about startups and we know we can help them be more successful.

There’s much to share with you in the months ahead so we hope you’ll check The Guidewire blog regularly, follow us on Twitter, and visit our Facebook page. New paths are always the most interesting to travel and we hope you’ll be right alongside us.

Changes at DEMO: Chris Passing the Torch

chrisshipley — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 06:05:20 +0000

Who could ask for a better job? For the past 13 years, I’ve spent my days talking with some of the smartest people on the planet. People passionate about technology and the art and science of molding that technology into products and services that address real challenges and bring new capabilities to people’s lives.

I’d be hard pressed to make an accurate count, but I’d guess that since taking the reins of DEMO in the spring of 1996, I’ve met no fewer than 15,000 entrepreneurs, inventors, and innovators, and helped about 1,500 of them launch their products to market on the DEMO stage.

DEMO has given me the opportunity to travel the world; meet with government officials and business leaders; interview certified geniuses and a few certifiable nut cases, and through newsletters (back in the day), blog posts, speaking gigs, interviews, and the DEMO conference itself share back a bit of what I’ve learned and the realizations that learning sparked.

DEMO, with its emphasis on product innovation, is an amazing lens and filter through which to gauge the future of the information technology industry and the markets as they open, undulate, and fold over time. The conference is a tremendous reviewing platform for new ideas and a lookout post for emerging and impactful trends.

It may not be surprising, then, to learn that after all these years, the lookout perch that is DEMO gave me the opportunity to see a new future for myself and for my company, Guidewire Group.

So early last year, I began the process of transitioning from DEMO so that I could start my next career in earnest. The first step, of course, was making sure that this was the right new path for myself, my family, and my Guidewire Group colleagues. DEMO has been a big part of all our lives for a long, long time. We all did a lot of soul searching and determined that, yes, we were ready to put our full energies behind the Guidewire Group business: working with technology companies during the critical transition points in their businesses to identify opportunity, define strategy, and accelerate the path to success.

The next step was more difficult: working with our partners at IDG and Network World to identify a successor. DEMO is a great job and a challenging one, and it’s not an easy post to fill. We found the most perfect fit in an accomplished journalist, entrepreneur, and kindred spirit, Matt Marshall. Over the last year, I’ve had the opportunity to work with and get to know Matt and his team at Venture Beat. He is a talented, smart, deeply ethical journalist and he and his writers have created a remarkable, respected brand and business. And he is the perfect person to pick up the reins of DEMO as I lay them down after the DEMOfall event in September.

Matt and I share many of the same values, foremost of which are the respect for entrepreneurs and the process of innovation and the commitment to act with integrity and fairness as we serve our customers and communities. But Matt and Venture Beat are more than a pin-for-pin replacement for me and Guidewire Group. They bring new perspective to DEMO. While much about DEMO will remain the same, surely Matt will make a wonderful impression on the brand and the business. The new partnership between DEMO and Venture Beat promises a broader platform for the DEMO community and a richer conversation that will span the events. Together, Venture Beat and DEMO have an exciting future, and I’m eager to see it unfold.

I’m equally eager to unfold the future of Guidewire Group, a company I co-founded in 200 with Mike Sigal. In the past four years, Guidewire Group has evolved into an analyst firm laser-focused on startups. We work with young companies in the U.S. and Europe at key transition points, to develop and deliver business strategy and monetization and market validation. Through custom projects, events such as Innovate!Europe, and Guidewire Studio, our exclusive in-residence program, we’re doing the work I love most – helping startups thrive.

We have an exciting future planned for Guidewire Group and I look forward to sharing our vision with you in the months ahead. We have been privileged and honored to work with this great brand and the amazing people who have been associated with DEMO across the last 13 years.

And we’re looking forward to the next six months as we work just as diligently as we always have on DEMOfall 09, while transitioning the Executive Producer mantle to Matt and his team.

The Vortex: Little Green Men

carlacthompson — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:20:41 +0000

There is so much to share from this week that I’m literally giddy. In such a busy week, though, there have been no standout tweets. I may just nominate myself. We’ll see how I feel at the end of the post.

News from the Social Media Vortex

-Hutch Carpenter developed a handy chart to delineate the Angels and Demons of Social Media. I’m going to have to go with Rizzn who commented, “I mean no offense to Hutch, but…you’re either using it for business purposes or you’re using it to screw around and talk to people. If it’s the former, it doesn’t make you a demon and if it’s the latter, it doesn’t make you an angel. You’re still just a user.”

-I warned you about Scoble’s Army last week, didn’t I? Apparently he was listening, because it only took a couple of days to put that army to use. Seems he embedded an Amazon affiliate link in a tweet and the hue and cry from the technosphere was vociferous. I can’t say I fault him, actually. The man has 25,000 followers, for pete’s sake, and should find something to do with that colossal number. Either he sends them occasional ads or instructs them to revolt and become our masters. I’ll take the Kindle ad over Kang and Kodos any day.

-The Washington Post launched WhoRunsGov.com this week, a compendium of key players in D.C., including “members of the new administration, Pentagon officials… [and] senior congressional aides.” Or as my favorite Politico Mike Allen put it: “Translation: It’s Wikipedia for the Obama administration.”

Apps on the Radar

-Plinky – I’m either completely in love with this new content creation site or classify it as a key indicator of Web 2.0 frivolity. Perhaps both. Louis Gray has an in-depth review of it. My two-cent summary: A cure for online writer’s block.

-For those with the opposite problem, check out TwitterEyes, a Firefox add-on that shortens your tweets to the prescribed 140 characters.

-And I confess to not having checked it out yet, but Pixelpipe is high on my list. Post one thing – video, text, or photo – to 60 different services. Perfect for those of us with more profiles than we can remember.

DEMO Trends – where the innovation is with DEMO 09 applicants

-A cleaner, more targeted take on mobile coupons

-A totally new way to look at and manage your email

-A new method of HD projection

Ephemera

-Little known fact about me: I love a good conspiracy theory. Yes, I’m one of those who thinks Oswald was a patsy. So imagine my glee when I read Duncan Riley’s post this morning on a UFO sighting during the Inauguration. Look! At the 11-second mark! A flying blur!

Tweet of the Week

-Since no one stepped up to the plate with my call for nominations (save for seedub with the helpful “yo mama”) I’m awarding this to myself. Well, really to Obama, for what I thought was the best line of his inaugural speech:

“All deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”

What It's All About? Entrepreneurs!

admin — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:02:07 +0000

As Co-Founder and CEO of Guidewire Group, I usually let Chris and Carla do the blogging, but something happened this week at DEMOfall that inspired me to pen this first post.

When Chris and I founded Guidewire Group, we did so because we believed that there was an enormous opportunity to help entrepreneurs around the world connect with the investors, customers, partners, employees, mentors, service providers, media outlets and other entrepreneurs that can help them realize their dreams. Guidewire Group is committed to fulfilling this need with intelligence, inspiration, and integrity.

Over the last few months, we and our long-time partner DEMO faced aggressive attacks on our business model and questions about our commitment to serving entrepreneurs. While dealing with these attacks and questions was occasionally challenging or distracting, ultimately they gave us renewed energy to keep doing what we know how to do best: support entrepreneurs and those organizations that want to see entrepreneurs succeed.

During DEMOfall’s closing dinner, most of the 72 demonstrators (from 12 countries!) and several of DEMO’s sponsors unexpectedly took the stage, one after another, and expressed their gratitude and support of Chris, Carla and the incredible DEMO team in a most extraordinary way. Thankfully, a colleague was quick enough to capture most of this incredibly gratifying testimonial.

Inspiring this kind of gratitude, delight and loyalty in those Guidewire Group was founded to serve is for me, what it’s all about. So as long as entrepreneurs are building new businesses, Guidewire Group will be there to support them.

Let the Next Phase Begin: DEMOfall's Opening Remarks

chrisshipley — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:02:59 +0000

I’m excited to see so many new faces at DEMOfall this week. In fact, this is the biggest DEMOfall event we’ve ever had. Most importantly, it’s just the size we like it: Lots of great people to meet without overwhelming crowds and noise. Seventy-two amazing companies and products from across a very broad spectrum of the information technology market, with plenty of time to hear from each one of them and get up close in the pavilion.

Let’s make these next two days all about them. They have been working tremendously hard to get their products ready for market and to introduce them to you today. The products and the companies: they deserve our respect and focus. If we give them that focus, they will tell us a tremendous amount about where the technology markets are going.

While the 72 products coming to market at DEMOfall represent a wide range of capabilities and impacts, without question the most obvious take away is that the tech market is moving into a new cycle. To understand this new cycle, though, let’s look at its historical context.

The first Internet cycle – what we might truly call Web 1.0 — was the Flat Web. It was all about displaying pages of text, maybe some graphics. It was about informing and about information discovery. It was, in reality, the original vision of the Web.

The second cycle – the one I think was the real Web 2.0 – was the Transactional Web, the sites that offered some kind of interaction with customers. Ironically enough, this interaction was often the capstone on a customer engagement, typically the financial transaction. In short, the Transactional Web was about buying things.

The third cycle – what is popularly called Web 2.0 – is the Social Web, where content and context and consumers combine to create a user-driven experience. In this most recent phase – the one now coming to a close – power shifted from the site owner to the site user. And, for better or ill, we all found our voice.
The coming forth cycle is built on that foundation, but before I talk about where we are going, indulge me to emphasize where we have been.

You see, Web 2.0 isn’t about a set of technologies so much as it is about a set of values. It’s been about sites and businesses developed on open source and open APIs. It’s about capital efficiency and viral growth and the gestalt of “free.”

These values inflated a hype bubble, not an economic one, a supposition that bears out when you compare the wealth creation of the Web 2.o cycle to the wealth derived in previous cycles. Simply put: there are very few Web 2.0 millionaires. And certainly not by comparison to those organizations and entrepreneurs that grew and grew rich in previous cycles:

* Netscape, Yahoo!, AOL and others in the Flat Web

* Macromedia, Adobe, eBay, Amazon in the transactional Web. In fact, the Transactional Web spawned Dot.com millionaires like guppies.

But Web 2.0? We have more notoriety, more fame, in this cycle, but not more wealth.

And I’d argue that the fundamental difference is that this time, hype doesn’t create market value, and without that extra boost, the business models of the vast majority of Web 2.0 sites don’t support true wealth creation.
But more importantly than making a few entrepreneurs rich is the reach of the Web – and again I would argue that here the Web 2.0 cycle has fallen short.

While more people are using the Web today, the social web hasn’t broken out of its echo chamber. Today, a relatively small number of people – 10s of millions maybe, but certainly not even a slim majority of people – are avid consumers of Social Web content.

The barriers that prevent Web 2.0 companies from reaching the mass of 100s of millions of users are the lack of transparency and trust, the convenience of access, basic ease of use, and real choice. In the next phase of the Web, these barriers will come down.

But let’s be clear: Web 2.0 has laid the foundation for the next, really big growth phase: The Distributed Web.
The Distributed Web is about syndication, integration, distribution. It’s about reaching out from one place and being present in every place. The Distributed Web assumes connectivity virtually everywhere. It assumes the objectification of applications and data so that both can be delivered on demand where ever and how ever the consumer wants or needs it.

We don’t get to the Distributed Web with a desktop computer and a browser paradigm – at least not completely. The Distributed Web depends on devices and protocols and tiered networks, both physical and conceptual. It is the network of computers and it is the network of things.

We are entering a period where distribution and syndication trump aggregation, meaning and finding trump keywords and searching, applications and data are componentized and available everywhere, hardware devices and services that run on them are indistinguishable, and where business models are real, transparent and open.

In this next phase, we take the community of Web 2.0 and hone it into a sharper weapon, one that supports collaboration for a purpose, be it business or social. One that delivers information in anticipation of interests and needs. One that reaches beyond the elite early adopters to captivate the imaginations and fulfill the desires of people whose lives are focused on the every-day tasks of work and family, of information and entertainment.

We are embarking on a new cycle, a new phase, a new period of growth, supported by real business models that hold up in both good and challenging economic cycles.

And while Web and mobile technologies are integral to so much of the forward movement of the market, they are not the only market shapers. Throughout this DEMOfall event, we will see important advances in usability, security, interoperability, computational capacity, and even a few outliers that point the direction to a greener, brighter, smarter future.

All of these things will come together to drive the next – significant — cycle of growth in the information technology marketplace.

Shoddy Reporting, Invective, and Arrogance. Yeah, I Want Some of That

chrisshipley — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:23:43 +0000

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

As I was growing up, my mother instructed me that, when I got angry or frustrated, to count to ten before saying anything. Quite honestly, I’ve counted to ten ten-times over. I’ve bitten my tongue and clenched my teeth and I’ve really tried to let it go.

And now, I just can’t help myself any longer.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve read too many blog posts (notice how we don’t call them “stories” any more?) filled with invective, passed-along assumptions, and outright misinformation that I can’t help but to call into question the standard of “reporting” going on in the echo-chamber we call the blogosphere.

When in a twitter I bemoaned the lack of original reporting (only one reporter (cnet) and exactly zero bloggers writing this week about this silly DEMO v TechCrunch episode actually contacted me), the infamous blogger Robert Scoble suggested that if I’d blog my opinion, he’d link to it. Does that mean that a perspective only exists or matters if it’s expressed in a blog post? Or that Robert’s just moving too fast to do any investigation outside his narrow medium?

Scoble’s not the only guy living in the rarefied air of the echo-chamber. Sarah Lacy, who works for the much-respected Businessweek.com, conducted a five-minute video interview with TC50′s Mike Arrington and Jason Calacanis, during which the two leveled the usual slander. Did Lacy fire one tough question at the two? Did this journalist call me or the DEMO organization to get a response to serious accusations? Um, the answer to that would be “no.”

In fact, a few weeks ago, when Mike Arrington wrote an assumption-based and error-filled story that demanded an apology from the DEMO organization for a comment that was clearly not made by or on behalf of anyone at DEMO, Lacy picked up the story and wrote with righteous indignation that slander was the highest insult that could be leveled against a journalist. Did she call me or DEMO before posting her story? Again no.

Let me be clear: plagiarism is not the worst offense of a journalist; its root cause is: Laziness, shoddy reporting, and arrogance.

In a post last week, Scoble tried to make a case for the “new school” as more hip, effective, and informative than the “old school.” When misinformation is propagated out of laziness and inconsideration, that’s hardly informative. It’s not “new school;” it’s No School.

Robert Scoble took the time – it must have taken at least 30 minutes to click through to each of the 72 sites – to visit the Web sites of DEMOfall’s demonstrating companies. Here’s what he had to say:

I just visited every one of these companies. Boy do they almost all suck (at least their Web sites and if their sites suck, I can’t believe their products are going to do much better).

Now this is the same guy who, earlier in the same piece said that if I “really cared about the startups” I would have taken the time to put links in a post about them. Okay, our bad, in the rush to publish the list of DEMOfall companies, we posted the URLs of the companies, but didn’t link them. But seriously, if I cared about startups, I’d be sure there were links in my stories for the convenience of Robert and other bloggers? This from the guy who cared enough about startups to spend maybe 30 seconds looking at a pre-release Web site before declaring that the company and its products “suck.” Now there’s critical thinking and thoughtful review.

Listen, I’m not just picking on Scoble or Lacy. This shoot-from-the-lip blogging has been going on far too long. And maybe I can’t really blame guys like Scoble who now stoop to the lowest and simplest form of “criticism” in an effort to attract legions of followers. Those of us who care about civilized discourse and critical thinking carry the burden if we don’t stand up to the bully tactics. If we engage in invective as sport and don’t demand even the slightest semblance of balance, then maybe we get what we deserve: a pack of school yard bullies who believe theirs is the definitive voice in the “conversation.”

They’re better than that. We’re all better than that. Let’s start acting like it.

In the Pause Before the Madness, Let's Focus on What Matters

carlacthompson — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:40:16 +0000

In a week that should be the buildup to an onslaught of significant tech news, I’m just a bit weary this morning. After a long weekend away from the computer, I logged on to the same old, tired posts about TechCrunch and DEMO and which would overthrow the other.

Every reporter and blogger in the industry seems to have weighed in with their individual conference experiences and no doubt every pundit will need to opine on who “won” in the aftermath.

And they are all missing the story.

I sincerely hope that beyond the “fight” between two events, we can keep the real story in mind: Entrepreneurs are launching their babies at these events, companies and technologies into which they’ve poured blood, sweat, tears and uncountable hours. No matter the venue they’ve chosen, more than 150 companies are taking the world stage next week. We should at the very least hear them out.

They have created something new from whole cloth and that, ultimately, is more deserving of our attention than a trivial, back-alley fight between two organizations which ultimately have a common goal: fostering innovation.

Let the story be about the companies. These companies, no matter where they are launching, very much deserve our respect and attention.