AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford & Technology CEO's Showcase

The World Business and Technology Televsion show covered AlwaysOn Innovation Summit at Stanford University from July 25 to 27, 2006. We interviewed Iqbal Syed, who is the Volunteers Co-Chair for the MIT/Stanford VLAB.

Please stay tuned for additional Video Clips from this AlwaysOn Summit.

Consumer Robotics--Rise of the Machine

On June 20th, 2006 in Palo Alto at Stanford University the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab's (VLAB) monthly presentation and panel discussion was on "Consumer Robotics --Rise of the Machine". An unusual theme, as most of topics to date have centered around web2.0 type of ventures. The general audience turn out was not as it would ussually be expected. But I guess that is to be expected, given this is a niche topic, and in a sense an acquired topic of interest.







Following are the transcripts and my personal comments.







Speaker:





Bob Christopher, CEO & Co-founder, Ugobe







Moderator:





Chris Shipley, Executive Producer, DEMO Conferences; Co-founder, GuideWire Group





Panelist:





Khalid Al-Ali, Director of Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University - West; CEO, Senseta





Robert Capps, Senior Editor, Wired Magazine





Jason Morella, Regional Director, FIRST - For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology





Warren Packard, Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson






The event was kicked off with the moderator Chris Shipley outlining the agenda for the evening, which is to explore how far robotics is going in consumer market-Imagination from 20 50 yrs back, and what robots can do for us.





The evening's presentation was given Bob Christopher who spoke about Ugobe. Immediatly following Bob, the moderator led a provocative panel discuss which ended with a heated Q&A session from the audience.






Bob Christopher Ugobe presentation:





(Following are key points from Bob's presentation.)




Tage Line: "If you can imagine it ugobe can create it"





Objective: To bring robots to life and discussed Uogbe's corporate team and advisory
board strategy in doing so.





--Any startup company must have a senior leadership team with experience and vision





--They must know and be able to anticipate any and all potholes.





finances: $7.5M Series B now doing $3M Series A done





Note many vc's have funded robotics companiesVC and robotics not a common relationship





What are we doing and why are we here?





Robotics is an Emotive life forms interactive pets 5.4B S Furby





NinterDogs...Tamafatchi...Simsgrowing to 668B 40M+unitsmarket by 2025 $28+in sales PLEO (This is ugobes space)





Robotic people seem to get the how part right but tend to stumble on why, why are you doing this what is your market





Think robot market will go in interactive pets direction to get widely accepted in consumer market place





Getting a good media response--japan primariily Fascination with robots is amazing, we think its next PC, platform Wire Mag, Discoer, Popular Sc have covered ugobe





As a company we launch life forms, robots that are alive. With sensory arrays, something that is potentially aliveWe are a physical version of pixar which tells story on cgi..We have to get robotics so good that you dont think of robotics, its transparent to you.





Marketing strategy: 1st yr: Pleo 2md yr: launch compelling new life form by 2007



Pro-Forma:$5M 2006$85M 2007$127M 2008



Life form OS (TM) Platform needs to adapt.





need to create different levels of interaction with your consumer. Hacking your robot, making to fun stuff.





Opportunity for robotic industry is large, for us an opportunity is to create relationship with consumers





Panelist discussion:





Quick response from panelists and intros.





Khalid Al Ali--involved with nasa products work with nasa ames. Carnagie Melon labariel vehicles and space vehicles. Has take a company to market out of his lab at Carnagie.





Robert Capps--wired magazine. Sr Editor. Use to be products editor for magazine. People love robot, they tap in to our imagainationimagination has far outstriped what we are able ot do with robotics.





Warren Packard---MD, Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Emotional and community...going in to next generation where robots will really impact us at emotional and community level.Revolutionarly b-models will come about. Gaming to practicle robots for helping with our lives. One critical point is how do you cross the casim, how do get to the mass market. How do you make it acessible---move from tinkers to mass market. Execution is key, like to watch ugobe and now there approach.





Jason Morella--Regional Director, FIRST. Show video on what FIRST is. And show robotics is not for education but also consumersDean Kamen, Founder Challengs young ppl to think create and inspireThey program design build robotsPutting the kids in contact with scientists and engineersFIRST is all about conquering the challengs. Larry Page, Google co-founder a proponent of first. Givng kidsa first hand experience with robotics and s&t.www.usfirst.org






Moderator: Consumer robotics. How do we get from big science to the products that will be sucessful in opening up a Billion dollar market?





Asks bob how do you reconcile both cultures:We are about creating a relationship between consumers and robots---there is a signifcant value to our construnt (1) appeal to consumer (2) sensory aspect, and (3) the ability of robots to evolve.





Moderator: What makes robots appealing, especially when facing the consumer market?





Robert Capps---at pleo they seem to be going a certain level of companionship, I assume like furby, pleo is getting invloved at an emotional level. NintenDogs article by David K, about how these robots engage in kids emotions.





Bob C---robots are the next PC, next thing kids want to hack into to do things. Write scripts, AI, etc.We want to foster this, create a level of SDK for kids to get in and hack, open source it. Ploe is a relationship productyou can tweek and do diff types or relationships. But its not a kit you assemble from ground up. It is a companion like opportunity





Warran Packard---interjects. Objects to Bob's statement of it is the next PC. its more than just PC programming. I am personalizing, dressing it up.





Bob--PC can be a game machine, you can take robots for game playing and interactivablilty, so it is like a PC. We find kids, college kids want to get under the hood.





Moderator: (1) enagage kids (2) toysRus model, have to direction we are trying to drive robotics. Talk about program at carnagie mellon and how are you driving to market? Question was directed to Khalid.





Khalid---resistance to this market, there is always a difficulty to shift from curiousity to practicality. Asked sears sales person who buys these robot sweepers, normally people do buy as gifts during the holiday season. So it is a toughs struggle to take on the hovers of the world.
We at carnagie mellon are big on rebotics. We push robotics, thus creating a community and to find ways to engage kids.





According to Gates this robotic space will dwarf PC industry. Like look at the laptop, a very versatile machine. But if you go to VCs on sandhill road, try to pitch your robotic product as a versatile device, you will find it is a tough job. There is no shortage of talent and the know how. What is needed is to bridge gap between science and tech and pitch to investors and vc's.





Moderator: TO Jason whats your objective.





Jason--we don't have anything to do with robotics. per say. We are trying to make kids work with professionals in the field. Robotics is the carrot. If Ogby needs qualifications, then they will hire some of our kids. We are about creating the work force who will solve alot of the products.
We are not a science fair. We don't want kids to do it on there on. We want professional to get invovled with kids. Creating a professional 2 kids relationship. Want to show that adults dont know everythin, but will find ways to solve problemsWe want to get back to 10-20 yrs ago when kids liked taking things friends apart. We are trying to make kids learn how all these things work.





Khalid: FIRST Is on to something. We ar Carnagie and nasa "learning by doing". But that is not new, Leanordo DeVince was like that. We do a lot of that in our lab, many of the students are involved with NASA projects. Other thing engaging young minds, creating out of the box thinkers. We get a lot of great ideas which perhaps a lot of us haven't thought of. As kids dont have a set mindset--they are very creative.





Moderator: Okay, lets Shift direction and talk about the V of VLAB, ventures. How do you look at robotic investment? Or how do these ppl get you interested?





Warren--I love robotics. Way to approach it is as not robotics, as something instead solving some kind of issue. Look at what the market needs, and target that. What are customer needs, what are the unique business and technology. If you look at ugobe, they have a great product for the toy business. The business model they are pursing is incredibly innovative. On all elements it looks like a great business. Bottom line it is a mix of things, we try to reach out to the customer and figure things out.





Moderator: What makes a great product in this space?





Robert--its a toy and got to survive as a toy and got to be appealing to kids. Consumers can be "fickly" of what they like or dont like. The best way to evaulate is to look at the energy behind the product, and what do you think about it, what do consumers think?





Open to audience: Q&A





(I am posting a few of the highlights from the Q&A session)





--Bob: need to have empaty and emotions for your product. Body langauge is so important to us. Need to create a rich evolving relationship between the product (robot) and its owner.





--ugobe has been approached by enterprise sector. Whats more imp to be sucessful in robotics business, need to start as a tech toy and build up. We think Robots are not robots as we see any more.





-irobot went from defence to consumer product (moderator intejects)





-Bob: creating a property around robot, a story. Telling the story is part of our challenge






Commentary by ARR:



Robotics has been around us for years, in th defence industry, manufacturing and now toys.



We see advance robots in Sci fi, but to reach levels of Sci Fi such as a DATA AI Robot/Anderoid we see in Gene Rodenbury's Star Treck TV serial type of technology is quite a ways from becoming a reality. For now it will continue to find a place in theSciFi space for many years to come.



The key is to watch the robotics industry evolution.





Copyright C. 2006 Rabita Technologies INC

Web 2.0 -- Trends and Opportunities (Event Notes)

Cupertino June 14, 20006: The Silicon Valley Indian Association (SIPA, http://www.sipa.org/) on Wednesday June 14th, 2006 hosted there monthly colloquium at the HP Cupertino Campus. The topic of this event was “Web 2.0: Trends and Opportunities”.



With a distinguished lineup of speakers whom included Satish Dharmaraj (co-founder/CEO Zimbra, http://www.zimbra.com/), Robert Seidl (CTO and co-founder, Genius Inc, http://www.genius.com/), and Seth Sternberg (founder and CEO Meebo, http://www.meebo.com/). The panel was moderated by John Koenig (president RiseForth Inc, http://www.riseforth.com/).



What is Web 2.0?



A new class of engaging websites, not it is not a standard. In fact is a method for making the web more interactive, and engaging users.



Panel Introductions:



Satish: Zimbra is an open source ajak powered collaboration client founded in 2003, at that time ajak term was not coined yet. We were the early pioneers in doing web2.0 stuff back in 2003. Web2.0 and ajak took off in around 2005.Robert: My CEO at Genius was the chief marketing person at webex. Our aim is to provide sales and marketing tools to people who are outsourced. Provide service on subscription basis. SalesGenius first offering, aimed at sales people. To provide assistance to qualified leads---strategic marketing, rather than going to trade shows and sending out email blasts.Our backend technology is ajak. Our business model is based on providing solutions that is we are solution oriented rather than being than technology oriented.



Seth: We provide a web based messaging client. Ajak is our main technology. We were three founders, started in 2005 with no funding. We raised angel funds a month later. In December of 2005 we were approved for Series A funding with Sequoia Capital.



Panel Discussion



Moderator: How do you see your company perceived different from traditional companies?
From your internal and the external perspective



Seth: We focus strongly in communicating with user. Our model is customer centric marketing. Meebo is available in 48 languages, all this was developed by users through a wiki site. We also have an online forum, this a way to engage users and build community around Meebo.



Robert: Now a days release cycles are much faster than they use to be. Not constrained by physical distribution. Have direct access to customer in software service. Quality wise, things are much tighter than when you used to do the shrink wrap cycle.Sales for larger corporations have an enterprise based sales cycle, which tends to act as a bottle neck, resulting in long time line. Now we have much smaller costs, smaller unit costs and we have trials. Thus allows us to run with smaller sales cycles.



Satish: On development or business side, there are several ways we distinguish ourselves. First we have an open source model. Allowing customers to connect Zimbra to other tools, languages, etc; A Strong open source community which embraces Zimbra. We have not made a single cold call client/customer call. Everyday a customer downloads zimbra, builds it, etc. We don’t know the customers, but all serious people come back for value added support, upgrades, patches and getting the branding of Zimbra.Most open source models revolve around brands. So customers cannot sell Zimbra, but can sell our product under another brand. If they want Zimbra's brand customers will come back and pay a subscription for our brand.All these things break down traditional model of hiring sales heads, regional sales heads, and teams. This leads to interesting types of sales plans, compensation plans, bookings, revenue recognition, and marketing. That is on the business side. End user wants rich client like functionality. Consumers are getting more experienced than businesses in terms of what’s on the web browser. What Zimbra does is managing software on the server server, as apposed to the desktop.



Web2.0 allows us to provide a rich experience to the user/customer. IT users love it, as they don’t have to manage fat client’s servers/desktops. Everything is centralized.



Before Web 2.0 we could not deliver anything any application over web. Now we can deliver rich applications over the web.Zimbra gives away as a open source, and has preferred hosting services.



Question for Robert from Moderator: How do you define web2.0?



Robert: It is a big deal the ability to tie multiple services together. And we can do it in house. Integration is much easier than before. Client capability, nice to have something with enough java script, etc to deliver a rich app now days; It’s much easier to shrink wrap apps now and internationalize apps.Seth: A VC came to our office, "what on earth is web2.0?" I came up with three branches. Moving apps that were traditionally delivered in software are now delivered in web browser. New Versions of old tech: New evolution of a all web dev tech. E.g. Scooby, a new version of evite. They are making it much more public. Has some ajak stuff in it more flashier, more looks like an app. New version of Yahoo, netvibes, etc3. Individual empowerment. Flicker, YouTube, wordpress, blogger.com/ These are websites or technologies which allow anyone of you to publish photos, videos, content.Moderator: New patches to software.



Satish: Believe in a big way about enterprise mash up.Web20 platforms, there is not going to be web20 platforms. Yes there will be a platform for ajak development platforms. IBM Zimbra has just initiated an open ajak imitative.Robert: One thing that is not so great of web20 is that tech is evolving so fast. Hasn’t evolved to a point where it is mature or perceived as something enterprise corp. want to endorse as their platformModerator: Is web20 more about content, services, business process



Seth: No it’s not just about content. Tech behind doing a heavy ajaks website is very difficult to do. Technology scaling large volumes and demands is hard to do. Also a lot about web20 is about user empowerment. Empowering users by putting platforms out there for them to take advantage of.Moderator: Which big companies get this?



Satish: IBM gets it, was involved in business side of java with sun. Open ajaks---IBM invited others to join ajak initiative Google gets it very well; Firefoxs browser is faster than IE. Microsoft gets it....but they are more threatened by ajaks and web20. Basically cannonalize there product. Diminishes value of OS, which Google and yahoo are out to do. Companies that don’t get it run of the mill businesses and enterprises across America. Consumers get as they use, may not understand it. Business on the other hand are still trying to struggling to where it fits inRobert: Not easy to move to the new sales model, from the old. Google as a large array of technologies, with lots of data--not monetized as yet. From a monetization prospective precise are still missing. From that prospective Google doesn't have a marketing model(s) yet---its free.



Moderator: What you might see as some nice opportunities for people to start a business?



Seth: love utube, we also share board member with utube. utube a service to upload video and share it with anyone. Trends: internationalization is very imp from people perspective. Mobile, everyone talks about mobile---funny our users don’t talk about mobile much



Robert: (1) some way of monetizing what you put out there for smaller companies and pieces of services (2) tool kits.



Satish: general trends and ideas that might be funded--i am biased to opensouce co's and b-models. This model is here to stay .Linux is pretty mainstream; most datacenters have linux running somewhere. MYSQL getting a lot of momentum in enterprise systems. Middleware, aps...that stack is getting filled out soon. Network monitoring app.Never do an app for the sake of being open source. What you do has to be innovative enough that solves your customer or end users problems. And should be hard for your competitors to replicate.



Robert: Hardware is completely commoditized. The lock that software holds presently prevents hardware from moving faster. With zimbra like apps, things could change. Will give Microsoft a run for the money. Data transfer from laptops---transferring your content to a new laptop is a bottleneck due to propoertary software. Now if your on the web browser then you don’t care about local software---but a new laptop and throw away your old one.



Q&A:



Question: AJAK vs Flashflash has advantage its same on all browsers. but pre-2005 was all about graphics and moving fonts and text around. Only recently they have dev apps -- macromedia flex 1.0 visual basics, flex 2.0 visual basics for web.Places where flash is better than Ajax’s, and places where Ajax is better than flash.



Ajax JavaScript has openness than flash where adobe is closed. Google yahoo has gone Ajax way want to embrace open standard and open programming ways.



Question: Application



Web2.0 aps are any rich UI app you generally see on the pc.



Question: Marketing



-- Find new way of doing things



--viral marketing, blogging, etc. Far better than old sales models and techniques.



Question: What types of apps



--documenting, spreadsheet, word processors can be down on browser



--things memory centric need to be done in app.--end result now will always end up as a web interface.



--however if its memory infective or something that needs to right to your local file system, it will need to be done locally first.Question: Monetizing web20



--embedding modules you charge for. Such as search tool and charge for search made



--partnering with carriers for sms.



--sell subscriptions



Question:



Apache tomcat is platform for web20Xml http serversAjax is purely client side, not server side. you deliver Ajax through zip file. Protocols b/w Ajax front ends and back ends could be propitiatory.



Question:



Security issue with Ajax in a way its probably cumulatively safer to do things via browser than through 20 - 30 client apps.



Question: Hardware



--$600 pc can run all ajak apps. --but memory need to have anough memory



Question: third world activities for web. sales through web



--one answer get close to customers



--let customers drive relationships, what genius is built on



Question: when to get vc money



Seth: initially they didn’t need--its hard to take vc money lots you have to do, as they slow you down



--if plan is grow big, flip it fast, then don’t take vc money.



--be really clear on what you want to do



--want to do a business or a quick flip



--not bad to do a quick flip, probably much safer bet in current climate.



--Find right vc partner is a huge deal, painful board meetings.



--Good VC characteristic: have they been an entrepreneur in the passed? That is a safer bet typically than b-school/investment bank vc’s



--In addition to having a good b-model get a good team before launching a product for VC funding



--meebo didn’t have a good team for VC funding



---were great professionals but not credible for VC funding before launch



--if meebo team was like Satish (zimbra) team composition then they would get money before launch.



--team members for pre-launch vcs are credible people from top visible positions or former entrepreneurs-vcs look at three things: (1) Team is really imp (2) marketability of product--is this something that can sell, reducing market risk (3) reducing execution risk.