Startup Notes- Tales from the Entrepreneurial Front: Recent Comments

Comment on Utah's Women Tech Council Announces 2009 Award Winners

2009-11-25T13:37:28Z

Humm... interesting,

Keep up the good work,

Thanks for writing, most people don't bother.

Comment on Legal Work is NOT a DIY project!

2009-02-12T22:28:30Z

I like your thoughts. great article and information

Comment on Service and Resource Providers

2008-10-15T09:46:38Z

Cool site.

Comment on Wanted: List of angel investors - who are the "most likely suspects"

2007-11-02T21:19:18Z

I posted a list of the Utah investor environment (link below) on my work related blog. For individual angels, this is tricky! A good route would be to talk to the VC firms and have them make introductions to the angels. However, an introduction will only be made if the VC feels that it is a good fit with the angel. Another route is FundingUniverse.

Blog link:
http://wasatchgirl.blogspot.com/2007/10/utah-private-equity-environment.html

Comment on Wanted: List of angel investors - who are the "most likely suspects"

2007-09-14T20:05:01Z

FundingUniverse is, IMO, really the only route to go if you don't know someone who can introduce you. Angels don't want to see every business, and I can't really blame them for that - if I were an angel I don't think I would want to filter through everything either.

Comment on Designing the Perfect Investor - Not all Money is the same (presentation)

2007-09-01T04:46:28Z

Thanks, that is high praise indeed. I'm glad it was helpful. Josh James, CEO of Omniture reminded me a couple of years ago that when he started his company, there wasn't anything like this in Utah - no networking, no sharing of experience, nada. Entrepreneurs were pretty much reinventing the wheel. It is my hope, and the hope of a lot of other people like Jeremy Neilson of the Fund of Funds which sponsored that session, that sharing what we've learned will make us all smarter and more successful.

Comment on Designing the Perfect Investor - Not all Money is the same (presentation)

2007-08-20T23:29:22Z

Thanks for posting this. Your FoF presentation was one that I actually wouldn't mind seeing again. Lots of good personal insight.

Comment on Walt's comments on ease of use in Home Networking and Internet Sharing

2007-01-01T17:35:48Z

Product developers in the home space are caught in a Catch-22: everyone wants unique, beautiful, easy to use products, but they also want them at bargain basement prices. You and I and everyone else who has ever attempted to create a software product knows that getting it right is far less work than making it easy. The next step to making it beautiful is so rarely attempted, let alone accomplished, that I haven't had the opportunity to even try in a 25 year as a programmer, software engineer, and product designer.

There are a few companies, groups, and organizations out there attempting, and sometimes succeeding, at making software beautiful. As you not above, Apple has accomplished this several times. Many other examples are applications for the Mac. Examples include just about anything from the Omni Group and the lovely application "Delicious Library" from Wil Shipley, one of the founders of the Omni Group.

Sadly enough, I haven't seen any such effort applied to home networking, and I fear I won't. This is doubly sad, because the marketplace has changed since we started DoBox; the technological starting point for such an undertaking is freely available these days, in the form of several free Linux distributions that run on various vendors wireless access points. All that is needed is a team with the vision to actually create a home network that ordinary people can use and the pool of dollars to express that vision and market it.

I'll submit that the stumbling block that cannot be overcome is the device between the user and the network. I get asked by friends and even brand new acquaintances all the time, "Can you help me setup my laptop for my wireless network?"

Oddly enough, nobody expects the average homeowner to be able to install and configure their multi-unit entertainment system; most are completely willing to pay someone to come install the big boob tube, but the idea of paying someone to configure their home network is unpalatable. Perhaps we have set the expectations too high? It just might be that we cannot possibly create a home network that even a "twelve o'clock flasher" can use. On the other hand, the TV/VCR industry overcame the twelve o'clock flasher problem a decade ago, maybe we just need to take a step back and look at the entire network, not just the device.

I'd like to see someone with Apple's attention to the end user take on home networking. Marketing any such device against the channel and marketing might of Cisco/Linksys, D-Link, and Netgear will be a daunting task, but you can't even start on that until you've actually made something better. Nobody is trying, as far as I can tell.

Comment on By the time IDC (or Yankee or Frost or Gartner) has written a report, it's NO LONGER a new market!

2006-11-21T15:48:10Z

Walt:

I have to say I'm crushed that, out of the probably 200 pitches you received that week, at Demo, 7 years ago, you don't remember me! Even worse, you say that I didn't even remember it right (after 100's of pitches and 7 years). I'll admit that you may have said "your friends in Connecticut" instead of neighbors, but I vividly remember that you thought granite countertops were far more compelling to consumers than home networking.

However, the much more important point that you made, and I thank you for sharing it here, is that home networking was too hard in 1999 and is still too hard in 2006 for consumers. I agree, and posted a bit more on this issue of the problems consumers face with tech products in a new post.

Comment on By the time IDC (or Yankee or Frost or Gartner) has written a report, it's NO LONGER a new market!

2006-11-20T03:28:39Z

The anecdote in this post about me is at least partly false. I have never lived in Connecticut, and never referred to "my neighbors in Connecticut." And, while I am not denying that a conversation about this product may have happened (I am cornered by people pitching hundreds of products a year,) I have no recollection of it.

However, I can say that in 1999, "home networking" was immensely too hard for mainstream users, and in fact it still is too hard. Even today, I belive that 90% of people who have Wi-Fi or wired ethernet in their homes didn't install these things to create a "home network." They don't move files around the house, or even share printers. They simply want internet access in multiple rooms.