State0 Blog

Today, I attended the Rackspace Cloud Event. I was blindsided by the purchase of Slicehost. I am a slicer and think it is a valuable service. I also think that Rackspace offers a good service for the enterprise. However, they are different companies at the core. I remember I once got a quote for a single managed server from Rackspace that rocketed to almost $500 for the first month. That is nothing like the $20 I pay for my slice. I am not yet sure how I feel about merging the two different attitudes and approaches. Rackspace claimed that they were going to work to preserve the Slicehost mentality and culture. I hope that is true and I hope that the rest of the cloud looks more like Slicehost than like Rackspace. I am sure there is going to be a push to serve the enterprise with cloud services but hopefully they will not forget about the bootstrapper.

Beyond that, Lew Moorman, Chief Strategy Officer of Rackspace, layed out a few other cloud related announcements. They purchased Jungle Disk to offer it as a “Cloud Application.” In addition to Cloud Applications, they will offer Cloud Sites, Cloud Files, and Cloud Servers.

“Cloud Sites” are the things Mosso  already offered. You can upload your app like with App Engine but you also have a database layer unlike App Engine where Google does it for you. I talked to the founder of Mosso for a minute about the database layer. I told him that this was where I saw the largest weakness in the cloud. He said that they were actively working on solving database scaling issues with MySQL folks and other industry standard database companies. Perhaps they will build a Smart Sharder (yes, I hereby coin that phrase) to do all of the work for us.

“Cloud Files” is essentially S3. It will be $.15/GB storage and $.22/GB bandwidth which is awesome. Moorman also mentioned that they will be working with Limelight Networks to offer CDN to the masses. Great stuff.

“Cloud Servers” are vaporware thus far. The idea is to roll in the Slicehost technology so that everything is under the same roof. In the Q&A, Josh Baer of OtherInbox asked when they would support SQS. There was no firm reply but you should assume there will be some sort of message queue service soon. Probably once they pull all of the technologies under the same roof.

Great event considering I simply showed up to hang out. I even got some free lunch out of it.

Photo by aturkus

I attended the Austin Alliance’s Fall Event tonight. It was a a three man panel moderated by Clark Jernigan of Austin Ventures. The title of the event was “Why the Best Time to Launch Your Business is During an Economic Downturn.” This title was thought up before the big kaboom. The focus of the event remained the same, but the thesis was different, if not opposite. Here are a few quick thoughts on what was talked about.

It is uncertain whether the Sequoia presentation will prove to be true. Slide 42 paints a grim picture of how long it will take to recover. However, there is no historical ground for this assumption because there has been no recession this grave in the last 50 years, let alone in the last 35 in which the Venture Capitalists have been around. Regardless of what happens, the game has changed and Venture Laborists are going to have to adapt.

There are a few things about the downturn that are good for startups if (BIG IF) they have some capital to spend. First, they can employ smarter people for less. The engineering giants have cut their rosters indiscriminately and there is opportunity to snatch up smart people as they fall from Yahoos and eBays. Second, there is opportunity to buy out assets from companies that are shedding weight. Those assets can be tied together to produce a lower cost solution for customers because there is no R&D to amortize. Third, you will necessarily learn to manage capital more conservatively (better). There is no room for high-burn-rate companies and bootstrapping is going to become an art.

In general, there is not going to be much VC money around so we should all plan to survive on seed money and inlaws.

At the Texas Wireless Summit, John Donovan, CTO of AT&T, gave a keynote at the end of the conference. It was a sit down interview given by Richard Schwartz of Openwave. Most of the conversation was about how AT&T takes a strategy of weaving together technologies to deliver an unified “experience.” John talked about both the mobile domain and the home area network environment. At the end of it all, I got the chance to ask a question. I asked him, “What verticals need better mobile applications?” He actually answered the question I wanted to ask which was, “What apps will net the most profit?” I know that I am not the only person interested in what it takes to create the best iPhone apps. So, I thought I would reproduce some of what I wrote in my notes here.

Focus on:

• Individuals of HIGH value. Folks who’s time is worth too much for them to open a laptop or call someone for info. These users need applications that can save them time. They also have the money to spend. A good example would be an application that enabled high value sales team members to better utilize SalesForce.
• Companies that manage and maintain a huge number of laptops. There are scenarios where those laptops could be replaced with or supplemented by mobile devices. It reduces costs and headache for those IT departments. It also makes the employees more mobile. This point can be generalized to replacing any extra piece of hardware such as an analog monitor or bar code scanner.
• Anything that is necessarily mobile, mapping for example. Loopt is a good example and has had success on the iPhone.
• Low security risk applications. This seemed to be more of a suggestion to avoid heartache. There are certainly big opportunities in the banking and finance industries. However, that is more sensitive data and will result in slower adoption and more ridicule.

I thought for a while about what app I would like to build that would meet many of those criterion. Then I went looking for it. Here it is: TripIt. I knew someone would have created it by now. It is a travel organizer. If they can successfully help executives and executive secretaries, they will be a money app. I called Loopt early on; I look forward to seeing how TripIt does.

Photo taken by Gaetan Lee

I spent the last couple of days at the Texas Wireless Summit. Great event with numerous industry leaders and entrepreneurs. My company BarZ Adventures was kind enough to sponsor me to go. I attended once before in 2004. The event has grown quite a bit since then. The general theme this year was Open: Open Networks, Open Platforms, Open Operating Systems… Every session started with a different definition of the term open and was followed by conversations of the market’s movement toward openness. Here are the areas where I see real change toward openness:

• Open Networks: Wednesday was highlighted by a keynote given by Tony Lewis. He is the VP of Open Development at Verizon Wireless. He made some very aggressive claims about where they were planning to take Verizon. He repeated a number of times that the focus was on the network. Then he presented plans to allow manufacturers and OEMs to certify devices for use on their networks within a 4 week time frame. That process would drastically reduce the time to market for new technology in the wireless space. It would also give access to a powerful network. Combining this kind of model with the advent of LTE will blow the roof off of a wide range of applications. Yesterday, John Donovan, CTO of AT&T made allusions to similar plans but made no concrete claims to an Open LTE.
• Open Operating Systems: Google’s Android is the obvious leader and is causing a market shift. Nokia has followed close behind by purchasing the rest of Symbian and opening up the Symbian Foundation. Mark Louison, President of Nokia Inc., gave a keynote yesterday at the summit and explained that he felt the half billion dollar purchase was a smart move because advancing the industry would necessarily advance Nokia. It is certainly true that when you own the OS, you own the market, even if you have to open source to do it.
• Open Platforms: Iphone is the big winner here. They have created the perfect platform for developers. Donovan did not make many comments to this effect because he had no need to. However, Mark Louison was eager to point out that Symbian had many more applications and a larger number of developers worldwide. Across the board, there is a definitive move towards letting developers in. The greatest hurdle here is going to be enabling developers to develop across the 5+ major platforms more easily.

Of everything I soaked up from the gathering, this one point was, pleasingly, most apparent: The time has come for application developers to reign in the mobile space! Everyone from every panel agreed that the day has gone where networks control the market. They are no longer the lone value provider. There were many who were skeptical about how the shift would play out. The most common flaw cited was support structures. How will networks shift support costs to application developers? My thought is that networks need to help application developers create brands and own customers. This will be best for everyone. Whatever the case is, the change will happen whether the support structures are ready or not. Clearly, it is time for innovation to come from the venture laborists!

I turn 26 in a couple of hours; not a tremendously momentous birthday. It is not divisible by 5 and, as far as I know, I will have no new liberties. However, it is a birthday, and so I have to look back and be agitated by all of the things I have done poorly in the past. One thing that comes immediately to mind is that I have not been involved enough with the tech community here in Austin. I am trying to fix that. This blog is intended to help. Hopefully, it will do more than bring to light how ignorant I am of most things. At best, I hope it will be entertaining and inspiring.

Perhaps sometime tomorrow I will consider the things I have done well.