Information Overload - Startups, Tech and Revenues

Why Did WalMart Buy Kosmix?

2011-11-11T23:22:00.000-08:00

This was a question asked on Quora - "What do people think of WalMart's acquisition of Kosmix?".

The short answer is - because it made strategic and financial sense. Here is the answer I wrote on Quora, as a start -

(disclosure, I used to work at Kosmix).
1) Kosmix, or WalMart Labs, is already on the way to earning their purchase price back for WalMart. Without any social media or online marketing of any sort (SEO, SEM, you name it), WalMart.com currently gets between 40 - 70 MM monthly visitors. The WalMart Labs team can easily get multiples of this number without breaking a sweat. (Kosmix operated the second largest Health website in the US, and some other very high volume web properties - they know how to get traffic).

2) Kosmix has built categorization technology that will be very useful for WalMart (lots of folks have written about this, so I won't repeat). This tech will help WalMart use social media to streamline operations, offer deals, and increase revenues.

By the way, the OneRiot acquisition ties right into the points above - seems WalMart has a large gameplan they're putting into action quite fast.

Visa Credit Card Transaction Flow

2011-10-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

Credit card value chains are quite complex. With all the new payment alternatives coming in (Square, Boku, Noca, Google and Visa's digital wallets, etc.), I thought of sharing an overview I had created some time back.

This is of course a basic view, and shows the value chain. I will post more information about all the fees and payment flows later. The interesting parts of the value chain are all the points of potential disruption. Paypal is the current Champion of Disruption, of course.

An Update on Microsoft's Razorfish

2009-06-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

I had written in November about the layoffs at Razorfish, and early rumors of a sale.

Seems this sale is happening soon. According to the Financial Times, Microsoft has appointed Morgan Stanley to look for a buyer for Razorfish, with French firm Publicis emerging as an early front-runner.

Omnicom and WPP, which are trying to put more focus on digital advertising, are also potential suitors.

Publicis has recently made some financial moves aimed at enabling an acquisition, and have also gotten cozier with Microsoft - on Friday, Publicis announced an agreement with Microsoft Advertising to use Microsoft technology to place Publicis ads on television set-top boxes.

NBC and ABC Suck Lemons

2009-06-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

I would like NBC and ABC to lose enough money that they have to shut down. Or at least fire their entire sports-related teams. Let me explain why:

NBC:

NBC has the rights to show the French Open Men's Semifinals this morning. The matches started at 5 am PST today, Friday, June 5th.
You have the opportunity to watch arguably the greatest to ever play the game, Roger Federer. In the other match, you have the cinderalla, who has already dispatched the world's greatest Clay Court player (and a possible arguable greatest ever to play the game, Rafael Nadal).

So when you switch on NBC, what do you see? Why, Dave Matthew's Band, Tom Brokaw, and the rest of the idiots from their morning show. Interspersed with ads from our local carpet dealer. They've decided we can wait until 10 am PST (on a workday!) to watch the matches. That made me develop my first symptoms of high blood pressure.

I am pissed off at NBC. Very pissed off. This is exactly what they did during the Olympics - while also lying about having the broadcasts live.

So what am I going to do about it? I am going to stop watching NBC. Anything on NBC. And I'm going to bad-mouth NBC whenever I can. I like Conan O'Brien. So I'm going to watch him free on YouTube. Hah!

ABC:

ABC won the rights to show the NBA Finals. I know, I know, the NBA season is unreasonably long. But after all that time, we've gotten to the point where we can see Superman and Skip-to-my-Lou go up against the Black Mamba and 9-time winner Phil Jeannie Buss. Kobe, at this point, is in the "best ever" discussions. And had a game to prove it last night. What I would have loved to have seen after the game would be some great analysis, interspersed with humor, etc. etc.... ok, I would have loved to have the TNT Inside The NBA crew (EJ, Barkley, Kenny) take us through the game.

Do you know what I saw instead? A local Oakland crew. Three guys - at least I know/ like Nate Thurmond. The other expert they brought in was the Warriors assistant coach for shooting for big men, or something. No disrespect, but.... And they kept trying to work the Warriors into everything. Kept talking about Michael Pietrus, and showing clips of him as a Warrior. WTF!?!?!?

Ok, so ABC wasn't as bad as NBC. I'm not going to bad-mouth them as much as I will NBC. But I'm quite unhappy.

NBC and ABC suck lemons. I want NBC to fail.

The Layoff Spectrum - No One Spared

2009-05-14T19:06:00.001-07:00

Layoffs are here, and they're here to stay. The surprising thing is how many supposedly (at least to me) well-performing companies are also having to lay off staff.

Nike - Nike is doing very well, thank you, with their stable of highly paid stars selling the socks off the competition. Really, how many other shoe ads do you see nowadays? And Nike is better positioned than most, since it is highly diversified throughout the sports arena - shoes, clothes, sports equipment (rackets, balls, bats), related gear.
It doesn't matter. Nike is laying off 5% of their global staff. And surprisingly, the jobs are not just mostly in the higher-wage countries - China is coming in for a high proportion of manufacturing job losses.

Miami Heat - The Heat were not expected to compete this year... or get any audience worth mentioning. But an MVP-caliber year by the NBA's scoring leader (Dwayne Wade), two highly touted rookies, and a surprise 5th seed in the playoffs capped by a 7-game first round series boosted the Heat's revenues well beyond any reasonable projections.
No matter - the Heat are also going through a round of layoffs.

The End Of Valleywag

2009-05-01T14:51:00.001-07:00

Valleywag, Silicon Valley's gossip site (and sort of pretend tech and startups related site) was always a fun read. After the staff was trimmed, it became a little less so. Ok, maybe a lot less so.

But today sounds the death bell. Owen Thomas is leaving Gawker Media (Valleywag's parent), and moving to NBC. There's no one left.

Rest in peace, Valleywag.

Crossing 95K Visits

2009-04-25T10:48:00.001-07:00

I just crossed the 95K visits mark on my blogs:

Looking forward to 100K.

And on a smaller scale, my profile on blogger has now been viewed over 1,400 times.

New York Times Article On Kosmix

2009-03-16T18:00:00.001-07:00

Our little startup, Kosmix, was just covered in the New York times

The article was titled Just Don’t Compare Kosmix to Google

Published: March 14, 2009

KOSMIX, a well-financed Silicon Valley start-up, is often described on blogs and news sites as a search engine that may someday rival Google.

As flattering as that notion may sound, it rankles Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, the co-founders of Kosmix. And that’s not because other start-ups making similar assertions have fallen laughably short of the mark. It’s because Kosmix is trying to do something that is quite different from traditional Web search.

“Search does what it does well, very well,” Mr. Harinarayan said. “I don’t think we can ever compete with that.” Kosmix, he said, is not about finding the best set of documents for a specific keyword or phrase. Instead, its goal is to “tell me more about something,” he said.

For a key word or topic that a user enters, Kosmix gathers content from across the Web to build a sort of multimedia encyclopedia entry on the fly. For many queries, the results are pretty satisfying and look as if they have been compiled by a human editor, not a computer.

If Kosmix succeeds in attracting a large following, it may well be the latest challenge, not to Google, but to a long string of old and new media companies struggling to hold on to their audiences and make a living on the Web.

Kosmix’s home page offers a mix of news, entertainment and other content from around the Web. But it is on searches that Kosmix becomes really interesting.

Type in “Kauai,” for example, and Kosmix will return a fairly rich page that includes an entry from WikiTravel, a user-created travel site; restaurant recommendations from The New York Times; photographs and videos from services like Flickr and YouTube; audio clips of local music; reviews of guidebooks, bed-and-breakfasts and other services; blog posts and more. It also has top results from Google, and suggests a list of related topics.

(Read the rest of the article on the New York Times website)

Meehive Launched, Nice Press Coverage

2009-03-11T10:54:00.001-07:00

Kosmix' personalized newspaper, Meehive, launched today. We've had some good coverage, including:

Techcrunch
Venture Beat
Louis Gray

Kosmix Introduces Meehive to Deliver Personalized News Pages

“As much as you might think I'm overloaded with information from the Web, I'm not, honestly. I find that often my first tendency after reading through my Google Reader items is to want to go back to the site and start again, only to find them empty. It's possible, with MeeHive up and running, that when I've hit zero on Google Reader, and tapped out my FriendFeed and Twitter, I can have a destination to find out what the rest of the world is doing outside my little bubble.”

Portfolio, Tech Observer

“Now there's a company that will make you your very own personalized newspaper made up of traditional media posts and blogs, kind of like a cyber-news Frankenstein delivered right to your inbox.”

Killer Startups

MeeHive.com Your Personalized Newspaper

“When all is said and done, this is yet another legitimate way to keep abreast of any development that could appertain to you, and access that information as part of a personalized website. An account can be created in no time at all, so that if you want to see if this solution is right for you or not just wend your way to www.meehive.com.”

Fone Arena

MeeHive Personalized News on iPhone/iPod Touch App Review

“I have been playing with the MeeHive iPhone App for over a week now and…it’s a simple app which makes news consumption on your iphone very easy.”

Resource Shelf

Kosmix Launches MeeHive Personalized News

Facebook With (More) Egg On Its Face

2009-02-18T11:58:00.001-08:00

Facebook recently updated its Terms Of Service to effectively say - "we own your data in perpetuity, even if you go ahead and leave Facebook. Complain all you like."

(Ok, I took some liberties with my summary). Anyway, Shades of Beacon!, they got slammed in the blogosphere, and had to bow down to the public's wishes. Here's what I saw on my Facebook home page yesterday:

"Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. "

What does this mean for Facebook? Without oversimplifying, they do need some of the updates in their Terms of Service, to better manage their network. And they would like to add some of the other updates, to be able to use data on their network better - specially for monitoring and monetizing.

My guess is that they'll slowly start adding a tweak here, a sentence there, and gradually update their Terms of Service to include most of the changes they wanted. It will just take them some time now.

Passing 80,000 Visits On Blogs

2009-02-18T01:53:00.001-08:00

Earlier this month (February, 2009), I crossed the 80K visits mark on my blogs. Nice.

My blogs are:

And on a smaller scale, my profile on blogger has now been viewed over 1,000 times.

Nissan In Pain

2009-02-17T12:46:00.001-08:00

The current economic meltdown is taking down another Japanese Automaker. Nissan fell to a full-year loss, its first in almost 10 years. In this, it followed in Toyota's footsteps

About 20,000 employees (9% of its workforce) are being let go.

Directors will have salaries reduced by 10%, and will not get bonuses, while Managers will have their salaries reduced by 5%.

Nissan, more than the other big Japanese auto makers, is rushing towards the future, as evidenced by the awe-inspiring GTR (I just saw it on the street - nice). Lets hope they can get back to their profitable ways soon. Their new lineup is quite exciting, with a number of speedy looking cars, including the 370Z and the Altima coupe.

iPhone App Review - Perfect Girl

2009-02-13T16:35:00.001-08:00

The Perfect Girl app on the iPhone ($0.99) is hilarious. Its one of those perfect simple ideas - and is copied (natch) by that beer ad all the guys love.

The interface is simple - one "Speak" button. By either pressing it, or shaking your iPhone, you get the Perfect Girl to give you a perfect line. Some examples include:

"I love ninjas"

"Wear what you want"

"I'll try anything once"

"I hooked up the surround sound", etc.

(My favorites so far are the first and last ones).

Layoffs At Wal-Mart, Too

2009-02-10T14:35:00.001-08:00

Recession-proof no more? Wal-Mart is cutting 800 jobs at its Arkansas (Bill Clinton!) headquarters. Mainly, the cuts are in the departments responsible for building new stores - as only 125 - 135 are planned for 2009, a 20% - 25% drop from 2008.

At the same time, I guess they'll add a lot more folks when these new stores do get built. So at worst, this is a bit of a re-alignment.

Toyota Sees Net Loss For 2008 Fiscal Year

2009-02-09T16:24:00.001-08:00

Even the mighty are falling (and I'm not talking about the oblivious mighty, like Detroit's Big 3). Toyota, which has been profitable each year since 1950, is turning in its first annual net loss ($3.85 Billion, or 350 Billion Yen) for fiscal 2008, ending in March.

At a broad level, there are two strategies Toyota can adopt to fix 2009-

a) Increase revenues. Very tough, but Toyota is well situated, with its leadership in hybrid/ economical cars, as well as TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) cars. As long as it can hold off challenges from Honda and Ford's eco-friendly cars...

One thing that is obvious is that Toyota's marketing efforts need to take a big leap here. The Scion was a very smartly played game - they need to extend that to their breadwinners.

b) Reduce costs. Yes, Toyota is the guru of Lean, Six Sigma, TWM, and any other buzz-words you know, plus a host of others you don't know. They will probably figure out a way here, again, and hopefully without affecting their full-time employees (sorry contractors)

Google Blog Post On Eye-Tracking

2009-02-06T13:18:00.001-08:00

This is a great post, specially for the real-time video showing how users' eyes move on a search page.

I'm not putting up any summary/ synopsis - most people in the business will know the basics of this post. You'll still learn a little somethin' somethin'.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/eye-tracking-studies-more-than-meets.html

Changes At Webaroo - Now SMS GupShup

2009-02-05T10:59:00.001-08:00

Webaroo, which over the years morphed into SMS GupShup, has long been a company I've liked. (Anand, one of the Kosmix co-founders, and one of the investors in Webaroo, likes them too - check out his blog post on them).

Webaroo, though, is finally moving their entire team to India. That means those on the US team who aren't moving over, are moving on. I believe Rakesh Mathur, their CEO, might also be taking some time off from Webaroo.

This comes after some good traction news from Webaroo -

SMS Gupshup has a user base of 12 Million people (I believe this is all in India. I have the Webaroo tool installed on Firefox, but they don't seem to be working on that any more)
Helion Ventures and Charles River Ventures just put another $11 Million into the company, in October 2008. Very good!

What Else Do Kosmix And Google Have In Common

2009-02-04T18:28:00.001-08:00

Kosmix is similar to Google in a few ways - we're both in the search space, our founders are from the same Stanford research group.... and now this.

I was at a dinner with a few friends, including one from Google, at Palo Alto's Counter Burger (amazing burgers, I kid you not!), when the folks around us noticed what you see below.

I'm taking this as a great sign for Kosmix following in Google's growth curve! Woohoo!

Sir, May I have Another... Layoffs

2009-01-29T21:38:00.001-08:00

(previous layoff news)

Corning has had a few lives since its inception. Its latest includes the glass used in flat screens, both computers and televisions.

Given that demand for both those consumables has softened a bit, Corning is laying off 13% of its workforce - about 3,500 people

Chemical company Ashland is freezing wages (big surprise), adopting a 2-week furlough program, and, of course, cutting 1,300 jobs

Boeing is dive-bombing about 10,000 jobs. Thanks to its union workers striking, and slowing down their revenue stream even further - very smart, guys

(Sigh)... More Layoffs

2009-01-29T00:21:00.001-08:00

(Previous announcements)

A quick name check to:

Brooks Automation - which is cutting 20% of its workforce (350 people), in its second round of layoffs

Halliburton (yes, even Cheney's old company is going to lay off people, known as they are towards their people-friendly policies... NOT)

Schlumberger, not to be outdone by Halliburton, has announced it will lay off 5,000 people... and might have another headcount reduction in 6 months

Intel, after initially affirming it wasn't going to lay off employees, is cutting 6,000 manufacturing jobs.

Layoffs, Layoffs And More Layoffs

2009-01-28T09:21:00.001-08:00

(Following my previous post on companies announcing layoffs)

The layoff announcements keep coming, and will probably keep coming over the next 6 months. Some notable ones:

I had already chronicled how Caterpillar was cutting pay to manage costs. Well, turns out they should have waited a bit... the cost cutting continues, with another 5,000 layoffs announced (in addition to 2,500 full-time and 8,000 contract employees having already been asked to leave).

UAL, United Airlines' parent, is laying off 1,000 people - it had recently (Q4 of 2008) laid off 1,500.

Sprint Nextel is cutting 8,000 jobs. Ouch! I blame their tv ads (I hate the Sprint, and the Verizon ads).

Black Monday - 70,000 Laid Off

2009-01-27T16:24:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, Monday, was a pretty sad day - layoffs to the tune of 70,000 employees were announced. Among those who are letting people go:

Texas Instruments (TI) is laying off 12% of its employees - 3,400 people. Demand for their chips has softened, given that virtually every downstream sector that is a customer (including cell phones) is experiencing soft demand, and high inventory.

Home Depot is closing its Expo chain, and some other smaller locations, leading to a loss of 7,000 jobs. I don't fully understand how the housing and repair markets are affecting them - one the one hand, the overall housing market, specially new house building, has been hit hard, and this probably impacts Home Depot. On the other hand, I would expect home-owners to have started doing a lot more of their own home repairs, which should benefit the Home Depot.

General Motors hasn't stopped hemorrhaging, and is cutting another 2,000 jobs in Michigan and Ohio plants

Staving Layoffs - Controlling Pay

2009-01-25T13:19:00.001-08:00

Companies are, perhaps predictably, managing personnel costs now by controlling pay. In most cases, salaries have been frozen, bonuses are being cut or eliminated. In some extreme cases, salaries are actually being reduced.

And given the job climate, the employees can only say, "Thank you, may I have another?"

Yahoo has, starting this week, frozen pay raises. Bonuses have also been cut (but per my sources, hopefully not completely eliminated in all cases).

AMD has had layoffs (1,100 people), and the remaining employees are enduring pay cuts ranging from 5% - 20%

And Circuit City's 30K+ employees are all going to lose their jobs, as the chain shuts down. (Note - I went to one of their stores, and didn't really find things selling for a huge discount. This isn't like Sharper Image's going-out-of-business sale)

Having fired over a thousand people, Saks is also freezing wages, and removing 401K contributions for the year

Caterpillar, which I would say is the most successful autos-related company in today's climate, is cutting pay - up to 15% for regular employees, and up to 50% for executives

YRC has cut pay by 15% for employees that are non-union, and by 10% for its drivers

Hutchinson is reducing pay by 5% for its remaining employees

Robert Scoble At Kosmix

2009-01-23T15:54:00.001-08:00

Robert Scoble, of Scobleizer fame (along with quite a few others, of course), is at the Kosmix offices today. Cool.

Blue Screen Of Death - Microsoft Layoffs

2009-01-23T11:57:00.001-08:00

Microsoft profit dropped 11% - thats quite huge. And finally, the long-rumored layoffs are coming. 5,000 people in the next few months.

It isn't a huge number for a company of Microsoft's size (about 5%), but it is a little unprecedented. This is the software behemoth's first-ever layoff (at least as far as I know. I'm not counting layoffs from acquired companies, of course.

Microsoft has a process where under-performers are constantly weeded out, a la Intel. This will probably continue, and might even get increased - so who knows the true employee turnover to come?

Sony - Layoffs For The Official Number One

2009-01-21T19:29:00.001-08:00

Sony is shutting down one of its two Japanese TV factories, and laying off 2,000 people (about 3%) of its workforce this year. That's quite painful, but not unexpected in today's climate.

The funny comment though comes from Kaz Hirai, Sony's head of Computer Entertainment. His contention is that Sony's PS3 is the "official leader.." in the gaming industry.

Let's see. There are three main players in the gaming industry - PS3, Microsoft's XBOX 360, and Nintendo's Wii.

Good ol' Kaz says the Wii is operating in a different world, and hence doesn't count. I'm a serious gamer, and I don't look at the Wii as a machine I would buy (although it has a few games, like Super Mario Galaxy, that are very good). But this is a bit silly.

Even if we gave Kaz a bit of a point here, the Xbox 360 is still outselling the PS3 2:1. That's not small change. His argument here? That Microsoft still hasn't shown it can stay around for 5 years.

Of course, Microsoft recently announced the 360 is not going to be replaced any time soon - that it's life-cycle is going to be well above 5 years. And having owned both the Xbox, as well as the Xbox 360, I can say that their customer service is quite good. I've had both my Xbox, as well as my 360 replaced free of charge for different reasons. The service was quick and efficient.

So, my dear Hirai-san, please check your facts. You aren't the official leader if you're lagging behind your only two competitors in sales as well as installed base.

The World Hasn't Ended... Yet

2009-01-18T15:06:00.001-08:00

Yes, the world hasn't ended. The economy is still not completely in the toilet. But some early signs are coming...

- Google had a layoff - the big G has laid off 100 HR folks. Makes sense, since they aren't hiring. they've also shut down their recently opened Austin office.

- Steve Jobs is sick, and has taken 6 months off. Apple stock got clobbered as a result. And suddenly the prospect of a religion without its chief prophet has become all too real

Ouch.

Breaking News - Carol Bartz New Yahoo CEO!

2009-01-13T12:02:00.001-08:00

Interesting stuff - Carol Bartz, Autodesk's limo-riding, performance-enhancing former CEO is going to be Jerry Yang's replacement.

Good to finally have a decision. More on this later

Not Even One Laptop Per Child

2009-01-09T14:07:00.001-08:00

OLPC, or One Laptop Per Child, has laid off half its workforce (~32 people). The remaining employees will also probably get pay cuts.

Ouch

LiveJournal Dying

2009-01-07T03:15:00.001-08:00

LiveJournal today announced a "restructuring" in their US (San Francisco) office. All product and engineering team members are gone, top to bottom. Only technical operations (keep those servers humming, boys!), legal, admin and customer service teams are staying... as of now.

SUP, the Russian internet startup that bought LiveJournal in 2007 for $30 Million, will probably start consolidating all tasks in Russia. LiveJournal is quite popular, but just like all other social networks (except MySpace), has failed to figure out how to make money.

LiveJournal is just the latest social network to start going under. Some others I've covered (a sample of the pain in social networks) are:

Hi5, which represents the second tier of social networks after Facebook and Myspace
LinkedIn, representing the business social networks
Sneakerplay, representing the ultra-niche networks
Ning, representing the overly funded network enablers
Zivity, representing the adult social networks (yep, it really is a downturn)
And, of course, Facebook's theoretical value falling (theoretically) from $15 Billion to $1.5 Billion.

Quite painful, unfortunately.

Alcoa Cutting Jobs, Production Output, Facilities

2009-01-06T14:19:00.001-08:00

The economic downturn means that basic commodities manufacturing and production is getting seriously affected. Alcoa, which produces Aluminum, is making drastic changes. Among all the reasons - Automotive production is falling drastically, and there is a surfeit of inventory throughout the Automotive supply chains.

Cutting output by 18% - 750K tonnes/year
Reducing 2009 capital expenditures by 50%
Cutting 13 - 15% of workforce (13,500 - 15,000 jobs)
Salary and hiring freezes. Contract positions being eliminated
Selling four business units that don't deal with core products, and that should bring in about $100MM (about the amount these four lost in 2008 - a net loss of ~6%):

automotive wheels
electric systems
global foil
transportation products

Alcoa had gone through a round of layoffs around June - August, which were a little prior to a full realization of the economic conditions hitting the world.

Page Rank Increase For My Blog

2009-01-04T03:20:00.001-08:00

A Page Rank increase of +1, bringing it to 2, for Capoeirista, my cover-all blog. Ho-hum.

Whats New At Cuil?

2009-01-03T15:15:00.001-08:00

Last time we checked, Cuil had lost their VP of Product, Louis Monier. How are they doing now?

Unfortunately, their traffic doesn't seem to be doing too well. They botched their launch slightly; they had great PR, got a lot of traffic, couldn't handle it, and didn't have the best results for searches.

Cuil does still have a following. But as the two charts from Quantcast and Compete show, below, their current strategy of incremental improvements has not won back their launch audience yet.

Quantcast

Compete

Crossed 70,000 Visits!

2008-12-30T00:44:00.001-08:00

My blogs just crossed 70,000 visits this Sunday. Sweet.

iPhone At Walmart

2008-12-29T18:34:00.001-08:00

Finally, the iPhone has made its appearance at Walmart - a little late to take full advantage of Christmas shopping.

What I find really hilarious is the price - after all the breathless rumors about the iPhone price getting slashed for Walmart's sake, it turns out the discount is 1%. For the 8 GB phone, that means a $2 discount. For the 16 GB phone, thats a $3 discount.

Hahahahaha. Who would put up with the lines at Walmart for that discount? I'll tell you who - people who were shopping at Walmart to begin with.

Advantage Walmart - it gets to sell the iPhone, right next to the Google-phone. And gets bragging rights about the lowest price for an iPhone

Advantage Apple - the discount doesn't even register, and other retailers won't care enough to quarrel with Steve and co. At the same time, this is another 2k - 3k outlets to sell the iPhone, which is great.

Advantage the Consumer? - Seems rumors of a price decrease are still around; and the iPhone has a fat enough (and growing) profit margin to allow for a nice price drop in the near future.

Who's A Cash Cow? More Layoffs At LifeScan

2008-12-28T13:16:00.001-08:00

Can you spell C-A-S-H C-O-W? J&J spells it L-I-F-E-S-C-A-N.

I had covered LifeScan's last layoffs in October. Seems there was more to come.

Another 10% of the company, specially in the US division in Milpitas, is being shown the exit door, including the entire Business Development department.

LifeScan is doing well compared to the rest of the Blood Glucose Meters companies, specially in the US. They are a $2 Billion company with manufacturing and operations in Milpitas (California), Inverness (Scotland - at the tip of Loch Ness), Mayaguez (Puerto Rico), and marketing and sales arms around the world. And now, they are considered ripe for rationalization.

This makes sense, if you think of LifeScan as a cash cow. J&J can continue to reap the profits from R&D mostly done 5 - 10 years earlier (not talking about incremental changes to the product, of course), as well as Business Development deals put in place as early as 10 years ago - including one that is supposed to be the product of the near future, out of Australia.

With this in mind, only functions necessary to continue operations satisfactorily are needed; the rest can either be consolidated within J&J headquarters, or gotten rid of altogether.

The Business Development team has some outstanding people. I'm sorry they need to look for new opportunities in this job environment.

Ning And Glam - Cost Cutting Time

2008-12-21T15:01:00.001-08:00

Ning and Glam Media are two companies that have a lot of funding - over $100 Million each.

Ning is also a lean company - they have a lean staff, and everyone works really hard (even by Silicon Valley standards). I visited their office a couple of weeks back. They have a normal office as startups go, except for the enormous monitors each person gets. If you work at Ning, watch Hulu at your desk, no need for a big screen tv!

And Glam has all sorts of claims of success. CEO Samir Arora is a consummate salesman and PR guy.

But such are the times, both of these companies, awash in capital, are cutting down on costs.

Glam is reducing everyone's salaries - 3% - 15% for the employees, 25% - 60% for Samir and some top execs and sales people. They're replacing this with a variable bonus element. It is a good idea... but might still lead to some top people defecting. Glam has also started delaying payments to partners and publishers even further. Hopefully, this doesn't drive any partners out of business, or causes them to scale down their business - because that would come back to haunt Glam.

And Ning is rumored to be readying itself for layoffs, or other cost cuts as well. This is completely unconfirmed, but several valley folks (none of whom work at Ning) are talking about it, as is FuckedStartups.com. Hope its not true, but......

Scary times, my friends.

VC Money Flowing Again

2008-12-19T14:04:00.001-08:00

It only took a couple of months; VC money is flowing again. We at Kosmix, of course, just got $20 Million. And now San Francisco-based Scribd has announced a $9 Million round of funding from Charles River Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and Kinsey Hills Group.

I like Scribd, so I'm glad they're going to be around. Essentially, the site lets you upload and share documents online. I work in a remotely spread out team (Mountain View, New York, Oakland, Los Angeles, San Francisco), so Scribd is something we should be using at work too.

Former Bebo COO George Consagra (no, not the guy from Seinfeld) has joined Scribd as its president. So they're getting serious.

Slydial Update - Love It!

2008-12-17T14:07:00.001-08:00

I had covered Slydial on my blog earlier. This Monday, I was contacted by SHIFT Communications, who seem to be handling their PR, to let me know the app was available on the iPhone, and that I should try it. (Slydial is an app created by the guys at MobileSphere)

I tried it over the last couple of days, and I have to say, I love it! I hadn't even thought of all the uses I could put it to;

Calling a business associate late in the evening. I've already done this a couple of times. This way, I make sure I'm not delaying talking to partners on the east coast by another day; at the same time, I'm not calling them at a very late hour.
By the same token, sometimes when a long or nuanced message is needed, SMS is a bit painful... specially when you have an iPhone, as I do. Slydial is a much better alternative
Prank calls. I know, this isn't a very elegant use.... but....
Don't give this app to the folks in the Philippines! If you do, you know they're going to start using it when they want to break up with someone. A voice-mail does beat out SMS in some cases
Relatives, friends, associates you don't really want to talk to. Or don't have the time to talk to.

What's great is that the recipient also sees a missed call. This way, there is no reason to believe slydial was used.

The app has made its way to the front page on my iPhone!

AT&T Layoffs

2008-12-05T09:22:00.001-08:00

I hate AT&T, just as I hate Comcast.

But I hate the company, not the people (at least non-executives) who work there. So I'm sad to hear AT&T is joining the layoff bandwagon, letting go off 4% of their workforce, or 12,000 people.

There are two factors that are leading to this:

Firstly, they are seeing their landline customers defect - that business is shrinking by 11%, while AT&T's own wireless business is growing by 14%. Their landline business is still bigger, and needs a bigger workforce compared to the wireless business, so that feeds directly into the total workforce.

Secondly, they are seeing people stop taking add-on services, and manage their minutes on limited plans more carefully (AT&T is one of the worst companies at charging through the roof for a single extra text message, or a single extra minute on your calling plan).

All Worn Out - Sneakerplay Shuts Down

2008-12-03T09:24:00.001-08:00

Sneakerplay was a perfect example of a niche social network - it catered to people like Entourage's Turtle, who are obsessed over sneakers.

Huh?

And to think it was only one among a number of similar plays.

Sneakerplay is shutting down now. Its time for most of the other niche networks to fall soon.

Thanksgiving Bargains Fuel J&J Acquisition Spree

2008-12-02T11:37:00.001-08:00

The Thanksgiving buying bug has bitten my favorite blue-chip, Johnson & Johnson, which is buying Mentor Corp. and Omrix Biopharmaceuticals.

Omrix is going to feed right into J&J's surgical care business.... and by that I mean the serious surgical stuff.

Mentor, on the other hand, feeds into, shall we say, the sometimes desired-but-not-required cosmetic surgery side. It is a leader in cosmetic products, including breast implants. J&J has traditionally not been a market leader in cosmetic surgery, but this acquisition will change that.

J&J's stock went down as a result of these acquisitions, but the long term prognosis is very positive. I'm shoring up my position in the stock.

A New High

2008-11-26T09:56:00.001-08:00

This Monday, November 24, my blogs hit a new milestone - 1,240 visits. Woohoo!

Normally, between them, my blogs get around 500 visits/day, so this is a nice new rise.

This occasion calls for a random photo - how about one from Kosmix' 2007 holiday party. Nagraj and Sailesh are flanking me.

Alza's Changing Face

2008-11-24T10:02:00.001-08:00

J&J's Alza division, over the last 7 years, has been a dismal place to work. They started by helping Google out, shutting their offices near the search giant. Google of course immediately snapped up those facilities.

Alza's Vacaville location has been a not too happy place to be at, since. In the last couple of years, there have been two massive layoffs. A large part of this is due to J&J methodically moving facilities and costs overseas. But in Alza's case, there is a lot more going on.

Its very sad. Right now, I can't even get their website to load.

Apple's Gigantic Ad Budget

2008-11-24T02:55:00.001-08:00

This shouldn't come as a surprise, given that Apple's ads are always everywhere you look; Steve Jobs and crew apparently have an ad budget of close to $485 Million for this year.

I would love to have Apple put a part of that ad budget online on Kosmix

Personally, by the way, I hate the Mac vs. PC ads. So, Mac is cool, eh? And PC is nerdy, geeky, stupid. To me, Mac is like the high school jock picking on the nerd. And when they both graduate, PC is going to work in a startup, while Mac will ask if you want fries with that.

Friday Buzz Kill - Buzznet Layoffs

2008-11-21T19:59:00.001-08:00

Damn economy. Damn Sequoia. Now they've made Hollywood-based Buzznet lay off 10 - 15 of their 90 employees.... today. That's Friday.

What a buzzkill.

WebMD Not Buying Quality Health After All

2008-11-20T05:48:00.001-08:00

With WebMD's share price free-fall ($32 to below $20), the erstwhile online Health leader is trimming some of its upcoming investments. Its latest is to stop its proposed acquisition of Quality Health, which I covered earlier.

This explains why, even after 3 months of announcing the deal, WebMD had not yet integrated Quality Health's traffic into its own in comScore. As such, Waterfront Media's Everyday Health, which now reports Kosmix's RightHealth metrics under its own (see my earlier post), has a better chance of holding on to its new #1 ranking in comScore.

WebMD and Quality Health have signed an ad deal, with WebMD's sales team representing Quality Health as well. As part of this deal, there is still a possibility that WebMD negotiates to report QH's metrics under itself in comScore. Thats when the race begins again.

New Milestone For My Blogs - 50,000 Visits

2008-11-19T12:24:00.001-08:00

On Tuesday this week, my blogs passed 50,000 visits. Sweet!

The blogs, of course, are:

And on a smaller scale, my profile on blogger has now been viewed 550 times.

Jerry Mandering - End Of A Yahoo Era

2008-11-19T08:56:00.001-08:00

Its finally over. Jerry Yang has stepped down as Yahoo's CEO.

I feel bad for him. Everyone else has savaged him mercilessly... while I can see that through all the tough times, he still talked about "bleeding purple", and did his best to shield his employees from harm, including laying off a smaller number than should have been appropriate.

Which of course points out that he wasn't a good CEO - a good CEO of a company as big and as troubled as Yahoo would need to make merciless, dispassionate decisions. But in these tough economic times, saving some jobs (even if its only temporary) has to be looked at favorably.

Anyway, I want to nominate someone for the now vacant CEO post, someone who I believe has what it takes to take Yahoo to the next level....

Slydial - The Polite Way To Avoid Someone

2008-11-18T09:26:00.001-08:00

Remember the Seinfeld episode where George is trying to avoid a girl, so keeps trying to call her home or office depending on where he thinks she isn't? Of course, he gets caught... its George.

Now Slydial is what he really needed. These guys (still in beta) offer a service (downloadable through apps on the iPhone, BlackBerry, WindowsMobile) where you can directly reach someone's voice-mail.

Not bad, not bad at all.

Twittering Trouble

2008-11-17T16:25:00.001-08:00

Why am I using Twitter? I do want to like it.... but I keep getting the message below:

The Sun Is Setting

2008-11-14T08:52:00.001-08:00

An analyst with Sanford Bernstein, Toni Sacconaghi, had estimated that Sun needed to cut 20% of their workforce to be able to get closer to righting themselves, mainly by raising operating margin by 5% - 7%.

Well, Sun has now announced a restructuring, which is hopefully realigning the company to be leaner and more efficient, while also laying off between 15% - 18% (translated, 5,000 - 6,000 employees)

Every Right Revolution Health

2008-11-12T21:53:00.001-08:00

I've been writing about the consolidation in the online Health space. My last three blog posts were:

Revolution Health's sale to WaterFront Media, the parent company of Everyday Health
Revolution Health's traffic
WebMD getting into the act, and acquiring Quality Health

Everyday Health had started the whole thing off by stating that their goal was to become the number #1 online Health site. Well, they just did that! Everyday Health has now become the #1 Health site, per comScore (and yes, this is still playing the traffic game).

So how did EverydayHealth/ WaterFront Media manage to do this? Since the dawn of time, WebMD has been the #1 Health site, with no one else coming even close. EverydayHealth and Revolution Health, in their quest to gain on WebMD, kept acquiring other health sites, or representing them for online sales, in exchange getting their traffic assigned to themselves in comScore. And then, of course, EverydayHealth acquired Revolution.... and they were still lower than WebMD.

Well, this week, we've just announced that RightHealth, Kosmix's flagship Health site (we were #2 in Health through most of this year, per Hitwise), is now also going to be represented for display ad sales by EverydayHealth. RightHealth traffic is the biggest contributor to Everyday's traffic - woohoo.

I guess the online display ads world is going to be a little different.

Accel and MC Hammer

2008-11-11T19:02:00.001-08:00

I was at last week's Accel party for portfolio companies and partners at San Francisco's Fluid lounge

Apart from our investors, the most interesting person I saw there was MC Hammer. He, of course, started DanceJam.

Who cares how long its been since his last hit, I'll visit any startup of MC Hammer's!

Here's MC Hammer at the TechCrunch party. And below, the old, wilder, balloon pants Hammer!

Linked To Layoffs - LinkedIn Trimming Staff

2008-11-07T07:57:00.001-08:00

Bay Area's very own LinkedIn surprised everyone by being the first startup to announce layoffs..... ok, maybe this is not a joking matter.

Anyway, LinkedIn is also laying off staff. I am a bit fan of the service - I prefer it greatly over FaceBook, Friendster, MySpace, Hi5. I hope this means the company is growing up, trying to get its act together, because the rumors out of their campus are not favorable. And they did raise a lot of money recently, so the layoffs are a pre-emptive move, hopefully (I really don't want LinkedIn to disappear!)

By the way, surprise surprise - LinkedIn has Sequoia as one of its funders.

Signs Of A Downturn - Veoh Layoffs

2008-11-06T07:19:00.001-08:00

San Diego-based online video site Veoh is laying off 20 of their 110 employees.

Veoh has brought in $70 Million in funding, including $30 Million last June, so this sounds like yet another pre-emptive move to manage costs during the slow economy.

Time For A Second Life - No More Business Development

2008-11-05T06:50:00.001-08:00

Linden Labs (Second Life) is laying off its Business Development group.

I keep forgetting that Second Life is still around. Maybe this will refresh my memory - an old Thriller video recorded on Second Life during the early days

second life thriller

And to show the kind of excitement Second Life can generate, check out the huge crowds at the Obama Campaign

Effects Of The Economy On Advertising

2008-11-04T05:56:00.001-08:00

The prevailing economic conditions are having predictable waterfall effects. Take the case of ad agencies; their value stream begins, of course, with advertisers. In times like these, advertisers (in general) do two things -

a) Tighten their belts - they reduce budgets, reduce staff, reduce expense accounts. Marketing folks generally fly high, compared to many other parts of most companies. So it is relatively easy to reduce spending on both the advertising expenditure, as well as non-ad related expenditure.

b) Focus on ROI - traditionally, ROI on ad spend is not easy to measure. Efforts are continually made to better understand the effects of advertisements, and media channels used to deliver a message. Everything from immediate buying decisions, deferred buy decisions, perceptions of competitive brands, to brand lift need to be measured and used to refine ad spend. But ROI on ad spend, to quite an extent, is a black art.

Consider this - the effects of online advertisements are easier to measure than television or radio ads (with online ads, there are direct actions that can be immediately measured, such as clicks on ads, how long the ads were visible on the page, etc.).

And in the world of online ads, CPM (cost per thousand impressions) ads have the least immediately measurable ROI, compared to CPC (cost per click) ads, which are second to CPA (cost per action) ads. Of course, I am assuming that brand lift is not the most important metric here; when brand lift is the metric, you have to look for more esoteric metrics. But when action is directly required, and ROI is top of mind, CPA ads are the clear winner, followed by CPC ads.

So what do I think will happen? Well, first of all, based on the points above, there will be layoffs and budget cuts in all marketing departments, and secondly, ad budgets will be moved to areas and agencies that can promise a deeper focus on ROI. This of course should imply that print and TV ads will give some ground to online ads. (see my earlier blog post about some layoffs already announced)

As part of my job at Kosmix, I am already starting to see some of this.

And in online ads, we should see a higher proportion of CPA ads, then CPC ads, both taking away from CPM ads. This will also drive a slightly less desirable behavior in websites - where CPM ads give a guaranteed revenue for impressions, one needs to drive users to click on CPC ads; and with CPA ads, you have to drive either qualified users (who will end up completing a desirable action on the landing site after clicking on the ad), or send over a lot of users and hope a fair proportion of them complete a required action. That should make sites less user friendly, unfortunately.

Bad Google Ads

2008-11-03T17:13:00.001-08:00

On my main blog, I have Google ads turned on, as a small experiment. Now I'm going to turn them off.

On all my pages, I see those foolish ads asking people to vote yes on Prop 8, which is fundamentally and morally incorrect - these idiots want to foist their version of laws onto everyone. I hope Prop 8 gets turned down by the largest margin ever recorded, only so these fools get so embarrassed they never try something like this again..

The worst part - in no way are these ads targeted even slightly to my content; the only connection is that I am in California, where this proposition is up for vote.

Google, fix this immediately!

What's En Haut, Google?

2008-11-03T11:46:00.001-08:00

Google is still not stable. I guess I shouldn't expect it to be, specially since most issues are too minor, or too obscure for most users to notice. But today's was a funny one - for some reason, Google took me to Deutschland - everything was in German, including the results, until I clicked on the "Google in English" link. Fun times

Advertising Downturn - Microsoft Razorfish Layoffs

2008-11-02T22:54:00.001-08:00

Razorfish, which Microsoft acquired as part of last year's $6 Billion aQuantive acquisition, is laying off 40 of its 2,000 staff members. The layoffs are all from their New York office, which has lost quite a few clients in the recent economic downturn.

At the same time, Razorfish is looking to expand its presence in Europe, and is buying Wysiwyg, one of Spain's largest online ad agencies.

Add to these two the rumors that Microsoft is looking to sell off Razorfish (which used to be Avenue A/ Razorfish before a recent rebranding), and you have an enigma wrapped in a conundrum.

The rumors around Razorfish's potential sale have quite a bit of meat to them. Add to them the following facts, that bolster the rumors:

a) Microsoft was really looking to buy aQuantive, in response to Google snapping up DoubleClick. Razorfish came as part of the package, and didn't really fit with Microsoft's overall strategy.

b) Microsoft puts almost $250 Million a year into digital advertising. You read that right! And they use other agencies, mainly (as far as I know) Universal McCann for a lot of their digital media plans. Now, if Razorfish was strategically a fit, wouldn't this be different?

c) Razorfish represents a broad spectrum of clients. But they aren't really selling them on advertising on Microsoft pages front and center. That stands to reason - without objectivity, Razorfish would not be able to keep their clients for very long. But then how does it serve Microsoft to keep them around?

Thanks Zecco - 225 Trades in October

2008-11-01T13:18:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Zecco's unlimited free trades month, I completed 225 trades in October. Yep, I managed to make a tidy profit. I'm not sure how I'm going to manage with only 10 free trades/month from now on.

And of course, still staying true to my original plan - no short sells, no options trading, nothing except straight out stock trades that kill the bear's buzz

Virgin America - 2 Quibbles

2008-10-31T06:09:00.001-07:00

Ok, so I do like Virgin America. A lot. Based on only 4 flights so far (between San Francisco SFO and New York JFK, and San Francisco SFO and Las Vegas' McCarran Airport - LAS)

But I have a couple of minor issues. First of all, they've started charging $2 for headsets. With all the great programming (and not to mention the original Doom video game!), this is idiotic. Just add $2 to your tickets, and stop asking for handouts! Some people will use their own earphones, some will read a book or do something else... and some, like me, will get just a little pissed off.

Second - no free food. Pay for your food. I guess I shouldn't even expect this any more, even on 6 hour flights. But it does irk me just a little bit.... I expect more from Virgin America.

Trading Up A Storm - 200 And Counting

2008-10-30T12:15:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Zecco's unlimited free trades month (October), I've been trading up a storm. I have already passed 200 trades for the month (and I started trading on October 6th, since I was traveling on a business trip before that).

Quite fun! And profitable - so far I have closed a profit of just over $1,050. And two more days to go, so lets see where I end up. One thing is for sure - I am going to be in for a LOT of pain come tax time.

Flying with Virgin America's CFO

2008-10-27T15:31:00.001-07:00

This morning, while on my nth flight this year back from New York, I found out I was sitting next to Bob Dana, Virgin America's CFO!

What's quite interesting is that we were sitting in the economy class. Granted I feel Virgin America's economy class is better than almost all other US airlines, this was still quite funny. Turns out Virgin has their executives travel on economy. They do get one perk - the exit row. (apparently they fly business/ first when they are on Virgin Atlantic, which is good).

I am impressed. This was a 6 hour flight, and the CFO was sitting in the aisle seat in economy, typing on his laptop, with his Bose headset on his head in between friendly stops by the airline stewards and stewardesses. And Bob's an ex investment banker.... so he is probably used to the good things in life.

Go Virgin!

Here's Bob in a presentation outlining Virgin America, including their mission statement.

Startup Good News - AdMob Gets $15.7 Million

2008-10-26T10:56:00.001-07:00

Sequoia, which can be credited for starting the rounds of layoffs going on in startup land, just gave AdMob almost $16 Million. Nice!

Omar Hamoui's AdMob focuses on mobile advertising. I guess Sequoia thinks that is a growing market, and one where (at least where AdMob is concerned) the doom and gloom scenario they're painting in general doesn't really apply.

Dell Lays off 8.5K

2008-10-25T16:13:00.001-07:00

Michael Dell says he is very strong on Dell's future.... having just cut 8,500 salaries, I guess he can definitely be certain on the personnel cost front

Searching for a Cafeteria - Google

2008-10-24T20:45:00.001-07:00

Ah, the mighty get hit by the recession, too. Google has shut down one of its cafes, the Off the Grid.

Valleywag and the other blogs are talking about rumored layoffs, too. That would make things very interesting indeed.

Chrysler Update - Driving Off Into The Sunset?

2008-10-24T15:02:00.001-07:00

There is an update to my earlier update on Chrysler's plant shutdowns and layoffs. Seems Chrysler is more than doubling the number of full-time workers getting laid off - the number is 5,000, or a quarter of Chrysler's full-time workforce.

This doesn't even tell the full story; the company has a very large number of contract employees. Chrysler has mentioned a quarter of them will also be let go.... but it doesn't need to specify the number of contractors let go, so there's probably a lot of blood-letting there.

What does all this point to? Chrysler putting itself up for sale, or something else equally drastic. Or, only selling a much smaller sub-set of their current auto lines (eg: selling off Jeep). Wow. I wonder if this will be another car company from a developing market (think Tata buying Land Rover and Jaguar), or time for the Private Equity firms to get back into action.

Check out the page on Chrysler in RightAutos, a Kosmix site. (Ankur Jain is the product manager).

Gold Man Sacks Crew

2008-10-24T08:41:00.001-07:00

That absolutely has to be my worst headline yet. But these are punny times.

Anyway, Goldman Sachs is laying off over 3.2K people, or about 10% of their workforce. But I believe these folks will be sent off with nice severance packages - GS is still very generous with their people.

Print This - Xerox Laying off 5%

2008-10-24T02:47:00.001-07:00

Xerox is cutting 3K jobs in the US, about 5% of their workforce.

My roommate works for Xerox, I'm hoping he and his team are ok.

Signs of a Downturn - Chrysler Layoffs, Plant Shutdown

2008-10-23T17:08:00.001-07:00

Chrysler is laying off close to 2,000 people, by shutting down a Delaware factory (despite the favorable tax rules there?), and slowing down work at their Ohio plant.

That's bad for both places, and should also put some influence on the upcoming elections.

Mahalo, all 13 of you

2008-10-23T10:33:00.001-07:00

Smart boy Jason Calacanis has laid off 13 people from his team. Mahalo, of course, is the Organized Wisdom for everything (or is Organized Wizdom the Mahalo for Health?).

Put more flowers on the site. Perhaps that will make your inadequately paid wiki-editors feel better.

Here is a Mahalo page for Kosmix, which demonstrates their major flaw - the page hasn't been updated since 2007, and for a topic page on a fast moving startup like Kosmix, that means it is quite out of date.

Signs of a Downturn - Imeem Lays off 25%

2008-10-23T04:30:00.001-07:00

San Francisco based music startup Imeem, which has raised about $19 Million in funding, is the latest to lay off staff, asking a quarter of their 80 employees to leave.

LinkedIn's Cash Windfall

2008-10-23T01:06:00.001-07:00

The current startup climate is very mixed indeed - a lot of layoffs, and quite a few companies announcing funding rounds. Good news is always nice to hear at this time; so even though its a little puzzling, its quite nice to hear Dan Nye's LinkedIn has just raised another $22.7 Million.

The main investors are SAP Ventures, Goldman Sachs, and Business Week's parent McGraw-Hill Companies. Of all the social networks, I use Mountain View-based LinkedIn the most heavily (most of it for work, and yeah, I have a few connections).

LinkedIn is valued at a whopping $1 Billion - ok, that might be a little too much happy sauce going around. But even if it doesn't capture that full value, it should have a good run towards it.

I Need Medicine - Merck Layoffs

2008-10-22T11:02:00.001-07:00

Merck announced their Q3 profit fell 28%,... and they're going to lay off 7,200 people. That's 13% of their workforce.

Ouch!

Zecco, Don't Fail Me Now!

2008-10-22T08:46:00.001-07:00

Dear Zecco

I know you are a startup, and you think it is acceptable to not always work. But I am starting to look longingly ahead to the time when I don't want to quit you immediately. Why can't I see any of my data (see screenshot below)? The market is falling - this is when I like to buy my stocks!!!

Please, Zecco, learn how to work properly.

Regards

-Vikram

Even the Bobcats and NBA have Layoffs!

2008-10-22T08:32:00.001-07:00

I keep forgetting the NBA is a business. But the folks working at NBA headquarters, and league offices around the country do know that. The Charlotte Bobcats, who have probably the league's stingiest ownership after the L.A. Clippers, laid off about 40 people from their marketing and business department, and three front office executives. And the NBA asked some people to leave, too.

Wow

Flip Me Off - Pressflip Founder Out

2008-10-22T00:29:00.001-07:00

Ted Dzubia, the founder of Pressflip, which originally came out as Persai, has left the startup.

Pressflip didn't seem to have much funding, as far as I can recall. And it was a bit of a joke among other Search companies... their results were generally quite bad. Pressflip's algos were supposed to learn about your search choices as you kept searching and giving them input. But I gave up after trying a few times, since I didn't see any progress at all. I do have to admit, I liked their UI a bit.

About.com Advertisements Begging for your Advertisements

2008-10-21T19:47:00.001-07:00

Take a look at the About.com ad above. The ad is asking other people to advertise on About.com. Hmmm.... I guess it makes sense.... sort of? Anyway, I would love to know what their ROI is.

Perhaps they should spend the money instead on getting the word out to advertising agencies and potential medium-to-large advertisers. The ad I saw above was on a blog with a nice following, but not the clientele that (I assume) would immediately jump and throw ad money at About.com.

Whoops, Yahoo Update

2008-10-21T15:06:00.001-07:00

The original rumors were wrong. (See my original blog post). Yahoo is cutting 1,50o people (10% of their workforce) instead of 3,500.

But I feel Yahoo is wrong - they should clean house a bit more, get rid of the people who no longer want to be there. And then hire new high performers - they will be among a smaller set of companies hiring in this economy.

Seesmic Shift - Layoffs at Video Conversation Company

2008-10-21T10:56:00.001-07:00

Loic Le Meur's Seesmic has asked about 10 of their roughly 25 - 30 employees to leave (most last week, and 2-3 about three weeks ago).

Seesmic is all about video conversations - upload your videos, join in the conversation. Great. I wonder what the Seesmic team is talking about now.

Just as with most of the other companies going through layoffs this early, Seesmic has a bit of money in the bank (including a recent $6 Million round of funding, and another $6 Million last year), and is tightening its belt for the upcoming economic winter.

Auctioning off Jobs - eBay laid off 1,500

2008-10-21T08:42:00.001-07:00

I had forgotten to mention earlier, but eBay, as expected, cut 1,500 jobs.

Their latest earnings report was ok. And they're finally getting serious about selling off Skype, even as Skype revenues keep growing... making it an attractive spin-off.

I'm hoping eBay gets its act together, but I really don't like using them any more.

SAP-ping Morale - SAP's Spending Freeze - Layoffs Not Far Behind

2008-10-21T02:52:00.001-07:00

Wisely, SAP is going to stop any unnecessary expenditure. But the severity of the moves they're making point to a soon-to-come layoff announcement.

Among the actions SAP is taking:

No new expenditure on IT. At all. No new equipment to be ordered, at all
Complete headcount and hiring freeze, including contractors, interns, students (wait, why wouldn't you keep students? Just make them unpaid internships - in this economy, the students would fight for unpaid internships.... as my batch did back during the dot com bust)
Employees leaving through natural attrition are not to be replaced
No internal transfers; yes, you can leave your group, but you won't have a place to land at
Internal transfers or written offers to new candidates sent before October 7th will be honored, all others to be called off
Stop working with external recruiters immediately (oops, sounds like SAP's HR group will be among the first to go!)
Stop working immediately with all management consultants (ok, so the consulting firms are about to start 'counseling out' folks, too)
Stop all external training sessions
No meetings off-campus. No renting off-campus meeting rooms or hotels
Cease ALL internal non-customer-facing travel in October…Any non-customer-facing travel already booked should be canceled immediately, even if this incurs penalties (they're serious!)
Fly coach from now on

CarZen - Helping Choose your Dream Car

2008-10-20T16:34:00.001-07:00

I recently found a way to test CarZen (http://beta.carzen.com)

I like it! I like it! And for a beta, their results for cars matching my tastes were pretty much on the money (see below).

Of course, it shouldn't be too difficult to build a car chooser such as this - all you need is a structured data repository, and create a question set against it. But to test this, I kept my answers slightly ambiguous - and still got good results.

Minor gripes - I would have preferred to have seen my beloved BMW 335i Convertible instead of the Lexus SC430. But I guess they had already picked the BMW M3, so didn't think two relatively-comparable cars from the same manufacturer were needed (although they did give me two Mercs... admittedly further apart than the two Beamers).

Another thing - I think they're a little off base thinking you can get an M3 convertible at $65K. Hah!

Medical Issues - LifeScan Layoffs

2008-10-20T15:05:00.001-07:00

My old employer, Milpitas based LifeScan, a Johnson & Johnson company, has asked some more people to leave. This is sad, as unlike startups, most people at LifeScan have been here for a large number of years, sometimes a couple of decades.

The layoffs are only partially related to the economy; the first factor is that LifeScan is slowly moving more functions across the ocean, to Switzerland. And the second factor is a reflection of the changing face of diabetes, and diabetes testing. The entire diabetes market is growing at a slower rate, and most companies and patients are now eager to move to continuous blood-sugar monitoring, instead of the episodic monitoring that is currently used.

LFS is a $2 Billion company, and has a lot of brilliant minds leading it. Here's wishing them the best.

Sweet Chin Music - Pandora Laying off 15% of Staff

2008-10-20T08:40:00.001-07:00

Time once again for sweet chin music at Pandora, but hopefully this stops the fat lady from singing too soon. My favorite online music site has been through the tough times of the dot com bust, and most recently the tyranny of those damn record companies. So I am confident they will come out successfully on the other side.

But for now, Tim Westergren, Joe Kennedy and team are letting go off 20 of their 140 staff members.

Pandora does have a load of analysts, well versed in music, some extensively and classically trained, who analyze songs and classify them by very detailed multiple descriptive categories. My guess is the majority of layoffs will affect these folks. I do have to admit, my Pandora radio stations don't play too many new songs.

Their sales staff is also supposed to be doing well, and I do see a lot of ads now. Thats good - keep bringing in the revenues, guys!

Voicing Despair - Jaxtr Lays Off 13

2008-10-20T01:56:00.001-07:00

Menlo Park based Jaxtr, which offers voice-over IP services (and yes, a social network as well... why not?), has laid off 13 people, about a third of their employees.

Jaxtr has raised a total of $21.5 Million, about half of that this June. As such, they seem to be in a good position, as long as they keep costs contained for a while. I like Jaxtr, I think they have a great product, and am pulling for them to come out strong on the other side.

Signs of a Downturn - Yahoo cutting 3.5K Jobs

2008-10-19T22:26:00.001-07:00

Per a Valleywag tipster, Yahoo is about to cut 3.5K jobs in early December. The job cuts have long been rumored, but the number sounds higher than earlier guesses.

What seems a bad move - the layoffs are going to be announced within a week of an over-the-top holiday party. And, of course, there are rumors that the severance packages will be pathetic.

Not I'm normally ok with holiday parties - layoffs are exactly when you need to put something else up to boost up the morale of remaining employees. LifeScan, a Johnson & Johnson company, did this while I was there, after their first layoff in almost a decade. But the timing isn't good. And, of course, if severance packages are bad, this reflects poorly indeed on the judgement of the executive team.

Most of the layoffs are rumored to be in Finance and Sales/ GA.

Yahooooooooo

Legally Laid Off - HellerEhrman Shutting Down?

2008-10-19T15:43:00.001-07:00

About a week earlier, Silicon Valley-based law firm HellerEhrman had started shutting down, laying off everyone. Given that HellerEhrman had grown to quite a position of strength over the 2001 - 2007 period, this is a bit hard.

Their website now seems to reflect that they've completely exited. The screenshot below is all you will see if you go to http://www.hellerehrman.com/en/.

The Placement Opportunities link takes you to a page with a list of firms hiring, as well as placement firms.

Poignantly funny - check out the Disclaimer they have on the Placement Opportunities page. Yes, this used to be a law firm.

Searching for a Job - SearchMe Layoffs

2008-10-19T09:24:00.001-07:00

SearchMe, a promising startup in the search space, is laying off 1/5th of its employees. And yes, they are another Sequoia-portfolio company.

SearchMe was another of the startups trying to carve a niche in Google's backyard; their tack - 'visual' searches. You should try them, they are an interesting take. And given they have almost $44 Million in funding, and one of the most successful serial entrepreneurs as a founder, (Randy Adams, with over 4 successful startup exits to his credit), they have a good chance of weathering the downturn.

It is a totally different question as to whether their visual search method helps them get anywhere.

In the screenshot below, I searched for Kosmix on SearchMe.com

Heavy Hitters Hit - Layoffs and Attrition at Heavy

2008-10-19T00:27:00.001-07:00

Glam's very much less successful counterpart, Heavy, which focuses on male-oriented programming and advertising, has been losing people for a few months. Well, they are helping matters along, and 14 of their 70-odd employees are being laid off.

Bringing Down the House - Zillow Layoffs

2008-10-18T16:49:00.001-07:00

Turns out Zillow isn't just reporting a lower value for my house (each time I check, damn it!). Almost 40 of Zillow's 150 employees are being laid off.

This is another Seattle based real-estate startup going through some economy-related pains. As usual, CEO Rich Barton's layoff memo talks about how business is great... but layoffs are needed.

As I keep saying, I think this is good for Zillow. Bad for the employees, but good for Zillow, and of course those same employees' stock options, in the long term. (one hopes, anyway - none of the startups I worked at during the dot com bust managed to give me a single dollar back on my stock options).

Signs of a Downturn - no IPO for Synacor

2008-10-18T13:16:00.001-07:00

Synacor, based in Buffalo NY, was thinking about raising $80 - $90 Million by going public, but those plans seem to have been shelved for a while.

Synacor is hovering around profitability, and has received a total of $29 Million in funding from VCs including Intel Capital, so hopefully they can stay stay afloat long enough to make another attempt at an exit.

Silicon Valley Layoffs - SkyRider Riding off?

2008-10-17T17:47:00.001-07:00

Mountain View P2P company SkyRider, yet another Sequoia portfolio company, seems to be shutting down. Its all still a rumor!

Signs of a Downturn - Zivity Layoffs

2008-10-17T12:31:00.001-07:00

Zivity is an adult social network. But sounds like even this industry is tightening up for the recession - Zivity is laying off 30% of its jobs.

Again, hope this helps the remaining 70% of folks keep their jobs through 2009.

Sequoia's Scare-Tactics - Ladder 49

2008-10-17T08:27:00.001-07:00

Here is slide 49 from Sequoia's shock and awe presentation

The synthesized message - tighten your belts now. Lay workers off now. This might help you survive the nuclear winter starting up.

This does make sense. I've been through the dot-com blow-up, and the macro-economic indicators were never as bad as they are now. Back then, 9 of the 10 people in my close personal group were laid off. But Iceland wasn't going bankrupt! So yes, if you want to survive, learn from the lessons of those who have gone before you, like PlumTree and Google. Don't become the next Pets.com.

On a personal note, this is very sad for the people who are getting laid off. My small consolation to them - they'll come out stronger, maturer, better rounded, and with better jobs on the other side. Its not easy to understand right now, but I'm saying this from personal experience.

Signs of a Downturn - Adbrite Layoffs

2008-10-17T08:13:00.001-07:00

Adbrite, another Sequoia portfolio company, is feeling the pressure of Sequoia's doom-and-gloom lecture, and is laying off 40 of its 100 people, including the VPs of Finance and Marketing.

San Francisco-based Adbrite, which was spun out of Philip Kaplan's FuckedCompany.com half a decade ago, has $35 Million in funding, and made almost the same amount in revenues in 2007. They are one of the top ad networks, serving over One Beellionn ads. But the coming ad slowdown is going to affect them, no doubt. Adbrite folks think they'll come to about break-even after these layoffs, but my guess is they'll stay below profitability for a while.

Silicon Valley Layoffs - Not So Hi5

2008-10-17T02:42:00.001-07:00

Latin American favorite Hi5, which lags behind MySpace and FaceBook but has figured out a nice growth strategy, has asked 15 - 20 of its 100+ employees to leave. Thats sad, I know some very good folks there.

Too many layoff and shut-down announcements coming too close to each other. This is starting to get depressing. Again, hope these companies protect the remaining jobs by managing their cash flow more closely.

Crossed 100 Trades in October, using Zecco

2008-10-16T18:14:00.001-07:00

I love Zecco. Sure, they still have glitches, sometimes you can't do even basic stuff. But overall, they keep me smiling.

Zecco had given its existing customers unlimited free trades in October, as I had written before. Well, I'm happy to say that with half the month gone, I have already made 102 trades.

Yes, you heard that right. 102 trades by the morning of October 16th. Here's the screenshot from the end of trading on October 15th, showing me poised to leap over the 100-trades barrier