Working on new blog feater

This is the first test blogging from Xeequa to blogger

Social Media - moving from playful to strategic

Cisco, IBM, Walmart, Wholefoods, Starbucks and others invest millions in their social web presence. The investment is more on the human resource side than on systems. They don't advertise what they are doing but they are moving fast.



The Social Media Academy provides some insight in this week's complimentary webinar http://www.socialmedia-academy.com/html/introwebinar.cfm



- The impact of social media on businesses across all industries

- Identifying the largest pool of business opportunities

- Assessment of a company's social ecosystem http://xeeurl.com/A0848

- Developing a comprehensive social media strategy

- Creating a social media plan

- Reporting and analytics in social media - over 100 reporting tools

- ROI, resources and budget considerations

- Social media as a cross functional business accelerator

- Competing for mind, - and market share

- Building a successful social media practice



This Friday 4/24 - 9:00AM (PDT) Online conference (no charge)

http://www.socialmedia-academy.com/html/introwebinar.cfm

Enabling XeeURL Community

XeeURL community is now having a public portal page and blogs can be posted to a blogger blog. In order to get a post to a blog on blogspot, the post must be made "public" and the respective blog need to be entered into the "social networks page under setting and my profile.

Technology, Not War, Is the Solution to Publishing

As sad as it is, industrial media killed itself. It is NOT the Internet or technology for that matter that killed publishers it is the change of their business model from independent content circulation to advertising distribution.



A publisher used to make money by providing a given audience latest news, well researched and easy to consume. Readers paid for the news and publishers made a profit by balancing cost of news gathering and distribution with newspaper revenue. Rather simple model.

I explaind the shift in process here a few weeks ago:

http://www.customerthink.com/blog/what_publishers_killed_may_kill_blogger_too



@AxelS
About Newspapers
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Facebook Pages

We started a new Facebook page for Social Media Academy. Introducing webinars and educational events. Please join the groups and become fan.

Quo Vadis Facebook?

The social networking company is looking for money – lots of money. How many do they really need and what then?

2007 estimated headcount 450

2008 estimated headcount 800
2008 estimated cash flow negative $150MM
Above numbers reported by TechCrunch

2009 estimated headcount 1,200
That translates to a cost structure of roughly $200,000,000 (200MM)
With revenues (I don’t see more than 100MM) this is $100MM under.
Now add the enormous cost of data centers that need to stream the videos, the photos and the rest of the application.

The clock is ticking. So what options has Facebook?
1) Cut Cost / Layoff
Either cut staff in half to get to break even
That’s possible but hard to do. But better saving 50% than losing all.
It would also mean the company is getting profitable and may do an IPO in a year or two.
2) Double revenue
But with advertising? That’s so much harder when even advertising machine Google admits that ad revenue is flat – meaning it’s probably going down. After all, the world is beginning to realize that the advertising model is not a business model after all.
3) Additional Funding
Get $500 Million to survive 5 more years, freeze hiring and use the time to develop a product/service value based business model – probably the hardest but still possible. In MHO the only way to keep current investors happy. Remember Jack Walsh: "Shareholder value is the dumbest thing in the world:"
4) Sell
OK then there is the option to sell the whole package - better now than never. Maybe for a billion or two - again remember Jack Welsh.

Then there is competition (possible acquirer):
1) Google with $16B cash in the bank has some nice little wiggle room
2) Less aggressive but more stable LinkedIn could weak up (I know hard to believe) and with just a few smart tactical moves get really dangerous.
3) MySpace – don’t underestimate those guys. They are less strategic more like a news paper driven network – but they have 3 things: a) Huge momentum, b) Financial backing c) the option to break into business (they are just a bid sleepy in that regard)
4) Microsoft? Not really. No vision, totally a-social DNA, no momentum… just money and then we could list any other company with money.
5) The SAP / Oracle world. Hmm interesting. Unlike Microsoft, they haven’t burned their name in social media yet. Just two massive companies but may become an interesting contender in the game in the next two years.

Disclosure: The above numbers are just rough estimates.
But you get the idea

@AxelS

The king is dead - long live the king

After focusing my blogging on Xeequa and lately on Social Media Academy I decided to to do some personal blogging one in a while. And as such I revitalize this blog here at Blogger.

Generation Y

Y is after X - it's that simple. But Y is very different!!!!

97% own a Personal Computer
94% own a cell phone
75% of the college students have a social network account

About 76 Million are entering the job space right now.
Businesses better get ready to know about the power and connectivity of that generation. If you are not connected you are out.

Social Media - where do you go

Social media has been an interesting ride. Unlike technology that was pushed into the market and a lot of ad dollars made it well known - it was the opposite. The market picked it up and then many asked - what happened?

Every once in a while things change at speed of light and many still didn't even know. Why? Because 1 billion of the 6 billion people on earth communicate amongst each other (like the 15 - 25 year old) without letting the rest participate in the conversation. Then once we all know it we lokk back and just wonder ;-)

Alternative Financing

I came across an interesting white paper put together by SaaS-Capital and ThinkStrategies: “Understanding the Financial Implications of the SaaS Business Model.” It doesn't need to be always Venture Capital.

Also I set down with a fellow CEO this morning discussing the implications of his highly engaged and emotional investors. Three investors own 52% of the company and have 3 different opinion what the strategy of the company should be. What's left for the CEO and management team? Leaving the company.

Fortunately the market is shifting rapidly... alternatives grow equally fast.

The decadence of Venture Capital

Venture capital is out. The financial world is evolving and so are investment strategies. In a recent post Guy Kawasaki pledged for focusing on inexperienced entrepreneurs. About a week ago I was on a panel with Henry Wong from Garage Ventures inviting everybody who want to start a company to grab his business card. His pitch: "Don't worry about valuation - think what you can do with all the money".

An experienced entrepreneur would just roll his eyes and walk away. The ROI on Sandhill Road is no better than Wall Street. So why take the risk? VCs are in trouble and the latest post "In search of inexperience shows it".

The 7 reasons why entrepreneurs avoid Venture Capital today:

1) Ownership
Creating a company and following the entrepreneurial instinct is more than just fulfilling a dream to be one’s own boss. It is creating something that is better than what we have today, a journey to find people who help shape the idea, will buy it because it is better and a journey of evolution, improvement success and failure. Entrepreneurs need partners and not a financial owner that takes 50% of a company for a hand full of dollars and make it their own.

2) Passion
Entrepreneurs are extremely passionate about their idea and need to go their way with no interruption and constant "help" from an investor. Passion is not a guarantee for success but a key ingredient that once broken, breaks the business

3) Founding Leadership
A recent report from Morgan Stanly compared the world leading innovators such as Microsoft, Google, Cisco and others. One of the metrics was passionate founders in the executive bench. 9 out of ten got a check. VCs typically replace the leadership team within 3-5 years and bring "experienced" executives to the team, making the founder a second degree player.

4) Business Objectives
VCs are in the business’ business. Making money from shoving around companies. Butting less and less money in the first place to invest in more and degrade to 1:10 ration of a winning deal to a 1:20 ration. It's also called risk management. Entrepreneurs aren't players who like to play in that category. Business objectives of both groups have departed to far from each other.

5) Disruption
True entrepreneurs come up with disruptive ideas and try to make a difference. VCs are not really looking for such ideas - even so they say so. When Google was founded, it was Andreas Bechtolsheimer, one of the founding members of Sun Microsystems who gave Google money not a VC - Jee who would invest in this where we have Yahoo. Since Google went public VCs invested in over 50 search engines. Very disrupting. VCs didn't invest in MySpace or YouTube in the first place but now invest in 100ds of social networks or video sites - very disrupting.

6) Investment Profile
True Entrepreneurs ceased building their business plan to match a best practices list of people like Guy Kawasaki hoping that it matches the trend. The opposite is the case, true entrepreneurs have counterintuitive ideas, don't follow mean stream and create businesses in very different ways. entrepreneurship is no longer matching the idea of a VC to invest in.

7) Venture Capital Success
Entrepreneurs became very critical when it comes to the success of a VC. While some entrepreneurs don't really care as long as they get the money - true entrepreneurs do care. Today’s ROI of an average VC firm is lousy. They are under huge pressure to deliver results to their investors in order to maintain their management fees of several hundred thousand dollars per head and keep their Aston Martins and Ferraries. That pressure makes them irrational. And the downfall continues.



At the same time very attractive alternatives raised from that downfall. Healthy individual investors are much more likely to invest in disruptive technologies and true entrepreneurs. Large successful companies all have investment arms and seek people with new ideas and the ability to make the idea a successful reality. Even banks, which kind of evaporated from the entrepreneur’s scene, are back with very creative offers. And as Garage Ventures strategy is just a representation of what other VCs doing, seeking inexperienced entrepreneurs at all cost - the success rate will further decline until Venture Capital may completely reinvent itself sometimes in the very distant future.

Clearly people like me know that they are "unfundable" after stating their opinion. But that's the point, we don't care. Venture capital is just no longer of any interest - we are going after true investors who have only one goal: using their money to make more money - instead of expressing their opinions on tactical measures at board meetings.

Yahoo blocks Xeequa and others

It looks like Yahoo has a new spam filter. All emails from Xeequa, Tanooma and ChannelExcellence are blocked by Yahoo. We are working on the issue but it is extremely difficult to deal with Yahoo - so in the meantime GMAIL accounts work just fine.

To call Yahoo for support is another interesting exercise: pay $29

Oh well - another item in the comparison list Google vs. Yahoo

Internet Monopoly

Today I tried to get the new Fiber to the home from Verizon (FiOS). Unfortunately our area is not served by Verizon. O-ton Verizon sales rep :"You know it is a monopoly we can't serve your area, AT&T is". Hmm - I tries AT&T but they don't have any high speed Internet in our area. So I checked back with my current provider Comcast Cable - yes, I have Internet via cable but when I check bandwidth with my little tool I see upload speed of some 70 Kb.

Wow - and that all happens in Silicon Valley. Some times I hope I would be somewhere in Eastern Europe, 5MB fiber to the home.

So was that what we had in mind when we went from a government owned telecom to the "free market"?

Can you hear me - can you hear me now?

Happy New Year 2007

With the beginning of the new year and changes in the blog software I'm experimenting with a new Blog for Xeequa and updating this blog. The new software for Blogger is pretty cool - B U T as I converted it to the new format I guess I lost a lot of the old customizations such as the Technorati Links, Feedburner Links etc. Oh well...

Please visit also my new blog which is http://Xeequa.blogspot.com

Web 2.007 (Web two dot oo seven)

And of course – in the typical spirit of Silicon Valley – here are some more predictions:

- YouTube will have much more users then MySpace
- Web 2.0 will enter the business world
- LinkedIn will go public
- Investments in traditional software will be next to nothing end of 07
- The number of Internet users: 1 Billion
will become the "number of the year" for all marketers
- World of Warcraft may be another IPO candidate
but may be purchased by Sony and runs on the “cell”
- Xeequa will have more customers by end of 2007 than SFDC
(just kidding – but you get the ambition)
- Second Life will become the leading virtual business party spot
- TV and print adds will further plunge to total none importance
- Relevance as measured by Technorati, Alexa and others
will become the market cap index for private companies

Let me know what you predict :-)

Xeequa receives first award

What an honor - the company is not even launched yet and we get our first award. On Zolis block you can read:
And the Winner of the Weirdest Company Name Award is: Xeequa
I couldn't help to get some explanation. But hear the whole story on the 15th when we launch the company.
In any case, thanks Zoli.

Xeequa Company Launch

For many this this will come as a surprise. Only a hand full of people and a team of engineers knew about it. Today we declare end of stealth.

January 15th 2007 I will launch an new force in the collaboration space and particular Indirect Business. Xeequa, the new company is in business to help companies instantly create and manage profitable partner alliances. Unlike today’s channel management solutions, which are owned by one vendor for “their” channel, Xeequa allows instant Cross-Company Collaboration for all companies with all partners simultaneously. All based on Web 2.0 technology.

Tanooma, the SaaS directory, will also early next year come out of Beta. We already changed the advertising mechanism to Adsense by Google which allows us to simply interact with Google to leverage our ad space. SaaS companies can self register; self service their profile so that Tanooma is pretty much a fully automated - self supporting entity. Registering a company or searching through the SaaS industry on Tanooma is completely free of charge and we have no intention to charge for being represented there. That allows us to have the most complete directory in the SaaS space.

SIIA OnDemand Conference

An interesting conference – somewhat competing with Saascon in San Francisco. While Saascon was directed to SaaS End Consumer and bringing SaaS closer to the broader public, "OnDemand" was a conference for industry leaders discussing the future of SaaS.

The first few presentations reflected the clear trends and expectations that SaaS is going mainstream and many speakers and panelists predicted that SaaS will replace many on premise applications in the next few years. However some on premise applications like global large scale ERP implementations will remain behind the firewall for quite some years. An analogy was drawn to the 80's when PCs replaced terminals - yet today - 25 years later - mainframes and even terminals are still in business. The SaaS future seems to be in the hands of the new generation software companies who are built for SaaS from ground up. Discussions made obvious that companies who need to change from a license product business to an on-demand model will have a very hard time. While some predict that most license software companies will fail to make the move, others put the example of Concur up, who successfully made that transition in a two year effort.

An interestingly large portion of the conversation on the podium and on the floor was around indirect channels. While sales organizations are not large enough and marketing budgets are limited, SaaS vendors need to find ways to attract partners to spread the word and help implement their solutions. Some companies present their successes with channels.

2 month Sabbatical

Wow - 2 month through the US from coast to coast. Yes, this was a very educational, interesting and relaxing tour. Never in my live I had 2 month off - and yes it is hard to get back into business mode. On the other hand this was so helpful to better understand the country, the diverse cultures, peoples, challenges and opportunities. We came back thinking "California is an island".

Software as a Service is big - in California. But in the rest of the US? We talked probably to more than 100 different folks in Bed & Breakfasts, Hotels, Motels, Restaurants, Gas Stations, Supermarkets, in Parks or elsewhere - not a single person had an idea what Software as a Service is. Hmmm - so how are we doing in terms of SaaS marketing?

We visited computer stores: "What is hot these days?" "Multimedia in any way or shape." Videos, photos, MP3... Any business around Internet? Cable Modems, better screens, faster machines, a laptop for grandpa. On software? Antivirus programs. Microsoft? Hmm don't know nothing hot.

Now we are back and totally recharged

Interviewing Channel Thought Leaders

I interviewed several channel thought leaders from within the SaaS industry and share the details in my other blog "Channel-Excellence".

The essence so far:
The SaaS Channel is finally coming into existence. It is not so much the traditional VAR and Reseller now moving to SaaS, but much more completely new companies that form a business specifically to fill the gaps of the SaaS industry. These catalysts do basically 3 things right - that truly enhances the value of the SaaS vendors:

1) They connect (integrate) multiple SaaS applications to a complete information infrastructure (Implementation Services).
2) They provide additional ongoing services including content creation, modification or improvement in very many shapes (Recurring Services Model) .
3) They help smaller local businesses to overhaul and improve their very individual business processes and leverage the fast to implement SaaS application to provide tools to actually service those improved processes (Consultative Services).

The SaaS channels are true catalysts to the SaaS industry. They work in a very different way than traditional VARs and resellers did - and exactly that is the value they provide. SaaS Catalysts accelerate the SaaS industry and will become a true cornerstone to our future.