Zimbra
Ajax enabled software. The cool thing about Zimbra is that they have a way to run offline. They are showing an email client right now that let’s you read and send emails while offline. Then when you reconnect they sync with the server. Pretty cool. They white label to hosting providers. They showing a Zimbra client skinned like gmail – for demo purposes only of course. Finding developers meaning knowing people and getting the people you worked with before. Mistake: integrated all the parts. They are working on splitting out the components so users can use just the wiki or just the email.
Veoh
Internet television peer casting network. Share high quality video via peer to peer networks – like a Tivo for the Internet. To appeal to large markets you need to have a large war chest. Finding developers is one of the biggest problems there is. Raised 34 million dollars for previous peer to peer security company. Biggest mistake – focused on how to move large amounts of data first instead of focusing on the simple site first. Youtube sold for 1.65 billion. Missed out on that. Advice: The question is where do you stop. Chose how far you want to take your company – how far can you stretch yourself into new areas. You have to pick something and focus.
Wink
Social search engine. Users put together collections of things they find. Users ‘wink’ stuff they find to vote it up. They are adding features that let you search for people and find their social presence online. Get a small group use small money from angel investors. Mistake: Put out a product too early. It’s hard to determine when you should release your product. Advice: how do you chose what thing is going to work. Conventional surveys and focus groups don’t work anymore. You have to put something out there. If it is going to work it will just work via the grassroots/viral marketing.
Weblogs Inc
Sold it AOL. Produces Engadget etc. Currently working on side project – trying to bring netscape back by turning it into a social news site. Wisdom of the Crowd can turn into Madness of the Mob. He believes they get the spam and the untruth out of the system. They add 1000 members a day. We go after developers who have jobs and find the best talent. Finding developers is not difficult. Biggest mistake – about six blog posts that I wished I hadn’t posted. Advice: Focus on one thing. Stay laser focused.