Independent voters/users will decide fate of AAPL

Like the presidential politics it is clear that democrats are voting for Obama just as existing iPhone users are going to buy iPhone5. Similarly republicans are going to vote for Romney just as existing Android users who are continuing to buy their Android phones whether from Google, HTC or Samsung. Just as this election is going to be decided by independents so will the selection of the phones be made by independents (neither an Apple fanboy nor an Android fanboy). According to JP Morgan study, success of iPhone5 may have a positive impact on the US GDP.

How will independents vote? To buy iPhone5 or Not!

There are three categories of independents who may make their decision differently

• People taking their first plunge to smartphones
• People taking their first plunge to touch based smartphones
• People unhappy with their existing phones

People taking their first plunge to smartphones

This may be the largest segment for success of Apple or Samsung. Many of these users are likely to be price sensitive and so Android may win here or the older iPhones (iPhone4S, iPhone4) may win some percentage of these users. Also since many of these users are looking for pre paid plans, Android is likely to win here too. However, Samsung may not be the winner here as there are many more cheaper Android smartphones available from other manufacturers. This segment is generally ignored by Apple.

People taking their first plunge to touch based smartphones

This segment is mainly the remaining Blackberry users who have finally decided to move to a touch based smartphone. In this case the likely winner will be Apple since iPhone is approved by many more companies and is relatively easier to use compared to Android smartphones

People unhappy with their existing smartphones

This segment is probably biased more towards iPhone users since Apple does keep its users more happy whether through its stores or other Apple fanboys. If Apple succeeds in creating more hype as iPhone5 launch approaches this segment will shift more in its favor.

Will iPhone5 be a victory for AAPL

Granted that iPhone5 launch was nothing spectacular but Apple will succeed due to support from its

• Existing iPhone users
• Users migrating from Blackberry
• Unhappy Android users

Thanks to my following fellow panelists who helped me with various questions including some from the audience

• Sanjeev Gupta (General Manager, Avaya)
• Ashwin Krishnan (Director, Product Management,Juniper Networks)
• Indranil Chatterjee (VP Product Management, Openwave Mobility)
• Toby Rush (CEO,EyeVerify)

The issues discussed can be split into the following main heading

• BYOD – Bring your own device
• Type of Device – Android, iOS or Windows
• Making a Business Case
• Security & Authentication
• Applications and App Stores
• Connectivity and Service Provider Issues

BYOD

With the consumerization of IT, consumers are more in control of what mobile devices they use. So rather than employees having multiple phones and tablets, enterprises have decided to allow employees to bring their own device or as someone put it more aptly as LYOD – lease your own device to the enterprise.

 Type of Device

Some discussions reaffirmed that RIM’s Blackberry failed to deliver to market expectation and is losing market share constantly. Apple iOS is very popular and almost the only tablet device in the corporate world. Android is important and with some new advancements like from Samsung in virtualization, it may become more enterprise ready. Microsoft Windows8 is great on paper but it is not clear if users will adopt it as fast as IT and/or Microsoft may like to see. Bottom line, any device that wins users will become the choice of enterprise as well.

 Making a Business Case

Sanjay Gupta, both in his session and at the panel, offered many examples of companies in healthcare and government who have justified use of iPad due to increased productivity like saving of 15 minutes per day of nurse time. May be we can share some of those slides in Slideshare at a later time.

 Security & Authentication

Security is paramount but focus of securing device needs to shift to securing enterprise data. VPN systems may not an ideal solution for securing mobile devices unlike PCs due to various reasons including power issues of mobile device. Toby Rush feels time for biometric security has now come with new cameras and additional capabilities on mobile devices and their software.

 Applications & App Stores

First and foremost, users need access to everyday files on their mobile devices something DocSync.Net offers. Then there is the issue of porting and running enterprise apps and with the fragmentation of so many devices this task is not easy. To know whether a particular app is secure or not is a challenge for which there are no clear answers but user education and enterprise authorized app stores were offered as possible solutions without any conclusion.

 Connectivity and Service Provider Issues

Ideally enterprises would like to get data only plans and family calling type plans for data services. The service provider billing systems will take some time to get there even if they are ready to offer such services. It was also felt that large operators like Verizon and AT&T have less incentive to offer these services and these services may initially come from regional operators.

 Conclusion

Enterprise mobility is a new frontier with many issues and so there are many opportunities for entrepreneurs and enterprising vendors in the eco systems to take advantage of it.

Do I need a co-founder? How do I chose one? What do I do if the relationship doesn’t work out?

These are some of the most frequent questions about co-founders that I have heard from entrepreneurs over the years. In this post, I’ll try to answer these, and a few other important related questions.

Do I need a co-founder?
The entrepreneurial journey, though exciting and romanticized with stories of huge successes, is actually really lonely. It is a place where the buck starts and stops with you. You have a great idea to start a new venture and the theory goes that if you can’t convince at least one other person to join the venture with you, how will you convince customers to buy into your vision and product/service. The bottom line is that you do need someone else to bounce your ideas off of, someone who offers a different perspective at least sometimes, someone who also feels that his/her success is tied to the venture just as yours is.

How many co-founders should I have?
There is really no right or wrong answer here. I have seen many successful companies with as few as 2 and as many of 11 co-founders. For every company there are critical skill sets that are needed to get it going. It could be an engineer and a business person, or it may need two different sets of engineering skills and a business person. For most companies, two to three people are sufficient as co-founders. Two co-founders is the most ideal from management perspective. Three, though okay in many cases, can become a crowd when new management is brought in and founders start taking sides.

What is the criteria for selecting a co-founder?
I have seen many companies with spouses as co-founders succeed, but as an employee I have stayed away from joining these type of companies and advise my friends to do the same. Often co-founders are friends, but is that the best way to select co-founders? I have seen many good friendships ruined after a startup venture goes south.

Every business needs some technical skill and some business acumen.  A good engineer can design something fancy but that doesn’t mean there’s a market for it or that it will sell. A good business person may know what will sell but if he or she can’t get someone to produce the right product, what good does it do? Co-founding teams should bring in complimentary, not overlapping, skills.

Should co-founders have the same equity stake?
If you asked me this question before my first startup, I would have said why not? Now that I have launched some startups, I would say there is no reason to have co-founders have the same equity stake. Most co-founders decide on the equity structure in a very arbitrary way. If you’re interested in more details about this topic, I recommend a very good book called The Founder’s Dilemmas.

I came up with a formula to make determining equity stakes easier:

Let us say founder A and B both start at the same time with similar value-add. Founder A is going to be the long term CEO while Founder B is going to be the VP of Engineering.

There are two parts to the equity:

• Founder’s Part
• Skills Part

Founder’s Part – This should be the same for both. If they started at different times or brought different contributions, that should be adjusted accordingly. But in our example, they’re even.

Skills Part – A CEO in a high-tech may get about 6-10% of the equity post Series A (when a VC or some accredited investor puts the money into company) while a VP of Engineering may only get 2%. So take this to pre-money level and assuming 50% dilution, it will be 12-20% (assume 16%) for the CEO and 4% for VP of Engineering.

Therefore 20% is based on skills and 80% is based on founding status. Founder A will get 16+40 = 56% while Founder B will get 4+40=44%

This is not the only way to do it, but it is something I have seen justifiable.

Can I fire a co-founder?
A company is a separate entity from the founder, and that relationship becomes even more separate when outside money is raised. If one of the co-founders is not performing or is being disruptive or unethical, you should definitely consider getting rid of him or her. However, never ever do this for wrong reasons, like depriving co-founders of their equity. Also, if and when you end up firing a co-founder, please do it with dignity. Everyone should be able to maintain their dignity in the process.

Conclusion
Deciding how many co-founders you need, who to bring aboard, and how to distribute equity all depend on your individual skills and the gaps you need filled. Whatever choice you make, be sure everyone is clear about their roles and agrees on the overall goals for the company.

When we polled users of Google Docs, these are the top five requirements:

• Access any document from my Computer as well as Google Docs and upload it to Google Docs from iPad

• Search content of any file on my Computer as well as Google Docs from iPad

• Edit content of any file on Google Docs right from within the app on iPad

• Downloading any Google Docs to iPad for offline viewing

• Additional security and control

In order to meet these requirements we created DocSync.Net app which is now available in iTunes. The following description goes into details of how these requirements are met:

Access – Users can access any of the last 50 files they worked on either on their computer or in Google Docs. Any of the documents from users’ computer can be uploaded to Google Docs from a simple touch as shown in the diagram below

Search – Users can search file name or content of file to find relevant files quickly from their iPad

Edit – Just simply select the Edit button on any document and it enables users to edit their files which are kept in Sync just as if you were accessing it on the computer

Offline Viewing – Any document you open on DocSync.Net is available for offline viewing. You can also explicitly use upload to iPad for any of the documents

Security – You can use an additional PIN on your computer to control access to these documents on your iPad. Moreover if you misplaced your iPad and after few wrong attempts, all of the documents uploaded to iPad are wiped out.

What would you like to see?

We have received requests for many more features and would like to know what would you like to see added? Please email to features@docsync.net with your suggestions.

Conclusion

If you want to securely access, search, edit, offline viewing and move documents from your computer to Google docs right from your iPad, DocSync.Net is the perfect solution.

On a broad level, presentations can be split into three main categories

• 1-on-1 presentations
• 1-to-many presentations
• Remote presentations

In this blog, we discuss the first two of these situations and provide tools and tips and evaluate iPad usefulness as a tool for making business presentation.

1-on-1 presentations

iPad is probably the best tool here – way better than laptop since that barrier of screen is removed as you can see in the picture below. For this category let us assume any situation where one can sit across the table with couple of people. For this purpose no screen projection tools are needed and iPad by itself is sufficient. However, you need to make sure your presentation is readily available not just in an online but also in an offline mode. Even though there are many tools on iPads to create presentations, the best approach still is to create presentation on your computer and then transfer it to iPad. Also avoid animations as they don’t transfer well on iPad.

Transferring your presentation from computer to iPad – There are three broad choices here

• Email to yourself – inefficient and cumbersome
• Putting it in a cloud like Dropbox and then saving it on iPad – inefficient and cumbersome but slight improvement over the first one
• Use a tool like DocSync.Net from iTunes and just select the file from your computer or cloud and it is automatically available on your iPad as shown on the picture on the right above.

1-to-many presentations

Your laptop is still a better tool for these situations than an iPad. Why? It is assumed that you definitely need to connect your output to an external monitor or projector. Needless to say that kind of connectivity is readily available from most laptops but for the iPad, you need to buy another connector from Apple or a third party. These connectors are available with VGA or HDMI options. We had a chance to hook our iPad to a projector and found some issues.

If you own an iPad1, probably none of these connectors will work as was my experience of having tried two of these. However, if you have the new shining iPad3 that Apple calls “The new iPad”, there are no issues but HDMI is preferred if you have an HDMI enabled projector or monitor. With our iPad2, I had the most consistent connectivity with VGA connectors. If you tend to move a lot while making presentations, the wire mess can also cause issues. I just wish there are more Airplay type projectors available in corporate environments.

Conclusion

For 1-to-many presentations, laptop is still a better tool but if you must use iPad to project, you will have the best options with iPad3. For 1-to-1 presentations, iPad is the best presentation device. However, you need to make sure your presentations created on computer are accessible. Of the three options of using Email or putting in the cloud and then transferring to iPad or just using DocSync.Net app to get your application on iPad, the later seems to be the best and most efficient alternative.

For the uninitiated, DEMO is like an American Idol but for entrepreneurs. Unlike American Idol, it only lasts for 2 days and winners only get one chance of 6 minutes to make their pitch along with an opportunity to showcase their products in the exhibit area. Every company comes with certain goals to the conference with launch publicity being number one followed by investor interest and partnership discussions.

Organization

The amount of preparation and the amazing efficiency with which this conference operates, I would like to congratulate not just the organizers but everyone else in the team for an excellent conference. Yes sometimes there are schedule delays and long waits for speakers but considering the number of companies doing live presentations, it is still amazing that conference works as well as it does.

Initial Feedback

For many companies this may be their first public showing of the product and hence it is a great forum to get initial feedback on your product and your pitch. Moreover the preparation that an entrepreneur has to go through to get ready for this including working with a demo coach, doing an on-stage and many off-stage rehearsals really prepares an entrepreneur well.

We also got to meet lot of other entrepreneurs who are also likely to be partners and users of our product. We got a lot of useful feedback from fellow entrepreneurs and managed to sign up a large number of beta customers. In that sense it was a successful event for us and probably for many other companies.

Sages and their feedback

After every six or so presentations, there was a sage panel of 4-5 experts giving their commentary on the pitches of various companies. Comparing it to American Idol, there were a lot of “Simon Cowell wannabes” in the sages and so entrepreneurs needed to have a thick skin while taking in the feedback. Most of the companies in a session were totally unrelated to each other and sometimes companies in pre funding were in the same session as a company in Series D round of funding thereby creating an unwarranted comparison.

The best sage panel, in my opinion, was the last one on Consumer wherein some of the sages looked at what was there and what can be done with the ideas and some sages like James Slavet of Greylock even made an effort to do some due diligence on his smartphone to see the background of the founders and taking that as part of his feedback.

Press and Buzz

Did Demo help companies in creating buzz? Yes it did but as usual the buzz varied from company to company as well as on how well the company leveraged the available resources.  We were lucky to get few articles written about us. Was there a lot of press at the show? Compared to last year, I felt that the press presence was somewhat light at the show with lot more press from IDG group of companies and not much from mainstream national media. However, I am hoping that as DEMO content spreads, it will create a more lasting buzz for many companies.

Investors

Meeting investors was not my prime goal but it sure was a goal for many entrepreneurs. I did get some interest from investors but I couldn’t guess as to how many investors were at the show and how many of them really made it to the exhibit area to meet with entrepreneurs. May be other entrepreneurs can chime in and share their experiences here especially the ones that came with that goal in mind.

What should be changed?

Rather than putting companies by broad technology categories, the companies should be classified by their stage i.e. Seed vs Series A vs Series B or by the amount of funding they are looking for. For example putting a late stage company like Fusion I-O in the same group as our pre-funded company DocSync was just a wrong fit. DEMO already has an example of that in Alpha Pitches and what I am suggesting is to make the similar changes to the overall agenda. In addition, the sages for each of the sessions should be actual investors who are interested in investing in this stage.

Clear Winners

Motorola is a winner since it got an excessive premium over its current share price. Microsoft is a winner since all of Android licenses now want to at least invest some portion of their resources on Microsoft’s Windows Phone and its latest Mango version of Windows Phone is making progress in the market. PC Mag’s article has done a good job in explaining this.

But how will Nokia, RIM and Apple  fare from Googorola?

Clear Losers

Google’s Android, which has been gaining in popularity, may see some defensive moves from its OEMs such as HTC, Samsung and LG who feel threatened by Google- Motorola phone despite Google’s assurance to the contrary. Google is a loser since it has overpaid for a patent portfolio that may not have the same level of relevance today as when these patents were developed. To quote Dan Ravicher, the executive director of the Public Patent Foundation from this Huffington Post article” There’s a patent bubble — a lot of speculation and bidding up. This reminds me of the housing bubble, the dot-com bubble. Five years from now, people will realize that they have overbid.”

What about Apple, Nokia, RIM and others?

Is Apple a loser in this? If OEM’s jump the Android boat, Apple will see less competition from Android. In that case, Google will put its energy in Motorola phone and in creating an end-to-end experience like Apple which may be more of a threat to Apple in the long term.

Is it a win for RIM, the makers of Blackberry phones? RIM has been losing market share and this may accelerate it. However, it also has a rich set of patents which will now be overvalued like that of Motorola’s thereby helping increase the valuation of the company if someone were to acquire it.

Is it a win for Nokia? Nokia had a choice of betting on either Android or Windows Phone and it chose the later and now must be happy with its decision. If Google indeed becomes an end-to-end supplier that will put Nokia at a disadvantage. Like RIM, it also has a very rich patent portfolio that may be overvalued if Microsoft were to pull the trigger on buying Nokia.

This may reduce the choice for both the consumer and mobile operators and when that happens prices go up and innovation suffers. So no matter which company wins, the consumer loses.

Conclusion

With this deal of Google buying Motorola, Microsoft and Motorola seem to be clear winners while Google and most of Android OEMs seem to be clear losers. Apple may benefit or lose depending on how Google handles this acquisition. RIM and Nokia may benefit or lose depending on what Microsoft may decide to do. This may also affect consumer and mobile operator choices when it comes to smartphones.