This guest post was written by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
partners John Doerr
and Ellen Pao
. We covered KP’s increase in the size of the iFund last week, and additional insights from KP’s Matt Murphy on the iPad. This post goes into a lot more detail on KP’s investments in the first iFund, and what opportunities they see for the iPad.
It’s hard to imagine that once there was no Internet. Just 15 years ago there was no browser, no web point-and-click. It was 1994, and Steve Jobs had left Apple. Steve was making Toy Story, and object-oriented software for Next.
Then one day Bill Joy showed me a beta version of Mosaic, the FIRST web browser. It was magic. Bill said “John, I have NO idea where this is going. You just better dive in.”
The rest of the 90’s were a ONCE-in-a-lifetime experience. Entrepreneurs created the Web, and great ventures – Netscape, Amazon, Ebay, Google, and others. And they changed our lives. Silicon Valley became the Florence of the New, Networked Economy.
The advent of the iPad feels like deja-vu, like it’s happening all over again. Not once, but TWICE-in-a-lifetime.
Inventing The Future
Newsweek put it best… “Steve has the uncanny ability to cook up gadgets we didn’t know we needed… but suddenly can’t live without.” Steve showed us what computer legend Alan Kay told us… namely, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
At Kleiner Perkins we say “If you can’t INVENT the future, the next best thing… is to FUND it.”
The iFund
So two years ago Apple and Kleiner Perkins announced an unexpected collaboration: the $100 million iFund. The best venture fund for mobile entrepreneurs.
Think back to March 6, 2008. The iFund idea was risky – some thought crazy. There was no 3G iPhone. No apps. No appstore. And no iFund.
Today the iFund is 14 ventures. 3 are stealth. We are proud to have backed great entrepreneurs in communications, gaming, publishing, media, mobile advertising, and mobile commerce. The iFund companies include:
- Booyah
– Creating new forms of entertainment to the masses by bringing together elements of the real world and the digital world. Booyah’s MyTown is the largest social check-in platform today, with over 1.6 million users checking in 4 million times per day.
- Cooliris
– A 3D interface for browsing vast amounts of rich media content on the iPhone and web.
- GOGII – Leading free texting (textPlus), communication, and group social interaction product for mobile, serving over 5 million users who have exchanged over 2 billion messages on textPlus.
- iControl
– Stay connected in real-time to what matters most – family, property, home, and business-from anywhere in the world, anytime, day or night.
- InMobi
– The largest independent mobile ad network, reaching mobile users in 37 countries.
- ngmoco
– The first iPhone/iPad-only games publisher with 20+ titles and the Plus Network for 3rd party developers. ngmoco’s games are installed on over one-third of all iPhone / iPod users and played over 20 million minutes per day.
- Pelago (Whrrl)
– Mobile social network and discovery app that allows you to find people, places, events, and trends through the eyes of your friends and other people on the Whrrl platform.
- Pinger
– A publisher of great utility and entertainment apps for iPhone, with 13 hit titles on iPhone including Doodle Buddy, Photo Chop and TextFree.
- Shazam
– The world’s leading mobile music discovery and socialization application – enabling consumers to experience and share music with others.
- shopkick
– Focused on the intersection of mobile and the physical retail world, shopkick’s goal is to dramatically improve the experience of consumers’ shopping experience.
- Zynga mobile
– The world’s largest social gaming network, bringing social games to iPhone and iPod Touch.
Each of these companies has received capital from the iFund and participated in bi-annual iFund Summits with other founders, CEOs and industry leaders. Through this network, we’ve seen phenomenal collaboration between iFund companies and tremendous learning in a space that evolves rapidly and changes daily.
iFund ventures have had well over 100 million downloads. And we expect more than $100 million in revenue from these companies this year. We’ve already committed $100 million, and raised another $330 million from others. That’s almost ½ billion dollars.
Good News – Bad News
That’s the good news. Truly good news. But the bad news – is that at the worst possible time, on eve of the iPad, the iFund is out of money.
The first rule of venture capital is (to quote my friend Coach Campbell) is…“you gotta have the friggin’ money.” It’s hard to be a venture capitalist if you don’t have the money.
Doubling Down
So we’re doubling down on the iFund, increasing its size to $200 million dollars. Here’s the real reason why…
The original PCs in the early 80’s were pretty crummy, that is, until 1984 when Apple introduced the mouse and the Mac… Back then Alan Kay, inventor of the Dynabook tablet, said “The Mac is the first PC worth criticizing.”
Fast forward to 2007. When Steve introduced the iPhone, Alan Kay told him “Steve, make the screen size 5 by 8 inches and you’ll rule the world.”
Welcome, iPad
On Saturday (April 3) the iPad arrived. We believe it will rule the world.
I’ve touched it, held it, and caressed it. It feels gorgeous. It feels like touching the future.
It is not a big iPod. But it IS a very big deal.
The New World
We’re going from the Old World to a brave New World.
- From the Old World of the traditional, tired window interfaces… to the wonderful new world of TOUCH.
- From the Old World of Point and Click to the new SWOOSH of Fluidity.
- Instead of old, artificial, indirect interfaces, the iPad is direct and NATURAL.
- Instead of WYSIWyg – what you see is what you get – it is WYTIWis. What You Touch… IS what IS.
- Instead of holding a MOUSE, you’re holding MAGIC.
The iPad is the beginning of the New World, the post-PC era.
One More Thing… The Future
April’s iPad shipment is just the beginning. It is truly, just a beginning.
Twice in the last 15 years we’ve witnessed 100,000 flowers blooming. Flowers of applications for the Web, and then for the iPhone. Both were paradigm shifts in how we interact.
Here comes the third shift: interacting fluidly on full and fast screens with vast information stored locally. And that will start a third renaissance of software.
Beyond Browsers
It’s time to move beyond spreadsheets and word processors, beyond web sites limited by browsers… to interactive, connected applications with incredible simplicity, speed, and fluidity.
To a future that transforms games and entertainment, education and publishing, healthcare, communications and commerce.
And almost everything else.
The tablet, the iPad is where these new dreams will blossom. And where the revolution is happening.
Much More Performance
Bill Joy says the key to more performance is lower power. Over the next decade he sees 3 times better batteries, and 10 times lower power chips. So we should be able to run, for the same price, 30 times as much application.
And as for storage, there’s no reason that can’t be 30x also. Or, about a terabyte of local, faster, solid state storage. (A terabyte is several hundred movies)
Interpersonal Surfaces
What’s important is the new ways tablet computers will be used. They won’t just be reactive, responding to commands. They’ll also be proactive.
They will be much more than personal computers. They’ll be interpersonal surfaces and services. Working seamlessly, unobtrusively, and comfortably in the spaces between us, between you and me and others.
To iPADdicts and Entrepreneurs…
I like to define entrepreneurs this way: Entrepreneurs do MORE than anyone thinks possible. With LESS than anyone thinks possible.
At Kleiner we’re awed by entrepreneurs. They surprise us with the improbable – they don’t know what’s impossible.
So to Steve, Supreme Commander of the Rebel Forces, and to the entrepreneurs at Apple, congratulations!
To iPADdicts and entrepreneurs everywhere: there’s never been a better time than now to start or join a new venture, and launch a new application or service.
Whether you’re seeking $50K or a few million or a great job… contact us.
John Doerr, jdoerr@kpcb.com
Matt Murphy, mmurphy@kpcb.com
Chi-Hua Chien, cchien@kpcb.com
Bing Gordon, bgordon@kpcb.comAileen Lee, alee@kpcb.com
Ellen Pao, epao@kpcb.com
Ted Schlein, tschlein@kpcb.com+1 650 233-2750
Company: Apple Website: apple.com/ipad Launch Date: January 27, 2010 The Apple iPad, formerly referred to as the Apple Tablet, is a touch-pad tablet computer announced in January 2010, to be shipped on… Learn More
Website: kpcb.com Location: Menlo Park, California, United States Founded: 1972 Investments: Breathe Technologies, CardioDx, Booyah, EdeniQ, Amonix, Juvaris BioTherapeutics, TransMedics, DHgate, and more Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) is a well known Silicon Valley venture capital firm, due in large part to their past success. They were early investors in many significant companies, including… Learn More
Companies: Amazon, Google, Zazzle, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Intuit, Sun Microsystems, Move John Doerr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Together with KPCB’s partners, John has backed many of America’s best entrepreneurial leaders,… Learn More
Companies: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Bing was Chief Creative Officer of Electronic Arts from 1998 to 2008.
He joined EA in 1982 and helped write the founding business plan that attracted Kleiner Perkins as an initial… Learn More
Companies: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Chi-Hua Chien joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2007. At KPCB he focuses on investments in the iFund (mobile applications),… Learn More
Companies: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Ellen Pao joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2005.
Prior to KPCB, Ellen held various operating roles at BEA, including head of business development for products, site manager for new mobile products, and lead for new engineering efforts in… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBase
Monday, May 24, 2010
“If you can’t INVENT the future, the next best thing… is to FUND it.” Wow. 'Nuff said.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Seems Social Media's really about the 5W's+1H / BBW: Social Media's New Mantra: Location, Location, Location
Social Media's New Mantra: Location, Location, Location
Fast-growing network Foursquare is luring potential buyers
By Diane Brady
Here's Dennis Crowley's ideal way to end the day: At 6 p.m., his iPhone alerts him to the evening's plans. It has already checked his friends' calendars and knows who's free tonight, so it suggests a restaurant they've all wanted to try. It notes when a table is available and informs him that three other friends are planning to hang out across the street so they can meet up later. And it all will happen—soon, he says—through Foursquare, the location-based mobile application and Web site Crowley co-founded with Naveen Selvadurai last year. "Every day, we tick off another couple of things that get us closer to being able to do that," says Crowley, 33.
Harnessing GPS-enabled mobile technology to let users broadcast their location is not a new idea. A service called Loopt has been offering friend-locating apps, and Google's (GOOG) Latitude feature on its maps can. Foursquare, a 20-person company that operates out of a crowded loft in New York's East Village, adds a game-like twist. Its 1 million-plus users earn badges by "checking in" at certain bars, restaurants, and other venues by pressing a button on the app upon arrival. A user can earn a "mayor" icon from a bar if he or she has checked in more than anyone else during the previous 60 days. The business model is simple: Generate as big a user base as possible and sell national brands and local merchants on the possibilities of marketing to people as they congregate—ready to eat, shop, or spend.
The service has certainly gotten buzz. On Apr. 16 (that's four times four—four squared), fans held "Foursquare" parties in more than 150 cities worldwide. The British soccer team Manchester City asked supporters to check-in en masse during the May 5 match at home against Tottenham Hotspur. More than 3,000 restaurants, bars, and other venues use Foursquare to attract customers with promotions.
Crowley says Foursquare is drawing interest from potential buyers in Silicon Valley, though he won't say who he's been talking to. Placing valuations on startups like Foursquare is famously difficult; their revenues are nascent, and the lasting impact of their technology is difficult to gauge. Tristan Walker, a Stanford MBA student moonlighting as Foursquare's head of business development, says the company brings in money from paid partnerships. PepsiCo (PEP), Zagat, and more than a dozen other brands have signed deals with Foursquare. Walker won't disclose terms or comment on whether Foursquare is profitable.
The key question is whether Foursquare's check-in twist is enough to build a sustainable business. Gowalla and Brightkite have built rival networks complete with their own check-in features, while established names like Twitter and Yelp also boast location-based tools.
At least some partners think Foursquare is unique among competitors. The cable television network Bravo (GE) launched its partnership with Foursquare in February. The more than 10,000 viewers who have been participating in Bravo's Foursquare promotion can "unlock" badges by checking in at locations linked to Bravo shows. (The venues range from restaurants favored by some of the celebrities on Top Chef to retailers popular with the women on Real Housewives.) Participants also get tips on what to do or buy at the locations and, in some cases, earn prizes for getting there first. "It's such a unique way to talk to our audience at a local level," says Ellen Stone, Bravo's senior vice-president for marketing.
Given the growing number of players now jumping into geo-location services, Crowley has heard the arguments that he should get out while he's ahead. "I view Foursquare as more of a feature that gets integrated into a larger service," says Michael Gartenberg, a partner with the research firm Altimeter Group in New York. "It's just a matter of time before the Facebooks and Twitters of the world start to offer check-in as a service." Gartenberg adds that he has stopped using Foursquare. "It was like a demanding girlfriend who wasn't giving me a whole lot in return," he says. "All I got to be was the mayor of the bagel shop."
Bonin Bough, PepsiCo's global director of digital and social media, says his company has been experimenting with Foursquare. Pepsi teamed up with the social network last December for a charity drive in New York. Every time someone checked in within the city limits, Pepsi donated 4 cents to a nonprofit called CampInteractive—to a maximum of $10,000. Bough says he was impressed with the user response on that campaign, and is intrigued with the way Foursquare's game aspect motivates people to go to events. Still, he's trying out other location-based services, including the company's own "Pepsi Loot" initiative that gives customers points for buying drinks in more than 200,000 restaurants. "It's a huge opportunity," he says. "But I don't think we'll know the winners for a while."
Crowley says he's too busy building his company to dwell on an exit strategy. "All this talk about valuations and exits is a distraction. We're doing interesting things. Users seem to love it." He's been down the startup road before: As a graduate student at New York University, Crowley developed a location-based text-messaging service called Dodgeball with Alex Rainert (now a Foursquare employee) that he sold to Google in 2005 for undisclosed terms. "We were there for two years, trying to make it bigger and get people excited about it," says Crowley. "We were like, 'Man, if they turn it off, we have to build another one.'"
The bottom line: Foursquare's location-based marketing is a "huge opportunity" that is sure to attract more competition.
Brady is senior writer at Bloomberg Businessweek in New York.
The music biz is getting more personal. / Reuters: Concert promoters embrace new media for fan services
Concert promoters embrace new media for fan services
Antony BrunoFri May 7, 2010 10:48pm EDT
DENVER (Billboard) - Talk about good timing.
Technology | Music | Media
After graduating last year with a degree in computer science from Sacramento (California) State University, 24-year-old Alex Rude decided to try his hand at iPhone application development by creating a scheduling app for that summer's Vans Warped tour, which he was planning to attend for the fifth year.
The idea stemmed from Warped's practice of announcing each day's lineup the morning of the event, which can be a hassle for fans trying to keep track of which act is playing when and where. So Rude bought a Mac and taught himself how to code for the iPhone. A couple of weeks later, he finished the app and, to his surprise, Apple approved it.
"That actually shocked me, because I thought there would be some kind of copyright restriction," he says.
In fact, there was. Warped new-media manager Paul Kersh discovered Rude's app a week after it went live and had to make a quick decision.
"We could either sue him for using the Warped trademark or we could hire him," Kersh says. "Of course we ended up hiring him."
Since then, Rude's app has gone from an unofficial fan scheduler with only a few thousand downloads to the official Warped tour mobile app that's been downloaded more than 30,000 times and typically ranks among the top 100 music apps in the iTunes store. Rude is now creating similar apps for the Mayhem Festival and Country Throwdown tours.
'THE PLACE WHERE IT'S ALL AT'
The story illustrates how important mobile apps are to organizers of summer music festivals. In addition to Warped, such events as Bonnaroo, Coachella and Lollapalooza are using mobile apps to enhance the concert experience for attendees as part of a broader new-media push that also includes social media and Internet initiatives.
"It's a continuation of what we're seeing with mobile technology becoming the place where it's all at," Kersh says. "It's really changed how we interact with fans at the show itself."
The Warped app, for example, goes far beyond the scheduler that started it all. It also features such items as information about each band (complete with links to buy their music at iTunes), news, tour date info and integrated Twitter feeds. Future updates will include automatic notification messages telling fans when the bands they've entered into their scheduler are about to play and a promotional code to download 10 free songs from iTunes.
The Coachella app featured an interactive map, a friend finder, photo uploading tools and the ability to mark on a map the location of a car or campsite. And Bonnaroo organizers say they're in the final stages of selecting a developer to create a "much more robust and functional" app than what it offered last year, including maps and integration with Twitter and Facebook.
But there are downsides, as organizers at Coachella discovered this year. Spotty coverage and mobile network congestion rendered many of the app's features useless. Also, only a fraction of attendees have smart phones, which is why many are also creating simpler mobile Web versions.
BUILDING A LIFESTYLE BRAND
This push into mobile is indicative of a broader effort to bring more new-media capabilities to live music fans, essentially blending a real-life experience with a virtual one. While mobile apps are designed primarily for onsite use, other digital efforts are intended to drive ticket sales and establish a year-round connection with a festival brand to keep fans engaged and to profit from additional sponsorship opportunities.
"One of the things we've realized about our events is that there's a community built around them that is much larger than the people attending," says Rick Farman, co-founder of Superfly Productions, which organizes the Bonnaroo and Outside Lands festivals, among others. "Yes, it does push people to attend. But where we think it can go is to build a much bigger lifestyle brand that is monetizable in some way."
Both Warped and Bonnaroo have amassed more than 100,000 friends on their respective Facebook pages, and both are establishing their own dedicated social networks as well.
The Warped website, created four years ago, has more than 350,000 registered members who can post photos and comments and connect with friends. Kersh credits the site for driving preorder sales up 20 percent above last year's previous record-setting number of preorders.
Superfly, meanwhile, created the Bonnaroo 365 site, which features streaming video of a handful of performances from the 2009 festival as its first experiment in establishing the event as a year-round brand. Farman declined to provide specifics but said the reaction to the site was good enough that he's stopped adding content to it in order to formulate a more lasting business model based on advertising and, possibly, subscriptions.
Looking ahead, festival organizers are contemplating how to incorporate such buzzworthy technologies as location-based services (such as Foursquare) and perhaps even mobile ticketing and payment systems.
"If you're in the business of promoting music or events," Farman says, "and you don't have a presence on those platforms or understand how they're different from one another, you're not doing your job."
(please visit our entertainment blog via www.reuters.com or on blogs.reuters.com/fanfare/)
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Tuesday, May 04, 2010
A coupon coup! Mobile Marketer: KFC campaign sees 13 percent in-store mobile coupon redemption
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KFC campaign sees 13 percent in-store mobile coupon redemption
May 4, 2010
KFC added 6,000 subscribers to its mobile loyalty program and saw a 13 percent redemption rate for coupons sent to the list over a one-month period.
The database and coupons were part of the fast-food giant’s “Relief Plan” campaign, which was comprised of four distinct weekly offers. KFC saw a significant bump in participation when traditional media outlets were engaged to get the message out – including an email blast to a group of existing subscribers.
“J&A was looking for a way to make KFC’s message more integrated with consumers and increase traffic via exceptional coupon offers,” said Jarrett Klein, national sales manager at Cellit Marketing, Phoenix. “The mobile platform accomplished just that, and brought more dimension to KFC’s overall media mix.”
J&A Integrated Thinking is a full-service agency that has worked with KFC for more than 40 years, providing local marketing services and media planning and buying for 50 markets and approximately 1,500 retail units.
During the campaign, the average store redemption was 13 percent. A whopping 14,000 coupons were sent during the one-month promotion.
A follow-up survey identified which offers consumers preferred over others, enabling J&A and KFC to better hone content going forward. Forty-five percent of the database participated in the survey.
Here are some screen grabs of traditional media promotiong the mobile program:
Method for success
Upon J&A's creation of the Relief Plan, KFC used Cellit’s technology to collect information from participants that would allow segmentation and targeting of users in future mobile campaigns.Each week, the KFC team at J&A sent out a different mobile offer to the database, rotating through a buy-one-get-one free offer, a percentage-off discount offer and an offer of a completely free lower-value item such as a small drink.
The mobile club was promoted in-store, online and in other traditional media.
KFC stores could track the popularity of the individual offers, as well as specific traffic patterns by store throughout the promotion.
To understand consumer preferences, Cellit designed a post-promotion mobile survey that was sent to all mobile members who participated in the KFC Relief Plan program.
Why mobile?
J&A sought an opportunity to introduce mobile to its KFC clients and test the effectiveness of the medium on KFC’s target audience.Due to a highly competitive fast-food landscape where the customer is faced with nearly unlimited choices, it was critical that KFC present compelling and competitive offers that break through the quick-service-restaurant clutter and motivate the consumer to action.
Mobile is really changing the fast-food business, according to Neil Strother, practice director at ABI Reseach, Oyster Bay, NY.
"Fast-food restaurants have been leveraging mobile in several ways: for discovery of nearby locations, coupons and for enabling mobile ordering and purchase," Mr. Strother said.
"Mobile is a good fit for these chains, especially the forward-thinking ones that seek to gain an advantage in a highly-competitive market by providing new tools for on-the-go customers," he said.
Senior Editor Giselle Tsirulnik covers advertising, messaging, legal/privacy and database/CRM. Reach her at giselle@mobilemarketer.com.
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