For too long, rather than engaging in constructive debate, Democrats and Republicans have mocked one another.

This has worked out badly for all of us. It has undermining our sense of common purpose. It has lead us to rash, unbalanced decisions from both sides of the aisle, rammed through without proper debate.

In his speech on financial regulation, Obama works to break free of the Democratic vs. Republican rut and move to a bipartisan consensus on restoring free and transparent markets, which are the best way to promote the common good.

Americans have pursued their dreams within a free market that has been the engine of America’s progress…

But the American experiment has worked in large part because we have guided the market’s invisible hand with a higher principle. Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it.

That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair, and open, and honest. We have done this not to stifle – but rather to advance prosperity and liberty…

The core of our economic success is the fundamental truth that each American does better when all Americans do better; that the well being of American business, its capital markets, and the American people are aligned. 

I think all of us here today would acknowledge that we’ve lost that sense of shared prosperity. 

Under Republican and Democratic Administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices.

We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. 

The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth; a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street, but ends up hurting both.

More excerpts below.

(more…)

CIO magazine has published a video on how to Install and Use Six Free Killer BlackBerry Apps. Included in the list is Beyond411, along with Viigo, Worldmate Live, Google Maps, Facebook for Blackberry, and TwitterBerry.

Is Facebook just clueless about what OpenSocial means or are they being disingenious?

Today Yahoo, Google, and MySpace formed a non-profit OpenSocial foundation to help promote a universal standard for developer applications on social-networking sites.

Here was Facebook’s response:

“As the largest contributor to the memecached [sic] system, Facebook has long been a leader and supporter of open source initiatives but will not join the foundation,” a statement from the company read. “The company will continue to evaluate partnership opportunities that will benefit the 300,000 Facebook Platform developers while improving the Facebook user experience.”

It’s absolutely apples and oranges to compare Open Source with OpenSocial and the larger trends that it’s a part of, including data portability and distributed social networking.

There are indeed some spiritual similiarities between Open Source and the Open Social movements. Like Microsoft, Facebook seeks to achieve several kinds of lock-in, which the open movements seek to combat. (It’s no accident that Microsoft is a significant investor in Facebook.)

• Data lock-in: Facebook seeks to keep user’s data and social graph tethered to their walled garden. The terms of use for Facebook applications are design to preserve this lockin.
• Platform lock-in: Facebook seeks to create a proprietary platform for application authors, so that compelling applications can’t easily run on and add value to Facebook competitors.

Contributing to memcached is laudable, but has nothing to do with contributing to an open social fabric for the internet.

Good critique of the Google Contacts API over on Snellspace:

… as is typical of GData, all of the application specific data is contained in extension elements. While this is technically not a bad thing, it does mean that Google has effectively invented Yet Another Way of representing contact information. We already have vCard and hCard, both of which have been extremely effective and have a ton of existing application support. However, none of that existing code can be used with GData contacts. I understand why Google is using the extension elements but I disagree that the tradeoff is worth it.

Using extension elements basically means that “dumb clients” — Atom clients that do not understand the GData API, will not be able to do anything at all with the feed. There’s not even any displayable content that a human can use to extract information. Clients have to be written specifically against the GData API. Assuming that Microsoft also puts together a Contacts API, and assuming they also use extension elements to represent the data, client implementors end up having to write vendor specific code that does exactly the same thing. That’s bad.

Lotus, on the other hand, uses the hCard microformat in the payload, allowing standardized parsing and useful rendering even by downlevel clients.

The entry itself is generally just an envelope for an hCard and a linked vCard. Because the content element contains XHTML, dumb clients can render the feed content regardless of the fact that our hCard uses a number of Profiles-specific fields; and the linked vCard makes it significantly easier to integrate this feed with existing contact management systems. For instance, we have one customer who has used the Profiles feed to integrate directly into mobile device contact databases using the vcard links.

The main advantage the Profiles approach has over GData Contacts is that client applications do not have to write Profiles-specific code to integrate and interoperate. If the client understands Atom, XHTML, hCard and vCard, they can use the feed.

Standards are a good thing.

Libxml-Ruby is a blindingly fast way to parse XML in Ruby. However, many have complained that the interface is verbose and not especially Rubyish, and that the documentation lacks details and examples.

Thanks to the flexibility of Ruby, it’s easy to remedy this situation.

libxml_helper.rb, described here, opens up the XML::Node class from Libxml and adds helper functions that make it easier to use. The helpers also make it easier to use xpath with nodes that include default namespaces. (I intend to continue adding to the helpers to smooth rough edges as I encounter them.)

The interface was inspired by the fantastic HPricot, a “fast and delightful HTML parser”, and many HPricot examples will work unmodified.

Convenience functions

You can call to_xml_doc on any string to convert it into an XML::Document:

>> s = '<foo><author>p. bogle</author><bar>content</bar><bar>cont2</bar></foo>'
>> root = s.to_xml_doc.root

The at() method returns the first Node matching the given xpath:

>> root.at("author")
=> <author>p. bogle</author>

The search() method returns a list of Nodes matching the given xpath:

>> root.search("bar")
=> [<bar>content</bar>, <bar>content2</bar>]

search() can also be called with a block to iterate through each of the matching nodes:

>>  root.search("bar") do |bar| puts bar.xpath; end
/foo/bar[1]
/foo/bar[2]

The helper also improves the handling of default namespaces…

Read More

A brave and thoughtful speech, worth reading and considering regardless of your political affiliation: A More Perfect Union

People used the web in radically different ways after a critical mass of people shifted to unlimited plans.

The same could be true of cell phones– unlimited voice plans could enable valuable new voice services that were previously infeasible.

For example, imagine being able to use your car speakerphone to play any audiobook you wanted, on demand.

All the technology has been in place for years– somebody just needs to license all the audiobook content, add a voice recognition interface for selecting the content I want to hear, figure out a pricing model (a la Netflix), and market it.

The only thing that has changed is that now, for $99, I can listen as long as I want. (The carrier might hate it, but it’s certainly compelling to me as a user!)

This is just one fairly obvious example of the sorts of services enabled by the new economics; there will hopefully be a flood of innovation in this direction.

YouTube just added a rich YouTube API for developers, including a Javascript API for the player.

This is exciting because it enables some of the scenarios I discussed in hyperlinking to the good stuff in a web video:

People who embed videos on the web frequently tell their readers to fast forward to a specific point to get to the “good stuff”, for example here.

It’s dumb that readers have to do that manually. If Flash video players were slightly smarter, the author could create an easy-to-type hyperlink that would cause the embedded video to skip to a specific section of the video and start playing.

Power users ought to be able to create their own “virtual edit” of a video by specifying a sequence of time segments to play back. A blogger might create their selection of highlights from the presidential debate to accompany their post, for example, without having to actually re-encode the video.

Below are my notes from the MIT Enterprise Forum Session on “Ten Steps to Angel Financing”, led by Chris Hurley of Beacon Law Advisors.  I tapped these out on my Blackberry, so apologies for misspellings or omissions. The talk took place on March 6, 2008.

Ten steps to angel financing

1. Types of Angel
- “Love angel”– has relationship with founder. Can help get the bus moving– investors want to be last person in the deal not the first. (Angel deals are viral.)
-  ”Full time angel”: growing increasingly sophisticated.
- “Industry veteran with vertical expertise’– very valuable, especially if they can attest to your idea
- finance person
- “mentor capitalist”: closer to love money, valuable in managing board. Retiring baby boomers stay in the biz world.

2. Current trends
Improved communication techniques helping an imperfect market to become more efficient
- transaction costs dropping
- smaller opportunities becoming attractive
- angels getting more sophisticated as they do more deals, piggyback off each others due diligence.
- custom deals: S-corps, operating LLCs, “synthetic preferred”

3. Pros and cons of angels vs. VCs
Angels can be more flexible
- in size of investment.  VCs are headcount light and can’t look at too many deals or too small deals.
- in types of investments
- generally, angels have better ability to play small, play early, participate in nice deals

Angel deals. $250k-$1.5m

VCs: $150m+ funds have a hard time writing a check for less than $2.5m, with a plan that justifies that level of spending. All vcs say they focus on early stage, but are unlikely to fund someone who doesn’t have a track record of success. They’ll give a “soft no” keep in touch answers instead.

VCs need to swing for the fences and hit a home run or the economics don’t work. A $5-$50M exit just isn’t interesting. Angels can work with smaller deals where everyone makes money with a small exitt Angels invest their own money, VCs invest others. Angels can have more direct industry experience.

VC advantages: VCs have more resources and contacts at their disposal. Bigger checks, fewer cats to herd. VCs more likely to invest and help with fundraising in subsequent rounds.

4. Angels compared to VCs
Don’t think of Angels OR VCs.  Competition is good for moving along a deal. No impetus to move otherwise.

Angels and VCs frequently in the same deal if not now, then down the road.

Can create angel momentum to pressure VCs.

There is an art to approaching both and to make the deal palatable to both.
- Think beyond initial raise
- Custom deals are good, but don’t create roadblacks in subsequent financing

Take enough money– closing will be harder if you ask for too little money, and you’ll pay dearly if you fall a bit short. Better to ask for too much than too little.  Can structure deals so that not all of the money is up front but is milestone based.
Should you put the raise in the business plan?  Yes, but don’t put deal terms, esp with VCs. Be ready to explain why you need that much money and what milestones you reach with that investments.

When approaching an angel, you can give them more specific terms in a separate document to streamline things.

Too high a valuation may set up future down rounds that wash out the common and all past investors.

Q: What percentage of early stage deals are convertible note vs. priced round?
A: Perhaps 10% of deals. Convertible notes are appropriate from investors standpoint for bridge situations. Relatively short time period and you’re bridging to a quantifiable, material milestone. If convertible debt piece becomes too large relative to next round, this can discourage future investors who don’t want to share the round with cats and dogs.

Q: What about maturity date on convertible debt?
A: Typically 12 months– should be enough time to get the deal done. Investors will often be ok with extending the date if you keep in good communication.

Q: What is a warrant?
A: An option to purchase preferred stock for some period of time after the next round at a discount rate.

Q: How much do you pay yourself?
A: Shawn:  Too low is bad. Take the low end of the salary range for your position in your region and knock no more than 10-20% off that.

6. Strategic Investors
E.g. Company investing in your technologu
Pros: less valuation and terms sensitive. Can open distribution channels. Can increase credibility dramatically.
Cons: Strategic rationale can quickly change. May prohibit other opportunities. Financial deal can cloud commercial deal.  Long deal cycle.

7. Angel and venture capital protocol

Do:
Put confidentiality notice on business plan.
Be confident, passionate, commited.
Listen.
Be forthright and thorough about competition.
Bottoms up projections.
Clearly state assumptions.
Avoid common and easily avoidable mistakes, esp related to structural issues.
Many engineers can’t sell. Make sure you can answer who is going to build it and who is going to sell it. Make sure you have someone who knows how to sell giving the pitch. Rehease rehearse

Don’t:
Ask a VC or an angel for an NDA
Be stubborn, inflexible, combative
Say there is no competition or underestimate competition. This shows  insecurity and costs you credibility
Show lack of sophistication by taking an unreasonable position on structural issues.

8. How to access the fragmented angel community
There’s a danger in being too exposed. People like to feel they are in on something. Don’t start with a public angel pitch first– get your love money first.

Angels tend to hide and use gatekeepers. Work with lawyers accountants to assemble a hit list.

Stay organized. Don’t double or triple team. Assign responsibilities.

It usually takes multiple meetings to close. Don’t let let prospect get cold, but be respectful. Raising money us a different sale than a product sale.

If you have someone interested, don’t leave the meeting until you’ve set up the next one.

Have a game plan and try to stick to it.
- think whether it is smart to pitch VCs and angels at the same time.
- many limited partners in vcs are also in the angel community, pitching to vcs too early can poison the well with angels.
- schedule smart friendly folks for a dry run.

Time horizon
- funding generally takes between 3 and 6 months from first meetingg

9. How angels identify promising investments
- referral: who is recommending deal
- strong and experience of team
- sensible and well-thought out distribution and financing plan: get set of financial projections is key
_ size of opportunity and attractive exist scenarios
- hot marlet

10. Selling an opportunity to an Angel
Know technical sophistication level of angel and investing style
- do your homework and prepare

Be credible
- don’t overstate where you are in development, financing, customer traction
- sell yourself and your team. Admit holes.
- emphasize strengths, acknowledge weaknesses
- know your limits. Demonstrate that you know you don’t know it all.
- be thorough in analyzing competition
- good plan, financials

11. When is your company ready for angels?
Core team assembled
Beta product or compelling demo
Strong opportunity for growth/return

Investor materials
- business plan
- overview (1 page)
- executive summary (2-5 pages)
- financial projections
- ppt presentation
- product FAQ and Investment Deal Faq

Web site may be helpful
Board of directors and BOA may be helpful. BOD shows stronger validation. Investment is strongest.
Legal housekeeping in order.  Don’t wait until the money arrives to get the house in order.  Delays the deal, makes the management team look bad.

PC Magazine reports on the features of upcoming Blackberry OS4.5 upgrade:

• BlackBerry Maps with Points of Interest (H) [Google Maps is better]
• Improved media player with playlist support and automatic playlist generation (H)
• Voice note recording (H)
• Video recording on Curve models (H)
• Streaming support for YouTube and Sling Player (H) [I like this..]
• Microsoft Office document editing with DocumentsToGo (H)
• Native format attachment downloading (S)
• HTML e-mails (S) [Yes!!]
• Over-the-air device upgrades (S)
• Free/busy calendar lookup (S)
• Searching the server for old e-mail messages (S)

Items marked with S require a server upgrade, while H is handheld only.