My firm just published our Spring 2008 Entrepreneurs Report, summarizing trends in the venture-backed technology market over the last several years. Among the statistics is this chart showing the average founder equity dilution in Series A and Series B financings broken down by industry. The dilution numbers on the BioTech industry are up above 90%, meaning that by the end of the second round of financing, founders of biotech companies don’t own much of the company. The flip-side of this is that biotech projects require a huge degree of funding, and it is difficult to raise that much money without giving up significant equity.
This morning I saw a demo on Venturebeat.com of a new native iPhone app from a Seattle-based startup called Urban Spoon. Urban Spoon is a client of my firm, so I have had some exposure to their original website, which aggregates information about restaurants and allows users to vote on which restaurants they like.
Urban Spoon has an iPhone application in the wings that looks to be a great way to add some spontaneity to your dining plans. The application (demo embedded below) uses the iPhone’s location awareness and provides you with a slot machine style wheel of fortune for picking restaurants. Shake the iPhone and a recommendation is made. Don’t like the pick, shake it again.
Tonight I read about a widget for blogs intended to make it simpler for readers to give feedback on what they would like to see on the site. The company that offers the services is called Skribit, and if you are interested in what they do, you can check out their widget at the bottom of my sidebar.
Can’t say much about how effective the product is yet, but I would love it if readers would submit some thoughts on what they would like to see on my site. I will update this post in a week or so with some overall thoughts. If you have any feedback on the site, would like to make a submission, or simply drop me a line, you can also send email to submissions (****at****) thisistech.com.
Skribit helps you get suggestions from readers and then others can vote for them. For example, one reader could suggest that you video-blog and other readers who like the idea can vote for it. Readers have a chance to easily drop in their questions/interests, and you get benefit as a blogger too - yes, you can get ideas for posts! Skribit can aid in beating writer’s block.”
Last night Seattle artisan software developers Jackson Fish Market launched their latest web application, Carbon Grove. Sponsored by Microsoft as a demonstration of Silverlight, the web app allows you to sign up to receive periodic tips on how to become more carbon neutral, and every time you respond to the reminders you cause virtual trees to grow on your page at the Carbon Grove site. The only downside is that it only runs on IE, so firefox users will need to launch Internet Explorer to give it a try.
Video site Omnisio.com has video (with synchronized power point slides) from Y Combinator’s Startup School 2008. Some heavy hitters gave presentations, including Jeff Bezos, Marc Andreessen, and Jack Sheridan from WSGR. A few vids embedded below. Check out the rest at Startup School 08 | Omnisio.
From my office in the Columbia Tower I have a great view of the startup community, both literally and in the work that I do. From Pioneer Square to Fremont and beyond, there are exciting things brewing in Seattle. The following is This Is Tech’s list of Seattle Startups to Watch in 2008. These emerging companies are bootstrapping some interesting stuff:
BuddyTV is a hub of all things television related. Users and the BuddyTV editorial staff comment and chat in real time about their favorite TV shows. The site has built an impressive amount of content. TV fans can congregate using live audio, video and text, which makes the site a compelling place to spend time. With its active community of users, BuddyTV is the type of community that the television networks and other traditional media companies wish they had for themselves.
Building on the groundwork forged by youtube and the recent onslaught of video sharing services, Fyreball has created a social networking site designed for sharing media online. Instead of sending your friends links to your favorite clips and photos online, Fyreball users create a unique webpage (a fyreball) and select which friends they want to invite. Invitees can view and comment on posted videos, and can add their own videos and content in response. Friends invite friends, and the result is a dynamic media rich message board on the topic of your choosing. I have been participating in Fyreball’s beta launch and the site is a great way to kill some time and catch up with friends. Fyreball was founded by a handful of ex-Bungie Studios folks, which reflects well on the company. Bungie is the company behind the Halo series of video games for Microsoft’s xbox and xbox 360 consoles. Halo 2 and Halo 3 are tied in my opinion for the title of greatest video game ever made. Incidentally, Bungie has been recently spun out of Microsoft, and is a company to watch in its own right. They would have made this list, but once you have shipped a few hundred million dollars worth of product, you just don’t qualify as a startup anymore.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
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