social video

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Favequest is playing in the 'social video' space and I thought it would be worthwhile to explain what that means to me. It might give you a sense for why we are building what we are building.

I have to come to realize that I get a much bigger kick out of media when I have a chance to use that media to interact with others. I write this blog to interact with you, even if people don't leave comments. I run into many of you through my travels and the blog often comes up which helps connect us. Why does that matter? I think it matters because the only way for us to evolve is to understand each other and work together to achieve greater things. This is one reason I'm supporting Pangea day http://www.pangeaday.org/index.php in a big way (reminder about event at my place on May 10 at 1:30). We're all much too isolated and busy living our lives to care or worry about others and that simply must change.

Why did I start this train?

One way media like tv is feeling increasingly empty to me. I only watch it occasionally when I'm relaxing with my wife but would NEVER just sit down to watch anything on tv. It feels like having dinner alone in a strange town or traveling and seeing something exciting and having no one to share it with. It's like watching a hockey game alone in the basement vs being with friends and screaming together. Enough with the analogies, I hope you get the idea.

Just watching video on-line is also empty if all I can do is watch it in isolation. Let me share with others, tell them what I think, have them do the same and start a conversation (can't really do that on YouTube). Let me discover exciting topics and meet new people with whom I can exchange ideas and create action. Let me reconnect with my Romanian friends and family all over the world by collaborating and sharing on Romanian topics.

I'm willing to bet a lot of money (done) and my reputation (done) that there are many others like me. If I'm the only one, were kinda screwed ... But I don't think so.

So we are building a platform that is totally about social interaction around video. So you should ask .... why does this matter? What are you really trying to do? What's the big picture? If you know me, you know there's always a big picture even it doesn't seem like it.

Look for the next blog for answers to some of these questions.

Cheers,

Allan

seeing the world through Facebook colored glasses

As you can probably gather from previous posts, I'm very big on personalization. However, it has been challenging to get the message across to people since it is just a term and people have a hard time understanding what it actually means in the context of the web. I've used examples and analogies, and fortunately we are able to start showing people what we mean which goes a long way. I thought I would try a different angle and see what pops out.

Imagine if you could surf the entire web anonymously from within Facebook. Assuming new websites were developed with the right intelligence, they would look entirely different for every user.

Say I visit ESPN. It would know that I'm forty years old, live in Ottawa, Canada, I like hockey and skiing among other things. If I had been to the site in the past, it knew what videos and articles I liked. It could take whatever information I allow it to know and it will present me with content that I will probably like without showing me stuff that I have seen before. The more often I go back, the better the service gets.

Imagine that I go to Amazon.com. It would present me with a list of books based on books I said I like in my Facebook Profile (Tipping Point, Blink, Wikinomics, Innovator's Dilemma ... ) as well as deals for music based on my musical tastes with some new bands thrown in that I have never heard of before.

Imagine I go to YouTube and have it present me with videos about playing the guitar, skiing, just for laughs, comedy and so on based on who I am and what I like, while also sending some surprises my way.

Better yet, what if you could also reverse the direction and have me stay still in one place (say Facebook) and have relevant web stuff dropped on my lap. If this was possible it would provide me, the user, a huge benefit because the entire web would reshape itself around me to help me find what I'm looking for while discovering new things I didn't even know existed.

All this without me having to lift a finger and in complete anonymity ... I'm just a number hiding behind a wall and yet I am unique. No more frustrating hunting and pecking. Just me and my friends and the power of the entire internet servings us. A bit utopian perhaps, but many of us are starting to develop technology and services to move the yardsticks towards the intelligent web that serves us as individuals.

If you get any of this, you get what FaveQuest is about.

We took a small step a few days ago and launched a video app in Facebook called FaveQuest that starts down this path. It creates personal video channels for you based on your Facebook profile by pulling relevant videos from all over the web including YouTube, Metacafe, AOL, iFilm and dozens of others. Not only does our software find stuff for you but we also draft your friends into the cause ... just to serve you. Aren't you special. If you like you can very easily share and start conversations with your friends around topics you care about. I have already learned so much about my business partners and we have each helped each other discover many new things already. We figured we would share this with everyone and evolve the app with your assistance.

If you feel like trying it out, click on the link below. Please share your feedback and we'll do our best to make it better (BTW, we are working hard to speed it up .... takes a while to filter out the crap just for you, and to make the interface simpler .... stay tuned).

http://apps.facebook.com/favequest/

Allan Isfan
Co-founder, CEO
FaveQuest

4 VC meetings, many more to go

It has been a while since I blogged and much has happened since. Note that I will be transforming the blog into more of a short "daily musings of a start-up founder", similar to Fred Wilson's blog entitled "musings of a VC in NYC" that I have been enjoying so much (http://avc.blogs.com/).

I was recently in Williamsburg, VA for a panel discussion on regulatory issues affecting broadband deployment. This is connected to my other personality as the "engineering" component of Isfan Solutions Inc. ... a consulting firm my wife and I founded a year ago (she had been running her own company for about fourteen years). A very interesting panel discussion and got to very briefly check out this pretty cool colonial town. Will definitely go back this summer with the family on our way to Charleston, SC to celebrate my niece's 16th birthday.

Also got to see Roger Waters play a fantastic show in Ottawa while the Senators unfortunately lost to the Anaheim ducks in the Stanley Cup final. It was a truly magical show and I strongly recommend not missing it if you have a chance (though it was extremely political ... a pink pig flying around the arena with anti-war and anti-bush messages).

On the VC front, we finally kicked off requests for VC meetings and managed to pitch to a few major VCs and a strategic investor so far and overall it went very well. So what does that actually mean? What makes an entrepreneur think a pitch went well?

1) very likely to have a follow up meeting
You don't really know until the next meeting actually happens. However, indications are that we will have follow up meetings with an expanding group of partners.

2) lots of good dynamic discussion
All meetings involved lots of great discussion with many great comments and questions. The partners were clearly enganged and involved which shows some interest in the topic. They also appeared genuinly interested to continue the discussion.

3) learned something new and useful about the VC and ourselves
In one case, the VC is very interested in knowing about our technical intellectual property. Unfortunately, we didn't focus on that very much but at least we now know it is very important to them so that will be a major focus during the next meeting. Fortunately, my partner and I both have credibility in terms of IP as we both have patents and history in complex technology. We have lots of patentable concepts but need to get moving on filing them.

In another case, it was less about technology but more about go-to-market strategy and shooting for the stars. We are actually not planning for a huge A round after the seed and are able to become profitable on only one round. This can create a perception that we are not thinking big enough even though we are. The basic question was "once your trial is complete and you have validated/adjusted your assumptions, how do you aggressively bring this to market to secure your place in a significant way, i.e. land grab". Another question in a similar direction was "if you could raise more money than projecting right now, what would you do differently?".

Answer I gave was not great ... more work there to make the our case and pitch that aspect more convincingly.

4) every pitch gets better
Every time we pitch to a partner, VC or other interested party, we learn something very valuable that gets folded back in to the plan and pitch and the whole story gets better.

I continue to be convinced that we are on to something significant and have credibility in the space. If we continue to evolve as necessary, make every pitch better than the last one and get follow up meetings with partners and VCs, we'll close our funding and step on the gas. In the meantime, we have been experimenting and implementing some of our concepts and I'm really enjoying being a customer which bodes well for the future.

Let me leave you with a question/comment that I hope will generate some thoughts and feedback. Our strategy has always been to think about the consumer first. We want to build a very simple, intuitive and personal service that amazes people by what it can do for them. You always hope that it takes off like wildfire and virally ramps to millions of people. We get picked up by a major player for some crazy valuation and everyone is happy even if we never made a dime. Think YouTube, Skype, MySpace ... you get the picture. However, as I always say, hope is not a strategy. We have therefore been spending a significant amount of time and effort creating a strong go-to-market strategy and business model that actually creates revenue instead of just thinking about how to get as many consumers to sign on, regardless of potential revenue. I believe in solid business concepts and creating a viable entity that can grow and make money without having to cross our fingers and pray that someone picks us up before we run out of cash. Are we crazy?

wiki miki

Wow ... it has been a while since my last post. When I start getting emails from people sounding worried about the lack of posts lately, it is probably time to get back at it. Things have been crazy since my last post about 3GSM in Barcelona. I was running around on start-up stuff as well as some new consulting work helping CLECs with some FCC petitions ... interesting new work, and then a quick trip to Disney World with the family. Yikes!! Good times on all fronts.

First a couple of quick words on the land of Mickey Mouse. I've been so busy lately, my wife wisely figured it was time to get away with the kids for some R&R. We stayed on the Disney property at a hotel called the Beach Club. Other than the sucking sound of an industrial vacuum on our wallets, it was fantastic. The bar made an excellent Pina Colava and the pool actually had sand in it, including a sand bar for the kids to play in, a small lazy river and a waterfall. Someone accidentally turned up the heat and the entire pool was hovering near 90 degrees Fahrenheit by our last day! I'm sure I saw dollar bills floating up in the air where someone had written JESUS in the sky with an airplane ... I'm not kidding ... about the Jesus part.

An entrepreneur can never flip the switch to off .... the hamster is always running though I managed to get him into a steady jog rather than the mad sprint he is usually in. Actually, I usually have three hamsters running at the same time ... two of them work hard to bring in money so that the third one can live his dreams. Anyway, Disney is a great place to observe American society at work. One thing is for sure ... American's sure know how to entertain. They nearly get you crying at the "Believe" killer whale show at Sea World with the whole "young kid sitting on the beach carving a whale tale out of wood reaches his dreams of becoming a trainer at Sea World". It is not just a "killer whale jumps out of the water" trick show, it is a full dramatic production with huge rotating screens and all. Another amazing show is the new car stunt show at MGM ... absolutely incredible and very well done.

Ok ... as usual, you're wondering what the hell this has to do with start-up stuff. As I said, an entrepreneur is always "on", even if the hamster is in a slow jog sipping on a pina colava so there is a connection.

I have been on a major deep dive recently to investigate "the power of the crowds". There have been many huge successes in the last number of years that really highlight the extremely social nature of human beings. Some excellent examples you may have heard of include MySpace, YouTube, WikiPedia, Digg, eBay, CraigList, SecondLife, Blogs, LinkedIn .... I could go on and on and on. Not only are people interested in connecting with others but many of them spend an insane number of hours creating, posting and rating content. It is true that fewer than 10% of the people actually contribute ... probably closer to 1% actually ... but when you consider the entire wired world that 1% ends up being a very big number.

While on the way to Orlando, I picked up a great new book called "Wikinomics, How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything". I highly recommend it ... a very well written book by a couple of guys from Toronto of all places (Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams of New Paradigm). I'll definitely try to hook up with the authors next time I'm in Toronto as this is a critical component of our start up.

I'll share some more about this in future posts as this is a major trend that will impact all of us. Speaking of social, I'm announcing a big party at the Isfan residence in mid April. It is mostly a social affair but I will pull together a bit of an "open kimono" session at the beginning and share with all in attendance a bit of what we are up to. If you are interested in attending and are not on my evite list, please shoot me an email and make your case ... I'll take it to the judges to earn you a fastpass (don't tell anyone).

Cheers,

Allan "back to reality" Isfan
Entrepreneur In Residence, Skypoint Capital
CEO, MYDYO
5628isfan@rogers.com

crush crush crush!

Do you remember that "Kids in the Hall" skit in which Mr. Tyzik would crush people with his fingers? It still makes me laugh!

I've been dealing with people asking me "why won't Motorola, apple or any other Goliath crush you"? A very valid question which I have asked myself many more times than others have.

This brings up many important questions for a start-up, but two key ones keep me up at night ... not with worry but to figure out the answer. The questions are:
1) have all good ideas been thought of already? If someone has thought of your idea, are you screwed?
2) if your idea is more of a concept rather than a technology, how do you defend it?

Let's tackle the first one. You come up with what you think is an awesome idea. With the giddy excitement of a child on Christmas morning, you type in your key words with shaky fingers into google .... and 100 links come up in 0.01 seconds!!! SON OF A BEEYATCH!. All good ideas have already been thought of, with some associated patents in and many websites describing your great idea. Radio TIVO? Done. MP3 player with WiFi. Done. With all the smart, motivated people out there, this is bound to happen.

Of course this is not true. However, it is wise to assume this is the case so that you can build a truly defensible product or service. If you assume you're the only one that thought of a particular way of doing something and that is your only foundation, the false sense of security makes you extremely vulnerable. New concepts fail or don't get implemented for many reasons (two of many are highlighted below).

Execution is key. The last $100M/yr product I was a major contributor on was not that novel. In fact, a major telecom equipment vendor had teamed up with a leader in DSL at that time and came up with what turned out to be a complete catastrophe. Our solution was so much better, it's not even funny. We were in a life and death situation where the whole company depended on the success of the product. We set very high goals, hired people with balls, executed with unbelievable focus. Failure was not an option and it showed. Our second product didn't fare so well.

Incumbents don't care. Big companies need big revenues and need universal appeal to hit their numbers. Even big companies have limited resources. Can you imagine if Apple came out with the next iPOD and it only sold 100k units per month. Heads would be rolling. BTW, they sold 14M iPODs in the last quarter. If we could sell 100k units/month, we'd be snorkeling in a pool of champagne (I wonder how much that would cost?)

Lots more to be said but best move on. Ok, so what if your idea is more of a concept, such as a service, rather than a magical technology, how do you defend it?

Everyone is looking for the secret sauce or that one ingredient that makes the sauce secret. I remember going to restaurants, trying to guess how they made the sauce so I could make it at home. I came close a few times but mostly didn't quite nail it. The trick is to mix ingredients such that they build on each other. Each one brings out the elements of the other. You see where I'm going with this. Amazon doesn't just have access to huge inventory and low storage costs. Their recommendations, often contributed by users, help people find other stuff. I often buy books two or three at a time to minimize shipping charges. Amazon often doesn't store items in their own warehouse. They just serve as a storefront and products get shipped directly from someone else's warehouse to you ... $0 cost to Amazon. Freaking genius. Nothing secret here.

Few people believed in search when Google was pitching. A site for crazy, user generated content called YouTube? Well ... we now have GooTube which controls an absolutely ridiculous number of eye balls and the equally ridiculous ad revenues.

Ye must have faith ... and balls.