As we're getting ready for the Finovate 2009 show next Tuesday, we're all in mad rush mode to get final features into the system. Was up until almost 4am last night and got into the office a little after 10am. Suffice it to say, I'm dragging right now. We're making good progress and I'm excited to see how we'll be received when we present at the show.
 
I'm taking a little break from work to play around with the Peek Pronto I won in the Posterous contest a couple of weeks back. First impressions are that it's a very well put together device. Very sleek and compact. Super light and the keyboard is very well made. Also, the screen resolution looks much better than I anticipated. This is going to be my wife's device since I already have my iPhone. I just hope she puts it to good use. Thanks again to the guys over at Posterous for choosing me and to Jeremy Downs at Peek for sending this out!

Just heard the news that Oracle has bought Sun. On the surface doesn't really seem like much. One big iconic Silicon Valley company buying another big iconic Silicon Valley company. Oracle does databases, Sun is known for hardware. Larry Ellison came out to say that the main jewel in Sun was Java describing it as "...the single most important software asset we have ever acquired." Though I don't doubt this, let's not forget that Sun also owns a small open source database property known as MySQL. A small database property that a lot of start-ups are built on (including Centrro). A small database property that is by and large, free to use. I shudder to think of the ramifications should someone start charging for this product...
 
Though I doubt Oracle would force current or future users of MySQL to pay licensing fees, I'm also concerned that they probably won't devote as much resources to the future development of the platform or *gulp* decide to hobble it to force people down the Oracle Database path. Time will tell but if past history is any indicator, I probably should start thinking of an alternative database solution, just in case.

Though I always enjoy going to Vegas, it's a rough place to be. A combination of the dry air, too much drink, too much food, too little sleep can never end well. I'm glad to be back home and sleeping my own bed.

I'm reading the Techcrunch post re: Twitter and it's Series C round of $35M. Congrats to them. In reading the comments, I noticed there was a fair amount of hate re: why anyone would continue to fund a company that doesn't have a revenue generating strategy in place. That's a legit stance. Still, I don't have as much pessimism about Twitter than I do about say, Facebook. For one, Twitter hasn't unveiled its revenue generating products yet. For all we know, it could hit a monster homerun. Facebook on the other hand has made several attempts at generating revenue with some success (and some failures - Beacon anyone?). Still, I'll reserve judgement until after they roll out those proposed revenue generating products.
 
One comment in particular was from a guy named Nathan:

Useless is a bit much. The service is useful to millions of people who use it multiple times every day. The issue isn't the usefulness of the service, it's the fact that it doesn't generate revenue. A big difference. Also, it seems that Nathan is a little bitter that his revenue generating start-up can't get funding. On that point, I feel for him. Fundraising is not easy. You'd be lucky to get one second meeting out of ten first meetings with investors. We've been fundraising for about a month and had to hear a lot of no's before we got to the handful of promising second/third meetings we are entering into now. Our business, like Nathan's, is not that sexy though we do generate revenue and have very strong growth projections.
 
The analogy I like to use is this. Someone comes up to you and asks for a million dollars to open a couple of Denny's franchises. The person provides solid sales numbers, tons of historical data, etc. and tells you that you'll most likely make back your money in 3-5 years and then receive a nice 10% dividend each year. Then another person comes and tells you they need a million dollars to open a new concept high-end restaurant with a new chef who has worked under the best chefs in the country. Who would you fund? My answer would be the Denny's franchise, but that's because I'm not rich and like the stability of a safe investment. For investors who already have money, the idea of a nice solid investment throwing off 10% just doesn't excite them. They need the next billion dollar payout - the next YouTube, Yahoo, or Google. Otherwise, they'd just go buy bonds and commodities.

Was reading the latest post from Albert Wenger, a partner over at Union Square Ventures. His post was about companies that started as consumer sites and who now want to switch to a white or private label service and the potential difficulties in making the transition. His primary reason seems to be that once a company is built as a consumer facing entity, it doesn't have the DNA to switch to a company that has to deal with the whims of white label clients.
 
I somewhat agree and disagree with that statement. Yes, getting into the white label (we call it private label) business is not easy if you don't have the technical infrastructure or the mindset of a client-consultant organization. I wouldn't say it's necessarily impossible though. If your core technology is built on a flexible platform, making the changes to your technology should be relatively simple - like building a different front-end UI instead of rebuilding a new product from the ground up. As for the sales mentality, I think any good entrepreneur needs to have that to become successful regardless of whether they are selling to clients or to investors or to potential team members. If you don't have that mindset already, I don't think you'd be very successful regardless if you're transitioning to a white label path or sticking with a consumer strategy.
 
When we started Centrro, we were solidly going down the white label path. However, we've since added a consumer facing product (KnowBeforeYouApply.com) and will be adding another one shortly. Though they both try to reach two different markets, they both rely on the same underlying technology which we've built to be very flexible. Most of all, I think having good people on board makes things a heck of a lot easier. Our business development and technical teams are what drive our business and with them on board, we'll be able to zig and zag our way out of any jam.