It's going to be a bit quiet around here

8:48:40 PM    trackback []  

Winds of Discovery

Check it out, including Glenn's and my mini-debate about pharma policy.
12:51:27 PM    trackback []  

Learning curves on the final frontier

Hat tip: VodkaGuy
2:34:27 PM    trackback []  

Spirit of America quick updates

• COO Marc Danziger and Logistics Director Kerry Dupont are interviewed by Doug Kaye
• Continuous coverage at Britt Blaser's place
• Update at Winds of Change
• Dave winers SoA. Blaser fisks Winer. Every circus needs a sideshow.
• Over 300 inbound blog links to spiritofamerica.net as of this AM. Thanks to everyone, especially those I hit on. Bloggers are great! I hope VCs turn out to be as well.
• Look for a house blog and blogger Real Soon Now.
• More anon.
  11:05:17 AM    trackback []  

Peoples' War, Peoples' Peace

Anyone in the VC line of things has the need to frequently recall Napoleon's adage: "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence." I think that's what's going on here, and it is not meant to disparage any of the contractors or even the CPA. There's a kind of inherent incompetence of large, bureaucratic organizations when it comes to dealing with needs on an individual and small scale. There are intrinsic problems of bigness that give us all fits dealing with government bureaus and contracting regulations here. Now take that institutional logic, plop it down in the middle of Baghdad, and bugger its improvised plans with a mix of terror and outright thievery. Watch the poor elephant try to dance.

Too bad it's not just a B-school case study. Hell, too bad it's not just one of my companies. Unfortunately, it's a part of the thing that may matter most in the world today: To find out whether American and Arab can hope to shake hands and live and prosper together, or whether it's going to be war to the knife. And things aren't looking all that great.

It's part of the peculiar spirit of both America and Silicon Valley that people take things into their own hands when the management fails us. We've come to one of those times. If you've been following the plot line around here, you know what I'm about to pitch, so here goes:

There's a grassroots effort called Spirit of America, that is organizing to connect ordinary American citizens as contributors to small scale projects that benefit ordinary Iraqis. It started collecting Frisbees and school and medical supplies to send to Iraq with the Marines. Then they tried an effort to provide video equipment to start up Iraqi TV stations in the Sunni triangle. Which got noted by the Wall Street Journal, and suddenly a $100k ask turned into a $1.5m raise. Talk about an oversubscribed round! Based on that, the folks behind the original effort are trying to take this to a national level, that is sustainable for as long as it takes.

My friend Marc Danziger has taken on the role of COO at Spirit of America. Part of that scaling up is the audacious goal of staging a major media campaign beginning in mid-June, with the further goal of involving a million Americans in some way by the 4th of July. I've volunteered to help. We're still figuring out what that means, largely by jumping in and seeing what happens.

I've already hustled a few of my blogging friends for posts and links to SoA - thank you!! We are trying to create a baseline public awareness through blogs, in preparation for the bigger launch. If you're a VC who's in my Palm, you are hereby warned that I will be trying to 'raise a round' for these guys in the very near future.

Since I know this blog (or its RSS) gets around to some part of the technical community, I'll also put out this ask: SoA is going to need some further serious help on building a backend system to match their goals. Big pipe hosting, content management, project tracking, contributor and project matching - you get the picture. If you've got real chops in these areas, and have suggestions, recommendations of good people and companies, or even better the desire to pitch in, my e-mail address is over there to the left. We're not expecting free, but we really need fast and flexible, and discounts wouldn't hurt. I'll collate any inputs and funnel them to the folks already working the tech beat, so they aren't swamped any more than already.

If you don't fit any of those categories, we still need you! Just click on this banner (the first one that has ever turned up on Due Diligence), and it'll take you over to Spirit of America:

Still here? So let me tell you what we're asking for over there. The simplest ask is just to join the SoA mailing list. They've already got my name from an earlier contribution, and never violated trust - it's not going to be a spamfest. This will let SoA keep you up to date on the programs that are getting ready to launch (OK, are being figured out as I write).

Secondly, you could drop some bucks. There are some worthy projects already underway that could use your support. Just look down the left sidebar for your fave, and hit the Paypal button.

You could also volunteer to help. Since the needs are - dynamic, let us say - just go on over there to see the latest list.

Lastly, it should be noted that is an explicitly NON-partisan effort. You don't have to be an R or a D or anything else to believe that the Iraqis have been crapped on by both their and our governments, and deserve our help, for all our sakes. I'll borrow the words of former Dean campaign manager Britt Blaser:

"...there's no part of the SoA project that any of us can find fault with. If you're a bleeding heart liberal, you want to demonstrate that people who hate the war can reach out to the people hurt by our government's illegitimate war. Rabid war supporters see a chance to demonstrate that the war can be won because the greatest American force is the innate goodness of the American GI, and that it's worth going to war to connect our terrific GI's with Arab kids. I can walk both sides of that street. "

So what do we want, folks? Mano a mano, or hand in hand, there and here? No guarantees of success whatsoever, but what would you rather be working towards?
11:28:10 PM    trackback []  

Q&A; with Iraqis

It started when Sarmad, an Iraqi civil engineer posting at Road of Nation started putting up questions for his audience from a set of anonymous Iraqis, including Kurds, on issues regarding the war and the occupation. He got a large, and mostly straightforward, set of responses from Americans and others, with far less trolling and flaming than the typical. (If you visit, note that Sarmad's English was likely learned verbally. His spelling is often nonstandard. Sound it out, as my grade school teachers used to say. It's worth it. He also just lost four of his colleagues in a terror attack. Sympathies are in order.)

Naturally, some of the commenters started asking questions in return, some of which were taken to Sarmad's friends and a collection of replies then posted. One helpful reader of the site has created an index to those question topics and replies. Remember these Q&As; have been translated into Arabic and back again by non-professionals, so the language and cultural gaps are on full display.

(Update 6/4: A moderated Iraqi to rest of world discussion board is being started.)

In the latest development, another Iraqi blogger Alaasmary has collected a panel of five Iraqis to answer questions being collected in his comments. They include (variously) an ex-Iraqi Air Force colonel, a taxi driver, a woman, two civil engineers and an electrical worker. A long and interesting list of questions for them is already accumulating.

From all the interactions I've had with the readers of this blog, you are a civil and intelligent lot, but I'm nonetheless going to say this explicitly: If you go over there, please be both open and respectful. This a chance to talk directly without the fog of Al Jazeera and CNN propaganda. Let's not mess it up.
11:35:05 AM    trackback []  

More Lions around the Valley

I've been hiking the Bay Area hills for nearly twenty years now, and have yet to see a big cat. Some bobcat, a lot of coyotes, but no lions. Dang. Here kitty, kitty....
10:34:47 AM    trackback []  

The Armed Liberal Doffs the Mask

Now, A.L. has decided to drop the pseud, and come forward in his real persona, Marc Danziger. And not just on the blog, but in a feature column by Dan Gillmor in the San Jose Merc. I'll talk about why in a moment, but first I want to tip the hat to Marc and a heretofore unacknowledged friendship:

A.L. and I started out trading comments on WOC. That led to me asking him for some advice in one of his areas of expertise. That's right, the 'Armed' part. Thanks to Marc (and John, and Marciano), I'm now an Armed VC. But that's a topic for another day.

That exchange in turn led to a very enjoyable f2f on Marc's next visit to the Bay Area. Along with a lot of random jabber, we discovered that a centrist liberal and an ex-libertarian (though agreeing to disagree on some things) had very much the same view of what's at stake in the War on Terror in general and the democratization of Iraq in specific, the potential costs of failure, and the conviction that ordinary citizens can and should take a role in winning the peace.

Marc was already on the way to acting on that conviction. Shortly after our meet, he joined up with Jim Hake of Spirit of America to help the Marines at Camp Pendleton pack up donated medical and toys and school supplies to give to civilians in Iraq.

Then Spirit of America started a project to donate television studio equipment so that Iraqis could have their own stations to counter the propaganda of Al Jazeera. The Wall Street Journal took notice of this good cause. My wife and I were hosting Marc, his son, and TG on a return visit to the Valley when he took a call saying that the appeal for $100k in funding had raised over $1m in one day. The final total was over $1.5m - obviously a lot of people see the same thing and want to contribute.

If you didn't follow the links, the reason that Marc has dropped the mask is that he has now officially put his consulting career on hold and accepted a position of COO at Spirit of America, which is getting ready to kick into high gear. I'll have a lot more to say about that tomorrow, but for now I just want to wish Marc (and TG) all the best of success and survival in (non-profit) startup mode.
10:26:31 PM    trackback []  

Impressions of SID

Samsung made a determined (and largely successful) effort to steal the show from such older stalwarts as Sharp and Philips. Their large and crowded booth showed such as goodies as:

• An 80" plasma panel HDTV
• A 47" LCD HDTV
• A 17" active matrix OLED panel. I wasn't too fond of the color balance, but the ability to build this size of panel is impressive.
• Multi-primary TVs in both DLP and LCD technology.
• A 2.03" VGA (400 ppi) equivalent display for mobile phones, built on amorphous silicon, incorporating technology from our portfolio company Clairvoyante.

LED backlights are moving to larger form-factor displays. Lumileds and NEC-Mitsubishi jointly announced and showed a 21.3" LED backed display.

After all the noise about OLEDs, they seem to be turning into a nascent industry. Two years ago there were tiny lab protos and samples in the corners of larger booths. Now there are whole booths devoted to OLED fabrication, testing, and materials. The actually available product is still a small minority of what's to be seen, but the momentum is noticeable.

Flexible displays now seem to occupy the early stage slot formerly held by OLED. At least Kodak and Philips were showing working (monochrome) flexible displays.

There were a number of 'electronic paper' products, including the well-known E Ink. I was not impressed. The technology is clever, but the visual appearence really suffers when juxtaposed to LCD and PDP in the same exhibit hall. I wonder if this approach will be able to get enough momentum to compete with the LCD juggernaut.

A lot of the display industry, particularly the commodity portion, is on the way to Taiwan and thence to mainland China. Nan Ya and VDS were among the Taiwanese with large booths. (And there are other established players such as Chi Mei and AU Optronics that did not exhibit had representatives on the floor. The Korean vendors had better watch out - while they're overtaking the Japanese, the Chinese are coming right up their tail pipes!
11:35:33 AM    trackback []  

Off topic, but fun

Thanks to Xopher.
11:01:38 AM    trackback []  

Heading for SEA-TAC

12:57:59 PM    trackback []  

It's hard being the CEO

A few bits of enlargement and emphasis from here:

The trust relationship between CEO and board is paramount. The best way for the CEO to undermine it is to pitch the team's wins, while sweeping problems under the rug. (As Jerry points out, this isn't always a conscious act - see below). It will always come out. The chance that a business plan survives contact with the market is zero.

Even in the best run company, reality differs from plan. The investors and board know there are going to be deviations. Get them on the table as fast as possible so they can be handled quickly - that's the competitive advantage of a startup. Let them fester, and reality will continue to drift from plan. When the truth comes out, the CEO's credibility is gone, and the required course correction will be major. Recovery is almost impossible for the CEO, and difficult and costly for the investors.

Some amount of this occurs without malice. None of us starts our career as a CEO, or board member for that matter. We begin as engineers, sales people, marketers, finance professionals. Under intense pressure, we will often fall back into our 'native style'. Like the drunk looking for his keys under the lightpost, we search for solutions and good news in the domain where we started and feel at home. It takes a very tough and self-conscious CEO to avoid this at all times. It's the job of the board to note and correct such a tendency, and it's a reason that a CEO is wise to have a close personal advisor to monitor and adjust his behavior as well.

This is also a very good reason for a diverse board. A CEO and board all of the same background will have a tendency to search together for solutions under the same lamppost, and feel they are making progress because they communicate so well. Meanwhile, disfunctions in other areas of the venture pile up. It may be a pain having to summarize down the technical issues to where the ex-CFOs can understand them, or beat the basics of marcom into the heads of retreaded engineers, but it's part of the necessary process.
11:26:42 AM    trackback []  

The results of the blog readers' survey...

1:15:02 PM    trackback []  

A New Literacy of Cooperation

We're starting with Peter Kollock introducing the topic of Social Dilemmas.
8:55:52 AM    trackback []  

Lions invade Silicon Valley!

The lion population has been slowly growing in the Bay Area hills, responding to an over-population of deer. With a dry late spring, the deer have come down from the hills to feast on irrigated gardens earlier than usual. As the deer move into the suburban fringes, the lions follow. There's been a small one sighted at Edgewood Park, less than a mile from my home. Still, having a cat make it miles down into Palo Alto is unprecedented - it might have been following a stream drainage corridor. Too bad they had to take it out, but the judgement call that a half-tranked lion loose in a residential neighborhood was a poor risk was likely the right one.
10:45:17 AM    trackback []  

This concludes our tape-delayed presentation

9:26:29 AM    trackback []