44 unanswered voicemails.  That’s how many I had on my iPhone the other day when I came up for a little air after being heads down with our team on our upcoming new  release of the StarPound platform.  My StartupLounge email is full – I have no idea how many hundreds of unanswered emails are waiting for me there. If you are/were one of those 44 people, or one of the countless people who have tried to contact me via my StartupLounge email address – I’ll apologize en masse now.  I’ll also go ahead and tell you that most likely, your voicemail or email will be deleted without my reply.  It’s just too big of a hole for me to climb out of at this point.

So why I have been incommunicado lately, or as @Unblakeable puts it, apparently in the witness protection program?  We’ve been heads down working on the next release of our platform, and launching several new customers (including a Global Fortune 100 customer – whee!).  Oh, and talking with investors, growing our base of channel partners, and pulling more than a few all-nighters. Suffice it to say that “free time” is somewhat of a myth around our office these days.

Read more »

I dropped a tweet on this earlier today, but thought I’d drop a quick note here on the blog as well – especially since I’ve been incredibly lazy about blogging lately.  Well, incredibly too busy to blog, actually, but …

A while back, I was approached by a team of entrepreneurs here in Atlanta who were in the planning phases of a new wireless startup called WiFi Cat.  Strange name, I know, but they had a pretty novel idea.  As I tend to do with so many startups these days, I offered my advice on how they could get the venture off the ground from a bootstrapping standpoint.  My advice, of course, is/was worth what they paid for it – zero lol.

At any rate, fast forward.  The team has really made a lot of progress with their model and service, and are finally ready to stand in front of investors and share their story.  I encouraged them to apply to StartupRiot (and CapitalLounge) to start getting their message out there.  They were accepted into both, and will be having their big coming out party at StartupRiot on February 18th here in Atlanta.

I am also thrilled, and flattered, that they asked me to serve on their board of directors, a responsibility that I do not often accept, and one that I take very seriously.  In the case of WiFi Cat, it was really a no-brainer, though.  This technology is going to fundamentally change the WiFi scene, with far reaching implications that will absolutely DWARF the WiMax initiative.

The team also asked if I could present the idea at StartupRiot personally.  While I don’t think I am necessarily the best candidate to pitch the idea (I’d prefer the founders), I think my passion around their idea will serve me well during the presentation.

So, I will see everyone on the 18th at StartupRiot!  Can’t wait until I can finally talk about this deal – and no, i can’t talk about it right now, so please don’t ask!

Cheers.

The other day, someone wrote me an email asking me to explaining how StarPound’s platform compared to Asterisk.  After I replied, it occurred to me that it might be worth taking a moment to blog about this topic.

First, if  you aren’t familiar with Asterisk, it is the leading open-source software PBX and telephony package out in the marketplace.  They’ve done a remarkable job in creating something of enormous value.  I will go so far as to say I think Asterisk has quickly become an integral part of the open source enterprise stack.  Asterisk was created by Mark Spencer of Digium fame.

Asterisk is a telephony engine and toolkit.  Meaning you can use it as the underpinning of lots of really cool telephony apps.  You can use it as a PBX, a gateway, a media server, and even in call center contexts.

StarPound, while also an engine and toolkit, builds on top of toolkits like Asterisk.  StarPound consists of a visual business process modeling tool, and a suite of application servers that allow you to automate those processes.  For those processes that need to be “communication-enabled” (see: CEBP at Wikipedia), StarPound’s platform has telephony-related tools that tie into components at the Asterisk level.

StarPound relies upon external telephony engines like Asterisk to provide under-the-hood call control and media serving functionality.  Note:  We’ve done in-house integration and testing of FreeSwitch, and will be rolling out production support for that platform soon.

On top of all of these components, we have developed a suite of enterprise applications specifically aimed at call centers and enterprise PBX users.  These applications are incredible on their own merit, but also serve as great examples of the types of applications that can be built with the StarPound platform.  A lot of the confusion comes from people who equate StarPound as a “PBX in the cloud” company solely.  They think “PBX in the cloud”, and then immediately think Asterisk.

Even though we have a cloud-based PBX application, we typically don’t host it for individual companies.  That isn’t our model – that is the model of Vocalocity and others.  We are the type of company that powers another company that wants to be in that space.  We’ll have some big announcements to make soon on that …

So the short answer is, we are built on top of telephony toolkits like Asterisk and FreeSwitch, but that is really only a small portion of our overall capabilities.  StarPound is more accurately described as a software platform that automates business processes by turning them into web and voice services.  In fact, our PBX and call center applications are driven by, guess what?  Business process models automated through StarPound!  If you want to change something in your PBX or call center, you don’t fiddle with config files – you visually edit the “way” the application is supposed to work – the process model.

A great way to describe it  … with StarPound, you model what an application is supposed to do, not necessarily how it is supposed to do it.

Cheers.

The down market seems to be working in our favor. This probably isn’t going to news to some of you, but I thought I’d share a few random thoughts on this.

As a FOSS (Free, Open Source Solution) company, that also offers a cloud-based software-as-a-service option, we’re sorting through more deal opportunities than we can handle right now. We’re hiring based upon real growth … which is the ultimate barometer of any startup’s progression.

CIOs and other tech decision makers still have the same problems to solve within their organizations, they just don’t have a blank check book to work with anymore.  No one ever got fired for bringing in a Microsoft, Avaya, SAP, or any other market leader to implement a solution.  But if they can’t afford to do that, they can either look to a startup or smaller company for a solution, or postpone the project until the market gets better. Tech decision makers like to be heroes, so cater to that.  Give them a solution that makes sense to them in a down market. A down market is a GREAT time for an emerging company to secure a beachhead against established players.

So how do you cater to them in a down market?  I suppose there isn’t one correct answer – it will vary depending upon your business, but … here are some thought starters based on what we’re seeing.

Startups can be more agile and creative with pricing and infrastructure. You don’t have 25,000 mouths to feed.  Yet … You have a handful.  Be aggressive with pricing – don’t try to get your whole nut on your first deal or two.  Get creative. Options are limitless – per seat, per transaction, per CPU hour, etc.  Are those up-front professional services fees getting in the way of closing the deal?  Waive them, and incorporate them into a transaction fee where the customer can pay for them over time.

Make your solution solve a real problem. In this market, the checks are being written to solution providers who can truly offer an efficiency or savings (of either time or money, or hopefully both).  If you aren’t doing this, you probably won’t last in the enterprise space. Don’t make your internal champion go back and explain why his or her boss needs to write a check to you.  Instead, arm them so they go back and show how much time and money they’ll save by bringing you in AND how painless it will be to get started. Everyone wants an on-demand solution these days – the days of NIH are shrinking.

If your solution doesn’t really solve a problem – make it solve one.

Get the deal DONE (especially if it involves a reference customer). If you can do this, others will dial down their perceived risk of entrusting a critical function to a startup provider.  It could even be worth losing money on a deal like that if you know it will open other doors for you – plus it slows your burn or at least helps you get to breakeven.

Put it in the cloud. Hardware is now a commodity.  It is a lot easier and cheaper to build a cloud solution these days.  Blade server prices are down to incredibly advantageous levels.  And if you can’t or don’t want to do it yourself, check out Scalr.net, which has a fantastic interface around Amazon’s EC2 service.

Enterprise services are the “ultimate mashup”. If you are an enterprise services startup, and you can effectively add value somewhere in a chain of web services, you have a decent shot at surviving this “Great Correction” as I’m calling the current market – but you are going to have to get deals done outside of the box.

Would love to hear some other thoughts …

Cheers.

Well, after four years of toiling, the StarPound project is finally seeing the light of day.  In the wee hours this morning, Wei Wang (CTO) and I published v1.1.0 RC1 of the open-source StarPound CORE platform to Sourceforge, and then published the new StarPound.net web site.  The team has been working nonstop over the past few months to make this launch date – we’re tired, but we made it.

You can read a lot more about the platform over on the site, but I’ll serve up a quick description of it here, and share a little bit about where we’re going.

Read more »

In actuality, not a lot. But, apparently we both believe that the keyboard will eventually become deprecated in favor of more natural inputs.

Over the past 30 years, computers have changed dramatically in terms of processing power, graphics capability, and storage capacity. However, the one thing that hasn’t fundamentally changed is how we interact with the computer. We are still tethered via keyboards, mice, joysticks, and gamepads. Even the Nintendo Wii, as cool as it is, has you tethered to the experience through a wireless controller.

We’re doing our best to change that at PlayMotion, and in some cases, on a grand scale. Some of our experiences have hundreds, even thousands of simultaneous people collaborating together using natural gestures. We believe that the human body is the ultimate input device. Simply put, the human body is capable of performing movements and gestures that cannot be replicated by a traditional input device.

Gates sees diminished role for keyboards

PITTSBURGH – People will increasingly interact with computers using speech or touch screens rather than keyboards, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said.

“It’s one of the big bets we’re making,” he said during the final stop of a farewell tour before he withdraws from the company’s daily operations in July.

In five years, Microsoft expects more Internet searches to be done through speech than through typing on a keyboard, Gates told about 1,200 students and faculty members Thursday at Carnegie Mellon University.

Gates also said the software that is proliferating in various branches of science, including biology and astronomy must become even more advanced.

“They’re dealing with so much information that … the need for machine learning to figure out what’s going on with that data is absolutely essential,” he said.

Microsoft is trying to establish ties not only with university computer science departments but also with reseachers in other scientific areas “to help us understand where new inventions are necessary,” Gates said.

Gates plans to retire as Microsoft’s chief software architect in July and focus on philanthropy.

Hey Bill, it’s one of the big bets we’re making as well, although I don’t think the next point on the curve is as simple as speech recognition and touch screens. It is probably a complex mix of things, including natural, untethered gesture recognition, one of our areas of interest. Let’s face it – touch screens and speech recognition have been around a long time – granted, the technologies are much better now, but I can still type faster than I can dictate (then type to correct). However, consumers are adopting touch technology now en masse (e.g. the iPhone), as well as speech recognition (e.g. voice dialing capabilities on cell devices, Microsoft’s Sync technology for cars, etc.) But we have already come to expect those technologies … we’ve seen them mature over the years.

In my opinion, the next exciting point on the curve is the nexus of computer vision, gesture recognition and visual immersion. I’ll post some more thoughts on this soon …

Cheers.

If you will be attending the upcoming NASAGA 2007 conference, I’ll be delivering a cool keynote presentation (I hope!) on the trends surfacing with using interactive technology in the training and development space. The presentation will present my observations from the past (I spent quite a bit of time in the T&D/technology space with Cambridge Technology Partners and DCI), some observations about the present, and an overview of what I think the future holds (based upon current industry drivers). The latter two areas based upon our current work in the education market with clients at PlayMotion.

Link: North American Simulation and Gaming Association

I may turn the presentation into a video cast or something and post here – time permitting. Hope to see you there!

Cheers.