I love thought provoking renditions of what the future might be like. This is a good example of how material science (and Corning) will likely play a role in our future – Ben
Our Future – Through the Eyes of Corning
April 12, 2011
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Driving a Successful Exit
March 29, 2011Over the past 10 years, yet2 has facilitated hundreds of transactions with the Fortune 500, on 3 continents. Most of these have been between successful start ups and a large multinationals, and they cover a wide range of technology. While each transactions is different, I thought I’d share a few navigational insights to help successful start-ups drive an exit or form a partnership.
The first thing to understand is that large companies rarely act with one voice. While they try to, they don’t. They are a collection of individuals each with motivations and fears. Most of employees of these firms have 3 questions in mind, 1) How can I represent my company well? 2) Will this help get me promoted? 3) Will this minimize the chance for me to get fired?
Usually, it’s in the best interest of the LargeCo to delay and do more diligence or testing. Unless they are about to lose the opportunity, they have every motivation to ‘do one more test’. More testing and diligence helps prevent the decision-makers from getting fired. In this sense, Large companies may be price agnostic, meaning they would much rather pay $200 million for a technology they know works, than $5 million for one that ‘needs fixing’. This is how to get promoted, and not fired. Read the rest of this entry »
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Japanese Economy after the Earthquake
March 18, 2011For over ten years I have been going to Japan frequently. I’m going again in 2 weeks. Their; technology, discipline and focus have always amazed me. This was sent to me by a friend and I thought is was worth sharing.
Don’t underestimated Japan’s capability and resolve. The below picture is a good example. The left is the state of a highway right after the earthquake. The right is the same highway four days later. Message? The Japanese economy and people will rebound from this crisis, and be stronger and better then ever.
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What Sports Produce the Best Entrepreneurs?
March 16, 2011This is a great post from Rob Go’s Blog. I love his blog and though it was worth sharing.
I love playing sports (although as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more of a watcher than a doer). In particular, I love the mental side of sports. I’m convinced that sports are a great training ground for many different disciplines. I remember when I was interviewing for Spark, excellence at some sport was an important factor in the hiring process. Of course, it’s a good measure of competitiveness, but I think it’s even deeper than that.
This got me thinking about the emotional and mental characteristics that are important for entrepreneurs, and the sports that best hone these characteristics. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but there were three sports that really hone a particular strength that I see in great entrepreneurs. Read the rest of this entry »
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Google’s Self Driving Car
March 14, 2011By Anil Das of International Business Times
Search engine behemoth Google has been working long and hard on a ‘secret’ project towards making cars that can drive themselves. At this week’s TED conference, Google presented extremely rare demos of its much-awaited self-driving cars and the videos of the demos have hit the internet.
“Our automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” other traffic, as well as detailed maps (which we collect using manually driven vehicles) to navigate the road ahead. This is all made possible by Google’s data centers, which can process the enormous amounts of information gathered by our cars when mapping their terrain,” Google had said in an earlier blog post.
The automated cars, manned by trained operators, just drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard. They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe. All in all, our self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles, it added.
The internet gaint stressed safety has been the first priority in this project and the cars are never unmanned. The company has a trained software operator in the passenger seat to monitor the software. Any test begins by sending out a driver in a conventionally driven car to map the route and road conditions. By mapping features like lane markers and traffic signs, the software in the car becomes familiar with the environment and its characteristics in advance.
The company informed, citing the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents and technology of this kind has the potential to cut the accident rate by half.
Furthermore, this technology is expexted to reduce the time of commuting and make it time efficient. The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates people spend an average 52 minutes everyday commuting to the office.
Search Engine Land has posted a video of one of Google’s self-driving cars racing around a closed course. Take a look at the video to catch a brief glimpse of the future:
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NYC Venture Capital vs. Boston Venture Capital
March 4, 2011I recently read a great article by Dan Primack about a similar topic. I thought I would add my thoughts.
I spend a lot of time in both New York and Boston. My role with yet2Ventures allows me to visit both a couple times a month. I founded yet2.com outside of Boston back in 1999, and spend time raising money for yet2Ventures in New York.
It is not uncommon for people to think that because NYC is arguably the financial capital of the world, that is also a VC strong hold. NYC is not Palo Alto or Boston with their thriving innovation ecosystems, but it should not be underestimated. Read the rest of this entry »
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Innovation Outside of the Box
March 3, 2011Innovation is all about taking the common and regular, and changing it for the better. Here is a quick video about the reinvention of the shoe box by Puma. At yet2ventures, we are fascinated by breakthrough consumer packaging.
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Users Guide to Silicon Valley
February 23, 2011Starting in the fall last year I began spending at least a week a month in the Valley. I came across this great article by Steve Blank which describes a bunch of things to do in the Valley…. it almost a beginner guide to Silicon Valley. I highly recommend the read – Ben
If you’re a visiting dignitary whose country has a Gross National Product equal to or greater than the State of California, your visit to Silicon Valley consists of a lunch/dinner with some combination of the founders of Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter and several brand name venture capitalists. If you have time, the President of Stanford will throw in a tour, and then you can drive by Intel or some Clean Tech firm for a photo op standing in front of an impressive looking piece of equipment.
The “official dignitary” tour of Silicon Valley is like taking the jungle cruise at Disneyland and saying you’ve been to Africa. Because you and your entourage don’t know the difference between large innovative companies who once were startups (Google, Facebook, et al) and a real startup, you never really get to see what makes the valley tick.
If you didn’t come in your own 747, here’s a guide to what to see in the valley (which for the sake of this post, extends from Santa Clara to San Francisco.) This post offers things to see/do for two types of visitors: I’m just visiting and want a “tourist experience” (i.e. a drive by the Facebook / Google / Zynga / Apple building) or “I want to work in the valley” visitor who wants to understand what’s going on inside those buildings.
I’m leaving out all the traditional stops that you can get from the guidebooks.
Hackers’ Guide to Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is more of a state of mind than a physical location. It has no large monuments, magnificent buildings or ancient heritage. There are no tours of companies or venture capital firms. From Santa Clara to South San Francisco it’s 45 miles of one bedroom community after another. Yet what’s been occurring for the last 50 years within this tight cluster of suburban towns is nothing short of an “entrepreneurial explosion” on par with classic Athens, renaissance Florence or 1920’s Paris. Read the rest of this entry »
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Ganeden Biotech Launches Probiotic Yogurt at Walmart
February 21, 2011
Ganeden Biotech is a yet2ventures portfolio company – Ben
/PRNewswire/ — Today, a new low-cost, all-natural yogurt branded as enLiven (www.enlivenyogurt.com) launches exclusively in Walmart stores. The low-fat yogurt from Ganeden, the nation’s leading distributor of over-the-counter probiotic products, is available in four delicious flavors and features GanedenBC30 probiotics.
“Yogurt has long been touted as a healthy breakfast and snack food,” said Carl Freund, vice president of consumer products at Ganeden. “We believe Walmart shoppers will enjoy our tasty new enLiven yogurt with beneficial probiotics, as it is not only good for you and your whole family, but it is affordably priced to help save you money.”
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NASA Announces Results of Pilot Program With yet2.com
April 6, 2011HOUSTON, April 6, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NASA’s Space Life Sciences Directorate (SLSD) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston announced results of a pilot program conducted by yet2.com that identified partnerships to work on six technical needs related to human spaceflight. The needs range from better food packaging materials to a portable bone-imaging device.
SLSD engaged the services of open innovation service provider yet2.com as part of a series of pilot programs during the last two years. In an effort to expand open communication and to create additional opportunities for public involvement with NASA, open innovation service provider (OISP) platforms are under evaluation.
“Open innovation has been a critical component of SLSD’s broader innovation strategy,” said Jeffrey R. Davis, director of SLSD. “This strategy has strengthened our ability to make connections with organizations to address our research and technology needs that we would not have known about using more traditional approaches. Given the favorable results achieved through this pilot study, we will continue to pursue the use of OISP as one tool in our innovation toolkit.”
Based on NASA’s specific technological needs, yet2.com acted as a technology scout, providing a broad external network of experts as potential collaborators with NASA. A relationship can be established with these contacts to develop new technologies. Yet2.com’s system also can be used to maintain established networks for future collaborations. The results from the pilot study show potential for long-term efficacy of OISP platforms.
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