Mohamed Nanabhay's Blog

There are two things that most early adopters were clamoring for this month: an iPhone and an invitation to join Pownce, which is the new twitter-like sharing service founded by Kevin Rose and friends. Invites to Pownce are so rare that apparently people are selling invitations on eBay.

I've been itching to get in - in fact, I was on the verge of sending Daniel Burka (the rockin' designer of Digg and co-founder of Pownce whom I met at FOWA earlier this year) an e-mail groveling for an invite (listen, I'm in the middle of the desert - the little things give me joy). In my quest for an invite, I IM'ed Morad:

me: do u have a pownce invite yet?
morad: pownce?
me:tsk, tsk...kevin rose's twitter killer
morad: oh that...didn't know he announced it yet
me: behind the curve...that's what happens when u leave web for two weeks
morad: I am sick! I need help!
morad: did you get invitation?
me: don't have invite - if i get one you'll be the first to get invited by me

I'm always pleasantly surprised at how networked Morad is. Unfortunately, he's had a back injury and has been out of the office for a couple of weeks. More painful is the fact that he has difficulty using his PC due to the pain. This of course, didn't stop him from rushing out and procuring an invitation and then getting me in.

Being in early has it's benefits - I managed to secure my first name (which happens to be very popular) as my screen name.

I've got a couple of invites now so if you're feeling geeky and want to play with Pownce, drop me a note. Also feel free to check out
my Pownce page.

Ethan Zuckerman posted about a the rise of African blog aggregators a few weeks ago. I had previously written about a couple of different Arab blog aggregators so it was interesting to see how my comrades back South were sizing up.

I've been signed up for both Afrigator and the Mail and Guardian's Amatomu for about 3 weeks now and have been pleasantly suprised. Amatomu has already managed to galvanise the South African blogosphere - I've personally found myself spending more time bouncing around South African blogs linked off Amatomu.

Afrigator has the potential to do the same for the wider continent - it's still early days and it still has to gain critical mass. One of the old-school ways they are trying to gain visibility (and some link love) is by giving away an iPod (and some t-shirts) to people who help sign up bloggers. Vincent Maher (from Amatomu) has setup a Buzz Graph to track the impact of the Afrigator campaign - which is very cool - using one aggregator to track the growth of another!

Do you think of "triple-play", "quadruple-play", VoIP or some other buzzword when thinking of convergence of voice and data? If so, you're missing out on the whole other world of "emerging telephony" where really innovative applications are being built on the network (and I say network referring to a network where voice is just another application). I've been following the Emerging Telephony Conference (Etel) which has just finished on the O'Reilly Radar and here are a couple of things which caught my eye:

• Jaiku, a company focused on "presence" launched at ETel. You can sign up and create a live profile but the real fun starts once you download their application onto your mobile (only Nokia series 60 supported currently). Jaiku can then share your presence with your contacts, provide you with their presence (if phone is on, off, meeting mode, etc.) and location (what cell tower are they near). I'm going to play with this in the office next week (maybe Riyaad or Safdar will impress me and have our test Nokia's loaded up with the app on Sunday morning). For more information check out Brady Forrest's interview with a founder.
• I've been meaning to install and play with Asterisk (an open source PABX) for ages. These guys got a lot further than me and created some neat applications. Considering that I've also been meaning to start taking Arabic lessons for just as long, the BanglaBollo service really stood out. It's a language learning platform designed to assist people learning Bengali - you listen to some words, then record how you would say them and they later get listened to (and graded by) a tutor. Now if only I had the time to create an a similar version for learning Arabic...
• The Flat Planet Phone Company

  advanced phone services such as Hosted PBX, Mobile to VoIP connectivity, Disposable Numbers , Virtual IVR and many more....[your] own branded web site and all the tools to market the Flat Planet services under [your] own brand name.

  The system includes a complete hosted softswitch, billing and customer management system. With the unique Flat Planet business model,no additional investment, equipment or manpower is needed.

• Grand Central that promises one (phone) number to rule them all. No more missing calls if you aren't home or out of the office or switch telco's. Or at least that's the idea...
• Cell Crypt which provides (you guessed it) encrypted calls between mobile phones through a client that you install. Let's just hope that your phone wasn't compromised before you installed the app!

Of course, you could always create your own phone mash-up...

Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) came out with guns blazing at a panel debate on why European startups were trailing behind their US counterparts. One of the reasons? The BBC.

His reasoning is that the BBC is getting involved in all sorts of markets outside of broadcasting and since they are publicly funded, they don't have to turn a profit. This then puts all sorts of negative pressure on startups who now have to compete with free (or publically funded) products.

Check out this video to see why Micheal Arrington thinks the bbc should be dissolved.

One of things Arrington pointed to was the CBBC "virtual world for kids" that the BBC is working on and how that announcement must have disrupted four or five startups.

I'd love to hear Ben Metcalfe's take on Arringtons comments.

These are my rough notes from the Future of Web Apps in London

What is the right formula is for creating a startup:

• Market Timing
• Key factors
• Areas of opportunity

Are we in Bubble 2.0?

• The difference between now and the bubble is that people are not taking companies public due to compliance and investors will not invest in unprofitable companies.
• $600m venture capital in "Web 2.0" in 2006.
• Facebook almost acquired by $1.62 billion.
• MySpace generating $25m per month in advertising.
• So we're just getting started. And we're seeing companies fail and close shop which is good since in the bubble they just got rolled into oher venture funds after three or four financing rounds.
• Things are just starting and the best internet applications are still to come.

What should you focus on when starting up

• Have a good idea! Better to solve a problem you have than to try to "research" market needs.
• Invent a market
• Destroy a market
• Remove Friction
• Have a business plan ( but Digg didn't have one!)
• Have a revenue model
• Build it cheap, test the waters - don't build a fully scalable solution until you know it is what people want.
• Avoid a high burn rate

But YouTube didn't do any of this!

• Threw away their original business plan and one founder bailed
• flaunted international copyright law
• Burnt through a lot of cash

So why did they succeed?

• they removed friction by providing a much needed services - IPTV (and not user generated video clips). People want to watch the Daily Show online and YouTube enabled that.

• first to market
• so much growth that money poured in to cover burn rate.

Shared attributes of Winners

• Founding team - passion for what they are doing
• Doing something extraordinary
• Removing serious friction
• Great founder dynamics
• Never raised big money or raised it late
• Create buzz

Losers

• Poor founder/team choices
• Lifestyle / Ego Entrepreneurs
• Raised too much money
• Spent too much money
• Over business plan
• Forget about scaling (when you need to scale)
• Have to try too hard at marketing - If buzz isn't happening, seriously rethink your product (not your marketing)

Case Studies:
Case Study : MyBlogLog
1. Launched Oct 19 2006
2. Acquired January 8 2007
3. Never raised a venture round

Case Study: Amie Street
1. Launched mid 2006
2. Two universtiy students
3. No capital raised
4. Can do to music industry what Digg did to news industry

Let artists upload songs and they can initially be downloaded for free. As more people download the price starts going up in cent increments upto 99c.

Case Study: Jingle Networks : 1800Free411
1. Free business information phone number
2. Has taken 3% of US market
3. Get revenue from placing ads before you get the number
4. Force AT&T to compete

Areas of opportunity

• Offline/Online
• Adobe Apollo platform : allows you to use application online and offline. One application to rule them all!
• Firefox 3.0
• File system + html/flash/ajax
• DRM and Music/Movies/TV - Market is waiting for a legal way to do this
• Data and service portability (teqlo, ning, pipes) - need to free users data
• Mobile Applications