2010 Crunchies Predictions

Best Internet Application
Chartbeat
Greplin
Pandora
Rdio
Ujam

Best Social App
Cityville
Dailybooth
Foursquare
GroupMe
Twitter

Best Social Commerce App
Blippy
Groupon
Jetsetter
LivingSocial
One Kings Lane
ShopKick

Best Mobile App
Bump
Chomp
Google Mobile Maps for Android
Hashable
Instagram

Best Location Based Service
Facebook Places
Foursquare
Gowalla
SimpleGeo
Uber

Best New Device
Boxee Box
Google Chrome Notebook
iPad
iPhone 4
Kno
Xbox Kinect

Best Technology Achievement
Blekko
Google Self-driving Cars
Hunch
Palantir
Qwiki
Word Lens

Best Design
1000memories
about.me
Airbnb
Flipboard
Gogobot
Qwiki

Best Touch Interface
Flipboard
Fotopedia Heritage iPad app
Osmos
Pulse News Reader
Sencha Touch
Swype

Best Bootstrapped Startup
Addmired (iMob)
Beluga
Easel
Fast Society
Instapaper
Techmeme

Best Enterprise
37 Signals
Buddy Media
CloudApp
inDinero
Millennial Media
Salesforce

Best International
Crivo
PCH International
Soluto
ViKi
VNL
Wonga


Best Clean Tech
Coolerado
Kopernik
MicroGreen
Purealytics
Smith Electric Vehicles
SolarCity

Best Time Sink Application
Angry Birds
Cityville
Netflix streaming
Quora
StumbleUpon

Angel of the Year
Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC
Ron Conway, SV Angel
Michael Dearing, Harrison Metal Capital
Chris Dixon, Founder Collective
Mike Maples, FLOODGATE
Paul Graham, Y Combinator

VC of the Year (individual)
Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital
Jim Breyer, Accel Partners
John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins
Yuri Milner, DST
Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures

Founder of the Year
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks
Dennis Crowley, Foursquare
Jack Dorsey, Square
Kevin and Julia Hartz, Eventbrite
David Karp, Tumblr
Mark Pincus, Zynga

CEO of the Year
Dick Costolo, Twitter
Reed Hastings, Netflix
Drew Houston, Dropbox
Andrew Mason, Groupon
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

Best New StartUp or Product of 2010
Flipboard
GroupMe
Instagram
Quora
Square
Uber

Best Overall Startup or Product of 2010
Facebook
Groupon
Quora
Twitter
Zynga

Congratulations to all of the finalists. Innovation is the engine that drives social progress. You've all lent a hand in making the world a more efficient place by changing the way we work, live, and play.

Thank you,

The SVTB

2011 and beyond, a look into the next 5 years in the Tech Industry

As we move into 2011 I wanted to bring to your attention 4 things to keep top of mind going forward.

1.It's easy for everyone to forget, shielded from the reality of things by their 3D televisions, Ipads, and smartphones, that worldwide internet penetration rates for 2010 were only 28.7%.

This means that less than 1 out of every 3 human beings is actively using the internet. Collaboration is the key to innovation and social progress. Wireless internet availability for every person, in every region of the world is an absolute necessity for social progress. I would like to see technologies focused on increasing internet penetration rates worldwide come out within the next few years.

2. The name of the game is mobile. The global mobile application market will be a $25 billion market by 2015.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/18/report-mobile-app-market-will-be-worth-25-billion-by-2015-apples-share-20/

The development of network technologies and adoption of mobile devices has created a booming secondary market for mobile applications. The culture of cloud computing has moved from business to consumer and we now expect to truly be able to access anything from anywhere from any device. I'd expect to see externality businesses naturally pivot to capture this market transition (digital backup, virtual security, mobile processing, etc...).

3. In line with point number 2, the development of Near Field Communication (NFC) Technology has paved the way for short distance information sharing.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/19/technology/mobile_payments/index.htm

I expect to see the emergence of widely adopted mobile payment platforms. Paypal has already emerged as an early leader, integrating Bump as a device to device payment method. However, Google is entering the space along with competition from a number of startup companies, i'd assume to see some of the major credit card companies partnering with Point of Sale providers to compete in this space as well.

4. True Wireless Technology. Devices like the powerpad already exist, but within a few years we will see the integration of Magnetic Resonance Technology into the mobile energy sector.
http://gizmodo.com/5636704/real-wireless-charging-will-arrive-by-2012-fujitsu-claims

Everything is becoming digital, getting smaller, higher resolution, faster, and mobile. Devices still need an energy source, and as the devices you use everyday evolve, there will be a greater demand for cordless charging. This is a control point for the evolution of mobile devices. Magnetic Resonance Technology will allow wireless charging to be built into your lifestyle. It's already being pursued in the Auto industry, I predict to see it heavily pursued by smart board /smart grid / smart home providers as well. Imagine setting your device down on the breakfast table and having it charge, or building into the floor of your home?

As usual, thanks for all of your support and feedback.

The SVTB

Christmas in the cloud

It took my parents several hours to write, format, and distribute our Christmas letter this year. After getting into a long discussion with them about more efficient ways to distribute our Christmas letter, I introduced them to box.net, one of many free cloud computing applications available on the web. I uploaded our Christmas letter into the cloud and shared the cloud location using my social media channels so that all of my friends and family could immediately have access to our Christmas letter without having to store the huge file in their inbox, getting bounce backs from outdated email addresses, and running into formatting issues.

Wishing all of your friends and family a Merry Christmas is as easy as clicking the link that I've provided below:
http://www.box.net/shared/oqkxyzjve6

Embrace the power of the cloud and have more time to spend with your family this Holiday season.

Merry X-Mas and Happy Holidays,

Karl Laughton
P.S. You can now subscribe to my blog via email so that you'll receive an email notification every time I submit a new blog post, just put your email into the gadget on the right hand side of the page!

Tomorrow's Thought Leaders - Push the Envelope

I've been brought on as an associate board member to the Santa Clara Valley Science and Engineering Fair. It’s something I’ll be doing outside of work, but wanted to bring to your attention.

SCVSEF is a non-profit organization that’s an innovation distribution channel for the thought leaders of tomorrow and a feeder program to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

http://sites.google.com/site/synopsyschampionship/


I think that this will be a great learning opportunity for me as well as a good way to get involved with the community.

Non-profit organizations such as SCVSEF are the hubs that push the envelope in science and engineering to the next generation. They ultimately breed the next round of VC funding, create jobs, and will develop the technology that changes our everyday lives.

I'd encourage all of you to get involved in your communities and do the same, help change the world.

You can do more than you think:

"Attitude should not be determined by circumstances"


Karl Laughton

Thanksgiving means giving back- The importance of Corporate Social Responsibility

As we get closer to the Holidays I wanted to talk about the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility. What is your company doing to give back to the community this holiday season?

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give". ~Winston Churchill

Today my team and I volunteered at the Sacred Heart Community Center in San Jose :
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs076/1102490454376/archive/1103730459949.html

Sacred Heart services 2000+ people on a daily basis with 100 daily volunteers providing food, education, clothing, adult classes, job services, etc...

We donated food, toys, over 60 volunteer hours , and a matched $600 Cisco donation for our volunteering. (Check out the photos below)

http://picasaweb.google.com/vijisriraman/SacredHeartAndBocceBall?authkey=Gv1sRgCPOryqqhobCreQ&feat=email#

One responsibility that all successful people have is to give back to their community. Those fortunate enough to rise to the ranks atop society must never forget where they came from or how they got to where they are today. It's our communities who shape who we are, and we owe it to our communities to give back to them.

Get your company brand out into the community, promote CSR, and the community will reward you with brand loyalty as an externality of doing the right thing. Help yourself, Help your community, do the right thing this Holiday season.

Happy Holidays,

Karl Laughton

2011 Silicon Valley Tech Acquisition Strategies

As we head into the new year some firms have already started the buying frenzy. Amongst the major players, Intel has already made a few big moves with it's acquisitions of McAfee and Infineon. The play positions Intel nicely to make a move into the wireless sector where they can expand on their partnership with Nokia and hedge against suppressed demand for PC's. Expect AMD to make similar but scaled moves in the coming months if they're not bought by Oracle first.

Google had an enormous year with 40+ acquisitions as they are frantically trying to roll out their social media platform. I'd expect them to continue to buy in this space until they can launch their platform. After their launch, I'd also look for them to buy infrastructure/ services support as their application matures.

Apple's $100B war chest has remain closed, don't forget about them as we move into 2011. Steve Jobs has expressed his intent to make some big purchases in the near future. I'd like to see Apple supplement their Ping launch and make a run at YouTube for market share in the multimedia space.

H-P has been all over the headlines lately with it's bidding war to acquire 3Par, Mark Hurd debacle, and acquisition of Arcsight a few weeks later. It's clear that the world's largest tech company by annual revenue is strategically positioning itself as an end to end solutions provider. As an end to end provider with a broad portfolio of Enterprise products and services, they can make a run in the corporate data center market, a direct play at tech giants Cisco systems, Oracle, and Dell.

Based on the acquisitions we saw in 2010, I think we can forecast 3 distinct trends for 2011 acquisitions:

• Chip Maker/Semi Conductor plays into the wireless market: Tablet devices have suppressed PC demand and chip makers will need to diversify their portfolios to hedge their losses while this market is hot.
• B2C based companies will continue to play the web 2.0 market with acquisitions in multimedia sharing, location based services, blogging platforms, and the emergence of group procurement services.
• B2B enterprise networking and data center companies will continue to broaden their portfolios with cloud, virtualization, and adjacency plays intended to supplement their core business models.

As usual, thank you all for following.

SVTB

India Blog Series- Post # 6: The End

The purpose of this documentary was to demonstrate how you can use social media applications & Cisco technology to stay in touch while abroad and educate internal/external communities on the breadth of capabilities that can be achieved via the network as the platform.

I wanted to thank all of you for following my documentary blog series as I travelled to India. I hope that you all found the blog series worthwhile. I’d love to hear your feedback regarding the blog series and understand what you liked, what I could’ve done better, etc… Please feel free to comment on the blog/ contact me directly with suggestions.

Furthermore, I wanted to thank my management team (Kristin White, Shayne Fulford, Swati Daniel, Gabriel Negrete, and Viji Sriraman) for sponsoring my application to the GRC guest audit program and for encouraging me to apply. Without their support and flexibility, I never would’ve followed through on my application.

Lastly, I wanted to extend a big thank you to the GRC audit team (Ravi Channahalli, Swaroop Ramaswamy, Gautam Kumar, Tarun Damodaran, and Vinita Venugopal). Their support made the trip for me. The strong leadership, visibility, and collaboration from the team made the entire process seamless. We came together as a cohesive group, delivered quality results, and had a great time doing it.

I would encourage anyone who has an opportunity to apply for programs of this nature to do so. The experience not only made me a better professional, it made me a better human being.

I am truly grateful to have had this opportunity. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions/ comments that you may have.

Karl Laughton