IIW XVIII

Doc Searls VC Panel

Doc Searls:

this is an unconference, so we don't have panels, and yet here we are with a VC panel because someone made it

identity is rock that the computer industry has been pushing up a hill for years

How can we solve problems in the marketplace by focusing on the individual rather than the institution?

Keith Teare:

I have got many bruises from identity, and I don't know how to solve it. Real Names was meant for non-english name mapping

we built a startup called Contact Card that was supposed to let people be contacted without email everyone as a url

I have my own URL at teare.com/keith where you can chat with me - but the chat service is centralised

Derek Andersen:

I don't trust anyone to centralise my identity, not google, not facebook. we're seeing more anonymous sites #indieweb

When somebody has that much power over our identities, they will en dup using it for evil #indieweb

Noah Doyle:

we have an investment in a company called spike that puts a browser in the cloud that goes away when you stop using it

Doc Searls:

has the investment environment changed after Snowden?

Keith Teare:

there's an app called cover.me that is a cloaking app that wraps chat and photo-sharing in encryption, based in China

I used to be a Trotskyist - you read all the books and repeat the quotes and a good idea becomes dogma

Derek Andersen:

if you pay for something you immediately think it is worth more than something for free

ask customers "how much would you pay for this?" so you have a biz model on the first day

Keith Teare:

systems that depend on attention form people to grow are hard to combine with payment - eg app.net, just.me

Twitter is popular and free, but they put crap in front of you all the time, to get your attention

I'm forced into crowd funding. We have 14 companies at Archimedes Labs and they all had trouble being funded

there are now 3 kinds of seed: Family Seed, Pre-Seed and Seed

No-one funds an idea any more, you have to get it up and running for free

you can get a little bit of money for a prototype, maybe $100k, but then you need to get traction

If you get traction, the growth capital is unlimited - you'll get $100M

This encourages small ideas done quickly, not things that take tome to groe.

Doc Searls:

You could poison an idea with a bad implementation?

Keith Teare:

After Yuri Milner invested in Facebook late, he made all the VCs switch to Growth Funds and be Private Equity

Derek Andersen:

there are lots of indicators for traction - eg Y Combinator counts as traction.

You can get funding if you have a track record, but never if you're unknown

Keith Teare:

if someone takes 10% of your company and expects something in 3 months, you will build a small idea

Amit Shah:

there is not a true distributed net. The routers are controlled by a few people.

I'm not worried by the advertising model - that is dying a natural death. we're moving to real solutions

Keith Teare:

Google's biz model depends on searches from laptops and desktops - we do less searching on mobile it's an app world there

we're beginning to see infrastructure as a service for mobile like Parse, Urban Airship take off

Anandan Jayaraman:

finding liquidity is the hard thing for these models - can it be embedded elsewhere to grow?

Amit Shah:

we're looking for ideas that re unique, not me too ideas. We like defensibility, so don't do apps

Don Gordon:

I have an interest in SMB apps and there is a lot of VRM there, if you can give then new independence from big vendors