Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: startups

  • Formulas for successful crowdfunding

    Formulas for successful crowdfunding

    Pebble have achieved the biggest Kickstarter fund raising in the service’s history with a $14 million fundraising for its latest smartwatch.

    Over at competing crowdfunding service Indiegogo Flow Hives, a Tasmanian beekeeping invention, has raised nearly five million dollars for its innovative beehives that put honey on tap.

    Crowdfunding is fast becoming the way for smaller manufacturers to secure preorders from the market and secure scarce capital for the business.

    Pebble and Flow follow the success of Ninja Blocks who have had two successful crowdfunding ventures and their CEO Daniel Friedman spoke to Decoding The New Economy last year about raising money for hardware projects.


    Not every hardware crowdfunding project works out well though as Mark Pesce described in relating his experience with the failed Moore’s Cloud fundraising. Mark said he’d “rather eat a bullet” than engage in another crowdsourcing campaign given the pressures upon manufacturers to deliver.


    As Moore’s Cloud shows there are risks and complexities in looking to the crowd to raise project capital. Even a successful campaign faces potential problems in completing the project and delivering a product that meets the expectations of those who’ve contributed.

    Crowdfunding has opened a new way for artists and entrepreneurs to raise funds for their projects, like all tools though it does have it’s risks and isn’t for everyone.

     

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  • Building the next Internet of Things network

    Building the next Internet of Things network

    Earlier this week we looked at Cisco’s claim that Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks will handle much of the world’s mobile data traffic by the end of the decade.

    French company SIGFOX showed how investors are looking at the opportunity in these systems with a $115 million funding round two days ago.

    What’s particularly notable about SIGFOX’s investors is how many of them are telcos themselves with Spain’s Telefonica, Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and South Korean SK Telecom being key shareholders.

    Along with the telcos, who SIGFOX hopes will help them expand their footprint outside Spain, France, the UK and the Netherlands, there’s also a collection of industrial companies including Air Liquide and infrastructure giant SDF Suez.

    That a diverse range of companies are moving into the LPWA market shows how important the stakes are for providers in securing a position in the the technologies that will define the Internet of Things as industries brace themselves for the massive rollout of connected devices.

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  • Daily links – the future of Google, Silicon Valley’s name and how startups die

    Daily links – the future of Google, Silicon Valley’s name and how startups die

    On many measures Google are in trouble, but one analyst thinks we’re panicking and his view is the lead of today’s links of the day. We also look at how the name ‘Silicon Valley’ came about, why solar power is getting cheaper and how some startups die.

    Does Google’s future lie in R&D?

    “Google is down but it’s not out” is the warning of this analyst’s report on the company’s earnings and strategy. Interestingly Google outspends Apple by $4bn a year on research and development, but both of them are dwarfed by Microsoft’s spending, which indicates R&D investment doesn’t guarantee success.

    The origins of the name ‘Silicon Valley’

    Last Sunday marked the 44th anniversary of the first time the label ‘Silicon Valley’ appeared in print. The US Computer History Museum looks at how the name came about and no-one will be surprised it was a marketing person who coined it.

    Why does solar power keep getting cheaper

    A few years ago putting solar cells on a building was expensive, now in many parts of the world the price of PV panels is becoming competitive with mains power. Vox Magazine looks at the factors driving the price drops and finds that economies of scale are now the main factor affecting the falling cost of installed solar power systems.

    RIP Urbanspoon

    One of the earliest food review platforms was Urbanspoon which was founded on the basis it would only grow as a bootstrapped company. In 2009 the founders sold out to a larger company who have now sold it onto an Indian business who is going to shut the name down.

    Startups who’ve fallen off the map

    Business Insider lists 17 formerly hot businesses who’ve fallen out of the public view this year, while some of them haven’t disappeared, it’s a list that reminds us that most new businesses, particularly tech startups, fail.

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  • 2015 and the internet of desperate valuations

    2015 and the internet of desperate valuations

    2015 will feature more boneheaded moves as over valued companies try to meet investors’ expectations, a good example is Twitter adding sponsored accounts to its lists service.

    The move by Twitter, reported by Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan, is another attempt by the service to get revenues that justify the company’s ten billion dollar valuation. While adding little income, the move further erodes trust in the service.

    Illustrating the investment mania home delivery service Instacart announced it had raised $220 million, an amount that values the company at two billion dollars.

    That home delivery services are again the investment flavour of the time is a worry given similar stakes marked the peak of the first Dot Com Boom in 2000. Whether today’s equivalents are any more sustainable will be one of the questions for 2015.

    Another question for 2015 will be whether Twitter can crack the magic code and justify its valuation.

    Happy New Year.

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  • SurveyMonkey builds its war chest

    SurveyMonkey builds its war chest

    Earlier this year Decoding The New Economy interviewed SurveyMonkey’s  CEO Dave Goldberg on his vision for the business and how the company’s services are helping people understand the context of the data pouring into their organisations.

    Yesterday SurveyMonkey announced it had raised 250 million dollars through an equity round that values the business at $1.3 billion, an amount only a little more than what the company has raised since being founded in 1999.

    The additional funds are earmarked for privately held SurveyMonkey to acquire more companies and “provide meaningful liquidity to our employees and investors” with participants in the new funding round including CEO Goldberg and Google Ventures increasing their existing stakes.

    In his interview with Decoding The New Economy last February, Goldberg described how he sees mobile technologies changing both SurveyMonkey and business in general along with the challenge for companies in understanding the data pouring into business.

    It’s not hard to image many of the acquisitions SurveyMonkey makes with its latest fundraising will be in the mobile and analytics sectors.

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