At VON

I’m in Boston now for Fall VON.

The Enterprise 2.0 panel turned into an un-conference. Great questions on how voice is evolving into this environment and does the 2.0 label apply, or is wanted.

Tomorrow I’m speaking at the New Services with Old Lines panel: Wednesday, October 31, 2007, 3:15pm – 4:30pm.

Pudding Media is bringing an innovative model into the telecom space with advertising.

Powering meebo

Last night we had a special announcement made. We are now enabling voice communications, live talking, on meebo. This works between meebo users, and also reaching out to other IMs.

This is what it looks like:

We’ve started out just connecting the users. meebo is so big, it can crash our servers. Soon we’ll start enabling the content matching features gradually and bring in information, web pages and images into the conversation.

It’s pretty exciting to see the Pudding Media Partnership Program kicking in. We’ll start connecting more services soon, and making conversations interesting.

Here is the press release:

 Pudding Media and meebo Join Forces to Deliver Free Voice Chat to Millions of Instant Messaging Users via the meebo Platform The Pudding Media Partner Program Kicks offSAN JOSE, Calif. — Oct. 30, 2007 – Pudding Media, a voice discovery pioneer, today announced a partnership with meebo, a website for instant messaging (IM) with more than six million unique people logging in monthly, enabling free voice calls for meebo’s users. Pudding Media also announced the launch of its partner program with meebo as the inaugural partner in the program. Pudding Media similarly joins the meebo Platform as an inaugural partner. “We are excited to join the meebo Platform as a step towards our goal of offering communications providers a chance to enhance voice calls for their users,” said Ariel Maislos, Pudding Media CEO and co-founder. “Over the next few months, we will expand the service so that meebo’s users can choose to display Web pages, news, pictures and video clips based on the conversation.” “At meebo, our mission is to connect people live on the Web. The integration of Pudding Media into the meebo Platform makes it easy to enable our users to experience seamless voice chat with anyone on their buddy list,” said Seth Sternberg, meebo CEO and co-founder. “Pudding Media inside of meebo brings us one large step closer to becoming the Web’s live interaction destination.” Pudding Media created the partner program to provide enhanced calling experiences to any communications provider, starting with Internet telephony providers, social networks and Web publishers and expanding later to mobile carriers. Powered by Pudding Media’s innovative technology, Pudding Media’s partners are able to deliver an enriched call experience to their users. With the launch of the partner program, Pudding Media is making its innovative technology immediately available to all communications providers.   For more information about joining Pudding Media partner program, visit www.puddingmedia.com/partners.

About Pudding Media
Pudding Media is a San Jose-based startup building a revolutionary technology that redefines how we communicate. Pudding Media’s platform allows any communications provider, from Web publisher to mobile carrier, to enrich their calling plans with content. For more information, visit: www.puddingmedia.com 

About meebo meebo is a website for instant messaging. Founded in September 2005, meebo continues to catch on with IMers across the globe. After announcing 500,000 user-accounts in October 2006, user registration on meebo has rocketed to 3.5 million in just twelve months with more than six million unique people logging in monthly. More than 1 million people spend more than two-and-a-half hours with us every day. meebo’s investors include Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Visit www.meebo.com today to connect with people live on the Web.

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All brands, names, or trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

Contact:

Erica Jostedt SutherlandGold Group for Pudding Media 925.890.6889 ej@sutherlandgold.com 

Michaela WilkinsonThree-Forty Communications for meebo 415.233.4075 michaela@three-forty.com

Innovation in small places

Today the Washington Post wrote a great sotry featuring Kovio: Over the Rainbow In Silicon Valley

Kovio is a great company, trying to reinvent the semiconductor business by transitioning to printed electronics. Having joined the board of Kovio recently, I am astounded by the breadth of that vision. Very similar to how we are trying to transform the communications space at Pudding Media by transitioning to an ad-supported model.

Heading to silicon valley to fulfil that dream made a lot of sense.

I think the gravity of the place is amazing – the mass, way beyond critical, is drawing talent, ideas, and money to make things happen.

In Israel we see the same phenomenon, where a concentration of talent and ideas makes for spontaneous combustion.

I think it is all about size. The closer we are physically, the more we can informally interact and exchange ideas. This in turn allows the truly good ideas to raise to the top when competing for those scarce resources – talent, attention, money. There is no substitute to proximity. No matter how good e-mail gets.

Small is very important, which is why we are seeing small pockets of entrepreneurship as opposed to a global spread.

Facebook?

It’s interesting to see the misapplication of math.

What is the limit of a series? When do numbers make sense?

When we filed for an IPO for Passave, we were looking to raise 70M to 80M, in exchange for ~38% of the company.

So the value was 210M (80M/38%), but it was solidly anchored by 38% of the equity.

The same is achievable by 40M/19%. But how about 4M/1.9%?

How about with 1.6%? Sounds familiar?

Justifying a valuation with a very small percentage is flimsy at best.

But what if even that didn’t happen?

Here is another view on the same numbers:

Microsoft gives Facebook 240M in cash.

In return it gets 1.6% equity stake, and the right to serve ads outside the US on Facebook.

How much is each part worth?

Equity = 240M, ad-serving rights = 0, is clearly not it.

But what if ad-serving is worth 230M (in line with MySpace/Google deal), and the equity is worth the remaining 10M? That may give Facebook a valuation of only 10M/1.6% = 625M.

In economic terms the option value of the deal is substantial, making the 1.6% holding a significantly smaller part of the deal, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Maybe this is not an investment? Maybe this is an ad deal with what we call ‘a sweetener’?

The Idea of Gold

I just finished reading Making Money the newest Terry Pratchett novel.
I never tire of the Discworld mayham.
The beauty of this is in the simplified view of the world, highlighting ad absurdum just what’s needed to make a point.
For example: The idea of gold is more important than the gold itself.