Southeast VC

Facebook Keynote Includes Key Stats and E-Commerce Plans

I attended ChannelAdvisor Catalyst over the last few days in Pinehurst, NC. 500 people attended and listened to executives from eBay, Google, Amazon.com, Facebook, Nike and Paypal. It also included a lot of valuable networking and a panel from leading stock analysts.

I always enjoy re-connecting with some of ChannelAdvisor's customers as well as meeting new ones. It was hard to believe the slowdown in e-commerce given the strong growth in attendance over 2007 and the bullish comments made by so many internet retailers.

A keynote I particularly enjoyed was the one yesterday by Ben Ling, Director of Platform Product Marketing at Facebook. As most of you may know, I am a pretty avid Facebook user with 3 of our companies having apps on FB and some of them have multiple apps.

Anyway, here are some notes I took from Ben's talk and I thought I'd share them here:

- Facebook views shopping as a social experience and they think more and more experiences online will be social.

- Facebook's goal is to create the ability to share information more effectively.

- Some general stats I noted during his talk:

• Facebook now has 71 million users with 200k new users a day;
• 50% of these users return daily
• geographic breakdown 1/3 of their users are in the US, 1/3 in Europe and 12% in Canada.
• 1/2 of their users are not college students
• they expect a trillion page views in 2008
• They have over 300k applications and they have the #1 photo application on the web and the #1 event application on the web as well
• Facebook has 500 employees including 100 engineers

Facebook will be releasing general e-commerce capabilities towards the end of 2008. They will allow acceptance of credit card payments and passwords will be stored for other purchases on FB. Ben mentioned they will be partnering to make all of this happen. It will be interesting to track this and watch as Facebook finds ways to monetize the success of the strong and rapidly growing user base.

UPDATE: Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor posted a good summary of Catalyst here.

2007 Internet & Technology Acquisitions

This is a pretty good wrap-up- highlighting acquisitions in 2007 and covers the following industries:

• web/internet
• social networking
• internet advertising
• software
• hardware
• gaming

It includes the acquisition price (when disclosed) and links to the press release and other blogs commenting on the story. This provides some good data points for those looking to exit or even acquire in 2008.

Here Comes Another Bubble

Funny video about us being in another tech bubble.

Thanks to Rik for sending this to me.

UPDATE: This was removed from YouTube for copyright issues, BUT you can still see it here.

Email Addiction

Interesting article on email usage especially on those with portable devices:

• 59% check email whenever a new message arrives
• 43% said they keep the device nearby where they are sleeping to listen for incoming email
• 40% have checked their email in the middle of the night
• Washington DC is the most email addicted city in the country with 82% of people there having multiple email accounts.

I'm not going to make any comments about my personal habits :)

Facebook's Growth with 7 Observations

With one of our companies ReverbNation launching their music player on Facebook, I decided to create an account and check it out.

Assuming you are already caught up on how Facebook works, here are some observations from using it over the last 2 weeks:

1) I'm jealous of the growth Facebook is experiencing. Seems like a pretty smart decision for Facebook to open to the general public. Leading up to that move, the site was limited to college students and traffic on the site had leveled off.

But now, Facebook has hit 30 million users and just under 60 days ago that number was 24 million. And looking at other interesting stats, I found that users that are 35 years old and older doubled over the last year - now past 10 million. The biggest growth is with 25-34 year olds, up almost 200% year over year.

2) I was amazed how many people I know are in Facebook. Pretty quickly I have connected with 85 people that I know... and that was without trying too hard... most of these are work connections and many are LinkedIn duplications (which is a whole different topic btw). So, besides college students (where Facebook absolutely dominates) who is in Facebook? 1) A lot of younger, web savvy entrepeneurs. 2) A ton of VCs. Here is a quick sample of VCs that are members:

• Mike Feinstein, former GP, Venrock
• Brad Feld, Mobius Venture Capital
• Elliot Katzman, Commonwealth Capital Ventures
• Simeon Simeonov, Polaris Venture Partners
• Mike Hirshland, Polaris Venture Partners
• Paul Kedrosky, Ventures West
• John Kim, HIG Ventures
• Nathaniel McNamara, HIG Ventures
• Lucy McQuilken, Intel Capital
• David Aronoff, IDG Ventures
• Chip Hazard, IDG Ventures
• Jeff Bussgang, IDG Ventures
• Jack Biddle, Novak Biddle Venture Partners
• Phil Bronner, Novak Biddle Venture Partners

3) People (I hope the ones I am connected to are not in this category) spend an average of over 3 hours/day on Facebook. 3 hours/day!! With some college students that I have talked with, it seems to have replaced or at least greatly minimized having a Yahoo or Gmail account for your email. They use Facebook to communicate with their friends because they are all on the same platform.

Some features I like is that it is really easy to track what applications people are adding to their profile, see recent pictures they have added (some have 150+ pics), see upcoming birthdays and track events all over. 

4) It is really easy to start a new group on Facebook and keep it open or hide it. After I quickly found out who was on Facebook, I noticed there are a lot of groups popping up. I joined some groups I was most interested in: Web 2.0, eCommerce Strategies, Venture Capital 3.0. A couple of the groups I joined have over 1,000 members and growing fast. Some are more active than others with valuable content where members in that group offer valuable tips. I think I am a member of 15 groups right now.

Then to better understand groups, I launched Southeast VC on Facebook. I started the group on Facebook for entrepeneurs in the Southeast to compare notes, ask questions. 40+ people have joined so far. Of course, anyone is welcome.

5) Facebook seems a lot better organized and has a cleaner appearance than MySpace. I really don't understand MySpace. I set up an account there a while back to test drive it. I may go there once/month max. One of my college roommates reached out to me there. Funny.

6) The number of new applications on Facebook has exploded. Less than 60 days ago, Facebook started allowing third party companies to build applications for Facebook users to add to their profiles. Over 1,500 companies have built applications and these are mostly web companies targeting Facebook's 30 million user base. According to Facebook, some of the more popular applications have gone from zero to 850,000 users in just 3 days. Those kind of numbers seem to be more of the exception. Half of the Facebook users have installed at least one application. What kind of companies are noticing and building apps for Facebook? Well, eBay launched one that allows users to search for items and shop while still on Facebook. And I mentioned earlier that ReverbNation launched an application as well.

It remains to be seen how many of those companies make money on this.

7) $6 billion is a lot. Microsoft is rumored to buy Facebook for that? Can that be real? Facebook is supposed to do $100 million in revenue this year. 60x 2007 revenue? I'd sell.

Impact of Videos on E-Commerce

I just read an interesting article on Internet Retailer that said 80% of consumers take some kind of action after viewing online video ads. That included:

• 31% checked out the web site after watching the video
• 22% searched for more info about the product or service
• 15% went to the store
• 12% actually made the purchase

Also, out of people that made a purchase last month:

• 48% said the internet drove their initial awareness.
• 57% said they learned more about their potential purchase using the internet
• 55% used the internet to determine best price and where to buy

All these stats are pretty interesting. But I am still not seeing a lot of internet retailers offering video to help them sell their products yet. I spoke with a VP of e-commerce at an IR 100 company last night and he thought it would make a lot of sense for them to implement videos to better showcase the quality of the products they are selling. I agree.

One company based in Utah called Blendtec does a fun/smart job promoting their TotalBlender online which sells for $399. They post a lot of videos on the site of their CEO blending random objects. Just as one example and because I'm a big baseball fan, here is the CEO blending a baseball. The option to buy the blender is at the bottom right hand corner of the site.

And for more video reviews, check out ExpoTV, a site focused on letting users create videos with their own reviews. I think over time, we will see more internet retailers posting videos and probably pulling in user generated videos into their sites as they look for ways to further increase sales.

Tech 2007 - Now Accepting Applications

CED is now taking applications for their Tech 2007 conference scheduled for Oct 10 & 11 in Chapel Hill, NC. Forty companies will be selected and unlike past Tech conferences that focused just on NC-based companies, this one will highlight companies from throughout the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic.

Companies will display their products and applications in the "Tech Demo Room." The conference provides great exposure, is always well attended by entrepreneurs, larger companies looking for partner/acquisition opportunities, VCs and service providers.

Companies that are interested, should apply here.

Top Tech Companies in the Southeast

TechJournal South published their "Tech 50" list which includes some of the most innovative technology companies in the Southeast. A lot of familiar names made the list.

Incredibly short post since I am out of town. But I hope everyone has a good weekend!

Triangle Job Fair -- Tomorrow!

Just a reminder that Broadwick is hosting the Triangle Job Fair tomorrow at their office in Durham. Other participating companies include Preation, Lulu.com, InCentric Solutions, Peak 10 and ChannelAdvisor. The job fair will run from 4-7pm, is free to attend and open to everyone.

ChannelAdvisor is one of our portfolio companies and you may have seen they they announced closing on $30 million today, led by NEA. Anyway, they have a bunch of open positions available. Here is a full list: Download open_positions_at_channeladvisor.pdf 

This would be a great way to meet some folks at ChannelAdvisor and several other local companies.

Job Opportunities in RTP

I spoke with Rick Smith this morning at WRAL Local Tech Wire and he told me that Lenovo is cutting 350 jobs in RTP and 1,400 company wide.

Just as a reminder, if you look at the right hand side of my blog you will see I keep an updated list of companies hiring in our market. It also includes a list of local recruiters that I have worked with and some other valuable career resources.

I don't know a lot of the Lenovo folks, but hope this helps them and others looking, find jobs here in NC.