Entrepreneurs: Venture Summit Silicon Valley 2012
by KG Charles-Harris
Venture Summit Silicon Valley 2012 really brought home to me, yet again, the importance of being in the “right” crowd in order to move forward as a startup CEO. This event was packed with a mixture of entrepreneurs, VCs, angels, bank and debt financing partners and press. All the things necessary to succeed.
However, one of the most important issues seems to be the ability to network. While all the necessary people were here, gaining value from the experience was more related to being able to meet the right people. To do this should be easy in this environment, but I saw a lot of people who had difficulty going up and introducing themselves to other participants, or who didn’t have their 10-second explanation of what their company does clearly articulated.
In fact, it was quite interesting to see how many of the entrepreneurs present had difficulty with one or both of these issues; to aggressively introduce themselves to others and who couldn’t smoothly describe what they did in a few sentences.
How is it possible to be willing to pay so much money to be in the right place and still stumble on the goal line?
The density of interesting persons was sufficiently high where this may not have been a significant problem, but as a startup CEO it is absolutely essential at all times to be able to say what the company does, in a simple and easy to understand manner. Especially to people who are not experts in the area you are working in, which describes most investors and partners.
I’d like to laud Tony Perkins and AlwaysOn to have put on a conference that brings together entrepreneurs and potential funders in such an intimate setting. The surroundings were beautiful at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, the people interesting, and the keynotes, presentations and breakouts well thought out.
Mobile, cloud, big data, industrial internet – up
Social media – down
The most interesting aspect of AlwaysOn Venture Summit Silicon Valley was getting a perspective for where the technology industry is going and what’s being funded. There are a number of major trends that entrepreneurs need to be aware of while building companies and investors have clarity around if planning an investment to drive towards a profitable exit.
AlwaysOn VSSV is an annual gathering of some of the leading entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley and beyond, focused on understanding investment themes and technologies that will drive the future.
At this particular conference, it was clear that one of the most important trends was the significantly reduced presence of Internet and social media startups among the speakers and on the panels. The seemingly unstoppable social media storm has slowed down quite a bit.
One of the factors cited for this was that there was a saturation of these types of startups and another was that investors, having invested heavily in these companies over the past few years, were looking for investments with more predictable outcomes.
The effects of the GroupOn and Facebook IPOs (among others) resulted in negative investor sentiment toward these types of businesses.
So, what’s in vogue these days?
Mobile and big data companies seem to have taken over where Internet and social media left off. The opportunity in the mobile space is a result of a movement that started about a decade ago when people moved from the desktop to the laptop. The interaction with computers is now iterating to handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets, which are with us most of the time and collect data on what we do, where we are and who we interact with.
All this collected data forms the basis of the big data opportunity. The ability to use this data to deepen our understanding of customers, manufacturing processes and many other areas has been a dream of business people, politicians and technologists for many years.
I’m personally very happy about these trend shifts. Partially because EMANIO is perfectly positioned to take part of the development of this new industry of big data and analysis, but also because it has been difficult to understand the business basis of the social media phenomenon.
It has been difficult to discern a pattern for success within social media, but with mobile and big data this is much more logical.
KG Charles-Harris is CEO of Emanio and a special contributor to MAPping Company Success.
