EightBlack.

One of the TaguchiMail board members, Glenn Vardy, sent me this extract (point 4 below) in an email this morning. It’s relevant to us because in a week or so, we head to the US to begin a series of meetings with VC’s along Sand Hill Rd.

I don’t know about you, but asking for money is something that I’m not particularly good at. But in Silicon Valley, there is no embarrassment in this area (either on the requesting side or the giving side).

All I know is that in this market, start-ups in the tech space face an incredibly tough time. One quick glance at Techcrunch will tell you that while money is still around, it is increasingly difficult to part it and its owners.

I’ve seen a lot of local pitches in the tech area. VC’s, either here or in the US, aren’t as scary as most people make out. The most important advice I have received so far is this:

1. 10 slides only (if you need me to tell you more, you need to do more homework). Hint - Google “Guy Kawasaki and start-up advice”.

2. This recent article by David Hornik (there is plenty more on this subject).

3. Anything written by Marc Andreessen, especially is 6 part series on “The Guide To Start-Ups” Start here.

4. And this extract here, written by a serial entrepreneur and proven leader in the Valley - Sam Cece, the CEO of StrongMail. From his blog (Disclosure, StrongMail is a partner of TaguchiMail).

Innovation or iteration? I’m sure that most of you have heard the phrase, “The New, New Thing.” If not, it’s one of those Silicon Valley phrases that is typically asked by an investor, most likely a VC, that is intended to make you stop and think about your company’s next move. Plainly stated, it means, “What new technological (or market, business model, adjacent technology, etc.) innovation is on deck within your company that will leap-frog your competitors and propel your company into the future?” This is a tough question for any CEO.

The problem with forcing “The New, New Thing” onto your organization is that these big leaps are distracting, destabilizing and unrealistic.

If you are a parent with young children, you will understand where I’m coming from with this.

Sometimes I walk around the house in my underwear, yelling loudly “It’s good to be the King, It’s good to be the King”.

I want my kids to know who’s in charge.

However, not long after this act of bravery started on my count, my 5-year old daughter came up to me and said in a stern voice, “Daddy, you may be the King, but you’re not the boss”. I looked at her in disdain and gruffly demanded just who is then, if it’s not me.

She says matter of factly,  “Mummy is”.

Sort of a bit like Jerry Yang. He used to be the King at Yahoo!. But he’s no longer the boss.

I wrote a while ago that I honestly thought “the deal” would get done (between Microsoft and Yahoo!). I’d seen Steve Ballmer talk at last years Web 2.0 Expo and as soon as Battelle mentioned the word Google and Search in the one sentence, he started jumping up and down like a 9 year old boy who swallowed 4 and half litres of Ritalin.

Or something like that.

Microsoft desparately wants to win at the search game and thought Yahoo! would have at last, let them get closer to their arch rival, Google.

Anyway, I’ve never been a huge fan of Yahoo! so I sort of really didn’t care either way. I’ve never had a Yahoo email address, rarely use Flickr,  wouldn’t know what Yahoo Groups is/does, and never use Yahoo as my search engine.

And I think Yahoo! are so far behind in the whole area of search marketing, it’s not funny. The only people who have less market share than Yahoo in this space in Australia at least, is Sensis. And they would have better luck selling an STD to someone before they sold a search marketing solution.

But I digress.

I think Jerry Yang’s days are numbered. Carl Icahn is not the sort of person you need circling above and as the Yahoo! stock price heads south, the Board and their major shareholders just might ask Jerry to step aside. He may be the founder, but he may not have a choice.

One thing is clear. Yang hates Microsoft. I don’t reckon he wanted a deal done with the devil at any price.

And Ballmer for once played a game of patience, made his offer, didn’t budge and waited Yahoo! out.

The biggest sign of trouble though has nothing to do with the share price. Nothing to do with Google and Yahoo! getting into bed. And nothing to do with Microsoft.

It’s got to do with the mass exodus of talent leaving Yahoo’s gates. Look, the really smart bastards had already left, and the next calibre of people probably had already been trawling through the Google jobs board.

But when these guys leave, the crack becomes a gaping hole and pretty soon the proverbial damn will burst and there will be no stopping the thing. According to one source, over 50 top executives have left since January 2008, 9 of them since the Microsoft bid collapsed just over a month ago.

You can’t innovate without talent, doesn’t matter how much money the company has. Yang is in it deep now and if there is any hope for Yahoo!, he needs to step aside and take drastic measures to stop the brain drain. Before its too late. And it might already be…

However, if he wants to be like me, and continue to walk around in his underwear in a state of delusion, yelling out “It’s good to be the King” he can go right ahead. It’s just that pretty soon, there’ll be no one left in his Kingdom to preach to.

Which reminds me, I need to ask my wife if I can stay out late tomorrow night…

Perry outlines 10 critical steps.

And obviously, we agree - especially given the fact that TaguchiMail helps even further with this process.

Any marketer who is emailing and doesn’t know what his or her sender reputation is, doesn’t have a suite of reporting and delivery tools and cant dynamically optimise the content of their email broadcast, falls even further behind.

Perry’s one of the smartest online marketers I know. And for good reason. His clarity of thinking is way above the majority of the market.

It’s time for the management at the embattled digital group to come clean.

Just 2 days ago, after just 3 months, Danny Herceg - the man who was recruited to primarily re-build the company’s finances due to his high profile legal and banking network, quit.

Along with him went co-founder, Tony Charara. Although Charara is apparently still heavily involved with the finances of the group (more later).

According to the March 12, 2008 press release by BlueFreeway,

“Danny is a senior corporate and commercial lawyer with particular specialisation in capital raisings, mergers and acquisitions, privatisations, restructurings and venture capital. In addition to Danny’s capital raising experience, he also advises on various corporate law issues including prospectus issues, corporate governance, and employee share and option plans, as well as joint ventures and non-equity funding”.

The BlueFreeway shares are still in a protracted trading halt. It’s been a month now. This is not really their fault. If their taking advantage of a legal loophole within the charter of the ASX, then so be it.

But its clearly a fault that rests with the ASX. I just dont think its appropriate corporate regulation by the ASX to allow a company an unreasonable time frame (like a month in this case) to ascertain their financial viability. How hard can it be?

I’d be keen to interview both guys - but clearly they may have better things to do nor will they probably be allowed to talk to anyone. Or want to.

Interestingly, Tony Charara cites his time at BlueFreeway as something of an achievement with his new venture here. Not sure if I agree with the logic.

The problem with not communicating to the shareholder base is that in the absence of any concrete direction and advice, people will make and form their own opinions. And because there is a lot of pissed off investors and staff, people want to vent their anger. And rightly so.

I’m noticing this anger within the comments I’ve received over the past few weeks. And by the slew of email that has hit my gmail account.

Consider this “re-counting” of events that were relayed to me.

BlueFreeway, in its quest for world domination, went out and acquired 3 separate companies in Thailand. This was late last year, October, to be exact. Quite what for, I’m not totally sure. The companies were Media Synergies, Planetutech and Reflexible. The press release is here. The 3 acquisitions, according to the BlueFreeway announcement, cost the company A$1.5million (for all 3) and would add $1 million in revenue to the group.

Bill Emden, the Group Managing Director for BlueFreeway Asia stated that the acquisitions would allow BlueFreeway to service the rapidly growing Thailand digital media industry with world class talent.

However, if you are to believe the comments by numerous staff in Thailand, nothing could be further from the truth. For one, according to insiders, the much hyped “Blu” portal was nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Second, the access to technology and financial resources to grow and expand the “rapidly growing Thailand digital market” never eventuated.

When I tried to find out more about senior execs like Bill Emden, Google came back with this. I decided to look no further. Apparently, Emden is no longer with BlueFreeway, and nor are any of the other “head office” staff in Asia. I am told that the number one listing under Google for Bill Emden and the Bill Emden who ran BlueFreeway in Asia are one and the same person. See here for proof.

Whenever businesses are put under extreme pressure, like BlueFreeway is now, rash decisions are made.

Take for example, the alleged recent requests by head office to owners of several BlueFreeway companies to buy back their businesses. The only trouble is though is that many of the businesses that BF acquired, they acquired 100%, lock, stock and barrel. If you take the 3 entities in Bangkok for example, as stated above, they paid $1.5 million for all 3. This amount wouldn’t have made life changing differences to anyone.

All it did most probably was shore up some debt and return some “sweat” capital back to the respective owners.

According to some, Sydney is now pressuring these offshore entities to buy back their companies for the original amount paid. All I can ask is “why”. And what makes the head office at BlueFreeway think that they can do this? It gets even worse. Apparently threats and intimidation are occuring, resulting in even more bad blood between employees, shareholders and owners.

I actually feel sorry for those people who only sold a percentage of their company to the fast talking sales guys who pedalled the original BlueFreeway dream.

At least the people who sold 100% made the call at the time they did their deal. They made their bed. Now they’re lying in it. They can either quit and start again - or ride the storm out and wait for events to unfold. Either way, they’ll be better from the experience. They might not think that now, but they will be.

But the people who agreed to sell 51% or 27% or whatever the number, are stuck with this noose around their neck. More like a boat anchor.

Whatever happens, BlueFreeway need to make the call. And that call should be to quit now. Let the respective businesses (which have some world class talent within them) get on with their lives.

I think their stock will survive all of 5 minutes on the ASX, should they resume trading. There’s probably an unlimited number of “sell” orders queued and waiting to go, no matter what the price.

I do not for one minute, believe this is a salvageable ship. The damage has been done.

Too many people have left, including the majority of the founders, staff morale is in the toilet, the stock is suspended, past owners who are now employees are disgruntled and distracted and the vapourware behind their original proposition is now exposed.

The conclusion I have (and its obviously a personal one) is this. People get appointed to the board - and the smart ones promptly quit (after they see what’s really there). There appears to be no one in charge. Demanding that the 100% owned companies buy back their businesses is sheer desparation and the deafening silence to the market (which is now in its 4th week) can’t be good.

And I have no idea what Michael Hannan and his company, IPMG intend to salvage from all of this - but it can’t be much.

The saga will no doubt continue. Which is a shame. It needs to end. And quickly.

O’Reilly Media, as a major publishing group, clearly has a “roster” of preferred speakers - who incidentally, have their books published by O’Reilly Publishing.

Makes sense.

Clay Shirky is one smart dude.

His presentation to the core audience of Web 2.0 was one of the stronger ones. Shirky is well regarded as a writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies.

And anyone who begins a speech talking about alcohol is alright by me!. More on Clay at his website here and here.

His new book Here Comes Everybody came out last month.

From the speaker profile section of the Web 2.0 Expo website.

As the leader of the Mozilla Project, Mitchell Baker is responsible for organizing and motivating a massive, worldwide collective of employees and volunteers who are breathing new life into the Internet with the Firefox Web browser and other Mozilla products.

Baker was born and raised in Berkeley, California, receiving her BA in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley and her JD from the Boalt Hall School of Law. Her law career included working for Sun Microsystems and Netscape. She has also sat on the board of the Open Source Applications Foundation.

Baker has been the general manager of the Mozilla project since 1999, helping shape the license under which Netscape’s source code was released. In 2003, she became president and founder of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to openness and innovation on the Internet. In 2005, Baker led the creation of Mozilla Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. Baker served as as CEO of the corporation until January 2008, when Mozilla’s rapid growth encouraged her to shift her focus back to the scope and mission of the project. As Chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, Baker continues her commitment to an open, innovative Web and the infinite possibilities it presents.

TIME Magazine profiled Baker under “Scientists and Thinkers” in its 2005 TIME 100. She has also appeared on “The Charlie Rose Show” and “CNN Global Office” to discuss open source software and the Firefox phenomenon.

I always reckon when you are presented with the opportunity to listen to a billionaire talk, you should take it.

I can’t have been the only one to think this - as there were about 5,000 other people sitting beside me during the keynote at Web 2.0 with Marc Andreessen.

Marc has been instrumental in driving the internet and came to fame with the sale of Netscape (the company he co-founded) to AOL for the princely sum of $4.2 billion dollars back in 1999. That was when the US dollar actually meant something.

Many observers of the net were puzzled that someone of Andreessen’s intelligence, insight and ruthless conviction didn’t jump into the blogosphere sooner than he did. His blog launched in July 2007, not even a year ago.

But already it is one of the most read blogs in the industry and has a huge following. As it should.

Marc is an exceptional writer. I wish I could write with that level of clarity and consistency. And amazing attention to detail. Some of his posts are more like a thesis. You should just read what he thinks of the US financial sector.

Marc is one of those guys you just pray would be sitting beside you on a flight from Australia to London. Except for the fact that mortals like you and me probably don’t travel too often in a Gulfstream. Anyway.

John Battelle did a cool job of the interview (as usual). It would be good to be that well connected.

You should watch this session from start to finish. And be ready for “the nuclear winter…” You’ll understand after you’ve seen the video.

This session proved so popular last year, that the event organisers ran it again this year.

Essentially, budding young start-ups get 5 minutes each to present to the audience and to a panel of hardened venture capitalists. The audience then gets to decide the best pitch after each presentation.

Moderated by John Battelle and Brady Forrest, the session attracted big numbers and was held in the main ballroom of Moscone West.

At this year’s Launch Pad, 6 finalists presented their case.

To be honest, I didn’t get all of them but the one I liked best (along with the rest of the audience) was a company called Triggit, which is all about “website monetization made simple”. As soon as the guys from Triggit demonstrated their application using “drag and drop”, the audience had their “ah-hah” moment.

Battelle and Forrest did a good job of keeping the pace of the whole thing.

My takeaway from all of this. If you’ve only got 5 minutes to present to 500 people and a judging panel, people won’t remember your slides.

They will however, remember your marketing - and the guys from Triggit just happened to be wearing very loud red shirts with their logo emblazoned on the front. True, their product was simple to understand and their website straight to the point.

Simple works. Even in Silicon Valley.

I have to be careful what I say here because the O’Reilly folks were kind enough to grant me a Media Pass this year. So I can’t really launch into a tirade against the man, otherwise the only Web 2.0 event I’ll ever be invited to in the future is the Web 2.0 event scheduled for Uzbekistan in 2056.

Or something like that.

Yet, everytime I see Tim O’Reilly present, it looks like he just flew in the same clothes, halfway round the world while consuming 3 bottles of vodka. In economy. And on Aeroflot.

He comes across as this dishevelled, mad professor.

Billy Connolly calls it “the wind-swept and interesting” look. Anyway.

There is, however, nothing wind swept about O’Reilly the businessman. And this event is clearly no fluke. The logistics and planning commence 6 months out from the day it starts. And safe to say 10,000 people (conference attendees as well as Expo exhibitors) pass through their turnstiles.

They have the marketing of Web 2.0 down to a fine art. And to the casual observer, everything runs like clockwork. Which is no mean feat when you deal with this many people, this many ego’s and a venue the size and scale of Moscone (over 2 million square feet of building with in excess of 700,000 square feet of actual conference space).

O’Reilly is never short on opinion. Especially about where the web is headed. He’s even credited with coining the phrase “Web 2.0″. Industry experts refer to the “O’Reilly Radar” - which is O’Reilly’s knack for predicting where the industry is heading.

As an outsider looking in, I don’t think O’Reilly is the typically driven Silicon Valley businessman, looking for the next big score. This article about him in Wired, talked about O’Reilly the passionate father, husband, son and student. And while I’ve never met the man, I have a deeper respect for what he stands for and what he’s achieved. The article, while 3 years old, is well worth the read.

What then, was the essence of his Opening Address at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo?

Simply this.

That the internet is becoming the platform. That the real heart of Web 2.0 is collective intelligence, harnessing network effects to build applications that get better the more people use them.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft released this week their version of the platform and their admission that they want to dominate “the cloud” space. Called Microsoft “Live Mesh”. I’ll have to admit though - as soon as the Product Manager came on stage and started getting nearly excited as Steve Ballmer does when Google’s earnings come out, I switched off. Entirely. I’m also a converted serial Mac user, so nothing Redmond says or does really registers.

Tim O’Reilly is clearly one of the industry’s pioneers, one of it’s main thought leaders. The more I think of it, he is the “Yoda” of the valley. And people listen.

The video is well worth watching.

This was a first for me. Talking to a real life Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist.

David Hornik has a great sense of humour. Which he’s not supposed to have. First off, he’s a lawyer by trade. Second, he went to Oxford in London to study (he has 3 degrees). And third, he’s a VC in “the Valley”.

David is clearly a smart guy. And very plugged into the tech sector (which is what August Capital focuses on).

He’s also a fellow blogger, over at VentureBlog.

It’s a good read and I really resonate with David about what it takes to keep blogging.

I really enjoyed the chat. You’ll have to excuse the background noise but we were in “the bloggers lounge”, which is a dedicated hang-out for all the bloggers at the Expo. It’s a great idea and there were guys streaming video, putting together podcasts and simply posting live from the event.

David passed on some solid advice for entrepreneurs wanting to “get funded”. I truly do appreciate him taking the time to chat with me.

He was also a lot of fun at the session directly after this - which was the Launch Pad session (coming up soon).