Startups Archives - Page 18 of 29

SVASE VC Breakfast Club in San Francisco

Posted on September 11, 2006 ·

I’ll be moderating another SVASE VC Breakfast Club meeting on Thursday, Sep 14th in San Francisco. As usual, it’s an informal round-table where up to 10 entrepreneurs get to deliver a pitch, then answer questions and get critiqued by a VC Partner. We’ve had VC’s from Draper Fisher, Hummer Winblad, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Mohr Davidow, Emergence Capital …etc.

Thursday’s featured VC is John Parsons, General Partner, The Halo Funds. The Zvents post has all the info and a map, and if you plan to attend, please register here.

These sessions are a valuable opportunity for Entrepreneurs, most of whom would probably have a hard time getting through the door to VC Partners. Since I’ve been through quite a few of these sessions, both as Entrepreneur and Moderator, let me share a few thoughts:

It’s a pressure-free environment, with no Powerpoint presentations, Business Plans…etc, just casual conversation, but it does not mean you should come unprepared!
Bring an Executive Summary, some VC’s like it, others don’t.
Follow a structure, don’t just talk freely about what you would like to do, or even worse, spend all your time describing the problem, without addressing what your solution is.
Don’t forget “small things” like the Team, Product, Market..etc.
It would not hurt to mention how much you are looking for, and how you would use the funds…
Write down and practice your pitch, and prepare to deliver a compelling story in 3 minutes. You will have about 5, but believe me, whatever your practice time was, when you are on the spot, you will likely take twice as long to deliver your story. The second half of your time-slot is Q&A with the VC.
Last, but not least, please be on time! I am not kidding… some of you know why I even have to bring this up.

Here’s a participating Entrepreneur’s feedback about a previous event.

See you in San Francisco!

Tags: Venture Capital, VC Breakfast, Funding, VC Funding, Startups, Entrepreneurship, SVASE

Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Social Networking, Startups ·

Your Neighborhood Bank Becomes Your Trusted SaaS Provider

Posted on September 8, 2006 ·

If you’re like me, you haven’t talked to a bank teller for years, in fact haven’t set foot inside a branch for a long time. Why should you? You do all your banking online. (?) But you probably wouldn’t think of your bank as *The* Software as a Service provider to run your entire small business…

That’s exactly what Fokus bank pulled off in Norway, in cooperation with 24SevenOffice and Bluegarden. The new, innovative bundle is probably the first of its kind in the World: single sign-on Web solution for your banking and all other business software needs. (hat tip: Espen Antonsen)

Let me reiterate: it’s not just online banking, but a full hosted business system. Given all the trouble I had just getting Quicken / Microsoft Money to work with several major US banks, I have a hard time imagining them come forward with such revolutionary offering. Key benefits to:

Customers
- Trust, security. SaaS is not as widely accepted in Europe as in the US, and certainly the key issue is that flexible new products come from lesser known smaller providers, which SMB’s see as a major risk. Having the bank manage your data is a reassuring solution.
The Bank
- Customer retention, in fact competitive advantage to attract businesses away from other banks. In a world when it’s easy to switch banks for the sake of higher interest, Fokus will have a virtual lock on its customers: that of convenience.
24SevenOffice
- Access to Fokus banks 200,000 customers; prospectively using it as a vehicle to penetrate the Danish Market since Fokus is owned by Danske Bank. Marketing/PR value of launching a “World First”

This is not the first innovative deal coming from 24SevenOffice: previously they teamed up with Telenor, a leading Scandinavian telco to create a 3G “Mobile Office“.

I’ve been following 24SevenOffice for quite a while (and have received occasional updates from Staale Risa, COO), largely due to my obsession with “Enterprise” functionality to small businesses. I can count on a single hand (two fingers?) the number of All-in-One SaaS providers with comparable breadth of functionality: CRM + ERP + Office .

My only wish is that the company entered the US market sooner. Recently they launched an International version, accessible to US customers, but frankly, that’s about the one thing coming from 24SevenOffice that I am unimpressed with. It removes the key value proposition of being a full-rounded, integrated solution ( a’la NetSuite but more) and positions the system as a lower-cost CRM competing head-on with SalesForce.com. Well, I have news for my European friends: this version does not compete with Salesforce, but with the dozens of other challengers. Personally, I think it’s a marketing blunder.

That said I know the company is working on porting their full system (think accounting, HR ..etc) to US requirements and a full blown US launch is in the works …. stay tuned.

Update (9/8): To access the full 24SevenOffice site, trick the system by selecting a European country, e.g. the UK. You still have to do some digging, a lot of logistic functions are hidden under Financials.
There’s also a neat demo here.

Filed Under: Business, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, Marketing / PR, SaaS, SMB / SME, Software, Startups, Technology · Tagged: 24sevenoffice, accounting, crm, data security, erp, hosted software, Mobile Office, netsuite, On-Demand, SaaS, SaaS security, salesforce.com

Sign-On, Sign-In, Cyn.in

Posted on September 6, 2006 ·

Atlassian,the Sydney- and San Francisco-based software company, maker of enterprise wiki Confluence (and more) has just acquired a single sign-on solution company, Minneapolis-based Authentisoft. Single sign-on is something we all need whether behind a corporate firewall or on the Web. Without it, there are only bad and worse solutions:

try to remember the myriad userid /password combinations we have for different systems – bad
have some “algorithm” built in our passwords – bad
write down all login info – really bad
use the same userid / pw combo across all systems – really, really baaaad

I could go on… we need single sign-on. It’s that simple. I believe this make Atlassian the first “wiki-company” to offer 3 products in their portfolio. See Mike’s post on further plans.

Now, for the “sign-in” part: in an amazing coincidence, I was just reading the above announcement when I received the email from Cynapse, revealing their “flagship product”, cyn.in (pronounced “sign-in”). Yes, as in sign-in. In the very second I read the sign-on announcement. Isn’t this scary? 🙂

Anyway, cyn.in promises to be a web based service that enables the enterprise to build, collaborate, manage and publish: knowledge, documents, media and files, all within hosted sub-systems. It intends to apply the effectivity of Web 2.0 and the SaaS model, to deliver an information management, publishing and collaboration platform. Applications of cyn.in include Knowledge Management, Content Broadcast and Publishing, Collaborative Workspaces, Secure Online File Storage & Versioning, etc.

As I am reading it I can’t help but think those are the things I also do on a wiki … but I don’t think it’s a wiki… I don’t know what it really is though, at this point all you can do on the site is register for notifications and watch a a short tour.

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Software, Startups, Technology · Tagged: acquisition, atlassian, authentisoft, Collaboration, confluence, cyn.in, cynapse, Knowledge Management, online storage, single sign-in, single sign-on, wiki, wikis

Office 2.0 – Under the Radar Event at SAP Labs

Posted on August 18, 2006 ·

IBDNetwork’s Under the Radar event at SAP Labs was a lively evening with full house, good discussion and four exciting companies. Prior to the presentations moderator Mike Arrington (TechCrunch) and the panel discussed pro’s and con’s of Office 2.0.

Part of the discussion was whether “Office 2.0” is just an attempt to replicate existing functions on the Web.

Peter Rip’s take was that such replication is pointless: the web-based apps cannot come close to the incumbent (MS Office) in functionality and they stand no chance to unseat it in the corporate world. The real promise of Office 2.0 in Peter’s view is creating processes-mashups, supporting business in entirely new ways.

Ismael Ghalimi’s response was that partial “replication” is OK, in reality the MS Office products are way too complex, 90% of users probably only use 10% of the functionality. The added value is the ease of collaboration, and also easier integration, as it would be demonstrated by Zoho in a few minutes. I tend to agree with Ismael, as I stated before.

The Panel: Peter Rip, Sam Schillace, Etay Gafni, and Ismael Ghalimi

(photo credit: Dan Farber, ZDNet)

After the initial discussion the four invited companies each had 5 minutes for a presentation/demo, followed by another 5 minutes of Q/A. Although the theme of the evening was Office 2.0, 2 out of 4 presenters were not strictly speaking “office” companies – the Web 2.0 moniker would better fit them: Wetpaint and Collectivex. They also have something in common: a strong focus on groups, communities – but they take rather different approaches with CollectiveX being rather structured, whereas Wetpaint is an open book that the users get to write.

Wetpaint was presented by Ben Elowitz, Founder and CEO. Technically Wetpaint is a wiki, but the best part is that one really does not have to know wikis, just happily type away and create attractive pages without the usual learning curve. More than that: these pages can be shared, other users can contribute, entire communities can grow and thrive.

It’s an ad-supported free web-based service that combines the best of wikis, blogs, and forum software.

It’s like a wiki: you can create any number of pages, arrange them in a hierarchy, navigate through them top-down in a tree fashion, or via direct links between pages. Anyone can edit any page a’la wiki (optionally pages can be locked, too). There is version control, audit track of changes and previous releases can be restored at a single click.
It’s like a discussion forum: you can have threaded/nested comments attached to each page
It’s like a blog: editable area in the middle, sidebars on both sides with tags and other info. Personally I’d like to see more blog-like features, like pinging blog indices (Technorati and others), trackback support, etc. Ben confirmed some of these are on the way – when it happens, I believe Wetpaint will take off big time – after all, discoveribility is critical in building online communities.

All panelists were impressed with the simplicity and elegance of the UI, but someone (don’t remember if panel or audience) commented this is just one of many similar products available.
I beg to differ. Yes, in a room of 60-80 techies we can all use (?) any other wiki easily. Not so in “real life”. I’ve set up wikis for companies, ad-hoc workgroups and events for the general public – there’s a whole world of difference. In a company you have a common purpose, set objectives, can provide training – not so in the consumer/ community space. Take a look at the Wetpaint site we set up for the Techdirt Greenhouse (un)conference, or Road Trips USA (pic link above) on the fun side.
I challenge anyone to find another “wiki” with comparable features yet is so easy that anyone who can type and click (i.e. use a simple editor) will be able to contribute without any learning.

Update (8/18): Robert Scoble hits the nail on the head: it’s all about the Blink Test. Wetpaint passes it. Other wikis don’t.

Collectivex Founder and CEO Clarence Wooten described his service as LinkedIn meets Yahoo Groups. Mike Arrington’s definition (not as moderator, but earlier on TechCrunch): “CollectiveX is what LinkedIn should have been.” It’s social networking based on groups, rather than individuals, facilitating communication, providing file sharing, messaging, calendaring and exchange of leads/contacts. Revenue model: free base, subscription for a few premium features.

I admit I suffer from Social Network burnout. I do find some of them useful, especially LinkedIn, and I can think of a few groups I am a member of where we could use CollectiveX – I am simply tired of creating zillion version of my profile. I’d like a “Profile Central” where all these new services could pick up my data from. Am I dreaming? Wasn’t AlwaysOn/GoingOn supposed to somehow resolve the profile portability problem?

Of course this is just my ranting, although the audience questions pointed in the same direction, albeit indirectly: nice functionality, but isn’t incumbent LinkedIn too entrenched for new social networks to challenge its position?

Echosign Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin’s task was perhaps more difficult, perhaps easier: unlike the other three, his service could not be identified with a few words, he had to explain a new process flow. On the other hand he is addressing an ugly enough problem that he captured everyone’s attention: No matter how well computerized we are, when it comes to signing contracts, we’re back to the world of paper, faxes, lost documents. Echosign is a web-based service that takes care of the entire process flow( see slide below) : getting documents signed (electronically or hand-signature by fax), filed and distributed as pdf, routed, approved, managed, archived.

While technically this is SaaS, I guess Software Enabled Service is a better description than Software as a Service:-) EchoSign addresses a painful enough problem with a simple and elegant solution that it won the Panel’s Award. Congratulations to Jason and team!

Zoho Founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu did not bring us just one product but an entire productivity Suite. How do you demo 4 products in 5 minutes? (Not that he only has four, at my last count the company has 10 Zoho-branded products). The solution: you don’t. Instead of focusing on individual products, you demonstrate the power and ease of integration between them.

Sridhar pulled up a sample spreadsheet of sales figures and a chart; he changed some numbers in Zoho Sheet and of course the chart changed, too. Next with a few clicks he dropped data in a window and voila! – a Zoho Creator application just got created. We then saw the data entry form show up on a slide – part of Zoho Show. The same form, or other data views can also be embedded in Zoho Writer documents, or even in an email. As Sridhar kept on switching screens, one could almost get lost, but he got his point through: whichever application he changed the data in, it would show up real-time in the other application. I don’t have his presentation, but can present a similar scenario I used on my blog earlier. First I collected votes in a blog post using a Zoho Polls entry form –here are the results. Useful chart, not as impressive as the spreadsheet’s charting capability though, so I dropped the results in Zoho Sheet, which generated the pie chart below:

The chart has it’s own URL, it’s easy to embed in a blog (this post), document or presentation, and so does the entire spreadsheet itself.

Clearly the format of the Zoho presentation was a compromise, focusing on integration, but I think it paid off, the audience clearly got the picture that instead of randomly selected applications Zoho has a complete office/productivity Suite to offer. The tradeoff of course was not seeing detailed functionality – which is probably why panelist Peter Rip commented that the creation of these documents did not appear to be a collaborative process. As I have played with the Zoho Suite before, I know it is indeed very collaborative and the Zoho folks might want to call Peter and offer him a more detailed demo. The audience was very interested, in fact after the official event Zoho set up a demo station outside where they continued answering questions for a good half an hour or so. Some of those inquiries were about the ability to buy and implement the Suite behind a corporate firewall – something that Zoho is not ready for at this stage, but the interest level certainly bodes well for a future corporate business model. The immediate reward to Zoho came in the form of votes: Zoho won the Audience’s Choice for Best Product Award.

Congratulations to Sridhar and his team!

Last, but not least, thanks to IBDNetwork for organizing another successful event.

This was just the beginning: Office 2.0 enthusiast, or just about anybody interested, come join as at the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, October 12-13.

Tags: Office+2.0, WebOffice, IBDNetwork, Under+the+Radar, TechCrunch, MS+Office, Microsoft+Office, Microsoft, Productivity+tools, Wetpaint, wiki, wikis, collaboration, online+communities, blogs, blogging, Techdirt+Greenhouse, CollectiveX, social+networking, LinkedIn, AlwaysOn, GoingOn, Echosign, digital+signature, document+management, SaaS, Zoho, Zoho+Suite, Zoho+Writer, Zoho+Sheet, Zoho+Show, Zoho+Creator, Zoho+Polls, Office+2.0+Conference, office2ocon

Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Social Networking, Software, Startups, Technology ·

Lessons from the TechCrunch Wiki War

Posted on August 15, 2006 ·

Mike Arrington’s TechCrunch Parties have become “THE EVENTS TO ATTEND” in the Valley – in fact not just in the Valley: last time around I remember participants driving up all the way from San Diego, and this time people will fly in just to be there. The last party as well as the next one this Friday both sold out within hours after the announcement, and a lot of readers felt frustrated:

Some felt that first-come-first-served is not fair enough with such a short notice (an hour or so)
Some publicly asked for special consideration to get in
Some proposed to pay for “tickets”
Just about everyone complained for the lockups in the registration wiki.

I don’t envy Mike in this situation. It’s his party, his house (well, at least for the previous events), it would be perfectly OK for him to have an invitation-only party. Yet he obviously wants to see new faces, so he opens it up to anyone, but then of course he can’t please all… This time around, for the seventh TechCrunch Party hosted by August Capital there was more than the usual rush: the registration wiki has become constantly locked up and Mike was forced to move RSVPs to comments on his blog, closing the wiki.

Mike received ample feedback on why the wiki was not the right platform to handle hundreds of almost simultaneous registrations, and several entrepreneurs seized the opportunity to announce new offerings. Central Desktop announced a free public event wiki, and since it’s a hybrid not-just-a-wiki solution, Founder and CEO Isaac Garcia claims they do not have lockup issues (they use a form with a database in the background). Zoho Creator would have been another elegant solution.

However, what almost no-one talks about is that this was not simply a technical glitch. Having been lucky enough (?) to wake up 4am the day the wiki opened I managed to register myself at exactly position #100 in the wiki, then observe the wiki-war that soon ensued. The major “sins” I witnessed were:

Individual users registering entire blocks (dozen or more) names
The same users sitting on the wiki (blocking), probably while coordinating with their buddies who else to sign up
Previously registered names getting deleted

One can perhaps justify registering others, although I don’t know where the reasonable limit is ( I only signed up myself), but deleting others is the absolute cardinal sin. Apparently fair play is a strange concept to some.

This raises another issue though: are these people not aware that wikis provide a perfect audit trail and what they did can easily become public? Or do they simply not care? Is getting in on the TechCrunch party worth being displayed on a virtual “hall of shame”?

This particular incident aside, I think the major learning here is the overall lack of awareness of a typical wiki’s capabilities and how to “behave” while using it. I know many who’d like the collaborative capabilities but are afraid of “chaos” and the potential lack of civility… in short a major ‘wiki war’ if they open up editing to anyone. Most wiki platforms offer technical controls to limit chaos: even consumer /community focused WetPaint introduced several security schemes in their latest updates, and enterprise wikis like Socialtext and Atlassian’s Confluence have for long had elaborate security schemes – heck, that’s why they are “enterprise”.

Just as important as the permissioning is the role of social- behavioral norms, which clearly are more common and more forceful in a corporate environment, where all wiki “contributors” work for the same company. “Ross Mayfield said that in four years of building wikis for corporations Socialtext has seen precisely 0 trolls and 0 instances of vandalism.” He also maintains a Best Practices wiki (hey, it’s the new skin!). Now, remember, it’s a wiki – you can contribute, not just read.

As for the TechCrunch Party, the guest list is currently at 738(!) and here’s a preview of who’s coming, courtesy of CustomCD.us. (who may have intended to keep this a surprise, but I found it anyway….)

Update (7/28/2007): Here’s another case of wiki “who done it”.

Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Collaboration, Social Networking, Startups, Technology · Tagged: atlassian, audit trail, best practices, Central Desktop, confluence, customcd.us, event wiki, permissioning, social norms, socialtext, techcrunch, TechCrunch Party, techcrunch7, wetpaint, wiki, wiki lockup, wiki registration, wikis, zoho creator

Atlassian Taking On the World

Posted on August 15, 2006 ·

(Update: apologies for the dead video links, Youtube is apparently down, here’s their message: ”

We’re currently putting out some new features, sweeping out the cobwebs and zapping a few gremlins.“)

I’ve recently had a chance to meet Mike and Jonathan in Atlassian’s San Francisco offices, and frankly was blown away by their enthusiasm, the company’s growth, but most importantly by a demo of Confluence, the market-leading enterprise wiki.

Market-leading? Never heard of them, you may say …. Certainly they enjoy a lot less brand recognition than let’s say JotSpot or Socialtext, both of which enjoyed abundant PR from the moment they launched, largely thanks to Joe and Ross‘s star-power. (Hey Joe, you were my early inspiration to get started with blogging, time for YOU to post again!). Lacking the “instant brand”, Atlassian spent their money on product development instead of PR, and it has obviously paid off. Watch this video for background:

Less PR or not, they are not exactly unknown to customers, as Confluence’s corporate market share is more than the others put together. From what I understand Confluence’s sweet spot is larger organizations, where administration, sophisticated permissioning schemes (groups, pages, activities…etc.) scalability, performance are increasingly important. (Yes, permissioning kinda goes against the social, “we’re-all-contributors” nature of wikis, but it’s a fundamental corporate requirement). The largest implementations currently run up to 30k users, but Atlassian is working on a clustered release that will be scalable to hundreds of thousands of users. Pricing also reflects the focus on large corporations: while at the entry-level Confluence is typically more expensive, at the high end (large user-base) it costs less then either Socialtext or Jot.

Despite it’s impressive feature-set and favorable price Confluence is not an available choice for some customers; namely those who are determined to use SaaS solutions. Confluence is strictly on-premise, download and install-behind-the-firewall software. Being a big believer in SaaS of course I would like to see them offer a hosted version, but today’s market reality is that only 10% of all software sold is SaaS. Atlassian’s own customer experience is that a lot of larger organizations do want their wiki behind the firewall, and competitors must have been receiving similar feedback, as both Socialtext and JotSpot are adding an installable product to their offering. However, Confluence may be missing out on the bottom-up, grassroots adoption by business users that both Jot and Socialtext are enjoying – at least until it becomes available on-demand.

And while the Founders did not have the star-power of their competitors 4 years ago, they are getting closer, having just received the 2006 Ernst & Young Eastern Region Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.. Watch the video of the Awards Ceremony here:

Congrat’s, Mike and Scott!

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, SaaS, Social Networking, Software, Startups, Technology · Tagged: atlassian, Collaboration, confluence, enterprise wiki, Jotspot, SaaS, Social Software, socialtext, wiki, wikis

Exciting Office 2.0 Events

Posted on August 14, 2006 ·

IBDNetwork will organize another Under the Radar event, this time with an Office 2.0 theme on August 15th in Palo Alto. The event will showcase 4 companies:

Mike Arrington of TechCrunch will be moderating, and the presentations will be judged by a Panel of experts:

Etay Gafni, Director, Technology Innovation Center – SAP
Ismael Ghalimi, IT|Redux & CEO – Intalio
Peter Rip, Managing Director – Leapfrog Ventures
Sam Schillace, Software Engineer – Google/Writely

There’s more information on the Zvents site and you can register here. You can also participate in advance even if you can’t attend, by visiting the event wiki and posting questions, stories on this page.

Tomorrow’s gathering will be the prelude to the larger scale Office 2.0 Conference to be held in San Francisco, October 12-13, 2006, organized by IT Redux. I will post further details as they become known.

Technorati : CollectiveX, Conferences, Echsign, IBDNetwork, ITRedux, Networking, Office 2.0, Office 2.0 Conference, TechCrunch, Under the Radar, Weboffice, Wetpaint, Zoho

Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Social Networking, Software, Startups, Technology ·

Respect Must be Earned Even in the Blogosphere

Posted on August 12, 2006 ·

(Update: this post is starting to have its own life; read the comments below the post.)
My Mozy is a Lifesaver post received a strange comment:

“I’m not arguing the author’s points. He’s nailed it, as far as he goes. However, the Online Backup Advisor has a different take on Mozy. It’s funny and very informative.”

I don’t particularly like anonymous comments and I believe in the common courtesy if signing one’s comment (even with a pseudo-name), but it’s really not the comment itself that’s strange, but the post it points to: a long, elaborate, and yes, sometimes humorous attack-post on Mozy.

(Update (8/26): The “OBA” proved my point about his blog being a one-time attack platform right: the blog no longer exists. However, he can’t completely disappear, which I’m sure being such an expert he himself realizes, too. Here’s a copy of his post I saved from Google Cache to a public Zoho Writer document)

The author refers the him/herself as The Online Backup Advisor, or The OBA, in a style that’s meant to establish authority. (more about this later). Now, I don’t consider myself an authority (and am in no way affiliated with Mozy), so won’t attempt the address the detailed issues raised in the article, but the author makes a few generalizations, or simply skips fact-checking, which I certainly would not expect coming from an “expert”:

The referral model: “Mozy gives bloggers goodies in exchange for littering the Web with (fake) glowing reviews. If you click on the Mozy links in these blogs, the blogger gets things like extra storage space and even cash. “

Wow. There is clearly no cash incentive, and as for “fake reviews”, well if the only incentive is extra storage, that’s quite worthless to a blogger who does not actually like the service… so perhaps those reviews are not that fake after all. Disclaimer: I used my referral code in the previous post, and so did Chris Yeh, who led me to signing up for Mozy. We both disclosed it in our post, and, by the way, those who signed up using our referral also received extra storage. Sounds like a deal to me.

The business model: “OK, here’s something you are simply not going to believe, but I swear the OBA would not lie to you few of Mozy’s free backup accounts probably convert to their “Mozy Plus” account, which stores 30GB for $4.95/month.For one thing, $4.95/month for 30GB is far too cheap…”

Perhaps it is too cheap, I really can’t judge that. Perhaps “The OBA“, being such an expert has also heard that there are two major factors on the cost side of the equation: storage and bandwith. Mozy minimizes bandwith consumption by doing incremental backups (even below file-level) and limiting the number of free restores to 4 per month – something “The OBA” vehemently opposes. Why, is beyond me though: Mozy is clearly a “disaster-avoidance” service, and frankly, if you lose your data more than 4 times a month, you may be better off staying offline. For ad-hoc online storage, file-sharing.. etc there are many other services.

Ad-supported business: “Do you like SPAM? Would 30-40 per day be OK with you? Mozy will SPAM you with ads from not just themselves, but also from, “third parties via email.” “

Perhaps “The OBA” has heard about ad-supported businesses before. He seems to be repeatedly conflicting himself: first he makes the case that Mozy does not have a valid business model, than he has a problem with ads; he thinks the price is too low, but condemns bandwith-saving restrictions. I guess our “expert” wants it all free, unlimited, yet with a sustainable business model. And, for the record, I’ve been getting exactly one (1) newsletter per week from Mozy.

Competition: “Why yet ANOTHER inexperienced startup remote backup program?”

Gee, from such a renowned expert I would have expected to hear some recommendation on what I should be using instead of Mozy… but all I find is vicious mud-throwing at Mozy. You know, I am not married to Mozy, if something significantly better comes along, I might as well move. But until than, a less-then perfect but good-enough service is all I need.

There is a lot more in the article, and I certainly hope that someone from Mozy or a more technically-savvy user will pick up the glove and respond in detail. What really bothers me here isn’t so much the actual content, but the blatant attempt to create authority out of nothing, pretending to be an entity/analyst/expert. The funny thing is, the author may really be an industry expert (or not), but how should I know? As long as he stays anonymous (you know, there is that section called “About me” in most blogs), comments anonymously, and his/her one-and-only attack-post is in a brand new blog with no other post – well, I’m sorry, you are NOBODY for me. Credibility, respect needs to be earned, even on the Blogosphere.