Hypesurfer: September 2009

More thoughts on Twitter

Last week I reported on Twitter valuation of $1 billion and stated conclusions from first few moments after news.
Days have passed but my interest in this topic did not decline. I was interested in others opinions, true or false and made some adjustments on conclusions.
First, this is not sign of new Dot Com Boom - since level of VC investition level is on 1996. At least we ALL have 3 or more years to figure out correct model before new BOOM( mental note, start freaking project!!! )... if it ever repeats :)

Second. One thing we all should know is that Silicon Valley consists of finest minds in world. Meaning, that every move is carefully planned from a lot of angles.

Final conclusions? Lets start. One of mayor investors in Twitter - Betaworks has been building Twitter ecosystem. They have invested in round 20 diverse companies forming ecosystem skeleton. "Its a feature, not a bug" - John Borthwick. Top companies that distinguish are bit.ly, stocktwits, tweetdeck, TipJoy.
What might happen is M&A of some Betaworks founded company from ecosystem by Tweeter. Betawork will receive early ROI of their investment and found even more companies that supports ecosystem. This scenario happen before with Google and Youtube M&A having same investors. And, Twitter pulled its micro-blogging service into real-time web search by Summize acquisition. Above all, it was mainly talent acquisition that lifted quality bar of whole service. One, note on TipJoy that supports previous story. It almost got acquired by FB, but they bailed-out at last moment. But, they hired TipJoy CEO - Ivan Kirigins!
Founder will get early ROI, Twitter might get another great acquisition. But, they still don't have clear business plan nor revenue follow. Also, part of this $100 million investment is buying time. Any offer round $5-$10 billion will be easily rejected. With recent hire of Dick Costolo and future acquisition of great talent - right people will get into buss. Right people will sit in right seats and then will have time to decide where will this buss head. Simple as that. With current money burn and possible M&A, they will have about 2 year to figure out revenue stream and I'm sure that its not gonna be simple ad-based-web2.0 business plan.

FB movie - Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin

Recently, I have read Accidental Billionaire by Ben Mezrich. A story about founding of FB told by Eduardo Saverin former co-founder kicked by Mark Zuckerberg.
Great book! Describes founding road of FB from first Harvard days to summer in California and split between Eduardo and Mark. Many rock star VC are mentioned in book including Sean Parker, a founder of Napster.
Looks like honest story, but lacking Zuckerbergs view since he did not want talk with Ben Mezrich.

FB is excited 300 million people this month and from business side it would be blast to create Hollywood version of Accidental Billionaire. And its in making. Movie version of book has awesome cast staring Jesse Eisenberg (Mark Zuckerberg), Justin Timberlake (Sean Parker) and Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin.

Somehow I feel that injustice has been done to Eduardo Saverin ( and not just me - take look at this Larry Chang post ), even dough he made disastrous mistakes. He owned 30% of company that has been diluted to almost nothing through rapid share issuing. Read the book for more or wait for movie.

Looking at previous roles of Andrew Garfield and especially this scene from Boy A, he looks like prefect for Eduardo role :)

Twitter is generating money out of pure potential!

Image via CrunchBase

Today it hit me like lighting! Tweeter raised another founding for $1 billion valuation. Fist I'd like to thank all people I know that where included in previous rounds and I'm very glad for them.
But, 1 billion dollars? For what?
Twitter is generating money out of pure potential! Its not making any money, it did not set straight business course. But, its rapidly growing. Its the brand , the technology, the number of users and user growth rate.
Starting from today they have joined billion dollar club. Dick Costolo, who recently joined Tweeter as COO, before joined company said that Twitter is probably one of the few startup that has the potential to become something equivalent to today’s Google, Yahoo, Amazon or EBay. Dick Costolo is co-founder of Feedburner, that was sold to Google for $100 million. He has been working with Ev at Google, who also sold Blogger to Google. So, we can say that they also have superstar management that has reputation in Valley. And it has PhD Summize team.
Thats great for Tweeter, but $1 billion dollar? Give me a brake! Compared to similar companies from same club Twitter is missing most important ingredient - revenue. In comparison, Facebook generates hundreds of millions in revenue, has $300M active users and is "only" worth $6B. Thats six times in valuation comparison. Wow! This looks like end of nineties and Dot Com Boom, where money was given to companies on sheer potential. Except, US is struggling and in middle of recession.
I'm stunned! I'd like to see some numbers!

New Apple iPod at Apple Event

Image via CrunchBase

Whats gonna be? A new generation ipod with 32g of memory with wide 5 inch display , something that Toshiba build recently with its TG01 ? Is it gonna be Kindle competitor? Will Apple emerge into eBook readers today ? Maybe new iTouch?

Questions , questions. But nobody really have an answer and everybody is expecting something big from Apple. Every new Apple Event brings dozen of eyeballs staring and waiting whats gonna be their new gadget. We are sure thats gonna be something big, but is it gonna be as big as iPhone presentation. Will Apple stocks jump 5% during presentation like in some previous events?

We will know answer in couple of hours , round 1pm ET.

Until then follow tweets from event using #apple hashtag or connect to uStream live coverage.
Enjoy!
Updates:

Steve Jobs is on the stage

Jobs is presenting new OS for iPod and iPhone : OS 3.1

On 9/9/9 iTunes 9 is annonced

... and thats it? Only talk about iPhone apps managment

Jeff Robbins is currently on stage talking about apps management

btw http://store.apple.com/it is currently down

iTunes has support for Twitter and Facebook

iPod take on DVD, Nitendo and PSP

Apple stocks is up! as predicted

Can't tweet!

Tweeter is up and Steve Jobs is back on stage

Gaming is new market Apple wants to conquer. Sony should have made that psp mobile