Category: Investments
Today SEOMoz announced that Foundry Group has led an $18 million financing and I’m joining the board. Rand Fishkin (The Wizard of Moz) has an incredibly detailed post up titled Moz’s $18 Million Venture Financing: Our Story, Metrics and Future describing the financing process and company history in great depth. In it, he includes all kinds of numbers that people writing articles about financing are always asking for but never getting – it’s an extraordinarily (in my experience) transparent description of what, why, and how it went down. My partner Seth Levine also has a nice post up about our previous miss on financing SEOMoz titled Getting It Right The 2nd Time. And the official press release has a bunch of Internet Memes (thanks to Cheezburger) along with the liberal use of the word fuck.
Instead of going through the history of the financing, which is amply covered in the other posts, I’m going to talk about TAGFEE. What’s TAGFEE? It’s the tenents of SEOMoz. From the SEOMoz website:
Our goal is to have everything we create and cultivate – be it software, content, corporate culture, or professional relationships – live up to these tenets. We acknowledge that we are entirely responsible for SEOmoz’s reputation; the level of success we achieve, the brand image we create, and the contributions we make to the marketing industry are a direct reflection of our ability to uphold the TAGFEE code.
At my first company (Feld Technologies) we had a set of precepts and at Foundry Group we have a set of deeply held beliefs. When I first saw TAGFEE I immediately flashed to these two concepts. As I got to know Rand, Sarah Bird (COO), and other Mozzers, I realized they lived by TAGFEE. I loved it and it was one of the big factors that attracted me to the company. Following are my observations of how TAGFEE works in practice at SEOMoz.
Transparent and Authentic: Just go read Rand’s post Moz’s $18 Million Venture Financing: Our Story, Metrics and Future. The next time someone says that they are being transparent, call bullshit on them and point them at Rand’s post as an example of real transparency.
Generous: Everyone I talked to about SEOMoz reinforced that the company consistently goes above and beyond the expectations they set with customers, partners, and each other and hold themselves to an incredibly high standard in terms of interacting with and giving back to the industry that allows them to exist.
Fun: When I showed up at the company a week before the financing closed to say hi, everyone was gathered with margaritas and cupcakes. We did a 30 minute Q&A thing where Rand and Sarah went through in detail the deal that was happening and how it impacted everyone. The cupcakes were yummy and there was much laughing after everyone realized I wasn’t the homeless person that Sarah suggested I was (as in “Brad isn’t here – this is just some homeless person who wandered in.”)
Empathetic: I saw this in my interactions with Mozzers, Rand, Sarah, and people near to the company. I also see it in the Moz community. Amazingly direct, clear, and emotionally enlightened responses and interactions to everything, regardless where on the spectrum of “awesome” to “shitty” an issue lands on.
Exceptional: This is one exceptional company, in everything they do. They aspire to build something incredibly important and durable. And exceptional.
I’ve watched Rand and SEOMoz from a distance for a while. I know many people who have worked closely with the company. And I’ve been able to spy into Rand’s life a little through the lens of his wife Geraldine (who we call the hilarious cupcake blogger woman in my house). It’s one big TAGFEE universe and I’m spinning around in circles chasing my tail in happiness that I get to be involved in it.
Last week President Obama played with a Sphero. This weekend you can win up to $5,000 at the Sphero Hackathon in Boulder. It starts Friday May 4th at 6pm with a Welcome Reception (which means beer and Spheros) and runs all day Saturday and Sunday where you can hack with Spheros and the Orbotix SDK. I’ll be around Sunday from 1pm to 3pm taking a look at what people have done, playing around with the apps, and answering any questions about why I think Sphero (and Orbotix – the company that makes Sphero) is so awesome.
Two new apps have recently come out for the Sphero. The first, Chromo, allows you to play with Sphero in a whole new way. While Orbotix’s other apps allow you to control Sphero from your device (kinetically and via a digital joystick), now Sphero is the controller. The video tells the story better than words.
The other app is MacroLab. Did you have a Big Trak as a kid? If not, you missed out, but you can relive those missed moments with MacroLab. As before, let’s start with a quick video.
MacroLab is a tool Orbotix developed for internal purposes that turned out to be so powerful they decided to make it available to all Sphero users. It is essentially a high level abstraction of the API that runs in the ball’s memory that commands the robot. It makes the API accessible to people who don’t know how to program an iOS or Android app.
When a user creates a macro they send a series of commands to the ball. Macros are made by stringing together 27 basic commands (by comparison the SDK has about 300 commands – most are UI/robot housekeeping based but 100 are ball control related). Each command is executed in sequence. Following is an example (called “test”) along with an explanation.
– Calibrate – this zeros out Sphero’s heading so you know which way he will go after you aim him
– RGB – this changes the color of the LED to purple – the numbers are the RGB settings
– Roll 0.5 0 0 – 50% speed (0.5), 0º heading = straight ahead, 0 second wait time before executing next command
If we stopped here the LED will flash purple and Sphero would run away at 50% speed and only stop when you exit the macro. Basically the macro runs for a fraction of a second with an open ended roll command. The Sphero goes white (his default color) after the macro is run. In order to not have an open ended command we need to add some more stuff.
– Delay 5000 – this means to wait for 5 seconds, Sphero uses milliseconds so 5000ms = 5 seconds
– Roll 0.0 0 0 – 0% speed (0.0), 0º heading, 0 second delay
– RGB – change LED color to orange
– Delay 1000 – Wait for 1 second
The entire macro runs for 6 seconds. Sphero will turn purple, drive for 5 seconds at 50% speed, stop, turn orange for one second and then end by turning white.
The commands for MacroLab are very basic but powerful enough that Orbotix uses them to run tests on the factory line and form the basis of programs like “Draw N Drive” (every line you draw gets converted to a macro and the ball executes the command). The complete command list follows:
- Roll – sets the ball in motion
- RGB – changes the main LED color
- Calibrate – zeros heading
- Delay – wait time in ms before executing next command
- Fade – fade between two colors over a set period of time
- Back LED – turn the blue aiming LED on/off
- WaitUntilStop – don’t execute the next command until Sphero has stopped moving
- Rotate Over Time – turn xº in y seconds
- SD1, SD2 – global variables for system delays – useful when you want a bunch of commands to use the same delay
- SPD1, SPD2 – global variables for ball speeds – useful when you want a bunch of roll commands all at the same speed
- Roll SD1, SPD1 – roll command that uses the system SD1 for delay and SPD1 for speed
- Roll SD1, SPD2 – roll command that uses the SD1 for delay and SPD2 for speed
- RGB SD2 – change LED to RGB setting but use SD2 delay time for duration
- Rotate Over TIme SD1, SD2 – rotate over time command but uses the system delays SD1 and SD2 respectively
- Goto – calls another macro or restarts the same macro
- Rotation Rate – set how fast the ball can turn
- Stabilization – turns the control system on and off -when off the robot will not move inside the ball
- Raw Motor – command the motors without any control system enabled
- EMIT – Displays a message on the phone when the ball hits that point in the macro – useful for debugging
- Sleep – Puts Sphero to sleep
- Loop For, End – Create loops within the macro
- Comment – ability to add comments to your macros – no effect on the ball
When I first heard the idea for MacroLab I smiled a huge smile. It’s the beginning of Orbotix opening up their robot control language, which is part of the magic behind the premise for our investment in Orbotix. I’m amused when people say “why did you invest in a toy ball company?” when what we really invested in was a bunch of geniuses working on a robotic operating system that happens to start life out as a robot ball that you control with your smartphone.
What are you waiting for? Buy a Sphero today and get started. And come to the Sphero Hackathon in Boulder this weekend.
Yesterday, President Obama was in Boulder. The guys at Orbotix showed up and got him to play around with a Sphero. Watch the video (it’s pretty awesome) and then I’ll tell you the story of how they made it happen. The short answer – always be ready to demo your product – you never know when the President (or a key customer) is nearby.
Our main characters for this story are Ross Ingram and Damon Arniotes. Ross is the one demoing Sphero to the President. Ross is Mr. Everywhere for Orbotix – his job is to handle every hack event, be at every party, and show up everywhere that might be interesting with a bunch of Spheros. Damion is the guy filming everything on his iPhone. His full time job is to video Sphero in the wild and tell the story all the time.
On Monday night after Ross and Damon found out the President would be at CU Boulder they starting talking about how awesome it would be to get a Sphero into Obama’s hands. No one knew Obama’s route around CU and Boulder, but Ross and Damon drove around the Campus and the Hill (next to CU) to scope things out. I’m betting at least one beer was consumed.
On Tuesday, they drove to CU with Spheros in hand but still didn’t know where Obama was going to be. They had to leave Damon’s camera gear behind because of security and the fact that Damon isn’t press (apparently only press is allowed cameras).
While they were driving to campus they saw a bunch of yellow police tape and took a guess that this was a spot that might see some action. If you are a fly fisherman, you know this drill. Go where you think the fish are going to be and wait. They found a parking spot near the Sink (one of the venerable old college hangouts on the Hill) and parked.
Ross called Paul Berberian, Orbotix’s CEO around 6pm and asked Paul if they should drive Sphero past the yellow tape towards Obama. Paul, who went to the Air Force Academy, responded with “No fucking way – you’ll end up in jail – remote control ball rolling to the president – bad idea.”
Around 6:45 Secret Service starts cherry picking folks from the crowd to be in the receiving line for the President. Magically Ross and Damon get picked – they get screened with metal detectors and are allowed in with Sphero. A girl with a Slurpie had to throw it away – apparently Slurpies are more dangerous than robotic balls. I bet she had one of those neon blue ones.
The President rolls up minutes later and starts shaking hands. Damon starts filming on his iPhone. Ross greets the President and asks him to see his iPhone to drive the robot ball. The President immediately gets it; Ross asks him if he wants to drive it – and the rest is what you saw on the video. While this is happening, the Secret Service rushed in around Ross and Damon as soon as the President engaged, but the President kept going with Sphero so they hung back.
Someone in the crowd took the Sphero while Ross and Damon frantically played back to video to see if they got it. They did and the rest is memorialized for history – this is the first time we are aware of that a President of the United States has played with a robotic ball controlled with an iPhone.
There are two big lessons here. First, always be ready. Second, hire amazing guys like Ross and Damon and let the loose on the world. Guys – incredible!
I’m now officially in the cloud business, courtesy of my friends at Standing Cloud (we are investors.) Standing Cloud delivers cloud application management solutions for cloud service providers, technology solution providers, and their customers. Their application management layer, automated managed services and Application Storefront make it easy to build, deploy and manage applications in the cloud.
Back in November, I wrote that “If you are a hosting, managed service provider, or building a cloud service (public or private), you have three choices. The first is to ignore this stuff (dumb). The second is to try to build it all yourself and keep pace with Amazon (good luck). The third is to use Standing Cloud.” And that’s exactly what I’m doing. Basically, Brad’s Amazing Cloud makes me a cloud provider.
Built on a white-label version on the Standing Cloud platform, Brad’s Amazing Cloud provides all the tools to get applications up and running in the cloud quickly, affordably, and without the hassle of managing hardware and infrastructure. So it’s goodbye to server racks, terminal windows, and sys admin headaches. With Brad’s Amazing Cloud, it’s simple and hassle-free, whether you’re a skilled developer or a non-technical application user.
With Brad’s Amazing Cloud, you get your choice of clouds, applications, and developer frameworks. You can run on AWS, Rackspace, GoGrid, and several other cloud hosting providers. Through the Storefront, you can fire up preconfigured instances of a wide range of open source apps – and you need no technical knowledge to do so. Nearly 100 open-source and commercial apps – including popular business applications like Drupal, WordPress,
All account management with the cloud provider you select is handled transparently – no separate account needed. Pick the cloud of your choice, and change at any time, for any reason. Your applications are completely portable from cloud-to-cloud, so you’re never locked-in to a single cloud service or provider.
Brad’s Amazing Cloud is real, and it’s open for business now. Check it out and tell me what you think.
If you’re a solutions provider looking to provide an application management layer for your customers or resellers, a developer looking for the easiest way to build, deploy and scale applications in the cloud, or just want to get your business up and running in the cloud, quickly, cost effectively and without the typical technical challenges, Standing Cloud may have a solution for you. With their white-label capabilities, your cloud offering can be customized to meet your specific needs (just like they did for me), including branding on the storefront, management console and support pages, and your choice of applications (including proprietary apps and software), infrastructure and supported clouds.
If you want an intro to Standing Cloud, just email me and ask. I’ll also be doing a webinar with with the Standing Cloud team on Tuesday, May 15th, register here.
One of the most enduring challenges any Internet marketer faces is getting users to come back regularly and engage on their website. In other words; loyalty. Social gaming companies and a few very popular consumer web services have gotten extremely good at creating loyalty, where loyalty rate is defined as Daily Active Users (DAU) / Monthly Active Users (MAU). Yet when you look at loyalty rates on the rest of the web, they look downright abysmal. According to data from Nielsen, of the top 2,000 biggest sites in the US, only 21 of them have a loyalty rate better than 25%. In fact the average loyalty rate among the top 2,000 US sites is less than 7%. Do some quick math (7% * 30 days) and that means that on average their “active” users are only visiting their site two days out of the month.
That doesn’t feel very loyal, and this is the challenge, or opportunity, that our portfolio company BigDoor set their sites on. The team at BigDoor has been busy building a gamification and rewards platform, but after two years of work and a lot of learning they discovered that what they had really created was an engine that helps publishers increase user loyalty and engagement. Once they realized this, they also realized they needed to have a drop dead easy way to measure the impact they were having on loyalty rates. So they built in cohort analysis that automagically creates a random control group and the analytics engine needed to compare control groups versus reward user groups. Next came an iterative exposure function, because no smart marketer would roll something out to their entire site without testing it first on a subset of their traffic. Then they made it as easy as possible to implement, with the requirement being that it should take the same technical ability that a person needs to install Google Analytics.
BigDoor has been in private beta with this latest version of their gamified rewards program for the last few months, and the results surprised all of us. That’s because when a user goes to a site that is using BigDoor, they see a tightly integrated and highly gamified rewards program that lets them earn real rewards for engaging with the site. The more loyal and engaged the user is, the more points and rewards they get. Think of it like a fun and engaging frequent flyer program for any website. But behind the scenes is a white-label gamification engine that is churning through data, comparing cohort performance, and measuring results. And what has their impact been on loyalty rates? On average, across all of their publishers, they saw a lift in loyalty rates of over 150%.
If you talk to the BigDoor team they will tell you that they still have a ton of things to improve upon. They want to make the implementation process for a new publisher even simpler. They want to create more and better integrated widget templates. They want to get their loyalty score lift even higher. They are busy doing all of those things, but what’s already there is working incredibly well. That’s why we decided to double down with our investment in BigDoor and lead another round of investment into the company.
In addition to announcing their new funding round, yesterday BigDoor also announced they were bringing their gamified rewards program out of private beta, so it is now available to everyone. They currently have a huge pipeline of publishers they are working with, but if you manage a website that is struggling with that never ending challenge of loyalty and engagement, give their gamified rewards program a look and let them know what you think.
I believe that science fiction is reality catching up to the future. Others say that science fact is the science fiction of the past. Regardless, the gap between science fact and science fiction is fascinating to me, especially as it applies to computers.
My partners and I spend time at CES each year along with a bunch of the founders from different companies we’ve invested in due to our human computer interaction theme. In addition to a great way to start the year together, it gives us a chance to observe how the broad technology industry, especially on the consumer electronics side, is trying to catch up to the future.
We are investors in Oblong, a company who’s co-founder (John Underkoffler) envisions much of the future we are currently experiencing when he created the science and tech behind the movie Minority Report. Oblong’s CEO, Kwin Kramer, wandered the floor of CES with this lens on and had some great observations which he shares with you below.
Looking back at last year’s CES through the greasy lens of this year’s visit to Vegas, three trends have accelerated: tablets, television apps platforms, and new kinds of input.
I gloss these as “Apple’s influence continuing to broaden”, “a shift from devices to ecosystems,” and “the death of the remote control.”
Really, the first two trends have merged together. The iPod, iPhone, and iPad, along with iTunes, AirPlay, and FaceTime, have profoundly influenced our collective expectations.
All of the television manufacturers are now showing “smart” TV prototypes. “Smart” means some combination of apps, content purchases, video streaming, video conferencing, web browsing, new remote controls, control from phones and tablets, moving content around between devices, screen sharing between devices, home “cloud”, face recognition, voice control, and gestural input.
Samsung showed the most complete bundle of “smart” features at the show this year and is planning to ship a new flagship television line that boasts both voice and gesture recognition.
This is good stuff. The overall interaction experience may or may not be ready for the mythical “average user”, but the features work. (An analogy: talking and waving at these TVs feels like using a first-generation PalmPilot, not a first-generation iPhone. But the PalmPilot was a hugely successful and category changing product.)
The Samsung TVs use a two-dimensional camera, not a depth sensor. As a result, gestural navigation is built entirely around hand motion in X and Y and open-hand/grab transitions. The tracking volume is roughly the 30 degree field of view of the camera between eight feet and fifteen feet from the display.
Stepping back and filtering out the general CES clamor, what we’re seeing is the continuing, but still slow, coming to pass of the technology premises on which we founded Oblong: pixels available in more and more form factors, always-on network connections to a profusion of computing devices, and sensors that make it possible to build radically better input modalities.
Interestingly, there are actually fewer gestural input demos on display at CES this year than there were last year. Toshiba, Panasonic and Sony, for example, weren’t showing gesture control of TVs. But it’s safe to assume that all of these companies continue to do R&D into gestural input in particular, and new user experiences in general.
PrimeSense has made good progress, too. They’ve taken an open-hand/grab approach that’s broadly similar to Samsung’s, but with good use of the Z dimension in addition. The selection transitions, along with push, pull and inertial side-scroll, feel solid.
Besides the television, the other interesting locus of new UI design at CES is the car dashboard. Mercedes showed off a new in-car interface driven partly by free-space gestures. And Ford, Kia, Cadillac, Mercedes and Audi all have really nice products and prototypes and employ passionate HMI people.
For those of us who pay a lot of attention to sensors, the automotive market is always interesting. Historically, adoption in cars has been one important way that new hardware gets to mass-market economies of scale.
The general consumer imaging market continues to amaze me, though. Year-over-year progress in resolution, frame rate, dynamic range and cost continues unabated.
JVC is showing a 4k video camera that will retail for $5,000. And the new cameras (and lenses) from Nikon and Canon are stunning. There’s no such thing anymore as “professional” equipment in music production, photography or film. You can charge all the gear you need for recording an album, or making a feature-length film, on a credit card.
Similarly, the energy around the MakerBot booth was incredibly fun to see. Fab and prototyping capabilities are clearly on the same downward-sloping, creativity-enabling, curve as cameras and studio gear. I want a replicator!
And, of course, I should say that Oblong is hiring. We think the evolution of the multi-device, multi-screen, multi-user future is amazingly interesting. We’re helping to invent that future and we’re always looking for hackers, program managers, and experienced engineering leads.
Bwahahahaha – I know what it is, but I can’t tell you. But you can now play a text adventure game, created by Andrew Plotkin, which will give you hints. Remember Adventure?
You really shouldn’t have wandered away from your tour guide. The gleam of glass in a deserted room caught your eye for just a moment… but with that mob of chattering tourists out of sight, the MakerBot facility doesn’t seem quite as friendly as it did a moment ago.
Servos hiss behind you — but that’s not the guidebot’s cheery mask looming out of the shadows. It’s a security bot! You’re in trouble now. You duck into the laboratory. Or is it a showroom? Test chamber? You pull the door shut; hopefully you can hide out until the robot has passed.
No maze of twisty little passages here. Just a big scary security robot. I just played it for a while – it’s awesomely fun. I expect Seth Levine and Paul Kedrosky will get sucked in this afternoon and it’ll cause Paul to need to buy a MakerBot to print out the pieces in game.
I’ll see you at CES if you are going to be there. And keep your eyes on the MakerBot site for some cool new things.
My little buddy, the robotic ball controlled by your smartphone named Sphero, has shipped and you can order a Sphero now! Having watched Sphero come to life over the past 17 months, starting as a seed of an idea in the heads of two mad geniuses (Ian Bernstein and Adam Wilson) has been awesome.
I remember seeing Ian and Adam’s video application to TechStars for the Boulder 2010 program (at the time the company was called Gearbox). There were a lot of questions on the selection committee because it wasn’t a typical software thing. “These guys are hardware hackers – will we have good mentors for them?” was one of the questions asked. “Fuck yeah” I said. “I’ll be one of their lead mentors. I love robots.”
In my first mentor meeting with Ian and Adam, they showed me three ideas. One was an iPhone controlled door lock. One was something else that was iPhone controlled but was so stupid I can’t remember what it was. One was a ball that you could control with your smartphone. As they described idea #1, they told me about the mentors who had said “this could be a good business.” As they described idea #2, I started thinking to myself “where is the passion in these guys that I saw in the video?” When they got to the ball, I remember Adam (or was it Ian) saying something like “our third idea is a remote control ball – how cool is that?” We talked about it for a minute or two and with each passing second they became more animated. Adam literally stood up and was gesturing around as he tried to show me what it would be like to use it.
I looked quietly at each of them and said “which idea do you love?” In unison, they responded with “the ball.” Do you love any of the other ideas? Silence. Then I asked “so why is there even a choice in your mind?” One of them responded with “well – some of the people we’ve talked to thought the ball was a stupid idea and there was no market for it.” I responded with “Fuck that – do what you love.”
Paul Berberian, one of their mentors during TechStars, shared the same enthusiasm. About halfway through the program Ian, Adam, and Paul started to talk about teaming up – by the end of TechStars Paul had joined as the CEO. I’ve worked with Paul since he co-founded Raindance Communications in 1997 and was delighted to quickly lead a seed financing for Orbotix.
17 months later we have the world’s first robotic ball controlled by a smartphone. The early reviews are starting to come in and they are all in the “wow this is cool I wish there were more apps” category.
TechCrunch on Sphero: “As a technological artifact, the ball is incredible. When’s the last time you’ve seen a small, self-propelled ball with built-in gyroscope, accelerometer, Bluetooth radio, and compass? You could put a little explosive in these and they could be a Bond villain.”
CNET on Sphero: “In the end, it’s Sphero’s shape that may be both its strength and its weakness, for it’s hard to ignore the fact that this is a ball–and it’s not terribly exciting to see a ball roll around on its own after a while, even one that’s interactive and lights up. Of course, it’s something of a technological feat to remotely put a ball in motion, and kudos to Orbotix for doing that and coming up with an app tie-in strategy that should help keep things interesting moving forward. All that’s pretty clever. Or maybe it’s stupid. It is such a fine line.”
Engaget on Sphero: “That said, Sphero is a great toy to have if you’ve got any furry friends — this reporter spent a good thirty minutes making Sphero chase a friend’s dog, and it seems the pup had even more fun with it than his human friends. We should also note Sphero’s worth as a conversation starter, as most folks haven’t seen anything like it, and are keen to take it for a spin.”
I have two dogs and they love the Sphero. So far I haven’t gotten remotely bored playing around with them with it. I’ve played a few of the upcoming Sphero apps, including a Mixed Reality Pong game, using Sphero to control your phone (3D joystick like behavior), movement tracking, and Wii like games where the ball replaces the Wii mote. The potential of apps built to incorporate a Sphero just blows my mind.
In addition to shipping Sphero, Orbotix also released their SDK and the first five Sphero apps. The short term goal is to make it easy for anyone to develop apps for Sphero since – even though the Orbotix team is crazy smart and creative, we know that the breakthrough apps will come from other people.
I love the stuff I invest in. It’s magical to me that the idea Ian and Adam had 17 months ago is now a product with a full fledged software ecosystem around it. Orbotix is a long way from being a successful company, but shipping Sphero is a huge step in their journey.
If you love robots, want to hack on a robotic ball, have a cat, have a kid, or just want to play around with an amazing new toy at its very early stages, order your Sphero today. Yes, there’s a backlog so you won’t get it in time for Christmas, but hopefully they’ll be fully caught up by January.
Recently my partners and I spent some time discussing three of our recent investments – Spanning, Yesware, and Attachments – which are each applications built on top of Google Apps. Specifically, they are built for Google Apps and available in the Google Apps Marketplace or the Chrome Web Store.
Each company is going after something very different. Spanning is all about cloud backup. Attachments is all about getting control of your email attachments. And Yesware is “email for salespeople.” However, they have one very significant thing in common – they are all deeply integrated into Google Apps. In our thematic definition, they are in the Protocol theme.
The Google Apps ecosystem snuck up on us. We have all been hardcore Google Apps users for the past year and are psyched and amazed about all the easy integration points – both into the browser and the various Google Apps. In the past, we would have been more focused on “email as a datastore”, which would have resulted in multiple platforms, including of course Outlook / Exchange and IMAP. However, the pace of iteration on top of Google Apps, and the ease of integration is spectacular when compared to other platforms.
Notably, when the choice of building for Outlook vs. Google Apps comes up, many people who I know comes down strongly on the side of building for Google Apps. Their mindshare for cloud based business apps far outpaces Microsoft. A decade ago, Microsoft made a huge push with Visual Basic for Applications and the idea of “Office as a Platform” and – while plenty of interesting tech was built, something happened along the way and the notion of Office as a Platform lost a lot of visibility.
Theoretically Microsoft’s huge installed base of Outlook / Exchange users should drive real ISV integration interest, but the friction associated with working with Microsoft seems to mute the benefit. And – if you’ve ever built and tried to deploy an enterprise wide (say – 100,000, or even 1,000 seat) Outlook plug-in – well, I feel your pain. It’s possible that with Office 365, Microsoft will re-energize focus on Office as a Platform, but I haven’t seen much yet.
While Google has been building this all very quietly, I’m extremely impressed with what they’ve done. Companies like Yesware are able to release a new version of their app to all users on a weekly basis. For an early stage company that is deep in iterating on product features with its customers, this is a huge advantage. And it massively simplifies the technology complexity to chose one platform, focus all your energy on it, and then roll out other platforms after you’ve figured out the core of your product.
I expect to see versions of each of these products expand to work with Microsoft – and other – ecosystems. But for now, the companies are all doubled-down on Google Apps. And I find that very interesting.