Brad Feld

Category: Investments

I’ve encouraged all of my portfolio companies that have an online service to supply both REST and SOAP API’s to their web services.  This week, both Rally Software and NewsGator released REST implementations of their API.

NewsGator’s API is a public one and has been gradually expanding is scope and documentation.  It has been exercised extremely well since both FeedDemon 2.0, NetNewsWire 2.1 Beta, and the NewsGator Private Label solutions are using it extensively to connect with NewsGator Online.  The SOAP implementation has been around since August, but a number of people have requested the REST API which is now out. 

Rally’s API is limited to customers, but you can get a look at it by signing up for a test drive.

NewsGator and Rally’s REST API’s join FeedBurner’s API’s which has been out for a while.  I remember when SDK’s were the thing ISV’s focused on – if you wanted widespread adoption of your product, you built an SDK to make it easier to integrate with other applications (Microsoft is the master of this.)  Obviously, API’s are the SDK’s of the online world and it’s fun to get some REST from several of my portfolio companies.


NewsGator and VNU announced today localized versions of NewsGator Online and NewsGator Inbox for Germany, Holland, Italy, Belgium, and Spain.  These countries join the previously localized versions for the UK and France.

Ah – the joy of a platform.


Coming back from vacation and catching up on what my portfolio companies announced last week is often fun.  Three companies – NewsGator, FeedBurner, and Rally Software were particularly active last week.

NewsGator led the charge with a bunch of announcements including mobile stuff (the acquisition of Smartfeed and a J2ME aggregator), the public NetNewsWire 2.1 Beta, a very close to final FeedDemon 2.0 Beta, synchronization with Windows Vista and IE 7, and the launch of a private label newsreader with Newsweek.

FeedBurner was also part of the Newsweek announcement as they will be providing management for Newsweek’s feeds along with incorporating FeedBurner services such as FeedFlare.  Technorati was also listed in this release as they’ve been working with Newsweek since last summer.  I’m gonna make sure I renew my subscription to Newsweek to express my appreciation (yes – the irony is intentional.)

My friends at Rally Software – who happily count NewsGator as a customer (how else could NewsGator iterate on so many products so quickly) – won the 16th Annual Jolt Product Excellent Award.  I normally don’t get excited about awards, but I like ones that are named after over caffeinated sodas (I’ve always preferred Jolt over Mountain Dew), even if they are intended for products that have “jolted the industry by helping to create faster, easier and more efficient software.”  To finish things off, Rally also announced that they are working with Scrum co-founder Jeff Sutherland to teach Advanced Scrum courses.  No – this has nothing to do with rugby.


Feedstorm

Mar 10, 2006
Category Investments

I love numbers.  I also love data visualization – Edward Tufte has long been one of my intellectual heros and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information remains one of my all time favorite books.  My friends at FeedBurner delighted me today with Feedstorm – the visual (and audible) display of the growth of the feeds on their service.  Their viewer’s guide is as follows:

  • Blue drops represent text feeds, orange drops are podcasts.
  • The placement and position of the drops are random.
  • The pace at which the drops drop is representative of the general growth curve of all FeedBurner-managed feeds mapped to our actual dataset.
  • There are roughly 1,200 drops from start to finish, so imagine that number times 200 for a sense of the actual scale.
  • The larger drops are mapped to the emergence of the most highly subscribed feeds.
  • Turn on your audio to get a better sense for the initially sparse and then rapidly growing number of rich media feeds.

It’s worth a look and a listen if you like data and creative ways to visualize it.


No – I’m not talking about being excellent at rugby; I’m referring to one of the Agile software development approaches.  Scrum is becoming extremely popular among developers that are adopting Agile approaches.  One of my portfolio companies – Rally Software – has started teaching Certified ScrumMaster classes and recently had a glowing review in Software Development Magazine.  The article summarizes things well.

Although the ScrumMaster training class is put on by an agile software tools vendor, it is definitely not a thinly disguised sales pitch. The Rally tools weren’t mentioned until a class member asked about them. All in all, if you’re looking to quickly become a Certified ScrumMaster (a resume enhancer for sure), this hands-on class will get you going from 0 to 60 in two days flat.


I love stats (also know to serious people as “analytics.”)  In the past, I’ve written about the variety of stats packages I use and track regularly (e.g. at least daily.)  Today, FeedBurner came out with an upgrade to its stats that add a number of new things, including uncommon uses, the concept of “reach”, and item popularity.   Mike Arrington at Techcrunch has a comprehensive post up with screen shots – rather than repeat this here, I’ll simply point you there to take a look.

In other stats news, I thought I’d refresh the list of things I was using.  I’ve added a few (such as BlogBeat – which I love) and removed a few (such as MessageMap, which was intolerably slow, getting increasingly “wrong”, and – now that it’s owned by Google, will likely be integrated with Google Analytics, which I still use, sort of.)  Here’s the old list as of 8/16/05.

  • FeedBurner: Core RSS feed and page view metrics
  • AWStats: Core page view metrics
  • Google AdSense: Page views by channel, ad click throughs
  • Amazon: Online purchase metrics
  • Bloglet: Email subscribers
  • MyBlogLog: Outbound link tracking
  • MeasureMap: Inbound / outbound link tracking (in alpha)
  • Technorati: More link tracking
  • Feedster: Even more link tracking

Here’s the new list as of today:

  • FeedBurner: Core RSS feed, page view metrics, item views, reach, and email stats
  • BlogBeat: Core page view metrics (plus feed data via integration with FeedBurner API)
  • Google Analytics: Page views
  • Amazon: Online purchase metrics
  • MyBlogLog: Outbound link tracking
  • Technorati: More link tracking

I’ve dumped the others for the following reasons:  

  • AWStats: Stats weren’t telling me much
  • Google AdSense: Google Analytics (and now BlogBeat) gives me much better data
  • Bloglet: I dumped Bloglet and use FeedBlitz, which has stats integration with FeedBurner
  • MeasureMap: Slow, wrong data, and now part of Google (hence I expect integration into Google Analytics someday)
  • Feedster: Increasingly irrelevant / redundant data

Yes – less is more in this case (since I’m getting a lot more data from the services I’m using as they evolve.)


I spent the requisite five minutes on Google Pages tonight now that I could actually log in.  I created a very simple page, just to see what it felt like.  I’ll poke around some more when I’m bored, but for now I still don’t get it.  I do, however, really like the Google single sign-on which seems to have automagically appeared.  My Google services are getting a little more tightly integrated which is a good thing.  Hopefully the spam bots won’t figure out the algorithm for determining gmail addresses from the Google Page address (duh – very easy – nah – wishful thinking.)

I also spent the requisite five minutes setting up MyBook on Judy’s Book.  This is my local blog for reviews.  While I can use Judy’s Book WOPM (write once publish many) technology to post these to my Feld Thoughts blog, I’m going to play around with separate sites and only selectively post extensive reviews to both places (the short ones – things like restaurants – will stay on Brad Feld’s MyBook only.)  Of course, when I do this, I’ll use Judy’s Book to write the review and then use the WOPM technology to automagically post to Feld Thoughts.


Matt Blumberg – the CEO of Return Path – wrote a post on a meeting he hosted yesterday with some of the old-timers at Return Path – including one of the founders who is no longer at Return Path – to explore reinventing Return Path’s original business (ECOA – email change of address.)

Return Path – which was founded in 1999 (I invested in Veripost – the “other” early ECOA provider – in 2000 which was merged with Return Path in 2001) was originally based on being “the” ECOA provider.  At the time, we convinced ourselves that this could be a very big business.  We were wrong.  ECOA is a small business that can be run profitably, but it’s not enough to build a VC-backed company.  Fortunately, Matt and team determined this early on (in 2002) and started aggressively expanding Return Path’s footprint in the email services market – both through organic growth and acquisition.  Today Return Path is a medium sized company (e.g. big enough to matter and be considered a real company), growing quickly, and a leader in several market segments (oh – including ECOA).

Matt and his team have demonstrated superb startup skills by recognizing the limitation of their business plan early, adjusting it to incorporate a steeper growth vector, taking action, and succeeding.  Not everything they’ve tried has worked, but they’ve steadily built on each new thing they’ve done.  As a result, they’ve now shifted into a mode where they are growing a substantial operating business and – as part of that – continually reevaluating (and reinventing) their existing products based on both the changing dynamics of the market and the things that have succeeded or failed in the past. 

Good lessons for any entrepreneur or management team.


Oxlo and GM

Feb 22, 2006
Category Investments

I woke up this morning feeling like brogging about a few of the companies I’ve invested in.  It’s easy today since they are announcing meaningful customer implementations which are a very good thing for a young company.  I already talked about NewsGator Enterprise Server and Law Firms; next up is Oxlo and GM.

Oxlo announced that its product has been implemented at six dealer service providers with integration in the GM Retail Inventory Management (RIM) implementation. This is a key integration for Oxlo as they are now “in production” with GM.  RIM is a sophisticated bi-directional real-time integration between GM and their Dealers – this integration enables GM and their Dealers to more efficiently manage parts inventory at the Dealership – saving both GM and the Dealer inventory expense in the process.

If you’ve ever worked with a company that provided software to a major auto company, you’ll understand that this is a significant milestone.  If you don’t, just take my word for it.