Get ready – here we come.

NewsGator announced three new partnerships yesterday – each which enhances a different aspect of the RSS platform we are building out. Expect a steady stream of announcements over the next two months as the fruit from the first few months of our investment starts to ripen.

In my original post on why we invested in NewsGator, I alluded to the notion that I viewed NewsGator as an RSS platform, not simply a newsreader. While we are moving toward a clearly integrated platform view for all of our products, we’ve decided to release components along the way rather than wait for one “big bang release” (I’ve long been a proponent of both in-line and incremental release approaches, which fits really nicely with some of the Agile development approaches I’ve been exposed to since I invested in Rally Software.)

Each of the partnerships that we have announced exercises a different part of the platform we are building.

The FeedDemon partnership enables FeedDemon users to use our NewsGator Online Services (NGOS) to synchronize their subscription information across machines and devices (desktop, web, mobile, Media Center, Outlook, and other email clients.) Some people may think this is weird since conceivably NewsGator Outlook competes with FeedDemon as a reader. However, we don’t view it that way – we think that some folks want their reader integrated into Outlook (hence NewsGator Outlook), some people want a standalone client-based reader (hence FeedDemon) – so they’ll co-exist (since we have no plans today for a standalone client-based reader.) However, we (and FeedDeemon) agree that everyone potential wants their feeds on any of their machines and devices – we can help make that easy today.

The Moreover partnership brings a superb aggregated news feed service to NewsGator Online Services (NGOS) as well as to our desktop and online products. NGOS already had an awesome set of feeds – it just got a lot better.

The SixApart partnership enables tighter posting integration between NewsGator Outlook and Typepad / Movable Type. While this is relevant for all NewsGator Outlook customers (you can now post directly to Typepad / Movable Type from within Outlook), it is especially compelling for our enterprise customers – as both SixApart and NewsGator expand their enterprise customer base, this integration enables a much easier to manage experience for enterprise (read – large number of users within a corporation) deployments – both by the end-user and the IT organization.

More soon – and thanks to the folks at FeedDemon, Moreover, and SixApart for being great partners.

There was plenty of good chatter several years ago when salesforce.com started publicizing their foundation’s vision of being a “global leader in fully integrating business and the community by proving an inspiring and innovative service model for integrated philanthropy.” They committed to give 1% of their employees time, 1% of their equity, and 1% of their profits to the salesforce.com foundation.

While lots of companies have a philanthropic side to them, it’s unusual for early stage companies to have much focus on this. When we funded Rally Software (previously known as F4 Technologies), the founder Ryan Martens created a “1% Fund” with the Community Foundation Serving Boulder County modelled after what salesforce.com had done. Ryan did this proactively – we obviously supported him and are extremely proud of his initiative – but it was his idea.

This week, StillSecure announced that they are taking a similar step and donating 1% of revenue through 12/31/04 to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Like Ryan, Raj Bhargava – StillSecure’s CEO – has a strong personal philanthropic philosophy. With this action, he’s integrating this philosophy and awareness into his company with an immediacy that is impressive. StillSecure is still a young company so it doesn’t have the infrastructure to create a foundation, but Raj and his team are laying the groundwork today for having StillSecure have a component of its business that is philanthropically aware and subsequently more tightly integrated into its community.

I applaud all of these efforts. While I think it’s up to each company and individual to determine how they want to participate in their community, I strongly support innovative efforts like the ones taken by salesforce.com, Rally Software, and StillSecure. My hat is off to everyone involved.

PeopleSoft made a brilliant move this week when they announced their strategic alliance with IBM. PeopleSoft is obviously under attack from Oracle. IBM has simultaneously been positioning themselves as the ultimate middleware player via their WebSphere products.

IBM’s software strategy is to be complementary to enterprise application software providers rather than competitive to them. I got an email from IBM’s VC group about the PeopleSoft deal that said “Importantly, today’s announcement remains consistent with the software strategy you have become accustomed to when working with IBM and exemplifies the type of relationship we strive to achieve with our business partners. We remain firmly committed to building best-in-class middleware and leading the industry in platform innovation. Because of our focus on building middleware in an open standards environment, we continue to build relationships with a broad range of partners in the industry. We will continue to openly seek new ways to collaborate with you to develop an ecosystem that delivers profitable returns for IBM and all of our business partners, as well as maximum return to clients for their IT investments. “

With one move, PeopleSoft says another “fuck you” to Oracle, IBM deeply reinforces their position in the enterprise application ecosystem, and the two companies stir up the enterprise application consolidation pot a little more.

I watch this carefully because we have a number of enterprise application investments. One of my infrastructure software companies – Newmerix – provides software to help optimize packaged application change and quality – PeopleSoft is their key partner and they just announced a deeper relationship with them. Our view is that the chaos and uncertainty in the enterprise app market – while bad for customers – is good for infrastructure software companies like Newmerix and – as the ultimately consolidation plays out – good for our companies that can get in the mix before the music stops.

One of my friends and co-board members (an entrepreneur that knows the big players in the enterprise app market well) dropped me a note post PeopleSoft / IBM announcement that said “I think this is a precursor to an acquisition announcement – IBM+PSFT. Then the real consolidation begins – Oracle + Siebel, MSFT + SAP.” Oracle, PeopleSoft, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Siebel certainly have an interesting chess game going.

NewsGator has a new CEO – JB Holston. Greg Reinacker and I are extremely excited to welcome JB to the team.

When Greg and I first started talking about Mobius investing in NewsGator, the topic of CEO came up early. I’d had a few meetings with Greg, thought he was awesome, but also felt that – given his (our) ambition for the company – it would be a misuse of his talents for him to be CEO. In the words of one of my partners, Greg is “a CTO from central casting” – fantastic vision, extremely articulate about the technology he’s into and its business impact, passionate about what he does, and an unbelievably capable software developer (one of those 100x everyone else guys).

Once I’d decided that I was serious about an investment, I broached the topic of CEO with Greg. I was direct – telling him that I wanted to invest – but wanted us to hire a CEO that could be his business partner. After describing the respective roles I felt Greg and the CEO should play, I encouraged Greg to talk to a number of other entrepreneurs – including some that are founding CTO’s and some that are founding CEO’s – to better understand the respective positions and responsibilities. In addition, I was clear that while the requirement of hiring a CEO was a condition of my investment (I was willing to make the investment in advance of identifying the person, but I wanted a commitment that we would hire a CEO), the choice of CEO was ultimately Greg’s (we’d both work on finding someone, but I gave him veto power.) After a few more conversations, Greg was willing to sign up for this and we moved forward with the investment.

One of the first “potential CEO’s” I introduced Greg to was JB Holston. I first met JB when I moved to Colorado in the mid-90’s – he was connected to the Softbank consellation through his roles as President of Ziff Davis International (owned by Softbank at the time) and his involvement in starting up Yahoo! Europe. We took an instant liking to each other and kept up over the years. JB took a role as CEO of a company called NetSage and over the next few years he pitched me a few times on investing (I turned it down each time, much to his chagrin). Eventually, I introduced him to one of my companies – Finali – as I thought there might be an interesting strategic fit between NetSage and Finali. There was and Finali ended up acquiring NetSage and incorporating the NetSage technology into its vision of a next generation call center. JB worked on the Finali executive team for a year and then left to write a book and enjoy some time with his family. A year and a half ago, he called me with an idea for a Colorado-based progressive advocacy organization. Within six months, he’d rallied funding from me, Jared Polis, and a number of other folks and created the Rocky Mountain Progressive Network. An integral part of RMPN was its blog – which was my first real exposure to the blogosphere. I also got to see JB in startup mode and was blown away.

Greg took an instant liking to JB. I reinforced that I wanted Greg to make sure he was completely comfortable with whoever we chose as CEO – and was equally clear with JB that it was ultimately Greg’s choice. The two of them came up with a two month “trial period” – where JB acted as a consultant to NewsGator. This gave them a chance to get to know each other in a work context, understand their respective styles and goals, and make sure they were in alignment. Obviously, this trial period was a success.

I’ve heard (and seen) numerous ridiculous VC / founder / CEO stories over the last decade. I learned an extremely hard lesson in my first venture funded deal (where I was the entrepreneur, not the VC). I was the founding angel investor of NetGenesis and chairman of the company. My close friend Raj Bhargava was CEO and co-founder (with three others – it started with five others, but that’s another story). Raj was 21 at the time and NetGenesis was his first company. We had great early success and were a hot young Internet company in the 1995-1996 time frame. When we went out to raise our first round of venture capital (after raising about $2m from angels, McAfee, and Tivoli), we got four term sheets – all very attractive for an early stage company. One of the firms (and VCs) did an incredible job of romancing Raj and convinced him that he’d mentor Raj and help him become a successful CEO post investment. We chose that firm to lead the financing. Two weeks after the financing closed, the VC in question asked me out to breakfast (I was still chairman post financing – and – at that moment – a pretty optimistic and happy chairman.) At breakfast – after a little chitchat (I didn’t know the VC very well – I assumed we were starting to build a relationship) – he came out and told me he wanted to replace Raj with “an experienced CEO”. He was clear that he wanted Raj to stay in the company (“there must be some logical role for him,”) but that this was too important an investment to have a young, inexperienced guy like Raj at the helm. This evolved in a predictable way – after the initial negative emotional response from me and Raj, we both accepted (Raj much faster and more gracefully than me) that the VC was calling the shots and we lined up behind helping the VC recruit an experienced CEO. Three months later an “experienced CEO” (who ultimately was fired by the board and replaced by another experienced CEO – who ended up making the company very successful) was hired and three months later Raj left the company (he had nothing to do) and I left the board (I couldn’t bear to interact with the VCs involved at that point and decided I had better things to do so I “took my marbles and went home.”)

The lesson – which as I write this still riles me up – is that it’s much more effective to be upfront about any issues prior to an investment. In my experience, about half of the VCs believe this (and it’s not firm specific). Now – I’ve fired plenty of CEO’s (and founders) after an investment – that’s a different issue. However, as a VC is deciding whether or not to make an investment, and an entrepreneur is deciding whether or not to take a VCs investment, it’s my strong belief that both sides should be direct, honest, and clear about their views and motivations as they will have to live with each other post deal. Unfortunately, in the desire to “sell the other side,” people often cut corners, aren’t upfront and direct about what they are thinking, or feel that they can finesse the situation after a deal is done. In the words of my 15 year old niece “gross, icky dude.”

I’m very happy with how Greg and I approached this issue. Interestingly, it strongly reinforced my desire to work with Greg as it increased my confidence that we could be clear and honest with each other about even the most sensitive issues. I got to see his thought process in action as he thought through my request. Hopefully, I built the same level of trust with him as a result of being completely open about what I thought we should do an why. JB and Greg now have their own relationship (independent of me) and it’s cool to watch them work together to build this company.

Welcome JB – today the the blogosphere has another extremely strong leader and Greg has a new partner.

NewsGator announced another RSS content relationship yesterday – this time with uclick, the online arm of Universal Press Syndicate (UPS). You can now get Doonesbury, Cathy, FoxTrot, Garfield, Ziggy comics via RSS (god – I loved FoxTrot – I forgot it existed…)

Greg Reinacker (NewsGator’s founder) also put up a post discussing his thoughts about changing the NewsGator name. He’s looking for feedback – go to the post and tell him what you think. As a board member, I can assure you that your opinion will count here as we’re currently pondering what to do.

I’m a cell phone junkie.  For years, I switched every six months or so as the newest thing came out and I had to try it. 

I’ve been in love with my Sidekick since the first one came out.  Now – it’s one of our investments – so I was obviously biased to liking it – but I loved it.  Nine months ago I got an early beta of the Sidekick II.  I’ve been using it since and it’s incredible.  My beta model has a lot of miles (and minutes) on it and it’s held up extremely well as both a phone and a data / email device.  I’m still in love (to the extent you can be in love with an inanimate object, which the nerds in the crowd understand, but my wife Amy doesn’t and just looks at me with amusement whenever I say something like that.)

Mark Cuban – of Broadcast.com and the Dallas Mavericks fame – just wrote a rave review of his new Sidekick II.  He feels the same way I do – “To all you corporo types out there that like the Blackberry, you have no idea what productivity is like ‘till you play with one of these bad-boys.”

To all the folks at Danger and T-Mobile – congrats on an amazing new Sidekick.

MessageCast announced that its LiveMessage Blogger alert service has gotten 10,000 subscribers in its first week.  Some cool blogs such as Bink.nu are using it. 

To see how it works, you need to have Microsoft Messenger running on your computer.  Go to a site running LiveMessage and click on the appropriate link (e.g. Bink.nu has a LiveMessage button, Flexbeta has a Flexbeta Alerts button, Feld Thoughts has a LiveMessage button, and OnlyOnce has a LiveMessage button.)

If you have a blog consider trying out the LiveMessage Blogger alert service as an option for your blog subscribers.

We invested in NewsGator in June and Greg Reinacker and crew have been hard at work building out the next generation of NewsGator for Outlook and NewsGator Online Services (NGOS).

NewsGator is now providing RSS feeds for University Wire (U-WIRE) content as part of NGOS. U-WIRE is a free membership organization for the college press. As many as 300 student-produced stories are gathered and edited every day by U-WIRE’s staff, then made available to nearly 700 college media outlets. Their daily feed is a collection of the best news, opinion, entertainment and sports content produced by the nation’s college newspapers.

This is the second premium content offering NewsGator has announced this month – the other is with Leadership Development Expert Gene Mage. Look for more premium content coming soon.

Newmerix announced today that it had raised $7m in a new financing. Siemens Venture Capital was the new lead investor, joining us and IDG Ventures.

We provided Newmerix’s seed financing – with IDG Ventures – in early 2003. The vision of the founders – Niel Robertson and Ed Roberto – was to create a family of software products that take an entirely new approach to addressing the issues faced by packaged application development teams. As packaged applications – such as Peoplesoft, Oracle, SAP, and Siebel – have become increasingly widespread throughout enterprises, the teams within IT organizations who are responsible for modifying, testing, deploying, and supporting these packaged applications have been hindered by tools that are fundamentally inadequate for the job. Newmerix’s products take a revolutionary new approach to helping these folks who are impacted by the inability to easily implement changes to their packaged application infrastructure.

We funded a first round with IDG in the summer of 2003. I’ve been thrilled with Newmerix’s progress – they launched their first product in February 2004 (less than 12 months after the seed financing – a short time for an IT Management software company) and landed their first reference customer in May.

They’ve had a great summer – both adding customers as well as completing a solid financing that will enable us to focus on growing the company to the next level. We were also able to convince Wendy Lea – a superstar entrepreneur that we’ve worked closely on several companies – to become chairman of the company. Wendy most recently was a senior exec at Siebel running their eBusiness Consulting unit after they acquired Wendy’s last company – OnTarget.

Newmerix’s currently shipping products are for Peoplesoft, so if you know anyone running Peoplesoft that might be interested in Newmerix’s products, please send them our way.