Rich Miner to Co-Lead Google Ventures from Cambridge

Some nifty news this morning from Google: they've formed Google Ventures, which will invest up to $100 million over the next year, according to The New York Times. Bill Maris is the managing partner of Google Ventures based in the company's Mountain View headquarters, and Rich Miner is the managing partner in the Cambridge office.

On the official Google blog, they explain:

At its core, Google Ventures is charged with finding and helping to develop exceptional start-ups. We'll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven't thought of yet. Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.

Rich Miner has been an R&D exec at Avid Technology, Wildfire Communications, and Orange. He then co-founded Android, which Google acquired in 2005 -- and which led Google into the mobile phone business.

While Miner is extremely well-networked in town, it's not clear whether he's done any investing before (I never hear his name mentioned as a local angel, for instance.)

The Future of Mobile: From the Emerging Technologies Conference

Here's some video I shot at last week's Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT. It features two local executives (Google's Rich Miner and Motorola's Liz Altman) talking about where mobile is headed -- especially with regard to open and proprietary operating systems. (This took place a day or two after the official announcement of the first Google/Android phone.)



Some notes from the panel (not direct quotes):

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch: It's still too expensive to develop an application that runs across a broad range of phones.

Liz Altman: Low-end phones will use proprietary operating systems.

Rich Miner: Agrees with that, but says mid-range phones are getting more capable, and will be compatible with the Android operating system before long.

Miner: Google will try to avoid bloatware - aim for simplicity - even as phones get more capable.

Lynch says that "thought interfaces" will be a promising way to interact with mobile devices in the future. Miner is bullish on speech, and mentions Vlingo, a Cambridge start-up. The idea of scanning barcodes of products to get more info about a product also comes up.

Inside the Cambridge Innovation Center

Rob Weisman had a great piece in yesterday's Globe Sunday Magazine about the role of the Cambridge Innovation Center in Boston's start-up economy... and the recent launch of Conduit Labs' LoudCrowd game. (Conduit is a tenant of CIC.)

Weisman writes:

It is not a stretch to argue that while a company like Fidelity Investments may be the most important financial player this state has, a hospital like MGH may hold in its hands millions of medical miracles, and a university like Harvard may house some of the brightest young minds in the world, it's a building like the 17-floor One Broadway that holds in its small, cramped offices the future of the Commonwealth. Because if technology and innovation are the lifeblood for our future, then CIC is ground zero.

That's saying a lot, considering it sits in the Kendall Square neighborhood next door to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (which owns the building) and its cutting-edge research labs. The square also includes a sizable chunk of America's biotechnology industry.

But if the Boston area is going to produce its own Google or YouTube someday soon and restore its place as a high-tech hub on par with California's Silicon Valley, it's more likely to come bubbling out of One Broadway than any of the traditional technology geysers around town. That's because of the Cambridge Innovation Center, which is steeped in a culture of entrepreneurship. While earlier generations of hotshots gravitated to General Electric or IBM, today's are drawn to this high-tech group home, a Silicon Valley in miniature on seven floors.

He also focuses on the impact that nearby Google and Microsoft labs may have on CIC: will promising young smarties go there, instead of the risky start-ups housed at One Broadway?

The article made me a little nostalgic.... back in the Year 2000, I went to the launch party of what was then called Cambridge Incubator. I wrote about it in my old Globe column, @large. They gave out some sort of crystal paperweight as a party favor, which I've long since ditched.

What's a "Liquid Launch Party"? David Sack, marketing director at the Cambridge Incubator, can't really explain it, except to declare that it most likely will not involve indoor Slip 'N Slide. Too bad.

The Incubator is throwing the invitation-only launch party this Thursday to inaugurate its new office space in Kendall Square. It's got a full floor of the high-rise, which includes two studios for visiting artists, a small auditorium, and a nap room next to the server room.

Sack wants to keep most of the details of the party secret, except to say that guests will be able to get a free massage, do some brainstorming, and see demos from four of the Incubators' "member companies" - BrandStamp, Etineraries, Veritas Medicine, and Alper Caglayan's intriguing-but-still-stealthy PeopleStreet.

Though judging took longer than expected, the Incubator will also announce the winner of its Get .ORGanized competition for nonprofit Net businesses at the party.

The three finalists are all wonderfully creative: Click-Up for Kids proposes rounding up online purchases to the nearest dollar, and donating the difference between that and the actual price to charity; Mathtastic uses sports statistics to teach math; and Secure Sponsorship helps people use their databases of contacts to get pledges (via credit card) for charitable events like walkathons. The winner gets $250,000 of Incubator financing and services

What Innovation Economy is All About

Welcome, fellow Bloggers! (And thanks to Google for including this as a blog of note for July.)

Innovation Economy covers the entrepreneurial ecosystem here in New England... it's the companion blog to a weekly Boston Globe column that I write, also called Innovation Economy. There's also a video series that goes along with the column.

Some posts that might interest you:

- Getting to know Craigslist founder Craig Newmark

- How can Massachusetts do a better job of holding onto all the smart kids who come here to get an education?

- My take on the fifty coolest companies to work for in the Boston area

- A Polaroid spin-off is making a nifty new kind of photo printer that'll fit in your pocket, and doesn't need ink cartridges

- Are you familiar with Zipcar and the concept of car-sharing?

- Some warehouses, like those that serve Walgreens, Staples, and Zappos.com, now employ an army of robotic workers

- Would you pay $600 for a baby stroller? Lots of people, including some celebs, are...

- Meet the founders of Chestnut Hill Sound, a company that makes the popular 'George' iPod dock.

- Debating the impact on non-compete agreements on the Massachusetts economy

If this kind of stuff interests you, there are a few ways to subscribe to Innovation Economy via e-mail or RSS, up in the upper right corner of this page.

I also run another blog that focuses on how new technologies are changing the entertainment industry... that one's called CinemaTech, and it's also hosted on Blogger.

What Happened at Today's Panel Discussion About Non-Compete Agreements

Probably the most interesting aspect of this afternoon’s discussion of the impact that non-compete agreements have in Massachusetts, held at Harvard Law School, was the absence of any company willing to publicly defend the practice of having employees sign non-competes.

The organizers had lined up Melanie Haratunian, an Akamai executive, to represent that point of view, but she backed out earlier this week. The reason? Akamai is apparently in the midst of enforcing a non-compete agreement against a former employee, and was concerned that that employee’s counsel might be in the audience today. That, at least, was the story I was told beforehand by several of the event’s organizers; perhaps one of you can fill in the details.

Moderator John Palfrey simply said, in opening the discussion, that Akamai “had to pull out of this event due to some pending litigation related to this topic.” (When I called Akamai spokesman Jeff Young for confirmation, he said he was not aware of any such litigation.)

I wonder why, if the stalwarts of the Massachusetts innovation economy believe so strongly that non-compete agreements are essential to retaining their best people, that no one would come forward to defend that position? EMC? Nuance? Genzyme? Boston Scientific? Anyone? Anyone?

Update: Here's some video I shot:



Some notes from the discussion…

Harvard prof. Lee Fleming said that people and ideas move from states that enforce non-competes to states that don’t (think California.) His research has found that non-competes squelch employee mobility by about 20 percent, and 30 percent for experts in a given field. Fleming asked whether non-competes might stifle the reallocation of the best people to the best business opportunities.

Paul Maeder of Highland Capital Partners said that non-competes are like diabetes -– a silent killer. Before a company can get off the ground, a prospective founder thinks twice about risking a lawsuit.

One problem with the way non-compete agreements are written, said Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, is that they often prohibit people from working in “an area deemed to be competitive,” which can be vague.

Maeder said he is seeing a lot of California start-ups crop up that aim to challenge Akamai’s business of Internet content delivery. He said that one of them “will likely become the market share leader,” and asked whether we want that successor company to be in California, or here

Rich Miner, an exec at the Cambridge office of Google, says that the company doesn’t require people to sign non-competes. At a previous company, Wildfire Communications, Miner recalled trying to hire an engineer from Comverse. Comverse decided to chase the employee and enforce the non-compete, and so Wildfire had to pay him for six or eight months before he could actually begin working.

Maeder observed that Washington State, where non-competes are enforceable, has produced two great tech companies: Amazon.com and Microsoft. But he noted that there had been no great operating system spin-offs from Microsoft, or online bookstore spin-offs from Amazon.

Maeder also compared non-competes to indentured servitude, and said they foster “sleepiness” here in Massachusetts. He advised employees to ask about them at the beginning of the interview process, not on the first day of work -- when it's too late to negotiate anything different (like six months instead of a year).

Maeder says that he discourages his portfolio companies from requiring employees to sign non-competes, but he said that isn’t yet a firm-wide policy at Highland. (It is, apparently, at Spark Capital.)

Maeder suggested that there are three ways to change the rules surrounding non-competes in Massachusetts:

1. Legislative fiat (“I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he said, having visited Beacon Hill recently. Miner agreed, saying that change needs to be “a grassroots effort.” He did say, though, that he mentioned the issue to Governor Deval Patrick when Patrick visited Google’s office recently.)

2. Educating employees about their impact

3. Get venture capitalists and executives who serve on boards to speak out about the issue with the companies they work with.

During the Q&A period, Steven Chow, an attorney at Burns & Levinson, recalled that he used to sue EMC on behalf of Digital Equipment over employees who were violating non-compete agreements by going to work at EMC. (Didn’t that do a good job of preserving DEC’s dominance?) He said that non-competes help “keep the cost of engineers down,” since employers don’t have to compete as aggressively on salaries.

'Twas a good discussion, but it would’ve been about 10,000 percent more interesting had someone been on the panel to defend non-competes as a tool for talent retention, or make a case that getting rid of them wouldn’t necessarily make Massachusetts more competitive.

Next time?

Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise 2Open

Two related events happen in Boston next week, at the Westin Waterfront.

The main show is Enterprise 2.0, which focuses on how Web 2.0 and social networking technologies are being used by companies. The three themes are cloud computing and software-as-a-service, search 2.0, and social networking in the enterprise. Speakers include Rob Carter, chief information officer at FedEx, Rishi Chandra, product manager for Google Enterprise, and local videoblogging guru Chris Brogan.

There's also a free unconference event on Tuesday, where anyone is welcome to present and participate (but you do have to pre-register.)

Mark Horan on Building Big Hometown Companies

Mark Horan, president of the Massachusetts Network Communications Council, has an op-ed in the Globe today headlined 'Tech should begin at home.' The gist is that its good news that Google now has a big presence in our state, but that we're not doing enough to cultivate home-grown innovators. As an example, he writes:

Take a simple Google-centric example. A New York Times article last year described two MIT PhD students, Sanjit Biswas and John Bicket, who a few years back helped to build Roofnet, a wireless mesh network that offered free broadband service to an area covering about one-third of Cambridge.

According to the Times, the pair showed their technology to Google executives, who were impressed enough that they joined with California-based Sequoia Capital to invest in a new company founded by the students. Today, Meraki Networks is up and running - in Mountain View, Calif.

Too many of our brightest young entrepreneurs flock to Silicon Valley, whose giant companies help to seed their growth.

Inside Google's Cambridge, MA Offices

Google held an open house this morning at their three-month old Kendall Square offices (they moved to 5 Cambridge Center from the Cambridge Innovation Center earlier this year.) There wasn't much news... but it was a chance to meet some of the Googlers, watch Governor Deval Patrick play ping pong with Stephen Vinter, the Cambridge site director, and see demos of projects the Cambridge outpost has contributed to, like the Android mobile operating system.

Some data points about what's happening at the Cambridge office, followed by a video interview with Vinter, who talked about how Google hires for this office.

- Cambridge has 175 employees, split roughly evenly between ad sales and engineering.


- Google opened a Boston sales office in 2002; engineering began here in 2005.


- Among the projects Cambridge Googlers contribute to are YouTube, Blogger, Friend Connect/Open Social, book search, Android, infrastructure, Web crawl, and networking -- which seems like a pretty broad range.


- I asked Vinter whether any new projects were indigenous to Cambridge... that is, they'd sprang out of the local office, rather than been delegated by someone at the Googleplex in Mountain View. He said that Friend Connect, a toolbox for easily adding social networking to Web sites, is an example of one. (It was overseen by Norris Boyd, who was demoing it today in Cambridge.)


- Neither Larry Page or Sergey Brin, Google's founders, have visited the Cambridge office, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt has.

In my video chat with Vinter, I asked him about Google's hiring and interview process, and how the culture in Cambridge differs from Mountain View.

And here's some more coverage of today's open house: New England Cable News ... Mass High Tech ... Cambridge Chronicle ... BostonGlobe

Skyhook links in with the iPhone

Steve Jobs announced yesterday that the iPhone will now know exactly where it is at any time, making the use of Google Maps a lot simpler. Boston's Skyhook Wireless is providing a big chunk of the technology; Skyhook has a giant map of WiFi access points, which it tags with location information, so that when a device like the iPhone can "see" a few nearby WiFi networks (even if the signal is too weak to log on), it knows where it is.

More on the arrangement here.

Future Forward 07: Some rough notes

I have to confess that I did not take copious notes during Future Forward yesterday, a conference I help organize, but I did shoot some video, which I'll post here soon. (Update: video is below.)

But there were some great questions raised, some really insightful comments, and lots of interchange between the speakers and the tightly-packed audience.

The big question in the opening panel, which featured CIOs and CEOs, was whether it makes sense to be the "first one in the pool" when it comes to deploying new technology, or to be a fast follower. Bill Wray from Citizens Bank said his budget doesn't allow him to experiment in too many places, so he tries the latter strategy. George Orlov from Forrester Research said he's creating a sort of sandbox, so that his employees (technology analysts) can play with new technologies they are writing about. Ken Chaisson from Legal Seafoods talked about how some of the company's servers gravitate to new technologies, and that others follow when they see that the first group of servers is turning tables faster and earning more tips.

CEOs Paul Sagan (Akamai) and Art Coviello (former CEO of RSA Security, now a division president within EMC) were up next. Sagan talked about Akamai's near-death experience after the dot-com bubble burst, which required letting go hundreds of employees and getting out of high-priced leases. He also talked about how the company had to focus - quickly - on what he called "permanent economy" customers. I asked whether the start-ups in the room represented the "transient economy." "Too soon to tell," Sagan quipped.

The question of whether the enforcement of non-compete agreements hampers entrepreneurship in Massachusetts came up. Sagan said cheekily that we should lobby California to institute non-competes, rather than eradicating them here. Attorney Gabor Garai from Foley and Lardner, in the audience, seemed to think that they're a real problem. When Art Coviello got on stage, the first thing I asked him was his position. EMC/RSA, of course, likes to hold on to its best employees, and Coviello said non-competes help them do that.

Next, Dan Primack ran a very high-energy panel about VCs, IPOs, and M&A. He started by exploring corporate venture investing ... and particularly the fickle nature of it. Corporations open and close venture groups as the economy changes, and one of the VCs on the panel, Maria Cirino, said that in her previous life as an entrepreneur, one corporate venture arm replaced the person who sat on Maria's board three times in four years. The panel also touched on the problem of big funds (Battery was named) trying to do everything from early-stage deals to buy-outs. There was quite a lot of skepticism about that, but no one from Battery or General Catalyst was present to defend the big boys.

Giles McNamee brought up a very salient piece of data - only one or two percent of companies ever make it to an IPO, so it's quite natural that entrepreneurs consider and explore the M&A route.

After a nice long lunch, we came back to hear from the delightful and insightful artist John Maeda, who works at the Media Lab. I've long been a fan of John's work, but this was the first chance I'd had to see him speak. (TED has a video of a shorter talk he gave about his book 'The Laws of Simplicity,' but yesterday John got a full hour.)

Next, George Colony and Fidelity exec Charlie Brenner sparred on stage about the future of IT. Colony is trying to change the term to BT (business technology), since he says IT people should no longer be talking about information-related metrics (how many records are in a database, or how many queries they handle every day), but rather business metrics, like how much they've increased the average order size on the Web site.

Colony blasted the news media, mentioning the NY Times in particular, for "pumping up Google like they pumped up Amazon in 1997." The degree of hype, he said, is "very irresponsible." Colony was very skeptical that Google can revolutionize the cell phone business, since its new Android strategy will require carriers to work against their natural interests.

The last session, as tradition dictates, is a murderer's row of entrepreneurs, showing new products they're working on. Mark Thirman of AirPrint Networks had a pretty nifty demo, of a small printer that can spool out lottery tickets, movie tickets, or little maps; it communicates via Bluetooth with your cell phone. And Mike Phillips showed off Vlingo's speech recognition technology, which speeds up data entry on cell phones.

One VC in the audience made a telling comment. He asked a question of Vertica CEO Ralph Breslauer, dismissing the rest of the panel as "not real companies" (I'm paraphrasing). Everyone else was a consumer-oriented play, and some have slightly hazy business models. Are Boston area VCs just a wee bit prejudiced toward heavy-duty enterprise tech? Hmmm....

One thing we've started doing is allowing the audience to "invest" play money into the start-up company that they like the best.... as a joke, we put General Georges Doriot on the face of the bills (Doriot was the founder of the first venture capital firm, ARD, and a prof at Harvard Business School.) During the cocktail hour, one of the FF attendees, Tom Hagan, told me that he'd actually been in a pitch meeting with Doriot, early in his entrepreneurial career. Pretty cool ending to the day...

Sunday's Globe column: Brightcove and Maven, duking it out

Today's Globe column is about the competition -- and many connections -- between Brightcove and Maven Networks, two Cambridge companies angling to become the dominant tool for media companies that publish video on the Net. (Their offices are a stone's throw from one another in Kendall Square.) From the column:

The story of Maven Networks and Brightcove, two companies that have helped shape the way media firms distribute video online, is one of unbridled competitiveness: two entrepreneurs who were once on the same team now duking it out.

Brightcove, by virtue of having raised $82 million in funding, is one of the highest-profile tech start-ups in Boston (Maven has banked $27 million). The big question is which one will wind up with the sweetest finish - either an acquisition by a big player like Microsoft or Google, or a public offering.

I actually had included Adobe in that list, as a potential acquirer, but it got snipped during editing. (Macromedia, now part of Adobe, acquired the first company that Brightcove founder Jeremy Allaire started, Allaire Corp.)

A few other interesting notes on possible exits: when Comcast bought thePlatform last year, they paid between $100 and $125 million, according to several sources. So that's the one valuation we know about in the enterprise video-publishing space. On the consumer side, we know about YouTube ($1.65 billion), and Sony's acquisition of Grouper ($65 million). (We sort of know about Vimeo, a video publishing site started as part of CollegeHumor, which Barry Diller's IAC acquired last year for a reported $20 million.)

YouTube received a grand total of $11.5 million in venture funding before it was acquired by Google. It starts to make it look as though Brightcove's backers ($82 million) may find it tough to make a 3x, 4x, 5x return. But we'll see. One intriguing possibility would be combining the two companies, since Accel Partners and General Catalyst are investors in both. Of course, they'd then confront Sophie's Choice, since I'm sure that Maven CEO Hilmi Ozguc and Allaire would never work together.

John Simon, the General Catalyst partner who sits on the board of Maven (his firm is also an investor in Brightcove), wouldn't talk to me by phone. But he sort of answered a couple questions via e-mail. I asked what he thought the benefit was of being an investor in both companies. He wrote that the "two companies ... show every sign of delighting customers, employees, and stakeholders and being very significant venture capital winners at this point," adding, "[T]hese are two companies we can really be proud of."

Here's this week's video.... an interview with Jeremy Allaire, published using (what else) Brightcove.

Adobe, Google Grab Local Start-Ups

Two small Boston-area start-ups have been adopted by California parents: Adobe and Google.

Zingku runs a mobile social networking service; originally known as Bloobird Studio and funded by Flagship Ventures, the company's founders include Martin Fahey (formerly CEO at WebHire), Mussie Shore, and Sami Shalabi. (All three are Lotus Development Corp. alums.) Google acquired Zingku late last month, but didn't announce the purchase price.

From the PC World story:

Zingku aims to make it easier for people to share photos, send invitations or conduct polls among friends via mobile phone. It also provides a way for businesses to send "mobile flyers" to customers advertising products and services.

Zingku was started in 2005 and the service has been in testing with a limited number of users in the U.S. New account sign-ups have been frozen following Google's acquisition, according to Zingku's Web site. Existing accounts will be transferred to Google unless they are cancelled by Oct. 4.

Detailed terms of the acquisition weren't provided and Google didn't return calls seeking comment. The company has confirmed that it bought "certain assets and technology of Zingku," according to the Google Operating System blog, which first reported the deal, and is not owned by Google.

And Waltham-based Virtual Ubiquity has been acquired by Adobe, also for an undisclosed amount. Virtual Ubiquity makes the Web-based word processor Buzzword. The company received some funding from Adobe's venture capital arm last year. This sets Adobe up to compete with Google in the battle for users of Web-based writing tools. (Tim O'Reilly says that Buzzword is superior to Google Docs.) Virtual Ubiquity's CEO was another Lotus alum, Rick Treitman. Here's the announcement from the company's blog.

More gPhone Buzz, in BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek says that software developers are angling for partnerships with Google that would give them a prominent spot on the forthcoming gPhone. That includes Burlington-based Nuance Communications, the (almost totally silent) speech-recognition giant.

Update: BusinessWeek has another piece, titled, 'Will a Google Phone Change the Game?' From Roger Crockett's story:

Wireless industry consultants and marketing executives with knowledge of Google's plans say it has been showing prototypes of a new phone to handset manufacturers and network operators for a couple of months. Its plans have been kept top secret, but Google is expected to tap a company on the Pacific Rim that specializes in mobile design and manufacturing to build a handset to its specs. Google could then apply its expertise in operating software and user applications, says Paul Catalano, a partner at consultancy RelevantC Business Group (RCBG). Google officials won't talk about phones, and industry sources don't expect one before the second half of 2008.

Peabody on Facebook

The buzz in the blogosphere today is about whether Microsoft or Google is about to make a big investment in Facebook, valuing the site somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 billion. The Wall Street Journal's Deal Journal blog looked to Bo Peabody (founder of Tripod, an early homepage-building site acquired by Lycos, and Village Ventures) for some perspective. A snippet:

There are two ways to look at it. There is the purely financial decision, and the other is something different than that. If those guys were doing the risk-adjusted thing, financially they would sell. I just think that the market, if you look at the history of media, it is by nature a consolidating force. Typically things get consolidated. I don’t think that’s a great thing for consumers, but there is serious economy to ad sales. And they haven’t built a real ad sales organization. In order to do that it’s very expensive. Very expensive. Digital ad sales at the entry level are getting multiple six figure salaries. They have to think carefully about that.

Today's Globe column: Cell Towers, the Home Version

Today's column deals with a few of the local companies developing technology for femtocells -- essentially a tiny cellphone tower for your home -- and some of the VC firms backing them. From the piece:

Plugged into your high-speed Internet connection, they'll communicate with your existing cellphone whenever you're at home, and send your calls over the Internet. The benefits are better coverage, faster data speeds, and longer battery life for your handset - since it no longer has to communicate with a cell tower that may be a mile away.

And here's Airvana CEO Randy Battat talking about femtos...it'll be interesting to see whether Airvana's femtocell product looks like the prototype he has in the video, or has a flashier design (Randy is an ex-Apple exec, after all.)

Today's Globe column: Google's prototype phones spotted in Cambridge

As soon as I moved back to Boston in mid-July, I started noticing that a lot of entrepreneurs were brandishing their new iPhones as status symbols. But an even rarer status symbol, I discovered, was being able to claim that you'd seen a prototype of Google's new cell phone, some of the software for which is being developed in Google's Cambridge R&D office. That's the topic of today's Globe column.

In today's Innovation Economy video, I talk about the phone, and interview the founders of two local start-ups working on cool new cell phone apps, Veveo and Vlingo. Veveo is doing video search; Vlingo (once known as Mobeus) is doing speech recognition.



I'd also gotten a tip a few weeks ago that Google will triple its space in Kendall Square and move from One Broadway (the Cambridge Innovation Center) to Cambridge Center (above the Marriott); while I'd planned to include that info as an aside in this Sunday's column, the BBJ published something first. Then, Watha wrote a short piece in the Globe yesterday.

Innovation Economy Column (and Video): Davids Competing with Goliaths

Today's Innovation Economy column in the Globe looks at two mapping start-ups based in Massachusetts, EveryScape and Povo. EveryScape is working to create photo-realistic, three-dimensional maps of the world, and Povo is an interesting amalgam of Google Maps, Wikipedia, and Yelp, with a neighborly twist.

One idea I wanted to explore was how small companies like these can, if they're successful, either become acquisition targets for the big guys (in this case, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo) or find themselves competing head-to-head.

I had a short chat with MIT instructor/VC/analyst Howard Anderson on that topic that was quite enlightening -- but which didn't make it into the finished column. Some notes from conversation that are below the video clip, which takes you along for a ride in EveryScape's mapping-mobile.



(For a more basic explanation of what EveryScape aims to do, check out this New England Cable News clip.)

Anderson had some great perspective on the relationship between start-ups and big companies:

- Start-ups often awaken giants to the potential of a market. If the start-up doesn't move fast, "you get rolled over," Anderson says. "There is a pregnant period of time when you have to become the de facto standard. If not, and only the lunatic fringe likes your product," then you don't matter as a competitor (or potential acquisition) to the big players.

- "It's easy to compete against the big guy. They're always a little muscle-bound. They take a long time to recognize a new market. What you really have to worry about are the other small companies in the same space. I used to love backing companies that competed against AT&T and IBM. But when you had eight [start-up] companies, so much alike that their mothers couldn't tell them apart, then you never got traction."

- In meetings with big companies about potential partnerships, start-ups can often be induced by the power differential ("They're Google, who the hell are we?") to say a little too much about what they're doing. "You should talk about your vision, but if you're foolish enough to tell them everything, and show the innards of your product, then you can save them a great amount of time," Anderson says.