Meeting with Nova Spivack from Twine

Nous
avons été très bien reçus dans cette startup basée non pas dans le sud de la baie mais à San Francisco même. Twine a bien d'autres points dedifférenciation par rapport aux autres start-up web que l'on peut
trouver à l'heure actuelle dans la baie.

Tout d'abord son CEO, Nova Spivack n'est pas un jeune aux dents longues tout fraichement sorti de Stanford, mais un pionnier du web, qui en 1994 fonda la première agence web au monde: EarthWeb. Son introduction en
bourse en 1998 fut la première IPO dans l'histoire d'Internet pour une entreprise B-to-B. Lors de la première cotation elle fut aussi la 6ème plus grosse croissance de l'histoire du NASDAQ (+247%). Ce bouddhiste
trentenaire est définitivement un CEO atypique dans la Silicon Valley. Ingénieur spécialisé dans l'intelligence artificielle, diplômé de philosophie, chercheur autour des technologies du web sémantique, diplômé de l'International Space University, école appartenant a la NASA, il a déjà voyagé dans l'espace. Depuis Nova Spivack est redescendu
sur terre pour créer Twine et blogger à ses heures perdues.

Le CEO est un élément très important dans le succès d'une startup mais son équipe et son business aussi. Mais alors qu'est ce que fait Twine de si génial? Et bien c'est très simple, Twine centralise des informations, les lie entre elles, les catégorise, trouve des concepts communs, bref enrichie l'information, la rend plus intelligente. Sans
rentrer dans toutes les fonctionnalités que Nova nous a présenté, ce qu'on peut dire de ce produit c'est que ses possibilités d'évolution sont très très ouvertes. Une information plus intelligente signifie aussi des
publicitées plus ciblées et on le voit aujourd'hui avec Google, le contrôle de la pub sur internet est un métier qui paye très bien. Nous avons eu le droit à une démo en live de Twine avec la création du
premier Twine en langue française, le logiciel a très bien répondu même si le "module FR" n'a pas encore été activé et ne devrait l'être que dans 1 an.

En plus de la démo live de Twine, Nova Spivack nous a aussi offert une visite des locaux de Radar Networks. Ils comportent tous les éléments indispensables à toute start-up de la Silicon Valley qui se respecte :bonbons dans la salle de réunion, tableaux Velleda remplis de toutes sortes de pensées d'employés, salle de jeux garnie et Wii et autres Playstations, et bien sur employés souriants et motivés, apparemment enthousiasmés de travailler sur un projet si attrayant. Il faut dire que le charisme de Nova Spivack n'y est pas étranger : le temps de notre visite, il a su nous communiquer sa passion et sa vision, et même les moins informaticiens des étudiants ont su apprécier et comprendre les enjeux qui se cachent derrière ce que le futur du Web nous réserve.

Visit of Apple

We went to Apple campus and we were well entertained with a brunch and a visit of the Apple Store. We were disappointed by the conference. They gave us only a presentation of their products (computers, ipod, iphone etc) and the second half of the conference was questions and answers.

It was the first time since our arrival in the Sillicon Valley that the working atmosphere was so tense. Apple looks like a company where employees didn't looks like radiant. The security was maximal and people we met look anxious.

We are entrepreneur and we noticed that employees didn't be consulted for innovations and that everybody works on projects they don't know all of it. To illustrate this situation, we can take as example the answer given when we asked about the Apple strategy: "Our strategy is Steve Jobs".

The competition in this line of business can maybe explain their behaviours. One explanation of the atmosphere may be the Mac World happening on the same day.

Meeting with Cynthia Wagner Weick

University of pacific, Stockton, California

The talk was gathering multiple datas from international sources to target what are the main focus to look at, to encourage and finance innovation; to make it successful in a country, and profitable in a world orientated point of view.
The crux is to understand that innovation is a notion in the middle of three main elements: science and engineering, markets and fundings.
Markets opportunities come from the fact that the world is facing currently numerous kinds of challenges as health, food, climate change, energy supply...
Problems arising from these issues can be solved progressively with the improvements the science is likely to bring with its new discoveries going faster and faster within the frame of NICT.
Then, funds are necessary to finance research, and to help new ideas to raise money for investing in new potential developments.
That is why companies, private investors as well as public authorities have all to encourage as much as possible at their level Research, by helping it to become concrete.
One of the main issues in the future would be the capacity of bringing as much patents as possible into application. The trend/expansion of a national economy is drastically linked to the number of patent applications it can issue.
Collaboration and co-authoring is a positive attitude considering the results of such a behavior.
Design has an important place as well to distinguish products and bring an innovation faster to markets.


DAVIER Paul-Etienne, Niamkey Diane
Specialised Master Innovation and Enterpreneurship
ESCP-EAP

Visit of The Plug and Play Tech Center

 

Plug and Play Tech Center is an incubator based in Sunnyvale, in the Silicon Valley. It hosts more than 90 start-ups and offers them a full range of services: from full service space to strategic advice or financing (via Amidad Ventures). Since it opened its doors in January 2006 it has assisted its resident companies in securing more than USD$ 55 million.

Famous companies like Google, Paypal or Skype have grown between their walls. It is committed to cultivating the next generation of revolutionary start-ups in Silicon Valley that will impact people globally.

 

While we were there, we had the opportunity to visit the facilities. Our guide explained us the companies in the centre can arrange the spaces according to their needs. It is like if they had their own office somewhere else.

The visit also permitted us to understand and to feel the real importance of the environment you can find there. Everything is done to help you in the development of your company and you can share with many other persons in the same situation. Therefore, it will allow you to get from the experiences of the companies installed in the incubator.

In addition, we met with a director of a company of the PlugandPlayTechCenter. This person insisted on the importance of the place where you are developing your company. Thus, he told us that, while talking with other people, he met another company with which he could do some business.

Furthermore, he gave us some advices in order to create a business:

1.      First, your company must solve a problem or be useful: you must look widely before to start.

2.      You will have to choose what you will sell: a feature, a product, a company…

3.      Then, you must determine if there is a market for your product or service.

4.      After, it is necessary to evaluate how to get into that market.

5.      Next, it will allow you to evaluate the profit you can make.

He concluded saying “you must stay FOCUS on your real value proposition”.

Meeting with Denis Coleman from Solus

Nous sommes parti de Paris avec l’ambition de mieux comprendre le succès de la Silicon Valley en termes d’innovation. Denis Coleman nous a éclairé sur ce point en nous faisant toucher du doigt l’énorme différence culturelle qu’il existe entre la façon de penser et de travailler en France et aux Etats-Unis.

D’abord, nous avons compris que la Silicon-Valley n’est ni plus ni moins qu’une communauté d’entrepreneurs géniaux, qui avec un pragmatisme typiquement américain, font du business ensemble, s’échangent des informations et développent ainsi leurs business de manière exponentielle..

Ensuite, il nous a fait prendre conscience que l’élément humain est déterminant dans la réussite d’une start-up. Pour exemple, sa nouvelle entreprise, Solus, a ainsi commencé par recruter un businessman sorti de Harvard et un ingénieur du MIT.

Enfin, il nous a exposé le modèle qu’il a mis en place pour une réactivité et une performance optimale de sa structure, en mettant le client au cœur du développement produit, le produit étant vendu avant même sa conception !

Google

Google, Inc. [gugœl] est une société fondée le 27 septembre 1998 dans la Silicon Valley en Californie par Larry Page et Sergey Brin, auteurs du moteur de recherche Google. Google s'est donné comme mission « d'organiser l'information à l'échelle mondiale et de la rendre universellement accessible et utile ». Google forme un vaste conglomérat d'entreprises interreliées, comprenant entres autres YouTube, Gmail et Google Maps.

Début 2007, Google valait quelque 160 milliards de dollars à la bourse de Wall Street. Google possèderait le parc de serveurs le plus important du monde avec environ 450 000 machines réparties sur plus de 25 sites de par le monde^[1].

Depuis 2001, Eric Schmidt en est le PDG (CEO). La société compte environ 16 000 employés dont la plupart travaillent au siège mondial : le Googleplex à Mountain View.

Sur la période s'étalant de juin 2000 à novembre 2004, le moteur de recherche Google aurait indexé plus de 8 milliards de pages Web, 1 milliard d'images.

 

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG and LSE: GGEA) is an American public corporation, specializing in Internet search and online advertising. The company is based in Mountain View, California, and has 15,916 full-time employees (as of September 30, 2007).^[3] It is the largest American company (by market capitalization) that is not part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.^{[citation needed]}

Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 7, 1998. Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004, raising US$1.67 billion, making it worth US$23 billion. Through a series of new product developments, acquisitions and partnerships, the company has expanded its initial search and advertising business into other areas, including web-based email, online mapping, office productivity, and video sharing, among others.

In 2006, "google" came in second on Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year^[4].

 

Source: www.wikipedia.org

Nous vous recommandons de jeter un coup d'oeil à l'article de wikipedia sur Google qui est assez complet: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google 

 

Plug and Play Tech Center

Plug and Play Tech Center is a strategic partner to technology start-up companies in Silicon Valley.

Based in Sunnyvale, they are home to a vibrant community of more than 90 start-ups offering a full range of services from full service office space to strategic advice to direct investments (via our investment arm Amidzad Ventures).

Since they opened their doors in January of 2006 they have assisted their resident companies in securing more than USD$ 55 million via Amizad Partners and their venture capital partners. They are committed to cultivating the next generation of revolutionary start-ups in Silicon Valley that will impact people globally.

Plug and Play Tech Center’s mission is to accelerate the entrepreneurs path to success by leveraging a vast network of high-tech professionals who are serial entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors and high tech executives in established Silicon Valley companies.

Source:www.plugandplaytechcenter.com

At this link, you will find informations about start-up working at the Plug and Play Tech Center. 

The Plug and Play Tech Center is a project lead by Amidzad:

Amidzad is a seed and early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in emerging growth companies on the West Coast. We have over 50 years of combined entrepreneurial experience in building profitable, global enterprises from the ground up and over 25 years of combined investing experience in successful information technology and life science companies.

We are seed and early-stage investors with access to an extensive network of resources. Over the years, we have assembled a world-class network of serial entrepreneurs, strategic investors, and industry leaders who actively assist our portfolio as Entrepreneur Partners and Advisors. We partner with entrepreneurs and leverage the resources of our strong network to build successful companies.

source: www.amidzad.com 

eBay

The online auction web site was founded in San Jose, California on September 3, 1995 by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb,^[1] part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar's own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus.^[2]

The very first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. Astonished, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder and asked if he understood that the laser pointer was broken. In his responding email, the buyer explained: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers."^[3] The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to help Omidyar's fiancée trade PEZ Candy dispensers was fabricated by a public relations manager in 1997 to interest the media. This was revealed in Adam Cohen's 2002 book^[2] and confirmed by eBay.

Chris Agarpao was hired as eBay's first employee and Jeffrey Skoll was hired as the first president of the company in 1996. In November 1996, eBay entered into its first third-party licensing deal, with a company called Electronic Travel Auction to use SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets and other travel products. The company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997. Originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar's consulting firm. Omidyar had tried to register the domain name echobay.com(the domain has recently been put up for sale) but found it already taken by the Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, so he shortened it to his second choice, eBay.com.^[4]

eBay went public in 1998, and both Omidyar and Skoll became instant billionaires.^[3] The company purchased PayPal on October 14, 2002.

 For fun: unusual sale items

• In June 2005, the wife of Tim Shaw, a British radio DJ on Kerrang! 105.2, sold Tim's Lotus Esprit sports car with a Buy It Now price of 50 pence after she heard him flirting with model Jodie Marsh on air. The car was sold within 5 minutes, and it was requested that the buyer pick it up the same day.^[84]
• In May 2005, a Volkswagen Golf that had previously been registered to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who had been elected Pope Benedict XVI) was sold on eBay's German site for €188,938.88 ($277,171.12 USD). The winning bid was made by the GoldenPalace.com online casino, known for their outrageous eBay purchases.^[85]
• A seaworthy 16,000 ton aircraft carrier, formerly the British HMS Vengeance, was listed early in 2004. The auction was removed when eBay determined that the vessel qualified as ordnance, even though all weapons systems had been removed.^[86]
• In September 2004, the owner of MagicGoat.com sold the contents of his trash can to a middle school language arts teacher, who intended to have her students write essays about the trash before it was cleared away by a well-meaning janitor.^[87]
• Water that was said to have been left in a cup Elvis Presley once drank from was sold for $455. The few tablespoons came from a plastic cup Presley sipped at a concert in North Carolina in 1977.^[88]
• A Coventry University student got £1.20 for a single cornflake.^[89]
• A man from Brisbane, Australia attempted to sell New Zealand at a starting price of $.01AUD. The price had risen to $3,000 before eBay closed the auction.^[90]
• One of the tunnel boring machines involved in the construction of the Channel Tunnel was auctioned on eBay in 2004.^[91]
• A group of four men from Australia auctioned themselves to spend the weekend with the promise of "beers, snags, good conversation and a hell of a lot of laughs" for AU$1,300^[92]
• Disney sold a retired Monorail Red (Mark IV Monorail) for $20,000^[93]
• The German Language Association sold the German language to call attention for the growing influence of Pidgin-English in modern German.^[94]
• In late November 2005, the original Hollywood Sign was sold on eBay for $450,400.^[95][96]
• In February 2007, after Britney Spears shaved all of her hair off in a Los Angeles salon, it was listed on eBay for $1million USD before it was taken down after some considerable controversy.^[97]
• Bridgeville, California was the first city to be sold on eBay in 2002, and has been up for sale 3 times since.^[98]
• Boston Red Sox left fielder Manny Ramírez attempted to sell his neighbor's JENN-AIR Gas Grill on eBay. The auction started at $3,000 and the price escalated to an astounding $99,999,999, the maximum amount allowed by eBay. The auction was later closed by eBay because of the promise of an autographed baseball going to the winner as well as the grill; it is a violation of eBay policy to include items other than those advertised.^[99]
• In April 2004, American entrepreneur Matt Rouse sold the right to choose a new middle name for him. After receiving an $8,000 "Buy It Now" bid, the Utah courts refused to allow the name change. He currently still has his original middle name "Jean".^[100]
• In 2004, a partially eaten, 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary sold on eBay for $28,000.^[101]

 Source: Wikipedia

Planning du Voyage

Planning du voyage susceptible d'être modifié jusqu'à la dernière minute

Planning San Francisco.xls

Craig Johnson - Bio

Craig Johnson currently serves as the Chairman of the Venture Law Group Board of Advisors. He joined Heller Ehrman in 2003 and was a co-founder of Heller Ehrman's Venture Law Group, acting as its Chairman from its founding in 1993 until its merger with Heller Ehrman ten years later.

Experience

Mr. Johnson retired from the practice of law in 2005 and is now serving as an advisor to, and angel investor in, various early stage companies.

During Mr. Johnson's law career, he represented high technology emerging growth companies from incorporation through initial public offering or acquisition. Among the companies he has represented are Adaptec, Wyse, Collagen, StrataCom, Aspect, SnapTrack, Gupta, MediaQ, Reflectivity, Voxify, Centrality and IP Wireless.

Mr. Johnson is also the co-founder of Garage Technology Ventures, Financial Engines, Grassroots Enterprise and Concept2Company. These companies have raised more than $200 million in venture capital.

Mr. Johnson has been recognized by Business Week as one of Silicon Valley’s top 25 “movers and shakers” (1997), by Red Herring Magazine as one of nine Silicon Valley “top power brokers”, (1999), as one of the 100 most influential attorneys in America by The National Law Journal (2000), and by Forbes as one of the country’s top private company investors (“Midas List”) in 2001 and 2002. He has also been selected for inclusion in Chambers Global: The World's Leading Lawyers for Business and Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business for a number of years.

 Extract from: http://www.hellerehrman.com/en/attorneys/bios/Johnson_Cra...