Opportunties for Enterprise Software Investments

I had the opportunity to spend a few hours today at an Intel Capital event for their portfolio companies and VC friends. While a great way to network with fellow investors and meet new companies, I particularly enjoyed a talk given by Chris Thomas, Intel’s EStrategist, on the future of software in the enterprise. While none of the ideas were new, I liked how he laid out the major themes in computing and software in a well-thought out presentation.

Here are some of my notes from that discussion.

Chris’ view is that we are moving towards a service-oriented world, where enterprises can tap applications and resources on demand and on the fly. Yes, we have heard this theme over the last few years in a number of different incarnations. In fact, I got a chuckle from Chris’ list of marketing slogans from all of the large vendors trying to trademark their specific vision on the service-oriented world (N1, on-demand, etc.). Anyway, despite the hype of SOA (service-oriented architectures), it is beginning to happen, it is real, and it is still early. As we move into this world of SOAs, there will be tremendous opportunities for software investment as enterprises consolidate, modularlize, and virtualize their data centers. Chris highlighted the 5 buckets or themes that mattered to him:

1. Software and data delivered as services
-think ASP model, think modular, software components that perform a specific task, which can be used as building blocks and combined with other components via web services to solve a specific business problem
-this will be the new way to build software and go-to-market
-he gave an example of how AT&T used a combination of hosted software vendors and their APIs to deliver an order routing solution for a customer in 2 weeks instead of 9-12 months
-a side note – as we move into an increasingly global world, no need to worry about software piracy since you can’t steal a service but you can steal sofware

2. Hardware as a virtualized resource
-view hardware as one set of services
-manage capacity on demand
-new hardware=new software opportunity

3. Autonomic data sources (RFID, tags, smart sensors)
-Chris gave an estimate that an average retail store could have up to a terabyte of data from RFID alone
-think about the opportunities here to process, filter, store, and understand all of this data
-how will all of this data flow through the network in an optimal way?
-once again, more investment opportunities in software

4. Occasionally connected usage (Intel’s mobile theme)
-performance of offline and occassionally connected usage much better than always-on
-opportunities include power, performance, software that works online and offline (go to back to theme #1 above, ASP model)

5. Services cross firewalls (security)
-if we move to this service-oriented world where partners, machines, and applications access data on the fly, there will be tremendous need for security

Chris’ bottom line was that asynchronous XML messages are what makes this service-oriented world possible. We are just at the beginning phases, a new architecture is needed and with that comes new and interesting opportunities for software investments. I totally agree here as most of the service-oriented talk from many of the large tech vendors is still a pipe dream and more marketing than fully functioning product. In addition, most enterprises are experimenting with various aspects of the above themes but far from prime-time in terms of deployment.

Thoughts on picking your VC

Jeff Nolan has a comprehensive post on choosing your VC. I totally agree with Jeff’s view that not only should entrepreneurs do their diligence when choosing a VC to invest in their company, but VCs should also do reference checks on their new partners. This includes understanding potential board dynamics and making sure investor interests are aligned. Put it this way, a bad board with bad dynamics rife with egos and competing interests can bring a company down quickly. Some areas to explore include understanding the size of fund, the amount of dry powder, the appetite for risk, the view on the existing business plan, team, and management gaps to fill. As an example, a smaller fund with less dry powder may want to grow less agressively than a larger fund with more capital to invest. Not that the situation above can’t work, but it is incumbent upon the entrepreneur and existing VC to understand the potential areas for conflict and make sure they get comfortable with them. This means that the entrepreneur and existing investor should spend the appropriate time to get to know their potential partner (if they do not already know them) in addition to doing the right reference checks (see Jeff’s post for areas to dig).

Running an efficient board meeting

Board meetings can be a gigantic waste of time if not run appropriately. On the flipside, they can be a valuable source of input and guidance for a management team in the pursuit of maximizing shareholder value. While there are a number of different ways to approach and run a board meeting, I thought I would outline a few of my philosophies on them, and what I expect from my portfolio companies in terms of content.

1. Be prepared: Board meetings are like theater. Like any play, I expect the CEO to have a well thought out and scripted agenda for the meeting. The most efficient way to do so is to lay out an agenda and get feedback pre-meeting from the other board members to ensure that the board covers appropriate topics and allocates the right amount of time for each one. From an update and preparedness perspective, the CEO should always go into the meeting having a complete understanding of where the various board members stand in terms of any major decisions. There should be no surprises. This means that the CEO should have individual meetings and calls in advance of the board meeting to walk each director through any decisions that need to be made and the accompanying analyses behind them.

As far as board packages are concerned, I typically like to receive them at least 48 hours in advance so I can process the information and be in a position to ask intelligent questions.

2. Timing: For an early stage company, I typically like to meet in person every 4-6 weeks. Lately I have been skewing to more of a 6 week time horizon. I believe that timeframe gives the team enough time to execute on some of the goals outlined in the meeting and not spend their time constantly doing powerpoints for the board.

3. Content: As much time as possible should be spent on discussion, rather than update. What I want to know about is the management team’s priorities and why, how they are tracking against those goals, and what keeps them up at night with respect to meeting their objectives. What I do not want is a litany of presentations and tech demos with no discussion. At board meetings we should continually evaluate and monitor the company’s strategic goals, understand where the market is and how we are positioned vis a vis our competitors, and discuss management’s plans, priorities, and performance.

While there is no right way to run a meeting, having a framework can be a great way to lead organized and informed discussions. A good framework that I like to use is having the CEO give a high level company overview followed by a department level drill down delivered by the functional head. Typically, in the context of these department-level updates, discussion will ensue on milestone progress, roadblocks or hurdles to realizing the goals, resource constraints, performance of various employees, and any potential addition or subtraction to the list of goals.

Listed below is a standard framework that I like to use in board meetings along with some sample reports that help guide the discussion and allow directors to review performance. By no means is this meant to be an exhaustive list. Alot of these reports serve as good leading indicators for potential areas of problem down the road and none of these should require management to reinvent the wheel.

Company Summary by CEO
-Company overview discussing recent performance with highlights on each department
-Summary of key matters to be presented and decisions that need to be made – remember that decisions can only be made if the directors are all familiar with the issues and have had a chance to review the supporting analyses and risk factors pre-board meeting

During the meeting, it is the CEO’s responsibility to cover the agenda and keep the directors on topic and focused. That means if the conversation runs off on a tangent the CEO has to bring everyone back in line and table the discussion for another meeting.

Sales Review
-Detailed sales pipeline review by region
-Key wins/losses – detail on the losses and to whom

Professional Services (usually incorporated in context of sales discussion for smaller companies)
-Status of existing customer implementations and satisfaction

Marketing
-Competitive positioning update
-Product roadmap
-New product launch plan, etc…
-Lead generation statistics

R&D:
-Summary development plan of key features to be delivered for quarter and current progress
-Bug report broken out by severity-should also track resolution and time outstanding against prior months/quarters

Customer support:
-Statistics on level 1, 2, 3 calls and performance as measured by time outstanding versus prior months/quarters

Finance:
-Plan vs. budget – income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement

Depending on the stage of company, the time of year, or crisis of the quarter, there will be a much deeper dive into various departments to discuss topics such as product roadmaps, the budget, the sales plan, and partnership strategy. The more information the board has in advance by way of supporting analysis, the more informed the discussion will be.

At the end of the board meeting, I typically like to have a board-only session where the members can not only make the requisite board approvals for stock option grants and the minutes but also feel free to discuss any pertinent or sensitive topic like executive compensation, budget planning, financing/exit strategy, or concerns about personnel. This session allows the directors to evaluate any management proposals and comment on performance in a candid and open forum without embarassing or browbeating any executive. While a board meeting should only last 3-4 hours for the most part, you have to remember that much of the work of any board happens outside of the formal meeting and through the informal daily/weekly interactions with the mangement team via telephone, email, IM, and face2face meetings. This is where the heavy lifting happens. When you find yourself diving too deeply into a discussion on sales tactics, for example, the board may be better off saving that conversation for after the meeting. Before you present next year’s plan to the board, you should run it by a few of your more active board members for comment and advice before rolling it out to the whole board. If you find yourself having 8 hour board meetings, then you are probably getting too focused on the details (breakout sessions or scheduling subsequent informal meetings to drill into a particular topic is more appropriate) and not doing enough preparation in advance of the meeting.

If you are more interested in the board’s role and who should be on the board, I suggest reading some excellent posts from fellow VCs Brad Feld, Fred Wilson, and Jerry Colonna.

UPDATE: Fred Wilson adds to my post emphasizing the non-executive board discussion. As Fred says, it is always a great idea for the non-executive directors to be in synch wih their thoughts and overcommunicate prior to and after the board meeting. This also means having the right people in and out of the room. I totally agree.

Why I blog as a VC?

Recently, a number of people asked me why I blog as a VC. Isn’t privacy a good thing for VCs? Don’t you want to keep the good ideas to yourself? For the past couple of years, I had my own personal blog which I mainly used as a bookmarking tool so I could retrieve interesting news stories and my running commentary from any web browser. As I made the leap to the public blogging world, I really did not know what I would find until I threw myself out there.

So, after my first 6 months or so, here is what I like about blogging. Blogging provides me with an outlet for my views on technology, venture capital, and other current affairs. Yes, like most VCs I am opinionated, and what better way to express them than through a blog. Instead of beta testing a product, I get to beta or alpha test my opinions or thoughts and receive instant feedback no matter how far-fetched my ideas may be. I find this incredibly valuable as a number of people either email me directly or post comments and tell me I am off the mark, on the mark, or point me in new directions to further research my ideas. People send me information about new companies or even their resumes based on some of my current interests. As a VC, this is a great way to have an ongoing dialogue with an active and participatory audience. BTW, any product companies out there should think about using blogs and other technology like RSS to build long-term relationships with their customers and get instant feedback on product direction and features. Secondly, based on my posts, I have built some new relationships by engaging in conversation either directly or indirectly through my blog. Last week at DEMO, it was actually nice to have met some of the bloggers that I regularly read and with whom I share similar interests. Next, understanding the value of the blog, I actively read and subscribe to a number of other people’s feeds to learn about the hot topics of the day and to understand what the early adopters are currently thinking before a new technology or idea goes mainstream. I get to listen and participate in on the conversations about the next product or idea that will reach the tipping point as many of today’s innovative thoughts gather steam and build momentum through a word-of-mouth or word-of-network manner. Of course, the danger can be drinking your own kool-aid from the blogger community (think Howard Dean-he seemed really hot with the bloggers but did not fare so well in the primaries) so some balance is required here. Finally, it is alot of fun, and I hope you keep visiting and actively commenting either privately or publicly.

Demo reflections

I try to limit the number of conferences that I attend every year to a handful. Besides Esther Dyson’s PC Forum, there are few others that I like to attend regularly. However, I have to say that Chris Shipley’s Demo was a great show. Read more about it on Ventureblog.

Being on the east coast, it was great to catch up with a number of west coast VCs that I have not seen in awhile. Sure there were lots of great companies at the conference, but getting together with the other VCs to trade notes about deals that were in our pipeline was extremely valuable. For any company raising capital these days, it was clear to me that we are all eager to put money to work. There were all flavors of investor interest, some were excited about mobile telephony and cell phone games, others continued to like security and data center-related deals, while some liked consumer deals. The common theme I heard echoed from all of us was that management was key. When someone brought up a deal, it was not long before management was mentioned and in the context of how successful they were in prior startups. Yes, this is nothing new, but I thought I would just reiterate how important it is to have the right team and prior experience really helps! It was also clear that many of us were interested in blogging and understood the groundswell building but were not quite sure how to capitalize on that from an investment perspective. So all in all, it was a great conference and one that I plan on attending next year.

The VC/entrepreneur relationship

Many of you have heard the analogy that the VC due diligence process is like dating and getting the investment is akin to being married. For all of you in relationships, you also understand that honest and open communication is one of the keys to success. Similarly, the VC and entrepreneur relationship should be built on the same foundation. Trust me, I know when one of my portfolio companies closes a new and important deal because good news always travels fast. However, bad news does not travel so fast. I urge the entrepreneur to share the bad news just as quickly as the good news. Why? If you tell the VC sooner rather than later, we can help. If you have an experienced VC as an investor, you can bet that he has seen the movie before and at the very least can offer advice and words of wisdom to help you in your decision making process. If you wait for the board meeting, it is too late for us to have any impact. Secondly, VCs don’t like surprises. Err on the side of too much communication initially than too little. Sure, we won’t be happy with bad news. We’re even unhappier about bad news when we are told at the 11th hour with no ability to influence the decision. You can tell alot about your VC by his demeanor when confronted with tough and unexpected negative situations. In fact, in your investment process, ask yourself this question, “When things are going bad, is he going to roll up his sleeves and help or simply yell and bark orders.” As Clint Eastwood said in the movie The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, “There are two kinds of people in this world. Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.” Hopefully, you won’t have the VC with the loaded gun, but rather the one who will pull out a shovel and help.

Companies are bought and not sold (continued)

Fred Wilson has some good commentary on an earlier post. We seem to agree that at the end of the day if you build a real business with sustainable cash flow, the exit will take care of itself. I seem to have oversimplified the “IPO potential” comment for the sake of keeping my post short. To further explain, my only point regarding “IPO potential” is that using pre-bubble metrics a company cannot go public (for the most part) unless it has already been profitable for at least 2 quarters, have a diversified customer base, and be a leader in its market. In other words, it must be a real business with sustainable cash flow. When I look at making new investments, being able to look like the above within a reasonable time frame is a prerequisite for me. Those are the types of businesses that can be bought and not sold.

Companies are bought and not sold

Besides taking a brief time out to celebrate the Expertcity deal, I have spent a fair amount of time interviewing VP candidates for one of my portfolio companies. As with any smart executive who cares about the value of equity, the question I am often asked is, “What is your exit strategy.” My answer is quite simple-every company we invest in must have IPO potential (IPO potential as defined by non-bubble metrics) but along the way if someone makes an offer for the company because it is an attractive, rapid growth business, we can evaluate it appropriately. What we will not do is invest for the sole purpose of having a company acquired. That is a losing proposition. The ultimate way to create value is to have a real business with real cash flow and a strong balance sheet where you can show your potential acquirer that you do not need any other sources of funding besides self-sustaining growth. VMWare certainly used this approach when it decided to sell to EMC. You have to be able to show your potential acquirer that they are not the only way to create liquidity for your business.

Companies are bought and not sold. What I mean by that is good exits usually happen when someone tries to buy your company rather than you trying to sell your company. In other words, these good exits usually happen when your company is approached by a potential buyer-i.e., you are seen as desirable in someone else’s eyes rather than you telling someone how pretty you are. Typically, these types of exits result from already existing, revenue-generating business relationships. It is not that big of a leap for an aquirer to make an acquisition offer on the higher end of a valuation range knowing how its partner does business, how the management teams work together, and how the product sells through to its customers. Other times it can happen when your company consistently beats out a competitor in the market and is seen as a thorn in the side. In either case, your company is a known quantity and the potential acquirer has seen you perform in the market.

What does this all mean? My advice to entrepreneurs and management is quite simple: if you focus on what you can control (growing and managing your business), then the external factors (exit strategy) will take care of itself. However, if you try to force it and shop your company, that shows a sign of weakness and more often than not will result in a fire sale. Remember, companies are bought and not sold. If you do not get the price you want, it will not matter since you have a business built for the long-term. For a strong, well manged company, opportunities will always present themselves.

Citrix buys GoToMyPc maker, Expertcity-great day for ASPs

Congratulations to Expertcity and Andreas, John, and Klaus. It has been great to work with you from a board level over the last 4 1/2 years. When the transaction closes, I look forward to writing a little more about how you were able to persevere through some tough times, launch new product, stay focused on leveraging the core screen sharing technology, and build a high growth business in a completely new market. Not only were you an early player in remote access, but you also were one of the first ASPs out there.

Expertcity is not the only ASP making headlines today. Salesforce.com filed to go public and raise $115mm. As I mention in an earlier posting about Google and IPOs, pre-bubble, it took companies 4-6 years from their first round of funding to IPO/acquisition. During the bubble it took 1-2 years. While I am excited about today’s announcements and other recent deals like VMWare (bought by EMC) and Zonelabs (bought by Checkpoint), it is obvious that we have returned to a pre-bubble mentality and the companies that will be significantly rewarded are the ones that embody the philosophy of building real businesses with real revenue and cash flow. Well, isn’t that just business 101? Yes, and this is great news as it is something we can all understand.

Software packaging

Om Malik (ex-senior writer for Red Herring) has been writing about the commoditization of hardware. In a recent article in Business 2.0 titled “The Rise of the Instant Company,” Om talks about how hardware has become commoditized to the point where hardware expense as a cost of goods sold is de minimis. In other words, companies can now cobble together off-the-shelf-hardware with proprietary software to create companies that can quickly and cost-effectively go after large incumbents. This is a great point and what it comes down to is that software companies can now “package” themselves as hardware plays and successfully leverage the hardware channel from a sales perspective. This is quite attractive from a VC perspective because now we get the opportunity to invest in business that can grow rapidly like a hardware play at software like gross margins (depending on price point 65-85%).

Given this backdrop, I believe that we will see 3 types of software companies in the future. The first will be companies selling expensive applications which will rely on extensive professional services to install and customize. This is the market dominated and characterized by large companies like SAP, Siebel, Peoplesoft and their ancillary professional services partners like Accenture, IBM Global Services, and other consulting companies. The second will be companies that will sell their software as a service (ASP model). These are companies like Salesforce.com, Liveperson, and Expertcity (LPSN and Expertcity are both fund investments) which took the above market segment and made it really easy for customers to buy and in effect, removing the complexity of managing and installing the software. Finally, there will be software companies that have a componentized product that is easy to install which can and may be packaged into an appliance to leverage the channel sales model. This could mean that companies are selling their own appliance or OEMing their software to hardware vendors who in turn sell an appliance. Companies like Neoteris and Network Appliance fit this model. From a venture perspective, the sofware companies that are most interesting to me are the ones with ASP and appliance offerings. In this posting, I would like to focus on software packaged as an appliance.

While the average selling prices for companies that leverage the channel are much lower than pure, direct enterprise sales, I like the fact that these types of companies can utilize a seed and harvest model. In the seed and harvest model, companies that have lower price points can seed a number of customers with a low, entry price product and go back to them later to harvest accounts to sell multiple instances of the product. While the initial sale may not be $1mm upfront, you may be able to get $1mm in the life of a deal. The benefit for the software company is hopefully a shorter sales cycle (it is easier to get sign off for $50k vs. $500k) and the ability to leverage other people’s feet to sell your product.

From a VC perspective, I like to see companies which can leverage other people’s sales forces to grow. Yes, your company will give up some points in margin and also lose some control over customer relationships, but will hopefully make up for it in terms of more volume. For early stage companies, it is already quite difficult and expensive to sell into Fortune 1000 accounts. Many of the companies under the first model (pure enterprise license sales) need expensive direct sales forces which sell high-priced products which have long sales cycles. If the price point of your product is not high enough, then there is little likelihood of you ever building a real, profitable software company from direct sales alone. In addition, if you want to get the excitement and interest of service providers like IBM Global Services and Accenture, you better be able to drive $10s of millions of dollars of service revenue.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that software companies do not need direct sales forces as it is incredibly important in a company’s early phase of development to own the customer relationship and gain valuable feedback about its product. In fact, no matter what kind of software company you aim to be, you need to have customers to get channel partners, know what it is like to sell to an end customer, and successfully manage an end customer in order to train your channel and OEM partners. Therefore, most companies will require some form of direct sales force to begin with, but over time, I like to see the mix of revenue moving towards greater than 50% into the channel and OEM model. What this means, at least for me, is that selling $1mm software licenses with 3-6 month installation processes is not interesting and has gone the way of the dinosaur from an attractiveness perspective in terms of funding. The fact that hardware has become commoditized has really opened up new ways of selling software and building companies, ways that can be quite attractive for both entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.