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Visit Rauenhorst
Recruiting at http://www.rauenhorst.com/ "Helping to take you where you want to go." |
The NetSuds (TM) Report
The October 31, 2000 Issue:
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Definition: "com and .com" = Telecom, Datacom, IT or Internet
In this Issue:
1.0 |
Heard on the Net |
| 2.0 | Jobs in the "com and .com" Market |
| 3.0 | NetSuds e-Day, November 28, 2000, Minneapolis Hilton |
| 3.1 | e-ntrepreneurs Breakfast: 7-9 am |
| 3.2 | e-ntrepreneurs Training Camp: 9 - 5 pm |
| 3.3 | e-ntrepreneurs Lunch: Noon 12 - 2 pm |
| 3.4 | e-vening Gathering: 6-9 pm |
| 4.0 | Hot and Cold |
| 5.0 | Qwest - What's Happening to Customer Service? |
| 6.0 | pulver.com 2000 Calendar |
| 7.0 | Start-ups vs. Pull-outs |
| 8.0 | Web Economy BS Generator |
1.0 Heard on the Net
1.1 People on the Move:
Please email: people@netsuds.com to report a change in your job
status if you are moving from or to a company in the
"com or .com" space.
NetSudser Grant Pound, former Interactive Creative
Director at Colle &
McVoy, has joined the
Lawless Institute as an Interactive
Creative Consultant.
Grant is looking for folks for virtual
teams of designers,
writers, project managers and developers
(or back-end shops).
Contact Grant at ghpound@hotmail.com
952.884.9095.
Former Vice-President,
father of the Internet, seeks
Presidency.
Willing to re-locate but prefer D.C. address.
Compensation package
fixed at $200,000, with no stock options.
Retirement plan is key:
prefer social security to any type of
private retirement
plan. Prescription drug plan and universal
health coverage
mandatory. Happy Halloween.
If you are a tech
worker or executive looking for your next
"big thing"
consider interning at the NetSuds office.
NetSuds sees lots of great opportunities every day
in the
start-up AND public
company markets.
1.2 Companies on the Move:
Please email: start-ups@netsuds.com to report (1) the
formation of a new
start-up, (2) momentum change at an
existing start-up, (3)
addition of key hires, or (4) a funding
event at a start-up.
Please give details on the above
including any
information you do not want made public. We
are very discrete.
Founded in January
2000, San Jose-based Ecite.org is a private
company that partners
with City and County governments across
the nation to provide
fast secure and reliable e-government
services. From
paying property tax, parking tickets and
utility bills to
accessing property records, online or over the
phone, Ecite.org gives
citizens an anytime, anywhere
alternative for
interacting with their local government. Their
T-payments division
located in Minnesota, provides a "live"
payment collection for
an internet company. Contact CEO Rani
Yadav-Ranjan at 408-781-3733
Rani@Ecite.org.
2.0 Jobs in the "com and .com" Market
Please email: jobs@netsuds.com to report job openings in the
"com and .com"
Market. In the body of the message, give the
name of the company
and a URL link to the job postings.
Optical Solutions - http://www.opticalsolutions.com/join.htm
SpanLink - http://www.spanlink.com/careers/HEADER.html
UniMax Systems - http://www.unimax.com/jobs.htm
HighJump Software - http://www.highjumpsoftware.com/careers/
Minnenet.com - http://www.minnenet.com/website.nsf
CBS MarketWatch.com - http://www.cbsmarketwatch.com/jobs/
Chaincast Networks - http://www.chaincast.com/
BlueWater - http://www.bluewater.net/careers.html
NexTel - http://www.nexteljobs.com/
Marquette Bank - http://jobs.marquette.com/
|
Visit Rauenhorst
Recruiting at http://www.rauenhorst.com/ "Helping to take you where you want to go." |
3.0 NetSuds e-Day, November 28, 2000
NetSuds e-Day "e-ntrepreneur
Day" is a full day of entrepreneur
events culminated in
our traditional NetSuds e-vening gathering.
NetSuds is officially
2 years old in November! You don't have
to be an entrepreneur
to attend e-Day events. Look at the
agendas and you will
see that all the "com and .com" crowd will
get something out of
these great events.
3.1 e-ntrepreneurs Breakfast: 7-9 am, Tuesday,
November 28
Register - http://www.netsuds.com/eb/2000/Nov2000/eb.htm
Keynote Address by Forbes publisher
Rich Karlgaard.
Rich
is considered one of
the top visionaries in the new e-Conomy.
Founder of Upside
Magazine and garage.com, Rich now is the man
behind Forbes magazine
- the largest circulation business magazine
for the new e-Conomy.
Rich's insights and counsel are widely
sought after and
respected. Rich is a native of North Dakota.
See http://www.netsuds.com/eb/2000/Nov2000/richkarlgaard.htm
30 "com
and .com" start-ups giving 1-minute elevator pitches
to Rich, venture
capitalists and angel investors. Come see some
of the region's best
and brightest start-ups giving their elevator
pitch. Network,
do business, visit the exhibit section. See our
registration web page
for the updated list of presenting companies.
Minneapolis Hilton - http://www.hilton.com/hotels/MSPMHHH/index.html
Cost - $75/person.
Co-Hosted by:
Wizmo - www.wizmo.com
Co-Sponsored
by:
Faegre & Benson - www.faegre.com
St. Paul Venture
Capital - www.stpaulvc.com
Finance & Commerce
- www.finance-commerce.com
KPMG - www.us.kpmg.com
Zentropy Partners - www.zentropypartners.com
In Association
With:
Hall Kinion - www.hallkinion.com
The Minnesota High
Tech Association - www.mhta.org
Network Appliance - www.netapp.com
Oracle - www.oracle.com
Exhibit booths
still available.
Sponsorships sold out.
3.2 e-ntrepreneurs
Training Camp: 9-5 pm, November 28
Register - http://www.netsuds.com/eb/2000/Nov2000/etc.htm
Keynote addresses by Rich
Karlgaard (Forbes, Upside, garage.com -
see Entrepreneurs
Breakfast biography) and Jeanette Symons
(Ascend
Communications, Zhone Technologies - see Entrepreneurs
Lunch biography).
Training Camp
Seminars
1. Venture
Capital 101: "Pre-Money" How to
get an appointment,
get
a term sheet, get funded and get going. Panel discussion
with Colleen Salo (Newbury Ventures - CA), Jeff Tollefson
(Crescendo
Ventures - MN, CA), Daniel Rosenberg (Sterling
Venture Partners - IL) and TBA.
2. Legal
101: "Do it Right. Do it Smart.
Do it Once." Setting
up
the right legal structure to attract venture capital.
Seminar led by Andrew Humphrey, Faegre & Benson LLP.
3. Human
Capital 101: "The Team is the Key."
People, not ideas,
make great companies. Seminar led by Jeremy Hanson, Korn/Ferry
International.
4. Vision
101: "Tips from the Top." Trends
and Advice from a
visionary. Keynote address from Rich Karlgaard, publisher
of
Forbes and founder of garage.com.
5. Entrepreneurs
Lunch - http://www.netsuds.com/eb/2000/Nov2000/el.htm
Keynote address by Jeanette Symons - CTO/Founder of Zhone.
6. Pitching
101: "Hey Batter Batter." How to
Pitch to Investors
for
$$$." Seminar by Joan Moser of Moser & Associates.
7. Success
101: "Been There. Done That."
Successful entrepreneurs
share their experiences, insights and wisdom. Panel
discussion
with CEO Mark Cree (NuSpeed/Cisco), CEO Wade Myers (Interelate),
CEO
Tom Kieffer (Agiliti) and SVP Steve Larson (Net Perceptions).
8. Ingredients
101: "Did I Forget to Mention." Accounting,
PR &
Banking." Panel discussion with Bill Toupin (KPMG),
Matt
Kucharski (Padilla Speer Beardsley), Jay McNeil (Silicon Valley
Bank) and Mike O'Connor (haven.com).
9. Venture
Capital 201: "Post-Money." Life
with a VC after you get
funded. Expectations, Execution, Expansion, Next
Round. Panel
discussion with John Risdall (Risdall Linnihan Incubator - MN),
MaiHanh Pham (Emigrant Capital - NY), Michael Gorman (St. Paul
Venture Capital - MN, MA, CA) and Shanti Mittra (Primus Venture
Partners - OH).
Cost - $250/person
(includes the e-ntrepreneurs Lunch).
Co-Sponsors:
Faegre & Benson
LLP - www.faegre.com
Korn/Ferry
International - www.kornferry.com
Silicon Valley Bank - www.svbank.com
KPMG - www.us.kpmg.com
Padilla Speer
Beardsley - www.psbpr.com
Ventures/CityBusiness
- www.bizjournals.com/twincities
Risdall Linnihan
Advertising - www.risdall.com
Exhibit booths
still available.
Sponsorships sold out.
3.3 e-ntrepreneurs
Lunch: Noon 12 - 2 pm
Register - http://www.netsuds.com/eb/2000/Nov2000/el.htm
Keynote address by Zhone/Ascend
Founder & CTO Jeanette Symons.
Jeanette epitomizes
the phrase "just do it". As a founder of
Ascend Communications,
she led technical development at Ascend
as it grew from
obscurity to prominence in the broadband remote
access and WAN
equipment market. Ascend was sold to Lucent in
1999 for $25B.
She cofounded Zhone Technologies and raised $500M
of venture money in
record time. Zhone recently filed for an IPO.
Jeanette's last
keynote speech was at Networld+InterOP. She is a
frequent visitor to
the Twin Cities, first managing the Twin
Cities Ascend
development center and now as CTO of Zhone,
managing the Zhone
development center. See
http://www.zhone.com/about/mgmt/jeanette_symons.html and
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2643793,00.html
3 "com
and .com" start-ups (TBA) giving 5 minute presentations
to Jeanette, venture
capitalists and angel investors. Come see some
of the region's best
and brightest start-ups giving presenting their
companies.
Network, do business, visit the exhibit section.
Minneapolis Hilton - http://www.hilton.com/hotels/MSPMHHH/index.html
Cost - $60/person.
Co-Sponsored
by:
Faegre & Benson - www.faegre.com
Ventures/CityBusiness
- www.bizjournals.com/twincities
In Association
With:
Finance & Commerce
- www.finance-commerce.com
The Minnesota High
Tech Association - www.mhta.org
Sponsorships &
Exhibit booths still available.
3.4 e-vening
Gathering: 6-9 pm, Tuesday, November 28 - FREE
Register by sending an RSVP email to matt@netsuds.com or visit
our RSVP page at http://www.idonated.com/netsuds/donate.htm
Minneapolis Hilton
Hotel Ballroom in downtown Minneapolis.
Hilton - http://www.hilton.com/hotels/MSPMHHH/?_loopback=1
The Hilton is located
at 1001 Marquette Avenue South.
Cash bar.
Appetizers are courtesy of our sponsors:
IntraNet Solutions - http://www.intranetsolutions.com/
Oracle - http://www.oracle.com/
Vignette - http://www.vignette.com/
Sponsor Presentations
in adjoining rooms to Ballroom.
Magical entertainment
by Jack Daly, magic@jackdaly.com.
NetSuds is a quarterly gathering of telecom and
datacom
networking
professionals in Minnesota. Our attendees include
(1) investors, (2)
equipment & software vendors, (3) service
providers and (4) IT
professionals, i.e. people who run public
and privates LANs,
MANs & WANs. Related industry professionals
are also welcome.
Please feel free to forward this invitation
to your qualified
associates but ask them to sign up for their
own invitation at http://mailman.netsuds.com/
NetSuds is an informal social event with no set
agenda. We
usually have a theme
and a short speech to set the tone for the
evening. Nothing
dictates that we stick to the announced them.
This is an event you
create by the people you meet and the
discussions you engage
in. Deals are instigated. Business is
done. Jobs are
found. Old friends meet. New friends are made.
Cost - FREE!
A single
sponsorship & multiple Exhibit booths still available.
4.0 Hot and Cold
Cold - B2C, B2B
Lukewarm - ASP
Hot - Broadband,
Wireless
And there are
exceptions to any rule. The markets are
destroying valuations
of some good B2C and B2B companies.
My good friends at Net
Perceptions are seeing this as their
customers - B2B and B2C
- are spending less and less on the
technology Net
Perceptions develops and sells to this market.
One of my favorite
Internet B2Cs - Egghead.com - has seen
better days even
though this is my favorite shopping portal
on the web. They
have one of the cleanest, friendliest
shopping experiences
on the 'net. So many of the ".com",
e-tailers or B2Bs that
serve these companies have seen
huge reductions in
valuations - both public and private.
Perhaps the toughest
pill to swallow is the unfunded company
in this space
struggling to meet payroll and stay in business.
It's getting to be a Willie
Nelson kind-of-moment for these
companies. Time
for ".com AID" concerts, etc.
On the other hand,
there are the broadband and wireless
companies who are
getting the lion's share of VC money these
days as the insatiable
desire for bandwidth and networking
continues. Our
own Optical Solutions - Plymouth-based
fiber-to-the-home -
has over $100M in venture funding and a
reported $192M sales
and/or sales backlog. They purchased
local gigabit-routing
company Ziga Systems in September.
Mark Cree
and the crew at NuSpeed sold to Cisco
for $450
this past Summer after
only 8 months in operations. And
the national deals in
this space are equally amazing.
Consider that Zhone
Technologies just filed for a $350M
IPO. That's not
$350M in valuation - that's just the amount
of money they want to
raise at the IPO. It will probably
be oversubscribed and
they will raise more. These are the
folks who sold Ascend
to Lucent for $20B+ - that's B for
billion. And,
yes, one of the founders of Zhone is speaking
at the NetSuds November 28 e-ntrepreneurs Lunch.
ASPs are a mixed bag.
One even has to be careful who you call
an ASP these days.
Local ASPs - Agiliti and Interelate
- are
going gangbusters.
Execution, market and management seem to
be the key ingredients
at both Agiliti and Interelate.
So, the VC market is
not crashing ... unless your sector
window has closed.
There are still record amounts of money
being invested.
5.0 Qwest: What's Happening to Customer Service?
I hope my Qwest
friends will forgive me but some things just
have to be said.
My first office was set-up in Spring Park
this March and lasted
until October 1 when I moved my office
to Chanhassen.
Both telecom (analog POTS lines) and datacom
(digital ISDN lines)
services were screwed up from day one
and required lots of
intervention on my behalf to straighten
out. Why?
Is it because the connection between sales and
installation is
broken? Is the connection between sales and
customer service?
I don't know and Qwest was no help.
ISDN installation was
delayed twice on the first installation
and once on the second
installation. Once up it worked. The
ISP service came from
Agiliti and visi.com - both great
providers. My
home ISDN is dial-up and that seems flaky. I
don't know if it is
the Ascend P75 ISDN terminal adapter,
Qwest or the ISP.
It seems to dial-up fine and serve a few
web pages before going
"on strike".
Analog POTS was a much
more serious and frustrating issue.
Its the features.
Voicemail was a nightmare to configure ...
for Qwest! A
simple 2-line order, where the first number
rolls to the second
number (on busy) and in to voicemail if
both lines are busy or
no one answers seems like an easy order
and installation.
It took 90 minutes to order, 1 week to get
the first installation
and about 2 more weeks to get the first
installation to work.
I don't know how many times I was "passed
along" to another
technician or representative. No one "owned
the problem" or
was responsible for customer satisfaction.
My constructive
criticism to Qwest and Mr. Nacchio is stop
spending money on big
billboards at the Xcel Energy Center and
start paying for more
and better technicians, IT professionals
and customer service
representatives. Teach your people what
they are selling, how
to install it and how to manage a
customer. The
public is not clamoring for 20 local phone
companies from which
to choose but you may leave them with no
choice. Poor
customer service will lead to political involvement
and no one wants a
politician or regulator stepping in to this
issue - at least I
don't.
6.0 pulver.com 2000/2001 Calendar
Here is a calendar of events for
pulver.com. For more
information, see http://www.pulver.com/. NetSuds.com and
pulver.com are
strategic partners.
November 13-15 - VON Asia 2000,
Hong Kong, China
November 28-30 - Fall 2000
Presence and Instant Messaging,
San Jose
January 18-19 - Bandwidth Trading and
Minutes Brokerage Summit,
Maui, HI
January 23-25 - Winter 2001 VON
Developers Conference,
Burlingame, CA
February 6-8 - Annual IP Telephony
Executive Summit,
Sophia Antipolis,
France - (Invitation Only)
March 20-23 -
Spring 2001 Voice on the Net,
Phoenix, AZ
April, 2001 - Geolocation Opportunities
2001,
Tokyo, Japan
May 22-24 - Presence and Instant
Messaging,
Boston, MA
June 11-14 -
Summer 2001 VON Europe,
Stockholm, Sweden
7.0 Start-ups vs. Pull-outs
Last month, I wrote
about this subject and received a few
responses from folks
interested in following through on 2 of
the ideas suggested.
I also received a response from a VC
interested in funding
a start-up in the optical space. A
senior sales/marketing
executive is pushing me to take the
next step ... so I
will.
If you are
interested in having a meeting about doing a
start-up in either the
(1) DLC, (2) wireless IP protocol
software or (3)
optical equipment space, contact me at
matt@netsuds.com.
I am screening any and all responses to
this very thoroughly.
Don't respond if you are just interested
in the excitement of a
start-up or making lots of money.
You need to be a
qualified executive with operations, sales,
marketing or
engineering experience. At this point I don't
want any executive
search professionals, lawyers or
accountants responding.
There will be a time and a place
for that. If you
are an investor, however, you can respond.
I don't want investors
at our initial meeting but I will
include you at the
appropriate time.
As a reminder, here
are the opening lines of what I wrote
last month.
A start-up is a
company that is started by some people who
leave jobs to create
something exciting. A pull-out is a
company that is
started by some people who want other people
to leave jobs to
create something exciting.
Why wait for good people to leave jobs they
should have left
months, if not years ago? Many people
are stuck in jobs that
are not utilizing
their full potential. This fact has been
proven over and over
again in Silicon Valley. It is my
contention that we
have great talent here in Minnesota but
that talent has not
seen the light of business creation.
8.0 Web Economy BS Generator
http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html says it all. Thanks to
NetSudser MM - you know who you are.
If you are aware of others who
would like to receive the NetSuds Report,
ask them to visit http://mailman.netsuds.com/ to subscribe or unsubscribe.
Please send your comments and feedback regarding this issue of
the NetSuds
Report to matt@netsuds.com.
Matt Noah
952.934.5424
fax: 425.795.2019
matt@netsuds.com
P.O. Box 277
Chanhassen, Minnesota 55317
(c) 2000 NetSuds.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved