Google Ventures is almost here

Rich Miner, creator of Android, is moving to jump start Google's latest venture, Google Ventures, which will provide capital to startups.

Google has been working on this for quite some time. In 2007, Business Week reported that Google is going to take on a new role as a Venture Capitalist. WSJ reported last year in July about Google's new venture capital arm.

TechCrunch thinks Google Ventures is a bad idea and that "Starting a venture fund is not really the best use of Google’s capital." I disagree with TechCrunch mostly because I think it can be an effective way for Google to outsource innovation and give some of the big billions back to startups.

Structure 08 - Cloud Computing Conference

I am going to Structure 08, a conference being organized by GigaOm that focuses on cloud computing and how it is changing the landscape of computing infrastructures.

If your organization is contemplating traditional server based infrastructure vs. cloud computing, then this conference is for you.

“Structure 08 will gather the most innovative and influential industry leaders together to explore the latest Internet infrastructure buildout. It will sort through the emerging and disruptive computing technologies and inform businesses on how best to leverage them. And it will provide insight to investors and executives on the best implementations, ideas and startups out there today — and what to look for tomorrow.”
The conference has a star studded line of speakers including:

• Werner Vogels - VP and CTO, Amazon.com
• James Crowe - President and CEO, Level 3
• Greg Papadopoulos - CTO, Sun Microsystems
• Parker Harris - Founder, Salesforce.com
• Mendel Rosenblum - Co-founder, VMWare
• Zach Nelson - President & CEO, NetSuite
• Christophe Bisciglia - Sr Software Engineer, Google
• Jonathan Heiliger - VP, Technical Ops, Facebook
• Joe Weinman - VP, Strategic Solutions, AT&T
• Debra Chrapaty - Corporate VP, Microsoft
• Jeremiah Robison - CTO, Slide
• Dr. Albert Esser - VP, Data Center Infrastructure, Dell
• Lew Moorman - SVP Strategy, Rackspace
• Akash Garg - CTO, hi5 Networks, Inc.
• Sandy Jen - Co-founder & VP, Engineering, Meebo
• Danny Kolke - Founder & CTO, Etelos
• Om Malik - Founder & Editor, Giga Omni Media
• Geva Perry - CMO, GigaSpaces Technologies
• Scott Wiener - CTO, Cloud9 Analytics
• Dave Schrader - Dir, Strategy & Marketing, Teradata
• Harald Prokop - SVP of Engineering, Akamai Technologies
• Scott Yara - President & Co-founder, Greenplum

The one day Structure 08 conference will be held on June 25 at Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF, 1675 Owens Street, San Francisco, CA 94158.

I hope to meet new and old friends at the Structure 08 conference. I will be in the area a few days before the conference as I am also attending Velocity Conference by O'reilly. It will be great to meet up if you are in the area.

Life cycle of a web 2.0 startup

These days it seems like everyone is working on a social network, web 2.0 start up that is going to be funded by advertising.

It's getting to the point that whenever someone tells me they are launching a site, I ask them the following questions:

• Is it a Web 2.0 site?
• Is it a social network?
• Is it a mashup?
  
• God forbid, is it written in Ruby on Rails?
• Are you going to use advertising to monetize it?
• Are you going to use Google AdSense to monetize it?
  

Scarily, more often than not, the answer is yes to most of these questions. Recently I asked a friend about what is the business model of his employer? To which he replied:

“We don't have a business model but we have buttons with rounded corners”
Today I found an article by Stacey Higginbotham that highlights some of the same concerns. The title of the article is 5 stages of a consumer web startup.

1. In the beginning
2. The launch
3. Launch a social network widget
4. 12 months later
5. The end is near

Some of the interesting links she mentions in her post:

• Selling Ads for MySpace is a hard work
  “We remain incredibly optimistic about social media. But there are specific challenges 1) Tons of inventory. Lack of scarcity creates a liquidity challenge. Working on bringing big brands aboard. 2) People who are visiting social networks there for different reasons, different uses. Figuring out how to target. 3) What's the value of a "friend"? Trying to figure out new metrics to communicate with marketers.”
• Enough Already: People Please STOP LAUNCHING AD NETWORKS
• What are your pre-launch priorities?