We were just talking in our chat room about what exciting things Google TV has in store. While partnerships with Pandora and Napster excite the media consumer in us, I think the real killer app will be video calling using devices like Logitech’s Google TV box, the Revue.

Although not mentioned on the site, it is clear that the Revue will work with Logtiech HD cameras like the C910. While we’ve been able to make Skype video calls on PCs, mobile phones, and laptops for years, imagine if you could do it from the comfort of your couch.

Read more…

The idea of gaming for more than a high score and bragging rights has been around for some time. The U.S. military used flight simulators and Mission Rehearsal Exercise video games in training programs as early as 2001.

More recently, scientists at the University of Washington began using a game called FoldIt to solve problems related to molecular science and, as the title suggests, folding and design of proteins.

Today, IBM released CityOne (a “serious game” in the company’s own parlance) to help urban planners, civic and business leaders make cities “smarter” or more environmentally and socially sustainable. CityOne is a massively multiplayer online game in the real time strategy category.

According to a press statement from IBM CityOne entails:

…More than 100 real-world scenarios. [Players must] transform cities related to initiatives such as alternative energy, traffic management, water management , banking and retail supply chains through a series of crisis scenarios. In all of the missions, the user must determine the best way to balance the city's financial, environmental and sociological interests.

Players make decisions to improve the city by attaining revenue and profit goals, increasing customers' and citizens' satisfaction, and making the environment greener with a limited budget. In parallel, players will learn how the components of business process management, service reuse, cloud computing and collaborative technologies can make organizations in city systems more intelligent.

Predecessors in the popular SimCity and Civilization franchises got regular gamers (and educators) thinking about social and environmental issues years ago.

Worldchanging.com also offers an excellent list of articles on video games designed for social good and general audiences.

Joining IBM in the design of games for enterprise use, and online gaming that gets professionals thinking about sustainability issues, the Seattle startup, Novel Inc. released its own “social strategy MMO” in alpha earlier this year, Empire And State.

Up until now, Google TV has somewhat been a mystery. Capabilities were announced and some screenshots made their way onto the web. But there really hasn’t been a solid demo or informative site about the upcoming platform. Thankfully Google just launched the Google TV minisite that actually reveals a bunch of details including that Twitter, Pandora, Netflix, and a bunch of other apps are on their way to your TV.

There’s a lot on the site and we’re still combing through it. This is what we’ve found so far:

Fresh off a rebranding, Punchbowl, a start to finish party planning site, is unveiling its Digital Invitation Studio to the public today. The new platform helps you create online invites that look and feel like you created customized stationery from a store, complete with
invitations, envelopes, liners, rubber stamps, and postage. The Digital Invitation Studio includes “Plus” designs which can be unlocked with a paid membership. Punchbowl is giving away free memberships to 500 TechCrunch readers (worth $79) here using the code “PBTECHCRUNCH.”

Punchbowl’s Digital Invitation Studio offers hundreds of stylish and modern invitations and save the dates, each with companion customizable envelopes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. You can add envelope liners, customized postage stamps, and personal photos. The result is a sleek custom online invitation with a matching envelope that replicates the act of opening a traditional paper invitation.

Invitations can be emailed and guests can RSVP directly from the online invite. The studio also includes a number of compelling new features including suggestions for wording your invitation and the ability to upload and re-size multiple photos to your invitation. Powered by Flash, the technology is easy to use and intuitive.

Competitors to Punchbowl include Socializr, Pingg, Someecards, Cocodot, and MySpace, Facebook and Evite. While the online invitation space is competitive, developing easy-to-use platform that doesn’t sacrifice the quality of the invitation could help Punchbowl continue to grow beyond its one million users.

Qualcomm wants to help bring better augmented reality apps to mobile phones, especially those powered by its Snapdragon chips. Today, it is releasing an augmented reality software development kit for Android phones, along with a $200,000 challenge for the best Android AR apps. The challenge goes through January, 2011, and the best apps will be showcased at the next Mobile World Congress.

AR apps are popular among developers because they allow them to add a layer of digital information on top of the real world as seen through a cell phone camera. Different AR apps include video games triggered by printed QR codes, in-stadium/sporting event guides, and local directory and product information (point your cell phone camera at a building and see what’s inside). But many of these are still gimmicky. We are still waiting for a killer AR app to emerge.

Qualcomm’s new SDK may or may not help to produce one, but Qualcomm wants to encourage AR apps because they take advantage of the visual and graphics capabilities of its chips. If AR apps become a must-have for smartphone users, Qualcomm can sell more chips.

Barnes & Noble this morning launched PubIt! (oh please, not another exclamation mark as part of a brand name), a platform that offers independent publishers and authors a way to digitally distribute their works through BN.com and the Barnes & Noble eBookstore.

Amazon, for your information, has a similar platform dubbed DTP (Digital Text Platform).

With the release of PubIt!, the bookseller says it is already adding tens of thousands of titles from thousands of independent publishers and self-publishing writers who pre-registered for the new service since it was announced in May 2010. Newly submitted PubIt! content will be available for sale within 24 to 72 hours after upload, B&N adds.

PubIt! uses an all-online platform for publishers to set up their accounts, upload their eBooks, set the list price and track their sales and payments. Publishers can price their titles between $0.99 and $199.99 and receive a royalty based on the given price.

For PubIt! eBooks priced at or between $2.99 and $9.99, publishers receive 65 percent of the list price for sold content. For those priced at $2.98 or less, or $10.00 or more, publishers receive 40 percent of the list price.

Amazon with its DTP program offers a 70 percent royalty option, but this is net of delivery costs (which are calculated based on file size). Barnes & Noble points out that it is not charging any “hidden terms or fees”, clearly alluding to its rival’s pricing model.

Publishers with U.S. rights to their content can upload ePub files or Microsoft Word, TXT, HTML or RTF files, which the PubIt! platform will convert to ePub. Publishers can also see how the content will look on one of Barnes & Noble's eReading devices using the NOOK emulator.

Titles can be added to all of the company’s NOOK products and software, including NOOK eBook Readers, third-party eBook Readers powered by the Barnes & Noble eBookstore, and NOOK software-enabled iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android smartphones, as well as Windows-based PCs, laptops or netbooks.

More information is available in the FAQ section.

It’s funny. Every time a new version of Android rolls out, I get all excited and giddy, dreaming of double rainbows and a stable platform. Then I install it and slowly discover my dreams were not realized and the latest tasty Android treat isn’t what I hoped for. It happened Donut, Eclair, and Froyo.

Apparently LG agrees with my feeling about 2.2 because, well, the South Korean company delayed its tablet simply because the release wasn’t stable enough. They’re going to wait until something better comes along. Seriously.

Spotify and Microsoft have launched Spotify's mobile music app on the Windows phone 6 platform, joining their apps on the iPhone, Android and Symbian phones. For what it's worth, Windows Phone 6 is the old Windows Mobile 6xx. However, this is of most interest to Europeans who can actually use the service. The features on Windows phone 6 include all the similar features of previous apps (listen to tracks, stream over WiFi or 2.5/3G, access playlists, run Spotify in the background, play in offline mode etc) Users can download the new app directly by visiting m.spotify.com, and it is also available for download on Windows Marketplace for mobile. Current users of popular Windows phone 6 devices will be able to download app on their phones. Using Spotify on the mobile requires a Premium account.

ClairMail, a company that creates a mobile banking and payments platform, has raised $13.8 million in funding led by Investor Growth Capital with JAFCO Ventures, Northwest Venture Partners and Outlook Ventures participating in the round. This brings the company’s total funding to nearly $35 million.

ClairMail’s technology is fairly simple. The platform helps power mobile banking and payments for financial institutions. ClairMail processes millions of transactions per month for its customers across retail banks, credit unions and card service companies, allowing consumers to make payments and access banking information via SMS, the mobile web and client applications, across a variety of mobile devices.

ClairMail, who counts eight of the top 12 North American banks as customers, have seen a 300 percent year-over-year increase in revenue for the second quarter ending June 2010. The company will use the new financing to hire additional engineers and grow its technology infrastructure.

The private buying club wars of Latin America, begun they have. Privalia Venta Directa has secured €70m ($95m) from General Atlantic and Index Ventures, plus existing shareholder Highland Capital, to basically roll-up all the private online sales clubs in the region, as well as consolidate positions in Europe, according to Lucas Carné, joint chief executive and co-founder of Privalia. It's the latest in a number of investments by VCs in the exploding world of private online sales clubs. The sites are most popular in France, Spain and Italy, especially amongst fashion-conscious consumers, a €3bn sales market in Europe. In the UK there are already plenty of ways to get discounted fashion. These clubs mash together members looking for the same brands, usually fashion, to create a group discount. Brands use them to get rid of excess inventory in flash sales over one or two days, or win new business through special offers.

The rumors we blogged about in August proved to be true: Toshiba has been working on the development of a glasses-free 3D TV, and they are ready to sell it as early as December this year (in Japan, at least). The company today announced [JP] there will be two versions of the so-called "Glass-less REGZA 3D TV", the 20-inch 20GL1 and the 12-inch 12GL1. Read the rest on CrunchGear.

Most popular Internet services have now been “instantized”, inspired by the recent unveiling of Google Instant, which “searches before you type”.

You can now add our very own CrunchBase to that list, courtesy of 16-year old entrepreneur and tinkerer Spencer Schoeben. Using his CrunchBase Instant, you can search our rich database of companies, persons, financial organizations and whatnot faster than ever before.

Nice touch by Spencer: when you land on a profile that links to a Twitter feed, tweets from that person or company are displayed in a separate column (example: “Alexia Tsotsis”). I’m thinking we should totally steal that idea.

Thanks, Spencer!

TechCrunch Disrupt has come and gone, and for most of us it was one of the most memorable conferences we’ve ever been to for many many reasons (we’re still playing catchup on a Sunday at midnight). So, to quench our conference nostalgia while we’re thumbing through the hundreds of videos, we’ve made the following TC Disrupt Bingo Card which, come to think of it, could also be a great accompaniment to Paul Carr’s “TechCrunch Disrupt: The Drinking Game.“

So until next year, “Drink!” I mean, “Bingo!”

Thanks for the inspiration: Sean Percival

Now that the craziness of the week is over, we can sit back and reflect on how great TechCrunch Disrupt was once again. And yes, even in the post-AOL acquisition world, we’ll keep on holding them — though sadly, not until next year at a place and time to be determined. But if you can’t wait that long, we’re happy to announce something that might interest you.

As you probably know, LeWeb is the premiere large technology conference in Europe. Last year, the Paris-based event attracted some 2,500 participants from 50 countries. It has gotten bigger each year since it began in 2004, and TechCrunch has happily been a partner since 2007. And this year we’re kicking it up a notch. LeWeb ’10 will feature a startup competition that will be a bit like a mini TechCrunch Disrupt.

Instead of the 25 startups launching onstage that we have at our Disrupt conferences, LeWeb will feature 16 startups which will pitch in the startup room on December 8, the first day of the conference. From those 16, a group of judges will pick the best 3 — and those companies will get to present the next day, December 9, on the LeWeb main stage.

LeWeb has done a startup competition in previous years, but it has always been relegated to this startup room, which has about 400 seats. This year, the three companies picked will now enter the big room, where they’ll present in front of nearly 1,500 people. And unlike previous years, the winners won’t be announced beforehand, so each company will present to win.

August Capital partner David Hornik will host the startup stage this year. And yes, we’ll be there as well — which always makes for interesting times.

Startups interested in applying to be one of the lucky 16 chosen to present should visit this page to sign up. Registration is free and selected startups will get two complimentary presenter tickets as well as a free DemoPod (presentation booth). Registration ends October 15.

Meanwhile, any TechCrunch readers interested in attending LeWeb this year can use the code TC2010 to get a 200 Euro discount. You can register here.

Again, LeWeb will be held December 8 and 9 this year in Paris. We hope to see you there.

[photos: flickr/robert scoble and Teymur Madjderey]

Translating user data into useful information is now the cornerstone of LinkedIn’s product roadmap. For example, the company recently updated company profiles with additional data visualizations such as the most popular schools attended by employees, the segmentation of an employee base by skillset and more. Today, LinkedIn is launching a new data-focused feature, called LinkedIn Career Explorer, that provides college graduates with insights from other LinkedIn members to help them visualize a career path.

Career Explorer leverages data from the professional social network’s 80 million members to help students visualize and map successful career paths in a variety of industries. The product also shows college students job opportunities and salary information, the type of education and experience required, and will indentify people who can help them find these jobs.

So students can specify a type of job that they want to pursue or the company they want to work for and LinkedIn will show professionals who have succeeded in similar endeavors. Students can also access the best contact within their networks for certain fields or companies, and LinkedIn will recommend job openings.

The new feature will lead students to the Company Profiles (LinkedIn now has over 1 million profiles on the network), and encourage users to "follow" those companies to receive updates, including job postings, new hires and more.

Career Explorer is currently being rolled out to students at 60 universities in the U.S. and will eventually expanded to users from other educational institutions. The feature seems fitting for the platform and will no doubt provide a unique way for college students to see the career paths of those who have reached success in particular industries. Also, Career Explorer is a way to attract college students (and perhaps even ambitious high school students) as members of the community and perhaps gain loyalty among this age group.

One challenge the network faces is making the platform a destination for users to visit at least every day (in an effort to match the frequency at which users visit Facebook or Twitter). In order to accomplish this, LinkedIn is trying to make its platform more useful to its members. And there seems to be two ways LinkedIn is adding additional functionality to its platform: through social features and data visualizations. As we’ve written in the past, providing ways to mash-up and use 80 million members' data is helping to democratize the massive amount of career data on the network.

Just when the tech community wet its rap pallette with MC Hammer (backed by the notorious dance moves of TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld), Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh follows up with a ditty of his own (featuring the talents of Laura Lombardi). Hsieh has been on a nation-wide bus tour promoting new book, ‘Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose,’ with a team of over ten happiness agents (read our review of the book here).

Along with his Chief Happiness Officer Jenn Lim, Hsieh, who sold Zappos to Amazon for roughly $1.2 billion last year, organized the bus tour as a quirky alternative to the standard book tour. With stops in Boulder, Chicago, Boston, New York and more, the tour lasts for three months, visits over 20 cities and ends in November in Seattle.

Perhaps you’ve heard that Microsoft is about to re-enter the smartphone fray with their new Windows Phone 7 phones in a few weeks. While Microsoft’s unique mobile OS makes it an interesting entry into the space, there is no shortage of thought that they may already be too late to a market dominated recently by Google, Apple, and RIM. And since Microsoft’s strategy for the new phones seems to be go after Android head-on, you have to wonder how on Earth they’re going to get away with continuing to charge a licensing fee for their software when Android is free? But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sees things a bit differently.

“It’s not like Android’s free,” Ballmer told WSJ in an interview this weekend about Windows Phone 7. “Android has a patent fee,” he said. “You do have to license patents,” he continued.

So Ballmer’s stance is that while Google may not charge a licensing fee for Android, there is a hidden free — one compliments of none other than Microsoft.

Ballmer noted that HTC recently signed an agreement with his company to grant them rights to patents for things they wish to do with Android. A few days ago, Microsoft sued Motorola, clearly attempting to get them to sign a similar deal.

It’s interesting that Microsoft has yet to sue Google for Android, and instead they are focusing on the OEM partners. It’s also interesting that HTC is also making Windows Phone 7 phones right out of the gate, while Motorola has said they won’t be working with Microsoft on phones until next year at the earliest. Instead, they’re focusing on Android. So this lawsuit is purely coincidental, I’m sure.

In other words, this is all political nonsense and a pathetic play by Microsoft.

The software giant hasn’t been successful in mobile phones, so they’re attempting to ride on Google’s coattails with some software patents. Those patents may very well be legit — it’s not exactly clear what they are — but this is a great example of why software patents in general seem to be pretty much a load of crap.

Where has Microsoft been the past couple of years with these suits? I’ll tell you where: waiting to spring this on OEMs when they had their own device out there that they need to gain traction against Android. Microsoft is giving phone makers a choice: pay us to use our software, or pay us to use Google’s software. Or pay your lawyers to fight us in court. (Motorola is apparently choosing the latter — no doubt at Google’s urging.)

When WSJ suggested to Ballmer that the licensing fees aren’t even that big of a financial opportunity for Microsoft, he seemed to get defensive. “It’s one of the opportunities. One,” he said. Okay, then why not just make your software free as well and fight Google on the grounds of better execution, rather than with litigation?

[photo: flickr/aanjhan]

There were two surreal moments for me at Disrupt last week. The first was during the SV Angels Party when Hammer was dancing. It wasn't just because MC-Freaking-Hammer was doing the Hammer dance in a tux and nerd glasses in front of me. It was because the CEO and founder of the media company I work for were on stage looking awkward and white, but dancing none the less. It was because I've hung out with Hammer at parties and conferences like the Lobby– two unlikely people sucked in to the Web 2.0 vortex. It was because I ran into the founders of Digg, separately and in different rooms at the party. They were like brothers the first time I met them, and now– no matter what they politely say on stage– they were estranged, with one ousted and the other trying to turn the once-hot company that helped start the Web 2.0 wave around. It was a feeling that something was ending.

The feeling was echoed the next day watching Kevin Rose and Michael Arrington on stage. For my corner of the Web 2.0 world these were two of the most seminal figures. I put Rose on the cover of BusinessWeek at the beginning of the wave, an article that got me a book deal that ensured I'd spend the next year surrounded by people like Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg and others. And Arrington was the only other reporter I knew back then who wasn't a total cynic about Web 2.0 companies' chances. Eventually I'd find we were so like-minded that I wanted to work with Mike– finally leaving my old-media roots behind. One word has summed both of these guys for a while now: Tired.

The first wave of Web companies never got here, most grew so fast they went public or raised an unsustainable amount of money, hiring an unsustainable amount of employees and when the spigot of free capital was gone they had no choice but to implode. But that didn't happen in Web 2.0– precisely because it had happened so recently in the late 1990s. People like Kevin and Mike were cautious. They ran their businesses at break even, raised money cautiously, and outsourced business processes– like ad sales and even some underlying technology– that weren't core to the business. For all the talk about a second Web bubble, most of the companies on covers of magazines were pretty conservatively run. As a result they had plenty of money in the bank when the recession hit. Sure there were employees cut here or there, but most of that was to get rid of people who were underperforming or make a show of belt tightening for investors.

But it was still a wave, an unsustainable ride of hope, big dreams, a feeling of invincibility that had to crash– and for me, mostly ended last week when TechCrunch was sold. But the recession didn't crash this one– exhaustion did. Building media companies– which is what most Web 2.0 businesses are– is a grind. You can't build a huge business with less than 20 million monthly uniques and getting there is a brutal day-in, day-out grind of producing great work, making the site as intuitive as possible and continually finding reasons to remind people you are worth 5 minutes of their day everyday. This is the part of the story we don't tell enough on TechCrunch. We make startups sound easier and more glamorous than they are. Everyone in the game knows that–but we probably do a disservice to people who think all they need is a Super Angel and in two years they'll get a deal from Google.

On stage Mike asked Kevin what the most amount of money he'd walked away from was and he said $80 million. Mike asked if Kevin regretted not taking it, and he didn't really answer the question. It was clear from his body language that at least part of him did. In that moment, they looked like two men both slightly jealous of each other– one because the other said yes and one because the other said no.

In any Silicon Valley wave there are the clear huge winners– Facebook and likely Twitter and Zynga. There are a few clear huge businesses, and I'd argue LinkedIn is in that category. And loads of companies that are clever-but-doomed. And then there are a bunch where we just don't know. They are clearly worth something, in the case of Slide or TechCrunch and, hopefully, Digg they're worth enough that the founders who worked so hard for so long make a life-changing amount of money. But in some ways, when these founders finally succumb to the grind, it's almost sadder for those of us who were along on the journey– whether investors, employees, friends or just users of their sites.

I remember the day when the Industry Standard– the magazine that chronicled the 1990s bubble and held weekly rooftop parties– went out of business. I covered the news for the tiny weekly business journal I wrote for back then, and drove up to San Francisco as employees were forlornly cleaning out their offices– all of them. It reminded me of the last day at college, when everyone takes every scrap of their life out of a dormroom never to return. I did an interview with the Editor that made me feel like an ambulance chaser. His dream was in shambles all around him and his staff of hundreds were out of jobs. Media people are impossible at faking how they feel. I couldn't do it when TechCrunch announced it was selling, and this guy couldn't do it now. One of his star writers told me it was like that scene in Goodfellas where the crew feels on top of the world like they own a town– and then they get sloppy and everything goes to hell.

Back at the Hammer party, it was my Goodfellas moment, albeit a far less dramatic one. I didn’t have an office to pack up and we all still have jobs, but I couldn't help feeling like it was all over. Not TechCrunch or Digg or Facebook or the other companies we associate with the wave, but the wave itself. It has crashed on a beach of exhaustion, and people who said they'd never sell for less than $1 billion doing just that. More of it is coming.

TechCrunch has been unlike any other media organization for which I've worked– whether newsweekly, magazine, television, or big media portal. We could all leave in three years and start another one but it won't be the same, Web companies are organic things shaped by a million little small decisions and dozens of people who pass through that company’s life every day. There's a magic that catches or doesn't. Business professors and journalists can later dissect what companies did right, but frequently at the time pivotal decisions were a fluke.

There's an endless debate about the good and bad of selling a company that's still growing in the Valley right now. There's the obvious macro-economic answer: Everyone selling too early is bad, because no new tech giants are created. There's the obvious micro-answer: A few million dollars is life changing for most people, and those entrepreneurs deserve to make a life-changing amount of money. In a lot of ways, Disrupt was in the middle of that debate all week. The same Michael Arrington who called out investors who just fund "dipshit $40 million companies" sold his company for a reportedly similar figure the next day. Like most people, I find both arguments compelling. But the important thing to know is this: You can do it again, but you will never create the same company twice.

At that Hammer party I ran into a friend who has built several successful companies– and always refused to sell at their headiest point. He asked me what I thought of the AOL deal. I asked what he thought. He laughed and said, "You're talking to someone who has managed to evade seven successful exits, don't ask me." Yeah. That sums up the end of the Web 2.0 era angst.

This probably isn’t too surprising. The Social Network, which had received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics, topped the box office opening weekend with $23 million in ticket sales (some of which was contributed by Facebook itself in a screening for employees on Friday).

While some analysts predicted that the film would open at $25 million, the movie’s performance is impressive. Of course, Sony’s relentless marketing campaigns and the Oscar-buzz surround the movie probably helped drive consumers to the box office.

The movie's budget was rumored to be in range of $45 million to $52 million, and Sony is expecting The Social Network to bring in a total of $100 million.

Just for a basis of comparison, one of the largest box office opening weekends was The Dark Knight, which brought in $158 million in sales in its first weekend.

You can read our review of The Social Network here.

Photo Credit/Flickr/Eclectic

Ever thought to yourself: hey I would love to have all my Facebook friends’ profile pictures printed on one giant poster and decorate my living room wall with it? Yeah, me neither, but perhaps if you’d learn that you could do it, maybe you’d consider it.

Enter Printing Facebook, which, well, lets you print all your Facebook friends’ profile picture on one giant poster for you to decorate that living room wall with.

First of all, if you’re not in the contiguous United States, you’re out of luck as far as getting the poster shipped to you goes. If you are, and you have $25 burning in your pocket for something like this (including the shipping fee), you can head on over here to order your very own 20×40 real-life Facebook wall.

All “Friends Posters” come printed in high-resolution on quality photo paper, wrapped in tissue paper and rolled in a cardboard tube.

Artist Benjamin Lotan, who cooked up his “Friend Poster” thing just in time for the opening weekend of The Social Network, says this is only the first product in a series of many to come – in an email he says an option to print out your Tumblr blog will be out next.

I really hope for his sake there’s an audience for that – I can somewhat imagine people willing to order print-outs of their Facebook social graph, but their blogs?

I also hope for his sake that Facebook won’t throw a hissy fit over his use of the “Facebook” trademark in his website and service’s name, and for borrowing the look and feel of the Facebook site. Or anyone behind the Facebook movie for borrowing material for this promo clip:

Update: also check out OneMillionPeople, made by the guy who brought you the Million Dollar Homepage.

(Via email – FastCompany also covered the service)

Did you miss Tim Armstrong on stage or the Super Angel/ VC debate? Want to relive the glory of Qwiki’s victory?

Although you can find all our TechCrunch Disrupt videos at Techcrunch.TV, for your convenience, I’ve put together a visual guide, sorted by day, approximate time and category. We’ll be adding additional videos as they are processed.

To the 235,389 people who managed to catch parts of our live feed, thanks for watching!

The Hackathon

Disrupt / Monday, September 27

Monday Backstage Interviews

Disrupt / Tuesday, September 28

Tuesday Backstage Interviews

Disrupt / Wednesday, September 29

Wednesday Backstage Interviews

One of the most interesting discussions at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference was the debate between the "super angels" and VCs. No, I'm not referring to "AngelGate" or the question of which investor group squeezes entrepreneurs the most. Despite what they say, all investors are in the game for personal financial gain; it's not about nurturing entrepreneurs or doing good for the world. The most interesting discussion—for entrepreneurs—was about whether a startup should raise lots of venture capital and go for the billion-dollar exit, or raise less money and be happy with a few million.

This issue is much more important than it seems: it affects the way you grow your company, and the focus you place on products and customers. When you go for the billion-dollar exit, you have to start with a master plan for owning a significant slice of a multi-billion-dollar market. You need to develop grand products for grand markets. This is good—you need a vision and a long-term focus. The problems begin when you start raising capital and racing to grow at all costs. And that is where the real chasm between the "super angels" and VCs is developing.

At the TechCruch event, "super angel" Dave McClure argued that there was nothing wrong with the $50 million exit. "It's not a bad thing to be building a small mousetrap", he said.  McClure told me, after the panel, that he believes that raising too much money can be harmful to a startup—it leads to bad habits and increases the chance of failure. In the race to build billion-dollar businesses, companies lose sight of their customers and crash more readily, after burning through large amounts of capital.  By aiming for smaller markets, startups can have a greater customer focus and build better products. And they can differentiate themselves from competitors going after bigger markets.

McClure is right. When you raise small amounts of money, expectations are small, and you have to bootstrap your way to success. You have to focus on building products very fast, validating that your customers really need them; and on bringing in revenue. The $50,000 to $250,000 that you raise through angel capital doesn't go very far. You are largely on your own.

When instead you have millions in the bank after raising venture capital, you have the luxury of building products that are more strategic. You don't need to ask customers what they need; you can let your gut guide you. This is great if your instincts are correct—you might build a Twitter or FaceBook.  But entrepreneurs are almost always wrong.  They really don't understand their customers; they learn by trial and error. And what happens in the venture industry is that when one big-name VC funds one particular type of company, every other VC jumps on the same boat; it becomes a mad race to gain market share. Witness what is happening in the location-based services market with Foursqare and Gowalla—with all the new competitors. And with all the Groupon clones. Only a handful of the hundreds of companies that are receiving funding will survive. Maybe one—and this is a big maybe—will become a sustainable billion-dollar business.

Then there is the issue of the exit. If you're a founder and own 50% of your startup, a $30 million acquisition can be life-changing. With a $15 million payout, you go from poverty to riches. You're set for life: you can afford to send the kids to the best schools, buy a multi-million dollar house on the hills, live a great lifestyle, and personally fund your next startup (or you can become a "super angel"). The difference to you between $15 million and $150 million (if you go for the billion-dollar exit) is small—the extra millions really won't change your world that much more. But for VCs, these small exits don't make sense: because of the big funds they manage and the limited numbers of companies VCs can involve themselves with, they need to make big investments to get big returns. A modest 2x return is of no interest to them. That is why they often block acquisition offers of less than $100 million. VCs see the acquisition offer as an endorsement of the company's products and usually want to invest even more so they can go for the billion-dollar exit. This usually puts them at odds with the company founders. (There are shades of gray here: VCs can always buy part of the stock that founders own, but all else is the same. And VCs often force companies to replace company founders with "more seasoned management" as the companies grow.)

As well, the lower the price, the higher the number of potential acquirers. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of companies that can do a $50M deal and only a few that can spend $500M on an acquisition.

There are also alternatives to early exits, as I wrote about in this piece: Is Entrepreneurship Just About the Exit? Most entrepreneurs are happy to build a lifestyle business that pays the bills and lets them learn; grow; and "enjoy" the entrepreneurial journey. Angel investors may well endorse this strategy if they can see the steady, long-term returns.

So my advice to entrepreneurs is to always think big and dream of changing the world—but be pragmatic and live within your means. You are more likely to succeed—and possibly to build a billion dollar business—if you stay focused on your customers and grow at a sustainable pace. And if you're lucky enough to get a life-changing acquisition offer like Mike Arrington just did, follow his example. Go for the billion dollars when you start your next company—by then you'll have more experience and you won't be risking the kids’ college education.

Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.