microsoft and startups: a love story

Microsoft and StartupsA love story

Microsoft has long been a developerfocused company – but they need to adaptto accommodate developers that don’t wantto make $1m year businesses, but want to

make $100m year products.

Microsoft has a bad reputation for competing with companies that are

building on their platform. I think this is one reason so many startups have moved

away from them, and I think this should be near their #1 focus in fostering new

Microsoft based startups.

For a startup, working with Microsoft is a full-time job for someone, essentially,10% of the company's resources. Our experience was

extremely frustrating, with lots of last minute "please come to Redmond tomorrow" to "that person is climbing Everest so our

discussions will be on hold for a month”. We spent that cost and we got burned and I'll

never do it again.

Most of their presentations to startups are about how to navigate your way around

Microsoft to do a partnership deal (who to talk to, what the steps are, etc.). We’d

rather they talk about what they’re interested in, where they are spending

R&D, their product roadmap, etc.

Microsoft invited us to their Worldwide Partner Conference and introduced us to all of their partners and resellers. I was

blown away. These people are such loyalists, they even use Windows mobile!

We need competition in the contextual and display ad marketplace! I want Google to beg for my high-quality impressions and

the only way for this to happen is for there to be another good ad-network.

It takes a huge potential ($1b) uplift in revenue for a potential partnership / acquisition to make a difference to

Microsoft’s bottom line. I’m sure they miss many smaller companies with promise

who find it easier to work with Google to explore ideas.

Excite.com took $3,000,000 toget from idea to launch. JotSpot

took $100,000.

Joe Kraus, Circa 2005

Change the world byspreading the knowledge of

innovators

O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures isin the business of fundingdisruptors, innovators, andhackers of the status quo.

A person has information shadows in a host of emails,

instant messages,phone calls, tweets, blog

postings, photographs, videos, and government

documents.

Operations Are The New Secret Sauce

Inspired by a conversation with Debra Chrapaty

If we are going to solve the world’s most pressing problems, we must put the

power of the web to work – its technologies, its business models, and

perhaps most importantly, its philosophies of openness, collective

intelligence, and transparency.

The “subsystems” of the emerginginternet operating system are

increasingly data subsystems: location,identity (of people, products, and

places), and the meaning that tie them together. This leads to new levers of competitive advantage: Data is the “Intel Inside” of the next generation

of computer applications.

Our journey has never been one ofshort-cuts or settling for less. It has

not been the path for the fainthearted - for those who prefer

leisure over work, or seek only thepleasures of riches and fame.

Rather, it has been the risk-takers,the doers, the makers of things.

Thank You

bryce@oatv.combryce.vc@bryce