Busy week: another of my recent investments was announced this morning. I have joined First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman and my Search SIG co-chair Dave Mc Clure as founding investor of Mashery, Inc., a software infrastructure startup. We will actually not disclose much more than what Oren Michels, the CEO, has mentioned on his blog– but the company is essentially developing a much needed piece of functionality of the web services and mashups economy.

Our Mashery will be a resource for developers, API providers and mashup users. Over the next six months, we will release a range of services that will make it easier to develop, deploy and use mashups and other “user generated services”

I am excited to work with Oren again, who was the VP of Business Development of Feedster – of which Josh, Dave and I all were Angel investors.

Just to clarify by the way: it just so happens that four … Read more »

Even though I no longer focus on enterprise architecture and related software solutions, I try to keep an eye on developments in that market, especially as consumer applications and Web 2.0 concepts make their way into it (dubbed Enterprise 2.0 of course)

I have recently added to my “Favorites” folder the 451 CAOS Theory, a group blog written by analysts of the 451 Group, an analyst firm, and Confused of Calcutta, the blog of JP Rangaswami, the CIO of Dresdner Kleiner Wasserstein.

I have met JP a number of times, mainly during conferences in the US and in Europe, and have always enjoyed his progressist approach to the adoption of new tools and processes to Enterprise IT. His “About this Blog” section says it all:

I believe that it is only a matter of time before enterprise software consists of only four types of application: publishing, search, fulfilment and conversation. I believe that weaknesses and corruptions … Read more »

Whereas it was a must until a year ago, offshoring developments to India has generated enough of its fair share of operational issues to make startup teams and VCs much more cautious. Beyond local issues – like the difficulty of hiring and keeping talent, and increasing wages – getting the coordination, leadership and motivation aspects are challenging.

Ed Sim’s post comes a propos as he relates to a successful offshoring operated by one of his companies. Some key points:

Offshore interesting and motivating projects Develop local leadership talent Hire, train and manage local staff with a long term view in mind

At the same time, SAP is going to be looking to alternatives to India because of rising costs.

I am off to CES in less than 3 hours, so I’ll make it quick: Bill Burnham has a series of great posts regarding the Internet and Enterprise software sectors of the public market, particularly:

Software IPOs: 2005 Year In Review Top 10 Worst Performing Software Stocks of 2005 Software Stock Update: 2005 Year In Review The Incredibly Shrinking Software Industry

In a nutshell, and I recommend taking a look at the compilation of data points and analysis work done by Bill: 4 software IPOs in 2005, a lot of Web 1.0 software darlings are in the list of worst performers for 2005, and the aggregate valuation of the Software sector has shrunk  by 10% in 2005 – to compare with a modest 1.4% growth of the Nasdaq and a nice uplift of 14.4% of the Internet sector.

Bill lists five reasons behind this systemic decrease of the sector, which does not look … Read more »