A VC in Vacationland

Seeking the next gen supply chain technology breakthroughs

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  • Outsourcing Options for Start Ups: UTest

    UtestImage via Wikipedia

    In the past, start ups have often kept all core aspects of their business in house, preferring to directly control outcomes. While laudable, the model may not be cost-effective.  Many companies in my portfolio and that I advise have outsourced development teams which code at much lower cost than in house teams. New options are also emerging, such as UTest, which allows companies to test code without committing to expensive in house QA resources. 

    According to Xconomy, UTest has become the primary source for outsourced code QA:

    "UTest, which helps big companies crowdsource their software quality assurance (QA) testing to a community of 30,000 freelance testers, said today that it has raised $13 million in Series C financing. It’s one of the largest venture funding rounds ever collected by a crowdsourcing company, and from the size of the round, “you should take it as a validation that their business model is working,” say Sharon Wienbar, managing director at San Mateo, CA-based Scale Venture Partners, which led the round. “These guys have more business than they can handle, and it’s all about scaling now.”

    The Southborough, MA-based company, which recently opened a Silicon Valley office, has built a software-as-a-service platform where companies submit their code and say what kind of testing they need, then wait for bug reports from uTest’s global community of testers. Wienbar and UTest CEO Doron Reuveni say demand for the service is exploding, in light of the growing number of companies that have software to test."

    There are numerous other providers which have similar offerings.  Submitting test code for QA to a number of providers with  known bugs is one way to quickly test the capabilities of the various offerings.

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  • Avoiding Pitfalls in Licensing Patents and Intellectual Property

    United States Patent Cover from a real patent ...Image via Wikipedia

    There are some simple rules to follow when out-licensing patents and/or intellectual property (IP) from another entrepreneur, university or patent holder:

    1. Take a Snapshot of the IP–business processes, technologies and products evolve over time, but the patent/IP associated with them should defined in a static space at one point in time, based on the original patent/IP descriptions.  What you license may not be what the idea becomes. You should not be paying the original patent/IP holder for innovations you do in your startup that are not part of the original patent.
    2. Pay as a Share of Profits— rewards to patent/IP holders should be based on a percentage of profits generated to your company from the IP/patent snapshot (see above). You should avoid giving patent holders a share of revenues under any circumstances, and especially if the company is not profitable.
    3. Deal extends only through Patent Life–payment for patent use should terminate when the original patent terminates.  In the case of IP where no limit applies, you may want to agree on a period of time, say 5 years, over which payments will be made. The original patent holder could develop new patents or IP going forward.  Be sure that you do not let them patent your ideas as only their ideas.

    Under any circumstances, be sure to engage a patent/IP attorney who is well versed in your technology or product area to help draft the agreements.

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  • Why China will have to become more democratic…Thomas Friedman explains why an aging China will need bottom-up entrepreneurship to survive http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/opinion/17friedman.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=going%20long%20liberty&st=cse

  • Logistics to the Rescue: the American Logistics Aid Network

    Image of a logistics provider's warehouse of g...Image via Wikipedia

    The American Logistics Aid Network–ALANaid–was set up by a coalition of trucking, warehousing and third- party logistics companies to provide logistics support after national and international crises.  The neat aspect of their operation is that they post specific needs of the front-line teams dealing with the crisis on the web site, allowing companies to provide targeted donations/services that can accelerate recovery.

    Check them out and help if you can.
     

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  • Green Logistics:ThredUp

    Image representing thredUP as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase

    According to MassHiTech, ThredUP Inc., the online clothing swap service, reports it has received $1.4 million in a seed funding from a handful of early-stage venture capital firms, bringing the Cambridge startup’s total funding to date up to $1.7 million.

    Perhaps an online setting will allow parents to avoid the stigma of visiting Goodwill to paw over low-quality clothing to find the gems. One can likely find higher quality clothing on line via the ThredUP barter site, especially for moms with few sibling/cousins available to pass clothing down the line.

    Four firms invested in the round: Founder Collective of Cambridge and New York, as well as Trinity Ventures, High Line Ventures and Nextview Ventures. 

    ThredUP launched last year with a plan to provide an online clothing swap service for adults, but quickly shifted its focus to moms and children. The service lets parents put up boxes of kids’ clothes and swap for other parents’ hand-me-downs, providing mailing labels for the exchange. The basic service is free, other than shipping and handling. ThredUP is making revenue from a premium on shipping charges, and by charging for premium services on the site – like the ability to see more information about the clothes users are bartering for. 

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  • Green Logistics: Sourcemap

    Drusillas Zoo Park Thomas the Tank EngineImage via Wikipedia

    Did you ever wonder who put the lead in your child's Thomas the Tank Engine?  Or the melamine in your pet food? Or the antifreeze in your toothpaste?  Sourcemap, an MIT open source project uses wiki-oriented volunteers to seek out the ultimate producers of crummy products and find out where the "stuff inside my stuff" comes from.

    Sourcemap currently has almost 1500 products in their data base, along with full documentation on the global supply chains associated with each product.  The results are fascinating, both from avoiding dangerous products as well as tracing real-world supply chains. The carbon footprint and transportation requirements associated with each product are also presented.

    The project is looking to partner with governments and business to expand the data base to include more products. The project wants to include environmentally friendly products as well to aid consumers in their purchases. 

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  • Want a new way to find tech-savvy start-up employees? check out TweetMyJobs www.tweetmyjobs.com

  • Disappearing Supply Chains: Movie Rental Stores

    A Blockbuster Video rental shop in the city of...Image via Wikipedia

    About a decade ago, you could ride through many cities and towns in the U.S. and see numerous competing local and chain movie rental stores.  Now, we are down to a handful, thanks to netflix, Redbox and digital downloads. How fast one type of supply chain can disappear and be replaced by another.

    And today we may see the beginning of the final chapter in the movie rental store story. Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) ended the speculation today, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy nearly 25 years after the video rental chain opened its first store. The company said more than 80 percent of its secured creditors have approved a plan to reduce its almost $1 billion in debt to roughly $100 million. The bankruptcy filing shouldn’t affect daily business and doesn’t include Blockbuster’s franchises or non-U.S.operations. They did announce that they would move to digital downloads and less expensive physical delivery options (like the U.S. Mail) to compete with the new kids on the block.

    With 23,000 locations within the last five years and growing, Redbox is clearly one of the giant killers in this space, with significantly lower supply chain costs that Blockbuster.  Digital downloads or movies-on-demand, of course, have even lower supply chain costs. Like the local book store, a few movie rental stores may survive, perhaps even make a comeback, like the vinyl record stores. But I would not want to be a Blockbuster franchisee this morning. 

     

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  • Want to be a successful entrepreneur? Try being hypomanic, according to the NY Times today http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/business/19entre.html?scp=1&sq=perfect%20entrepreneur&st=cse

  • Supply Chain Innovators: RoadWyze

    From Xconomy Seattle, "CEO Dale Keep of RoadWyze (Walla Walla, WA) regaled the audience with stories from his 36 years of working with government agencies dealing with snow, ice, and other weather conditions on roads and highways. His company, founded in 2004, places wireless sensors in roads to communicate things like air temperature, surface temperature, humidity, and pavement conditions (ice or no ice) to computers in road-management vehicles. “The solution is data,” he said.

    The idea is that all this data—the sensors could be placed every mile or so—will let authorities spend less money on salt and road chemicals by pinpointing where they’re really needed. It will also make roads safer for drivers. A case study in Maine suggests the technology could reduce the $32 million spent on salt in the winter of 2008-09 by about one-third.

    RoadWyze currently has four employees and a number of patents pending. Its latest prototype sensor systems will be complete in July, Keep said."

    Real time information, such as road traffic density, surface condition and current/projected weather data are crucial planning inputs to motor carrier operations seeking to reduce delays, accidents and overtime. The emergence of additional real time information sources, in conjunction with crowd-sourcing traffic data from companies like Waze-see earlier Blog on them–are building the basis for a whole new traffic management space as our nation's highways become more crowded and innovative delivery scheduling solutions become the norm.