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Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Net Gains
Dining inspires ideas, unconference inspires VC concern
By Galen Moore
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If you took venture money, better get used to the idea of selling your startup.
In a lively small group at last week’s Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council’s Innovation unConference, led by General Catalyst Partners’ Steve O’Leary, participants talked over the long-term changes in the venture capital landscape, brought about by a chill in the market for initial public offerings of stock.
“The VC world has completely flipped to thinking the IPO is the outlier,” he said. “That’s the 1 percent.”
The problem is, the list of corporate acquirers has gotten short. Where there used to be a dozen potential acquirers of up-and-coming technology companies, that list has consolidated into maybe four, O’Leary said: Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp., Oracle Corp. and EMC Corp.
The point was underscored neatly by the carpet on which O’Leary was standing. It, the conference room, and the 10-year-old Burlington campus where the conference was held are set to be acquired by Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL), along with the rest of Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: JAVA), pending a shareholder vote next month.
BON APP-I.T.
Speaking of real estate, Boston Properties Inc. (NYSE: BXP) appears to like the idea of a geek café in the heart of Kendall Square.
The commercial property company could be persuaded to replace the Marriott Hotel’s lackluster sports bar, Characters (“an airport bar TRAPPED in a strip mall,” according to one Yelp.com review), with a restaurant project dubbed Venture Café.
The cafe — hatched by Tim Rowe of the Cambridge Innovation Center — would concoct cappuccino and conference rooms with pressed sandwiches and presentation screens. The big idea is to create a social space where entrepreneurs could work, play and meet to hash out new companies.
In a meeting last week with Rowe, Boston Properties officials suggested he scour the earth for a restaurant model to emulate. Accordingly, the Venture Café organizers have put up a Facebook page where they’re soliciting suggestions (The placeholder URL venturecafe.net links to the page).
Being literary-minded, my suggestion would be to wait until Google Inc. invents time travel, then set it up like Douglas Adams’ Restaurant at the End of the Universe — which hovered at the End of Time, providing an apocalyptic floor show nightly. The first round of pan-galactic gargle blasters is on me.
E-LACARTE
Talking of dining in the future, if stealthy E-laCarte gets its way, there will be a computer on every table.
The E-laCarte device is a battery-powered, wireless-enabled, touchscreen computer designed to let restaurant diners play music and casual video games, pay the bill or order another round of drinks without having to flag down a waiter. Of course, ads and up-sells are a part of the mix.
Founding employee James Hall wouldn’t say how much the devices will sell for, except that they’ll be less than those offered by a competitor. Dallas-based Tabletop Media has a headstart with its Ziosk device in pilot programs at Chili’s restaurants and uWink (the gamer’s diner started by Atari and Chuck E. Cheese founder Nolan Bushnell).
A restaurant seating 50 could install Ziosks on each table for about $3,000 to $5,000, Cards & Payments magazine reported last fall.
PINKDINGO AND NOVOGY
Speaking of stealthy companies, two filed federal regulatory documents last month. Novogy Inc. and Pinkdingo Inc. are making even less dinner table conversation.
Novogy has launched in Cambridge on $250,000 of a $750,000 seed round from investors including General Catalyst. (GenCat managing director David Orfao holds the board seat.) The company is playing in the renewable energy space, said Ginja Collins, a former Mascoma Corp. vice president who co-founded Novogy with Colin South, the former Mascoma president, who was laid off last fall.
Other than that, “At this point we’re really not talking to reporters,” Collins demurred.
Norwalk, Conn.-based Pinkdingo proved even more elusive. The company has posted a $32,000 tranche of a $100,000 seed round, but any other information is as scarce as, well, a pink dingo. The site does not seem to be affiliated with a South Korea/Singapore-based online fashion accessories retailer of the same name.
The company is “in supa-stealth mode,” founder Scott Arneill wrote in an e-mail. Arneill is a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, according to his LinkedIn profile. Beyond that, it’s radio silence, besides a vague promise at pinkdingo.com of “good things,” and a beta launch coming soon…
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