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The Problem of Wanna

Scott Karp is a famous blogger. I am not. But, his post on the struggles of the newspaper industry, and how this relates to GM's last ditch effort to innovate with their Volt project, is very good reading.

That's a long sentence. I'm not a good general writer, I'm more of a technical marketing and research type. The article, however, grabbed me, because I once worked in the electric vehicle industry. My experiences at a small, secretive Israeli EV startup, were very similar to my misadventures in trying to raise capital in Sillyclone Valley for a faltering independent mobile dispatch venture called ThruDispatch.

Mr. Karp conjoins GM's monumental myopia (ignoring anything having to do with advanced drive trains) with the newspaper business' total lack of a new media game plan. I see the common thread - It's called, "Wanna".

Over the past 10 years, a parade of inventors and young alternative drive train companies signed NDA's with GM, hoping to get a foothold. They came from all sectors of the component, engine, and fuels industry, with patents galore, and some of them were indeed astounding; hopefully one day a book will be written. One company had a a fully tested AC drive train that could also power your house or sell back excess power to the utility grid. But we never heard about them, because GM didn't wanna.

In the midst of the Web20 semi-bubble of 2005-06, I wrapped up a six month contract at a Sillyclone Valley R&D lab, and took to the road to pitch a plan for a really innovative, user driven, mobile dispatch venture for independent automotive servicers. Thousands of potential Nextel subscribers were surveyed, all had agreed to pay a decent monthly fee, and a prototype had been in place for a while.

But, if the business plan or pitch didn't have the words "social network, video, or Facebook App", there was no getting past the gates of Sandhill road. They didn't wanna.

Now that we are on the threshold of what will surely be a blood bath of failed, ad-supported YAVSS and YASN ventures, in the midst of an IPO desert, will the equity come around to wanna?

Will they wanna invest in services that working people of the middle class will pay to use, rather than the chimera of free and ad supported services that are doomed?

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A business plan makes the rounds

In 2005, I left my full-time position as in-house integration analyst at a fairly successful Automotive Auction, where I created a Nextel-based, Fax-to-handset, web dispatched system used by our towing fleet, independent mobile glass repair guys, locksmiths. The system was very popular, and I thought that converting it to an open enrollment system would be a great venture.

I brought the idea to the owners of the auction, but they were technology risk averse; then I wrote my business plan / briefing, and went on the road to find an institutional investor, but I was doubtful that a lone wolf like myself would qualify for VC. Then I sought an internal position with a software or mobile services company to take me and the plan in-house with a business unit and budget allocated for this project specifically.

That one came real close - so close. I was offered jobs and contracts to just work for several folks, which I did on occasion, fruitfully - but never got the Plan funded (yet).

So here it is for all to see; maybe by opening it up, I can find a partner, investor, or just more work. There is nothing particularly proprietary about the technology, just the domain knowledge of how the "independent dispatch industry works", and my extensive surveys of the work-force that makes up the paying subscriber constituency. Oh, yes, I have also completed much architectural technology foundation stuff that is invaluable to a team of developers getting started.

As far as my ongoing market research - there is still no open portal for distributed, open dispatch services.

So, maybe you can work with me and do something with this business plan:

Obviously, we all have very strong ideas about how to qualify and fund a venture, so, here -  collaborate with me, or use it to line your smuggled amazon blue-fronted parrot's cage:

Here are the non-design documents explaining the venture's branding, external functionality, and market positioning:

Briefing 

Presentation Handout 

Mobile Comms Background Article

A Newer Presentation

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What happened to the ThruDispatch Articles??

Well, that deal lasted all of a few months - people are big takers! It's hard to be a believer. I still believe in ThruDispatch.

The materials on this blog referring to the ThruDispatch business venture have been removed pending a provisional agreement between myself and a limited partnership.

This is great news, as the ideas that underpin ThruDispatch have been pitched to a number of capital sources, without garnering the slightest interest. This provisional partnership validates the inherent worth of the concept of an independent mobile services portal, and the totally innovative, 'flow-through' automated dispatch work-flow model.

Going forward, I will be working with the new partners to perfect the intellectual property, create prototypes, and start the task of seeding initial metropolitan and suburban markets for the first ThruDispatch systems for towing, mobile lock, and automotive services.

This partnership will not completely preclude me from taking consulting work within my specialties of service industry work flow systems, and alternative strategic sector marketing to verticals.

I have many  quotes out to bid, and I will work at full capacity until ThruDispatch displaces the schedule. However, all of my consulting work that is accepted under future contract terms shall honor the schedule contained in each agreement.

 

Sacramento - the sacred place where no tech gets done.

Sacramento, the sacred, San Francisco, the profane. Or substitute Santa Clara, Mountain View, whatever.

Sacramento has few tech companies that you have heard of, anyway. That's because what goes in the valley, behind the funding, the side deals, the dirty deeds, is profane. Just like a David Lynch film title, town monikers such as Sunnyvale, conjure a veil of hidden evil. Sand Hill Road, envisions a den of vipers hiding in the obviously gritty substance.

The Bay Area will garner fame yet again for the redundant capital placed in YAVSS and YASN. Yet Another Video Sharing Site and Yet Another Social Network will be our legacy for this upcoming foul year of our lord 2008.

The vortex of financial woes in the larger economy, which thankfully shall not be repeated here, will extend inexorably toward the cherished technology forges of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area tech shops, crammed full of 'Silicon Valley Undertakers'; men and, increasingly women who have developed a serial reputation of raising, burning, and selling off half started technology properties, many of the last round, clones of YAVSS, and YASN.

So Sacramento may have an exalted name and no tech credentials, but the Silicon Valley is unholy altogether in it's capitalization practices of late.

It sometimes happens that vertical markets with proven business models in the old economy, primed to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies that have languished in consumer ventures, are slapped down but good by those who should know better. These smaller, saner markets deserve a hearing, but are often shut out by the noise of the YAVSS and YASN. The unholy gatekeepers: the VC partners. The blood of the valley will ultimately be on their hands by way of closing every avenue to some of the sanest blue-collar mobile ventures.

And, no, I'm not just speaking of ThruDispatch, my errant venture. I'm speaking of tales of woe gleaned from entrepreneurs with much better credentials and curriculum vitae than myself.

This article shall be extended when I cool down.

Techno Reality Dame Confidential

From the Series, 'Down and Out in Silicon Valley'.

(Names and locations changed to preserve the privacy of those involved).

After the last fraught meeting with the tech-slackers, I had to see Tabbatha again. She stood out as one with an understated elegance, showing no desire to tear down an idea merely as a knee jerk response.

Indeed, the response I have come to expect when presenting ThruDispatch was not a cool refusal, but a vehement castigation of the idea in its essence. These exchanges were often punctuated with an assault on my character, resume, acumen, and motives. You could almost certainly identify which coast the critique originated from - bile and personal attacks generally came from the Bay area, cool refusals and weak advice from the Yankees.

Tabbatha agreed to see me at her workplace conference room. She was a partner in a prominent design studio, and highly placed, at that. It made me wonder why she was hanging with the slacker programmers at that Mission District hole of an apartment? So I asked, "what gives, Tabbatha, you have a really prominent design job, are technically very savvy, and I see you now dressed in a very sharp and conservative getup. Hmmmm?", and I gestured at her designer business outfit.

Tabbatha launched into what must have been a well rote response, "Well, you should know that I am associated with those...boys...merely for the purpose of getting labor quickly leveraged for fast prototypes. That is the secret of nailing down corporate design deals - the first to slap a mock up into a client's hands will get the deal, all design issues being equal".

A Subordinated Debenture for the Venture Challenged

From the Series, 'Down and Out in Silicon Valley'.

(Names and locations changed to preserve the privacy of those involved).

I was daydreaming, as usual, at my desk in San Mateo. I rented a room in a small house with a nice garden tended by a non-antagonistic female room mate. My self employed ways didn't bother this stalwart member of the technology working class; Victoria worked as an HR / executive assistant at a tech venture in Palo Alto, which gave her regular hours, and gave me leave to scream and curse over the phone, at the walls, and to myself, as the muttering tended to rise in volume as the day wore on.

I could also have meetings at the house, and pretend that I owned it, thus feigning a normal life, i.e., that I was NOT broke, that I have NOT squandered 6 months of lucrative consulting income on the ThruDispatch venture with no progress or code assets to show for it, and finally, I had NOT wasted most of the last nine months (since my last paycheck) either pitching, trying to build a team, or trying to get consulting work. This was all a front; I was, as the title of the series suggests, down and out and selling  my toys and other assets. Thankfully, three months of very lucrative meat and potatoes work came swinging through via a recruiter in integrated manufacturing  - one of my vertical IT standard specialties.

In my work as a product strategy analyst, my fortunes can, and often do, change in a single phone call. But it's cold here in San Mateo, and my insistence at pushing ThruDispatch down the throat of the selfsame groups who assign value to temporal and ephemeral social media has not served me as well as I had hoped.

There are no warm feelings for the lone visionary, despite the best intentions of the self-styled Business Bootstrapping Blogger Brigade, their ministrations make my end-of-year that much more discouraging.

Back to my erstwhile daydream, more a flashback, for the event took place only six weeks ago:

(Harp Arpeggio....~~~~~)

Why did Arnaud Roland, the Senior Adviser of the Los Altos Technology Incubator, spend so much time trying to get a team of developers interested in ThruDispatch without a chance of recompense (it seemed at the time)? The mezzanine functional requirements of the system were, admittedly, much more complex than a typical bootstrap web startup. Was Roland just an enthusiastic dispatch work-flow groupie? Or, was there a connection with Hiryu Wattanabe, the father of errant  Hank, the troubled software engineer?

I knew that Mr. Nabe (his familiar nickname), was fabulously wealthy, that he had a son in desperate need of place and companion, and this loving dad of dads would spend whatever to deliver happiness to his son. I also knew he was contributing each year to programs tangentially connected to the business incubator programs and various Standford related institutions.

So, I mused, we have:

1) Hank (Hiroshi Watanabe), a troublesome fixture at the Los Altos incubator, ejected multiple times for being disruptive and abusive in a place where real business was trying to get done -

2) Arnaud Roland, possibly a part-time babysitter for Watanabe Sr. He would look the other way when Hank was caught with his bedroll in the lab.....but he couldn't play full-time social worker without risking his main mission -

3) Roland's strenuous efforts to fit my black-sheep venture into some hybrid team of young developers resembling the 'Dirty Dozen', or the cast of McHale's Navy.

(Harp Arpeggio....~~~~~)

Something was fishy.
 

A Father's Love Shall Not Be Leveraged

From the series, "Down and Out in Silicon Valley, the Chronicles of ThruDispatch". (Names and locations are changed to protect the privacy of the parties).

I was called to the palatial Atherton home of Hiryu Watanabe, father of Hiroshi (Hank Watanabe). A rich man beyond the dreams of even the Valley's moneyed, he retired from the board of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries after a distinguished career of 40 years. Estimated net worth: 800 Million.

We had spoken on the phone briefly about his troubled son; he spoke and I listened about the all too common meltdown that occurred when Hank got tied up in a software project. Hank's love was his poison. The father had been dealing with this since Hank started the downward spiral, shortly after gathering his doctorate from Standford.

I didn't quite know what to expect, or what the subject of our conversation would be. I halfway assumed that maybe, maybe Mr. Watanabe Senior had gone through Hank's things and found the ThruDispatch code. But, I had written it off already, and I didn't want to personally pursue it like a vulture; at any rate it was very preliminary and useless to me, for now. I was mystified at the invitation.

'Now, this is a nice house', I saw before me a modern, possibly Frank Lloyd Wright inspired or, more likely,  original edifice. Modern and oh so architectural in the extreme, homes like this in the 12 k sq. foot range must be worth at least 20 million in Atherton.

A young woman, very pretty and sure enough a native Japanese, came to the door in a blazer and name tag, which said, 'consular security'. Hmmm, have to file that one away for later. She showed me in and said in perfect though accented English, "Mr. 'Nabe, will come to be calling on you here now". Mr. Nabe - ok, a familiarity.

She told me to address him as, 'Mr. Nabe, or Shihan Watanabe', I can't be sure what she was requesting. As it turned out, I didn't have to do much talking at the meeting. There may have been, however ample opportunity for fainting.

I was led to a room deep in the Watanabe compound -  a sumptuous den that has no analogue to the rooms that I had frequented, either in youth or adulthood. Oy Vey: it was such a large room I didn't see my host nestled about the various accouterments. The escort directed me with a well manicured index finger and the polite introduction, "Nabe San, Mr. Wilensky". She got my name mostly right.   

Ejected from Business Incubator: Part Two: Working with a Congenial Genius

Continued from part 1. From the Series, "Down and Out in Silicon Valley" by,  Alan Wilensky

"Hiroshi?", I said in a rising, non-threatening voice. I wanted a combination Mr. Rogers and benevolent older brother tone. "How you doin', man, we really didn't have a chance to formally introduce ourselves, I'm Alan Wilensky, I am so sorry about getting involved at the incubator and getting you.....hospit...al...ized, er...ah...I mean...I didn't know who you..." I was sputtering.

Hiroshi chimed right in over me, "what you talking about". This was the first time I actually heard his speaking voice, which was a fully Americanized accent. Hiroshi was, as I later found out, of Japanese and American descent, and preferred being called, Hank. We are getting way ahead of the game, however.

"What involved, what hospital, what are you talkin' about man?", he was off to the races, although one can't actually blame the man if he remembered nothing of the incident!

(internal whisper to self: whoa, big fella, lets not let things spiral into incivility so soon and so blunderingly)

"You know", I said as I drew closer, a little, "with Claudia, that Thursday? You were crashed out in the Networking lab?". Where was this conversation going?

"huh..uh, yup. Crap man, I was just napping there 'cause I don't like my room at the group house, but...," he raked his hand through his longish hair and followed with, "..but I don't recall leaving....."....his voice trailed off in a suspended thought.

I needed to get the conversation back on track, so I gave him the only thing I had, my best Monty Python lines, "Well, what of that, Roight! Roight!". "To Business!", I punctuated.

"Claudia said that you needed a prototype, and you don't have much bread, and I don't care 'cause I'm not about the money", Hiroshi was on a roll, or on rye. Continuing, he said, "give me the rundown".

"And, call me, Hank", he had a story to tell, so lets let him tell it. "I was born here, I'm not Japanese, except on my dad's side, I don't speak the language, I don't like sushi,  my family is filthy rich, I get a 5k a month disbursement from a trust".

"Well, doggies", Jed Clampett's ghost exclaimed to me. Or should I say Buddy Ebson? "well, that's all great stuff, Hank, let me tell you about my messaging state architecture for virtual dispatching".

I subsequently gave Hank the once over for the ThruDispatch data model and key functions. By this time we had transitioned to my office, and he was considerably more settled and even quite bright and charming - for the moment.

Ejected from Business Incubator: Brilliant, Bipolar Hiroshi - Part One

From the Series, "Down and Out in Silicon Valley" by,  Alan Wilensky.

So, you want to start a small, services based mobile messaging venture to serve the independent automotive trades-people. Fine, you will need a J2ME client for the Nextel platform (90% of towing and auto trades are Nextel accounts with 1 or 2 phones). Then you need a server and portal architecture, etc.

I started all of this with an actual system that I built in Salem NH where the focus was a Fax to Nextel gateway and a Web dispatch console. What I needed was a new architecture for automated 'flow-through' dispatch. I didn't think my personal (dwindling) resources would be enough to bootstrap the venture (I should have  done so a year ago), so I went in search of capital.

Never mind being employed as a freelance analyst for product sector research. As someone who occasionally contracts for institutional investors -  I was unable to get traction on the dilution path. I had moved from Boston, working on the Peninsula for six months and venture campaigning for six months (wow, a year).

I'm a little worn out, I'll tell ya. What is it gonna take to get a sane venture off the ground? I need an enthusiastic programmer / engineer that believes in the business' potential, or one who is bored and needs a project to sink teeth into in order for us to get to functional prototype. Where oh where?

Back to the incubator to track down a guy I met briefly, but who seemed suited to my strategy: the brilliant, bi-polar, Hiroshi - the man who dreams in code.

Like everything else connected to the launch of ThruDispatch, this was to be somewhat of a fiasco. But dear reader, believe me, ThruDispatch is a good, solid idea that will foster a sustainable, Web-based business that shall truly serve its users with a real, not imagined, business oriented social networking service.

Read on:

Bedrock Needs, Social Network Fluff

This is a story of un-served and under served markets. This is also a tale of saturated  markets that also happen to be speculative in their very nature. Lately, Venture Capital has been flowing into a considerable number of ventures piloted by a dubious mix of characters. There is an oft heard adage quoted many times in the cannon of startup literature, "the team is more important than the product - rather a great team with a  'meh' product than a brilliant product with a 'meh' team. How can you argue with that?

But we are seeing a flood of money being poured into ventures that, in all honesty, can't be called serious. If it was merely the duplication of existing and unproven models, then you might argue that the cadre of privileged VC fund partners who are responsible for the Pilate-like 'thumbs-up-down", then maybe the funds are just playing the odds. They feel the need to play in the space, and dare not be left out of the madness.

Obviously, I wasted much time as a lone wolf trying to pitch ThruDispatch to these funds; I'm not even sure I want to be the CEO, CFO, CTO amalgam that the grant of such benevolent dilution confers.

But again, what can you say when the attributes of a real, recession-proof, service-based venture is proffered and rejected so...summarily. Here we have an under served market, a real business, even a modest one, that is based on real, preexisting client constituency who has been well surveyed and who are eager to pay subscriber fees to use such a system.

  It must be ....me? Fine. No academic credentials, bootstrap career through the trades, and now, very modestly self-employed. I have a few nice recommendations and one or two marquee clients. Im not VC material.

And as of now, I don't want it anymore. They don't want me, I don't want them. Lesson learned.

So if it only took me since 2005 to learn this, and there is still absolutely no competition in the hosted mobile dispatch for independent automotive services space?

I will persevere by seeking partners in the conventional mobile workforce management space, and keep trying to find a small development team that might take this on the cuff for equity, while I work the marketing and field build-out.