Southeast VC

North Carolina Venture Capital 2007 Highlights

CED did a nice job putting together a 4 page North Carolina Venture Report on 2007. I'll just point to it here, but I will point out some interesting facts:

• NC-based companies raised $909m in 2007. This positions NC as #7 when stacked up against other states and this is NC's highest ranking ever. It represents a 72% increase over 2006.
• Triangle-based companies raised 87.5% of the venture capital in NC.
• Our firm is part of 3 of the top 6 companies that secured VC in 2007 - Motricity, ChannelAdvisor and Batanga.

Also, this report contains a list of all the VCs that have invested in NC-based companies. This is a good "prospect list" for NC-based entrepreneurs that may want to raise money this year.

Facebook Keynote Includes Key Stats and E-Commerce Plans

I attended ChannelAdvisor Catalyst over the last few days in Pinehurst, NC. 500 people attended and listened to executives from eBay, Google, Amazon.com, Facebook, Nike and Paypal. It also included a lot of valuable networking and a panel from leading stock analysts.

I always enjoy re-connecting with some of ChannelAdvisor's customers as well as meeting new ones. It was hard to believe the slowdown in e-commerce given the strong growth in attendance over 2007 and the bullish comments made by so many internet retailers.

A keynote I particularly enjoyed was the one yesterday by Ben Ling, Director of Platform Product Marketing at Facebook. As most of you may know, I am a pretty avid Facebook user with 3 of our companies having apps on FB and some of them have multiple apps.

Anyway, here are some notes I took from Ben's talk and I thought I'd share them here:

- Facebook views shopping as a social experience and they think more and more experiences online will be social.

- Facebook's goal is to create the ability to share information more effectively.

- Some general stats I noted during his talk:

• Facebook now has 71 million users with 200k new users a day;
• 50% of these users return daily
• geographic breakdown 1/3 of their users are in the US, 1/3 in Europe and 12% in Canada.
• 1/2 of their users are not college students
• they expect a trillion page views in 2008
• They have over 300k applications and they have the #1 photo application on the web and the #1 event application on the web as well
• Facebook has 500 employees including 100 engineers

Facebook will be releasing general e-commerce capabilities towards the end of 2008. They will allow acceptance of credit card payments and passwords will be stored for other purchases on FB. Ben mentioned they will be partnering to make all of this happen. It will be interesting to track this and watch as Facebook finds ways to monetize the success of the strong and rapidly growing user base.

UPDATE: Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor posted a good summary of Catalyst here.

Startups247.com Launched by CED

CED announced this week the official launch of Startups24/7, their new on demand resource for entrepreneurs. The content on the site is updated regularly and based partly on CED's conferences, forums, roundtables and workshops. It includes content like videos and presentations.

I have committed some time to Startups24/7 and am moderating the "Raising Capital" section. The site gives entrepreneurs the ability to easily ask questions, share experiences and get answers from experts and other leading entrepreneurs.

Although it was built for CED members, I really think this will emerge as a great resource for entrepreneurs everywhere. Access is $14.95/month or $119.95/year, but is free to all CED members.

Q4 and 2007 National & Regional VC Highlights

I was in Charlotte yesterday and missed yesterday's PWC Shaking the MoneyTree quarterly breakfast, but thanks to Laura Troy at PWC, I attached the presentation Download pwc_q4_2007_highlights.ppt . I just went through it and here are some interesting stats:

• The amount of venture capital invested in the US in 2007 was the highest in 6 years
• Looking at the Southeast, $1.86 billion was invested in Southeast-based companies, that represents a 46.4% jump over 2006.
• North Carolina ranked #5 in Q4 and #7 for the year when looking at states that attracted the most venture capital.

Capital Connections Highlights Atlanta Trip

David & I will be in Atlanta over the next 2 days wrapping our trip around Capital Connections. If you haven't heard of it before, this is the regular free networking event that our friends Michael Blake and Scott Burkett put together. The goal is very simple: to put Southeast-based entrepreneurs together with active investors.

At last count, 175 entrepreneurs are attending representing 120 companies. Total count tomorrow should be closer to 250 which includes investors, volunteers and sponsors. Scott also shared with me that 60% of the entrepreneurs that are attending are attending Capital Connections for the first time, while 28% of the investors are also "new."

If you are attending and want to make sure we connect while we are there, feel free to email me. I'll have my blackberry with me.

Calling All Entrepreneurs - Charlotte

Over the last 9 months, Southern Capitol Ventures has held Calling All Entrepreneurs in RTP (twice), Atlanta and in Reston, VA. The turnout has always been great and we have enjoyed meeting so many new entrepreneurs in the process.

Next, on February 13, thanks to help from Terry Cox from BIG, we will be holding Calling All Entrepreneurs in Charlotte, NC.

The goal is to give ANY entrepreneur that fits into one of these industries (software, e-commerce, digital media, healthcare IT or wireless) the opportunity to meet with us for 15 minutes and to be heard. The entrepreneur can share their idea or company with us and get instant feedback. Just like past formats, we promise that no one will get screened out.

For additional background the media has followed Calling All Entrepreneurs for a while too. Here is a story about it. Here is another.

Anyway, if you'd like to meet with us on February 13 and are in Charlotte or close by to Charlotte, email me. I will follow up with you to let you know the location and email you some times that morning that are still available.

Chris Klaus, founder of ISS and current CEO of Kaneva offers Prediction for 2008

I asked 4 entrepreneurs to provide their tech predictions for 2008. Chris Klaus, founder and former CTO of ISS is the 4th and final one that I will post here. ISS sold to IBM back in '06 for $1.3 billion and now Chris is the CEO of Kaneva.

Chris, thanks for taking the time.

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Just as web browsers and web sites were in 1994, 3D browsers and virtual worlds are now manifesting as a viable platform for explosive growth. 

Along with the convergence of high speed Internet, graphics cards, personal avatars and a deep desire for people to connect face-to-face on the Internet, virtual worlds will provide the nexus of bringing all those elements together.

Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist, Shares Predictions for '08

This is the 3rd in a series of predictions for '08 from entrepreneurs. I asked Craig Newmark, founder of the wildly popular site Craigslist to provide his input for '08. Thanks Craig.

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Ordinary people are starting to use the Net to create grassroots movements in ways in ways that will change the nature of society and government.

There have always been many people of good who will have some clue regarding positive change. However, there has never been a medium which allows a lot of people to organize in large numbers, until the widespread use of the Net.

We're now seeing that happen, with power flowing from very small groups of privileged people to much larger groups. In politics, the Dean campaign got that going and now we're seeing lots of participation in efforts like those of Ron Paul and Barack Obama. On Wikipedia, we're seeing that ordinary people with voice and vision who are writing the history of our times. People in Palestine and Israel are uniting, in large numbers, at OneVoiceMovement.org to tell their leaders to make a deal.

One counter trend has traditionally damaged grassroots efforts, which we're seeing on the Net. That is, so called "front groups" pretend to be grassroots efforts but are actually run by shady politicians or corporations. (This is documented elsewhere.) However, investigating reporters, both professional and citizen, are now exposing such groups and neutralizing their effectiveness.

I think we're seeing massive grassroots-driven change this year, unlike anything in history.

Southeast Venture Conference - Discount Code for SoutheastVC Readers

I will continue with the '08 predictions next week. ....I just wanted to remind everyone that the Southeast Venture Conference is next month, which will be held Feb 27 & 28 at the Ritz in Tysons Corner, Virginia. Speakers include Jim Steele, president of Salesforce.com, Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and John Sculley, former CEO of Apple.

The folks at the SEVC just sent me a discount code to give out to SoutheastVC readers. Thanks Scott and Eric! Use this code SCV100 when you register and that will save you $100 off.

Hope to see you there!

Adam Reyer, XM Radio - 2008 Predictions

Thanks to Adam Reyer, SVP of Business Develpment at XM Radio for giving me a couple of his digital media predictions for 2008 and beyond. I will continue with a couple of additional predictions from others over the next week.

1. Internet video on TV finally makes headway

Now that home networks and HDTVs are commonplace in the living room, people are actually going to start watching internet video on the big screen. The driving factors will be:

• Content: It isn't bad watching, say, Abbott & Costello's "Who's on First" routine - or, virtually any other great scene from TV or movie history when you're in lean back/TV mode - and wait until YouTube has a good 8' UI!
• CyberSecurity: For those of us with kids, the thought process will go something like this: "...we need a PC for the kids to use; hmmm...all the cyber security experts at our kids' schools tell us that problems don't occur if the PC is located in the common area of the home vs. tucked away in the home office; wow, those small powerful multimedia PCs (incl. Macs) are pretty cheap...wait, that's because they're priced without monitors...oh, I get it, I'm supposed to hook it up to that HDTV I just bought...bingo."

2. Placeshifting becomes the norm

A proliferation in free applications that enable you to access your photos, music and videos remotely over the wired and wireless Internet (e.g. Orb Networks, Simplify Networks), combined with the demand for sharing such media via social networks and other means, will get people to see placeshifting as a free God-given right, as opposed to some kind of magic. Unfortunately, the outlook is not as bright for the business models of the enabling application providers.

3. Social networking fragmentation

New vertical/niche social networks will take hold by leveraging content and widgets from established vertical/community sites and the social networking toolset.