Calling Angels: New Mobile Startup

I met today with a new startup in the mobile space that I would all-but-guarantee is going to be acquired by either a hardware OEM or major mobile competitor. The company hasn’t officially launched so I can’t identify who it is. Sorry; I realize this is kind of like Hotwire with hotel rooms. 🙂

I was impressed by a number of features that the company’s app offer and there’s broad mainstream mobile user appeal there too.

It’s the kind of thing that isn’t just another app; it rises above the noise because of some of the unique features it offers. The company is formally launching soon, first on Android and then on the iPhone. There’s potential global reach here. And there isn’t anything exactly like it — that I’m aware of.

There’s some roughness still around some of the edges, but the team behind the company has multiple successful exits and so on (you know).

They’ve raised a seed round of angel money and are looking for a bit more. If you’re interested in an introduction just email me and I’ll do an intro. There’s nothing at stake for me financially; I don’t get any bounty or deal from this.

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Platial Shut-Down Means Nada for Local

Platial was one of the early mapping sites that allowed individuals to create personal maps, before Google MyMaps and Bing Maps “collections.” It launched in the heady period of early “mashups” along with a number of others doing similar things. The site is now winding down, having run out of money “18 months ago,” according to an interview in GigaOm with former CEO Di-Ann Eisner.

The interview semi-rhetorically asks: “what is means for geo” and other location-oriented startups. The short answer is: while investors have been spooked local is only gaining importance as mobile becomes an increasing force in consumer decision-making.

Platial itself never really had a business model. One could sort of generically say “advertising” but that was an area the company neglected for quite some time. Eventually a widget distribution strategy was developed, but there was limited scale. In GigaOm, Eisner says that local advertising didn’t materialize as fast as the company thought it would:

I’m not saying we didn’t have our own executional issues, but we were pretty well in front. We all assumed that the location-based advertising market would heat up a lot faster than it has. We’ve worked with all of them over the years: ReachLocal, AT&T/Ingenio. Advertisers are still thinking that within a city means location-targeted, so all of the benefits we were providing around a specific location were not very real.

The truth is that it’s always been hard for small startups to succeed in local given the “chicken and egg problem.” You have to build both sides of the business to gain traction. And if there are larger competitors (e.g., Google) it’s especially difficult to succeed on the consumer side. Google Maps has been so successful and had so much investment it was all-but impossible for Platial to think it could survive. It would have needed to change its model and set a new course.

Some things have improved since the heyday of “mashups.” There are now local ad networks (beyond AdSense) that are feeding ads to smaller sites: Citysearch/CityGrid, V-Enable and more to come. So the local advertising infrastructure has matured since Platial launched.

Paradoxically, just at the time that local is really becoming important — it’s always been important but most haven’t been able to see that clearly — investors are shying away. “We’ve already placed our local bets,” said one VC recently in deciding against taking a pitch from a startup that has decided not to continue.

Local will remain important for as long as there are people shopping in physical stores and there are small businesses that service customers close to home. It’s just a question of who has the fortitude, patience and funding to succeed.

WebVisible Closes $20M ‘C’ Round

WebVisible has just closed another financing round of $20 million, “led by Focus Ventures and Adams Street Partners. Existing investors Redpoint Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures also participated.”

The company will use the money for additional R&D and to grow its direct sales force. I spoke with CEO Kirsten Mangers this weekend and she said that the direct sales channel efforts are being conducted in the white spaces where its partner sales channels (e.g., AT&T) are not operating. WebVisible has a presence in Europe as well. 

The “big three” companies in the “local SEM” space, which is rapidly evolving beyond SEM alone, are ReachLocal, Yodle and WebVisible. WebVisible is really the incumbent in many ways, having been in the market the longest (roughly since 2002). There are many (emphasis on many) other companies of course that are either selling directly to SMBs or operating as platforms or service providers to support existing local sales channels (e.g., Marchex, Kenshoo, ClickFuel, Clickable). 

Indeed this intensifying competition makes for confusion and “noise.” See my earlier post: SMB Market Getting ‘Noisier’ by the Day

Mangers said she considered the various major players to be engaged in a “land grab” right now. That led directly to a conversation about churn, the vexing and persistent problem for the local interactive industry. Nobody reveals their numbers directly and everyone says “we’re better than the average.” But the industry sees 90%+ churn on an annualized basis, not all of which can be attributed to product dissatisfaction. But it’s ugly. 

Mangers and I discussed, as a hypothetical matter, that after ReachLocal goes public the company will need to maintain retention levels that are acceptable. (Reach itself says it has churn levels significantly below others.) Top-line growth will be the focus for investors for a little while but then they will shift toward retention. Out of necessity the churn issue will have to be addressed. 

As the WebVisible press release says, “Local interactive is the emerging market right now . . .”  Indeed, everyone’s buzzing about local because of mobile LBS and the shift of local ad spending to digital. Yet there’s resistance to investing in local startups even as the market is hitting its stride. VCs have been “burned” time and again by local investments because they failed to appreciate the difficultly on the advertiser side or had time horizons that were too aggressive. 

But the market is certainly hot and will continue to be for some time. Why? Because consumers will continue to consult digital media (PC and mobile) for buying advice before spending money in local markets, offline. Small businesses and large brands that sell locally will continue to need to do a better job of getting in front of those consumers to influence those decisions. 

Folks, this is what the Internet is about: influencing offline buying decisions.

Yelp to Gain $50 Million Round?

TechCrunch is reporting that Yelp will soon announce a new funding round of roughly $50 million. I had heard something like this during the Google-Yelp acquisition talks: that an “alternative” to the acquisition would be Yelp raising a “Zynga-like” funding round.

Let’s assume it’s an accurate report. What might that fund?

It might fund some employee buyouts/payouts, as the TC report suggests. But that’s not especially interesting, except to the employees getting the money.

It could fund further European or potentially Asian expansion. It could also fund an increase in the sales force, now standing at roughly 200 reps. It might fund a small acquisition or two.

There’s also the possibility that some money might be used for advertising to consumers or outreach to SMBs in some way other than sales.

If you were the Yelp board/management how would you spend the money, especially now that Google is coming after you with improved mobile offerings, maps everywhere and Place Pages?

Related: Inc. magazine provides a sprawling profile of Yelp. There are some revenue estimates and a few anecdotes that are interesting but there’s not much here that you don’t already know.

IPOs a Comin in 2010?

In the post “Yelp turned down Google” chatter the word is the company is headed for IPO city. Here’s Business Insider:

Why would Yelp’s investors allow Jeremy to turn down a $550 million deal when the company’s revenues are only in the tens of millions of dollars?

But our source tells us investors are the ones most opposed to selling.

They speculate that Microsoft inquired but also was rebuffed and that a deal with Google could still happen.

I could be way off, but I think running Yelp as a public company would be tough. But as a public company Yelp would change out of necessity I suppose.

The board would probably want a more Wall-Street-Friendly CEO and the company would need to find a strategy to grow revenues substantially and keep them growing; it would need to turn into a version of ReachLocal in essence.

The Yelp brand is very strong and they’ve built a terrific entity. But I probably would have taken the money.

When Money’s on the Table, Take It

TechCrunch is reporting that Friendster sold not for $100 (the rumor) but something less than $23 million:

The total purchase price paid was $39.5 million. But lots of stuff was deducted, totalling $13 million and change . . . The total to shareholders after the deductions? About $26.4 million. And $3.8 million of that is being put into escrow.

The site raised just over $45 million in four funding rounds. It famously turned down an early $30 million offer from Google and apparently there were some $100 million-plus offers last year that were declined.

This episode should be a lesson to “take the money.”

Spot Runner is another good example. There were/are many rumors and hearsay information about big Internet company X and search engine Y offering very big money for the company, which was declined because of a) too much investor money in and b) inflated expectations about what the company was worth or would eventually sell for.

There’s also Aardvark, which was rumored to be evaluating a sizable offer from Google. Who knows if that’s true but if it is and the company declines, it could later regret the move. I understand the concern about not realizing the startup’s potential or the founder’s original vision. The DodgeBall acquisition by Google is a good example of a startup that languished after an acquisition. There are also many such examples at Yahoo, where the startup was later shuttered and given only minimal attention after the acquisition.

Yet it’s very hard to actually build a business online with real revenues; only a few can. Others have to hope they’re incorporated into a larger entity.

So unless taking the offer represents a breach of fiduciary duty to shareholders, company executives are better off taking the money “on the table.”

Groupon Raises a Whopping $30M

Local deals and coupon (er, “social commerce”) purveyor Groupon announced that it had raised $30 million:

Groupon, the social commerce service that has saved consumers in cities across America more than $36 million since its launch 12 months ago, has raised a $30 million round of capital led by Accel Partners with participation from Groupon’s initial investor, New Enterprise Associates. The financing will be used to accelerate Groupon’s customer acquisition, expand into new geographies and further develop its technology.

Groupon leverages group buying and social media to provide its millions of customers big discounts on the best local businesses in major cities such as Chicago, Boston, New York City, San Francisco, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. To date, customers have purchased over 800,000 Groupons on deals ranging from spa treatments and golf outings to fine dining and skydiving.

Daily deals are delivered via email. I get them and mostly just delete because of lack of relevance (to my interests and lifestyle). Obviously, however, people love deals and email marketing remains quite effective. Daily Candy, a similar city-specific daily email newsletter, was sold last year for $125 million to Comcast.

Separately Coupons.com reported — it offers mostly grocery coupons with some fast food — the top coupon categories of 2009:

2009 Top Coupon Categories

1. Ready-to-Eat Cereal
2. Yogurt
3. Sweet Snacks
4. Refrigerated Dough
5. Salty Snacks
6. QSR/Casual Dining
7. Nutritional Snacks
8. Entertainment
9. Condiments
10. Pizza

My favorite categories on this list: Refrigerated Dough and Salty Snacks.

8Coupons: the Coupon Site That Could

I met briefly last week with 8Coupons, which is based in NY. The very small company began life exclusively as a mobile platform for coupon distribution, doing direct sales to local businesses. Talk about hard: selling local SMBs on mobile couponing. (In past surveys I conducted with Opus Research, about 10% of SMBs said they were using mobile as a marketing platform; but I think that number is high.)

Over the course of the past couple years, 8Coupons has learned its lessons and is now using mobile simply as one distribution channel among others. The site’s also still focused on small businesses and local deals, but not as focused on selling ads directly to them. It’s also pursuing a range of relationships with third parties that will enable it to gain coupons and deals content without relying upon direct local sales.

They told me that the site is allowing users to post deals (like RetailMeNot), as well as SMBs directly — anyone can post a deal. Interestingly they said that they see NY area merchants sometimes posting coupons and linking back to MerchantCircle pages where those coupons were created. I was also told that they see roughly 22% redemption on average for their signature “Ocho Loco” coupon deals.

I’m always pleased when I see entrepreneurs able to make course corrections and finding success. I was somewhat skeptical of the model when I first heard about it last year:

Another thing that prompted me to write this was a conversation with a coupon startup in the NY area called 8coupons.com. The site is trying to sell coupons to local SMBs — lots of heavy lifting there . . .

But it seems that they’re doing well in their home market of New York, and they’ll be expanding over time (they’re in other markets but without the deals density of NY). There’s a new site coming and some other interesting developments as well. These guys are in a very crowded space but they’re forging ahead. They’re self-funded, so far. As they gain more visibility they’ll get more VCs coming out of the woodwork to offer them investment deals (each time they appear in the NY Times, for example [2-3 times to date] they get a call).

Yext Scores a $25M Round of Funding

I guess presenting at the recent TechCrunch conference was a big win for Yext, to the tune of $25 million. Reportedly the money will be used to hire sales people and expand the range of categories that Yext is going after. Any direct sales effort to the SMB market is dicey but Yext claimed at the show to be on track for $20 million in revenue this year.

It’s not entirely clear to me how they’ve reached that revenue level without a brand and much visibility in the market, but I’ll find out.

Also, here’s another seemingly immutable principle of the VC culture on display: if you’re already succeeding there’s plenty of money to take you to the “next level” — or should I say “yext level.”

Is Twitter Worth $1 Billion?

After its $100 million investment by T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and Insight Venture Partners, Twitter will reportedly be valued at $1 billion. I’ve gone from Twitter detractor and critic to Twitter fan. But this seems like a really big number.

Is Twitter worth $1 billion? What do you think?

Back in February, Twitter was saying that it didn’t need more money and only took a $35 million round when it was approached by investors. Prior to the new $100 million Twitter had raised a total of $55 million in three rounds.

Now the pressure is on to generate revenues and/or find a buyer who will pay several billion for the site (though Twitter wants to remain independent). According to Google’s Ad Planner, Twitter has 67 million users globally. Compete shows almost 24 million users in the US as of August.

PaidContent summarizes a study that reflects Twitter users are twice as likely to “engage” with brands than users of other social networks:

Interpret surveyed over 9,200 internet users in August, finding that roughly 24 percent of the respondents that used Twitter, reviewed or rated products online; just 12 percent of people that used other social nets—but not Twitter—said the same. Twitter users were also more likely to visit company profiles (20 percent) than non-Twitter users (11 percent), and twice as likely to click on ads or sponsored links (20 percent vs. 9 percent).

Clearly Twitter is valuable. But did it need to raise $100 million more to succeed? Or did it have to because Facebook is trying to co-opt its features and supplant it among users? What do you think?

What Were Your Favorite TC50 Locals?

Local statup RedBeacon won the big prize at TechCrunch50 but there were other local startups or startups with some location element there:

• CitySourced
• Yext
• Clixtr
• Localbacon
• refmob
• Mota
• Theswop

For those that were there or watched the video online . . .  What was your favorite and why?

Or more generally, beyond local, which startup did you think was most promising. From among those I’ve seen (and I haven’t seen all the presentations), for me it’s Clicker.

eBay Selling Skype to Investors: A Bad Move?

According to the NY Times, eBay is set to announce the sale of Skype to private investors let by former Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen. Reportedly eBay wants approximately $2 billion for Skype, having written down the value of the investment. Originally the company was acquired almost four years ago this month for nearly $3 billion in cash and other consideration.

At the time of the acquisition then eBay CEO Meg Whitman said the following:

“Communications is at the heart of ecommerce and community,” said Meg Whitman, President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay. “By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications, we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net.”

There were all sorts of visions of PPCall for local merchants as well. In theory it was a great fit but eBay couldn’t make the marriage work. Now, at a time when Skype seems to be building momentum online and in mobile, eBay is unloading it.

Do you think it’s a good move to get rid of the company now — or a boneheaded one?

___

Update: eBay signs agreement to sell Skype for $2.75 billion:

The buyer, who will control an approximately 65 percent stake, is an investor group led by Silver Lake and includes Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board. eBay is expected to receive approximately $1.9 billion in cash upon the completion of the sale and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million. The company will retain an approximately 35 percent equity investment in Skype. The transaction, which is not subject to a financing condition, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2009.

HelpHive Aims to be ‘Yelp for Home Services’

That’s not their description, it’s mine. But it captures the way in which the new home services vertical is trying to provide more depth and community tools to both local consumers and vendors.

Beyond the yellow pages, Angie’s List, Kudzu, InsiderPages and Yelp itself (among still others), there is ServiceMagic, the 900 pound gorilla in the home improvement/repair segment. However the user experience at ServiceMagic leaves a fair amount to be desired.Trulia and Zillow are also adjacent to this segment and could easily try to enter it. Zillow has taken some baby steps in that direction and can be expected to eventually do something more complete.

More immediately, there have also been two recent site launches that I’m aware of: ServiceLive (from Sears) and LocalPrice, which is in Atlanta only. And now HelpHive:

HelpHive founders Dave Richards and Karim Meghji are trying to bring much more depth and content to the user experience than they feel currently exists on other sites (though this idea exists among other publishers/entrepreneurs in the segment as well). Here’s their story and philosophy. At launch, the company has “6,500 home services businesses covering more than 45 categories.” Wisely they’re focused on a single market for the time being but will eventually roll out to other cities.

In addition to trying to generate more content for users, Richards and Meghji have created a wide range of tools for businesses that allow them to provide lots of detail about their work and projects, as well as specify how they should be contacted. Indeed, they believe a HelpHive presence would/could/should be a viable substitute for a website for those vendors/contractors that don’t have them or that have awkward or under-performing sites.

Most interesting to me about the business tools is a message center that allows consumers and businesses to communicate through the site using voice. (Startup Search to Phone does something similar but in a somewhat different context.). Here’s a screenshot of the business-facing message center:

Finally, HelpHive seeks to tap social media to extend distribution and reach. Here’s the site’s Facebook fan page:

Clearly HelpHive is a smartly designed site and its founders are very thoughtful about the space. It’s just that the segment is very crowded. Yet, curiously, there really are no consumer “brands” per se among the home services specific sites — save perhaps Angie’s List, which requires a consumer subscription. (Angie’s List is much broader now than home services, but that’s still the primary association.)

If you were a VC and saw a deck that pitched HelpHive and made some of the claims the founders are making, would you invest?

Oodle Traffic Up, Raises More Cash

Oodle announced what may be its fourth round of funding: $5.6 million from existing funders Greylock Partners, JAFCO Ventures and Redpoint Ventures.

Oodle also said that it has crossed the 10 million monthly uniques traffic threshold.

Oodle has created an impressive network of partners, which include Walmart, MySpace and Facebook. The company has positioned itself in some respects as the anti-Craigslist, seeking to improve upon or compensate for what it perceives to be the deficiencies in Craigslist.

I also don’t believe Oodle has any competitors at its level of scale among “horizontal” sites (except, when I first posted yesterday I competely forgot about eBay’s Kijiji):

This chart is undoubtedly inaccurate but shows trends directionally.

Yodle Gets More Funding, SMBs Still Elusive

Yodle announced a $10 million C round this morning (funding details covered on Techmeme and related articles). Yodle has a technology platform but is positioned more as a direct sales channel, like ReachLocal. Marchex and WebVisible are local SEM platforms that offer fulfillment and management for other sales channels (i.e., YP, newspapers).

Yodle CEO Court Cunningham is one of the most forthcoming of the executives in this segment. He had previously told me that he thought the company was on track to be profitable by Q1 2009 but the economy has set that back apparently. TechCrunch reports that the company will be profitable “within six months.” It also says the company has roughly 5,000 advertisers.

Five thousand is some kind of magic number it would appear: StepUp had about 5k advertisers when it sold to Intuit and Merchant Circle said previously it had around 5K advertisers. However ReachLocal had roughly 12K advertisers, as of Q3 last year. By contrast, YP publishers have hundreds of thousands of SMB advertisers. Google may also.

None of the SMB/local search marketing firms has broken out of the pack, partly because no one has done much visible marketing for themselves — not even YouTube videos.

Over at SEL I’ve written up some data from WebVisible-Nielsen on the gap between online consumer behavior and SMB ad spending. This is something I’ve written about many times in the past, but the data do a nice job of showcasing that gap.

Specifically: 26% of SMB survey respondents have used paid search while 82% of consumers use search engines (the #1 method) to find local businesses.

Consumer usage trends over the past two years

Source: Nielsen-WebVisible (1/08), n=4,000

Yet More Money for Angie: $7M

I got this this morning in email:

Angie’s List announced today that it has welcomed another new investor to its privately held organization.

The Chicago-based Prism Mezzanine Fund invested $6 million in subordinated debt funding, as well as $1 million in equity investment, in the nation’s leading source for local service provider ratings.

Angie’s List earlier this year announced investments from Boston-based Battery Ventures ($35 million) and Menlo Park-based Lighthouse Capital Partners ($18 million). Bill Harlan, a partner at Prism, attributed his firm’s interest in Angie’s List to the company’s growth potential.

Angie’s List Gets $18 Million More

Here’s an interesting item, which many of you may have already seen:

Angie’s List, a provider of consumer reviews of local services, announced on Tuesday that it has received an $18 million venture debt investment from Lighthouse Capital Partners.

In April of this year the company got $35 million from Battery Ventures. The stated reasons for the additional funds are “continued growth, including an international expansion.”

The legendary Angie herself is making an appearance, I believe, at the Kelsey show in Santa Clara this week.

CityVoter Closes Second Round

CityVoter closed a second round of funding for $2.6 million. It was announced today:

CityVoter.com today announced it has closed a second round of funding for $2.6 million. Second round primary investors include Allen & Company and Series A investors Dace Ventures. The company welcomes Curt Viebranz, former CEO of Tacoda, Bradley Wechsler, co-CEO of IMAX, and media investor Vivi Nevo to its advisory board.

CityVoter has been chugging along, adding partners. Recently the site added Hearst’s SF Chronicle as a partner. CityVoter uses voting to generate top lists rather than asking users to write extended narrative reviews:

But where’s that iPhone app?

Looking for ‘Plan B’

One of the striking things to me about Internet entrepreneurs and VCs is that almost no one is seeking to create long-term value or build businesses that will be sustainable and be around in a decade. Many will deny this but if you look around, the Craigslists of the Internet are anomalous.

Most Internet entrepreneurs and their funders are identical to real-estate speculators — I don’t entirely blame them given how many people have made money in this way. They make something look impressive in the shortest amount of time in the hope that there will be a bidding war and they’ll get 5X to 10X (or more) the original money invested. In other words they’re flipping the business in the same way that people (used to) flip houses during the real estate bubble.

A few companies go public, but most do not or cannot. A few companies run out of money and are forced to sell. And, increasingly, a few just run out of money.

Whenever I encounter an entrepreneur who is seeking to build a business or is passionate about an idea and trying to bring it to life — without regard for whether it will be bought — I’m impressed because a long-term view of the market is both rare and exactly what’s needed to make many of these ideas succeed.

Such “sober” talk surfaced after the first dot-com bubble burst in 2001 but vanished a few years ago as VC money flooded back into startups and M&A activity started to pick up. This time it was often fueled by competition among a handful of big Internet companies — Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, AOL, News Corp. and a few other traditional media entities — seeking to out-do one another with new features/tools or fearful that an arch-rival would get the prize and not them.

But what happens when you try and sell but can’t? Like a house you have to lower the price. But many VCs/entrepreneurs resist this idea.

Digg may be an interesting case-in-point. Google was reportedly in the hunt to buy Digg for around $200 million and was very close, according to rumors. However, TechCrunch now says that Google has walked away from the deal. TechCrunch speculates that the company will just raise another round and keep going.

But my guess is that the founders were hoping for a big, near-term payday and are tired of running the company. I don’t personally know any of them. But I can imagine the expectations of selling had been growing and, psychologically, it’s very hard to return to business as usual once you think you’re done.

Digg probably never saw itself as a sustainable long-term business. It probably saw itself as a “cool” opportunity filling something of a hole online. Ultimately (say 3 to 5 years) everyone probably expected the company to be picked up by either an Internet heavyweight or a traditional media company. That may still happen.

But what if they now need to think about being there 10 more years and calibrating the cost structure to a sustainable revenue model? It requires a big psychological shift that may even require new leadership because it’s just too hard for the current management to make. I’m just guessing about all this of course.

Stepping back, it strikes me that there’s something quite “dysfunctional” going on in the way that many entrepreneurs and funders think about building online businesses. Historically people in the real world who start businesses have not gone in with the attitude: in three years someone will buy me and I’ll never work again or maybe I’ll go start another business that will be acquired in another three years.

Maybe this recession and another “correction” in the Internet market will reshape attitudes. But as long as there is money to fund half-baked ideas and companies built around needs that don’t yet exist, I’m not so sure.

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Related: Silicon Alley Insider dismisses Digg as a business. I actually think there’s an interesting business as a “recommendations engine,” for products and services, which the company launched but hasn’t yet developed.

Trulia Gets $15 Million More

On a difficult day for non-iPhone announcements, Tulia announced that it had secured $15 million more in funding. From the release:

Trulia will use this round of funding to further its development of new products and services for homebuyers, agents, brokers and advertisers and to expand their advertising services for the recently launched Trulia Advertising Network and self service offering, Trulia Pro. Trulia.com has raised a total of $33M in Venture Capital.

Eventually Trulia will have an iPhone app, as will Zillow. Properazzi announced its iPhone application today:

According to Hitwise, here are the top US real estate destinations for May: