David Crow

Connector of dots. Maker of lines. Rider of slopes.

Microsoft

Independent’s Day

by

Microsoft is hostingxna an free evening event at Fed Hall at UWaterloo talking about gaming, XBox Live Community Games, and entrepreneurship. The event is looking is scheduled to have a series of short presentations about how to build a gaming studio. It will feature folks from Microsoft, Frozen North, Infusion Development, and KPMG.

XNA Community GamesMicrosoft has been criticised about the need for a App Store for Windows Mobile (it’s coming). While the story on mobile is emerging, the story for gaming launched in November 2008. Xbox Live Community Games and XNA Creators Club allow designers and developers to create, share, and play games created by others. The FAQ has details about who can submit games and how you can make money. There is additional support for students and startups in getting access to the tools. Students can full access to developer tools at DreamSpark: Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition, SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition and XNA Game Studio 3.0. Startups can join BizSpark and gain access to MSDN Premium for almost free (it’s a $100 after 3 years or an exit event). If you are a startup, there are additional benefits in the BizSpark program including access to Network Partners like nGen – Niagara Interactive Media Generator, Communitech and others across Canada that can help support your business development and growth. You don’t need to be in BizSpark to access the services of these groups and others. And there are other fantastic resources like York Technology Association, MaRS, Interactive Ontario, and others.

Kudo One of the most exciting tools that will be release in the Spring is Kodu (formerly Boku) from Microsoft Research. Kodu is programming environment and language designed for kids. The programming environment runs on the Xbox and is built in XNA. It was shown as part of the keynote at CES 2009 (750Kb).

kodu

The conversation on January 29, 2009 won’t be focused on the technology. It will focus on the mix of technology, business development, and programs available to Canadian video game entrepreneurs to help them get started.

To register, visit ic.infusionangels.com or send Kayla Spiess an email with your name and other contact details.

 

Resources

 

What: Independent’s Day
When: Thursday, January 29, 2009 4:30 PM to 7:30 PM
Where: Fed Hall

University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON   Canada

Software, support & visibility

by

microsoftbizspark It’s funny, I’ve asked about startups building on .NET in the past. And with the development of programs like BizSpark the continued support of events like StartupCampMontreal and Founders & Funders, and yesterday’s funding announcement at Xobni, there a number of new opportunities for startups to get access to free software and exposure.

“Microsoft Blue Sky competition for the so-many startuppers using MS technology” – Heri

BizSpark is a program aimed at providing startups with access to software, support and visibility. Startups need to meet the following requirements:

  • Is in the business of software development,
  • Is privately held,
  • Has been in business for less than 3 years, and
  • Has less than US $1 million in annual revenue

There are no initial costs. At the end of the three years there is a US$100 fee. Startups can participate in BizSpark for up to 3 years, (assuming they haven’t changed ownership or gone public in years 1 or 2). The program includes Visual Studio Team System Team Suite (VSTS) with MSDN Premium for development, testing and demonstration purposes. There are also production licenses for Windows Server, SQL Server, BizTalk Server, and Office SharePoint Server. It’s a pretty complete package for startups looking to gain access to the tools for design and development.

How do I sign up?

First you need to find a Network Partner.

What is a Network Partner?

“Network Partners are active members of the local software ecosystem engaged with high-potential, early stage Startups. They are organizations specifically focused on supporting software entrepreneurs and Startups, or whose activities include a focus on promoting and supporting software Startups, through programs, mentoring, networking, business advices, financial and legal assistance or similar services and activities.” – Network Partner Program Guide

Basically, these are the folks supporting startups. In Canada today, there were over 20 Network partners including:

I keep looking for Network Partners to join the program. I’ve been working on folks in Alberta, British Columbia and on the East coast. Turns out there is a lot of ground to cover in this country. If you have an organization that supports start-ups in Edmonton, Calgary, Sudbury, Charlottetown, Halifax, Dartmouth, St. John’s, Quebec City, Yellowknife, drop me a note and I’ll do my best to get them to register. Or if you think you should be a Network partner, sign up using the Champ ID = davcrow.

If you can’t find a Network Partner, drop me a note.

Other Programs

If you don’t meet the requirements for BizSpark, there are other partner programs. I’m not an expert here, I find that most early stage companies are limited due to the “being in business for less than 3 years”. The other program is Empower for ISVs. I’m not entirely sure where you fit if you’re offering a SaaS solution outside of BizSpark. But there are programs that can help, check out the SPLA and SaaS On-Ramp Programs. 

BlueSky & Ignite IT

blueskyThere are 2 programs that offer developers and ISVs an opportunity to showcase their products and solutions. The Microsoft Blue Sky Innovation Excellence Award offers Canada ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) a way to gain access to product experts and members of the Emerging Business Team Portfolio Managers (think Christopher Griffin, Don Dodge, Cliff Reeves and others), exposure on MicrosoftStartupZone and a case study, access to new technologies and architectural guidance, software tools, among other things.

igniteitawardsThe Ignite IT Awards are a Microsoft Canada awards program aimed at celebrating the problems that were solved through IT solutions. There are both Developer and IT Professional stories. There are 2 prizes of $5,000 along with exposure. These aren’t primarily startup focused, however, since a lot of startups should be using technology to solve a problem and the Submission Form is nothing more than your elevator pitch. It’s should be good practice to practice giving your pitch and creating a 60 second video demonstrating why your solution is valuable. Think demo or clip of happy users. My thought is that this could easily be repurposed to help explain to your potential customers the power and benefit of your solution.

 

Give customers choice

by

Mark Relph has been talking about Choice and Flexibility (part 2) for customers. Today with the announcement of Windows Azure you can start to see how Microsoft is trying to offer the rich user experience choices and the choice of infrastructure, on premises or in the cloud, for developers, IT Pros and ultimately consumers.

choiceandflexibility

What you get is the opportunity to figure out what is right for you, your developers, your organization, your customers and your applications. The goal is to provide designers and developers a common set of Services that can be mixed an matched. If your a startup, you can decide to keep your application, infrastructure and services in the cloud leveraging the ability to instantly scale your applications and manage your costs. If you are an existing company with a large IT investment, you can leverage your existing corporate infrastructure layering in the pieces that allow you to grow or reduce your costs through the economies of scale offered by the cloud services.

You can start see the applications and tools that Microsoft has been shipping in context. Internet Explorer 8 is a tool for accessing software in the cloud. Silverlight 2 is a way for designers and developers to create compelling rich Internet applications. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a powerful environment for desktop software development. As developers you get a shared set of tools (Web Standards, Javascript, JQuery, .NET, XAML, C#, VisualStudio 2008) that can be used to build applications and services.

choiceandflexibility-startups 

Developers can begin to build solutions that fit the needs of their audience. It is about being able to build the right solution for your company, your audience, and your market using the appropriate tools and technologies. ProductWiki is building a web service for open product reviews. Me.dium is building a shared social browsing experience. ThoughtFarmer is enterprise collaboration tool that lives behind the firewall. Xobni is mail analytics and improved communications integrated in Outlook.

servicesPlatform

It’s about choice. The choice of device. The choice of user experience. The choice that fits your business and your customers. It’s about the flexibility of the platform to grow and evolve as you do.

PDC kicks off tomorrow

by

pdc-300x189

Getting ready to head to LA for Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (which begs the question as a non-professional developer what am I doing at PDC?). I’m preparing for a week of some in depth Microsoft experiences and announcements. Next to the coffee or the bourbon, the keynotes are the best part of a conference. I’m expecting big things from Ozzie, Scott Guthrie, Steven Sinofsky, and Don Box.

I love the layout of the Timeline application. It’s a great way to access details about each session and build a personal schedule. A higher resolution monitor (I’m running at 1280 x 800) would have meant a little less scrolling, but generally a good experience. Here are some of the sessions out side of the keynotes I’m looking forward to.

  • The Future of C# presented by Anders Hejlsberg
  • A Lap around "Oslo" presented by Douglas Purdy, Vijaye Raji
  • Windows 7: Design Principles for Windows 7 presented by Samuel Moreau
  • Oomph: A Microformat Toolkit presented by Karsten Januszewski
  • Office Business Applications: Enhanced Deployment presented by Saurabh Bhatia, Andrew Whitechapel
  • Developing for Microsoft Surface presented by Brad Carpenter, Robert Levy

It’s great to see sessions by the Mono team. Having spent a couple of days hanging out with Geoff Norton at FSOSS in Toronto.  I am blown away by the work that is going on by the Novell team and the Silverlight team to build a new cross-browser, cross-platform runtime. They are building some great tools.

This will be my first deeply Microsoft conference. Yes, I’ve attended the internal events, but I’m really interested in observing and participating with the folks that build Windows applications, applications for the web on the Microsoft platform and learning more about their experiences.

Mix09 <3 Your Web

by

PDC is less than a week away, and it appears that the Mix team is busy announcing plans for Mix09 in Vegas.

MIX09Logo

Agenda & Speakers

There is a great list of the usual suspects and the some new faces including:

Restyle & 10k Smart Coding Challenge

restyle_logo_rev

Do you hate the style of the Mix site? Change it. Use your own CSS and images to ReStyle the Mix homepage. This is a great opportunity for local web designers to create a new experience. 

TenKLogoDownload

Inspire the world with just 10k of code.  It reminds me of Stuart Butterfield’s 5k competition. It’s a great chance to win a conference pass, hotel accommodations and a gift card (money) for time in your Vegas.

What could you create for the Web if you only had 10 kilobytes of code? It’s time to exercise your minimalist creativity and get back to basics – back to optimizing every little byte like your life depended on it.

 

Both of these challenges have the same prize:

One winner will receive a pass to MIX09, hotel accommodations and a Visa gift card. Other great prizes are to be announced. Official entry requirements, procedures, rules and restrictions coming in November.

What: Mix09
When: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 (all day)
Where: The Venetian Hotel

Las Vegas, NV   USA

A Microsoft venture fund

by

Kevin Merritt has a great suggestion for creating a Microsoft venture fund. This is not new, I wrote about my displeasure with the proposed Yahoo! deal back. Kevin has thought about a YCombinator-esque microfunding model.
  • A three person team comprised of Ray Ozzie, Don Dodge and Dare Obasanjo would be the investment committee.
  • Anyone can submit a 10-slide business plan. No NDA protection, which is the norm in the VC industry.
  • Plans are reviewed once a quarter. Those that make it through the screening are invited to a 90-minute in person demo and pitch.
  • At the end of the 90-minute demo & pitch, the three-person Ozzie/Dodge/Obasanjo investment committee makes an immediate decision. It’s pass/fail. You’re in or you’re out. American Idol style. You’re going to Hollywood or you aren’t.
  • If you pass, here’s what you get: an investment of $100,000 cash plus $25,000 per founder, but never more than $175,000;  all the Microsoft software you need; unlimited, free use of Microsoft’s cloud computing infrastructure for 3 years; mandatory office space for up to 5 people for the first year in either the Redmond or Silicon Valley Campus; all the non-sense administrative support services that typically saps a startup, a collegial environment working with other Microsoft funded startups.
  • In exchange, Microsoft gets: 10% of the company in common stock with no special preferences or rights; your commitment to exclusively use Microsoft development software and operating systems for 3 years, other than with written exception by Microsoft; your commitment to deploy your software to Microsoft platforms first (i.e. if you build a mobile app, it has to run on Windows Mobile before iPhone).

That’s it. Quid pro quo. Startups need cash, tools, infrastructure and elimination of noise and distraction. Microsoft needs access to innovation and a future generation of folks building software with Microsoft development tools and to be run on Microsoft platforms. My bet is that Microsoft will flat out buy some of the companies during their year of incubation. And if you assume each startup will have 3 to 5 people, even the ones that fail will produce a good stream of folks who could easily become employees. Microsoft probably already spends $50,000 per hire anyway, so it’s not really costing them much if anything at all.

Oh, there’s one more important twist to help stem the tide of people leaving Microsoft to found companies or join startups. Microsoft employees in good standing having spent at least 2 years at Microsoft can quit their job and can be admitted into the incubator program with only a single approval from the investment committee. No business plan, pitch or demo are required. You’re in. Your prior contributions are your ticket. How many young entrepreneurs-to-be are willing to put in two good years at Microsoft just to get into the incubator program? I think more than a few. It’s a VC spin to the army college fund. It’s the Microsoft future entrepreneurs fund.

This is a great, well thought out plan for putting $25M to work. The biggest questions for me are: how does the model scale around the world? What are the implications with respect to existing anti-trust agreements and funding companies?  What are the areas, much like the Y Combinator 30 ideas, that are part of the initial investment thesis? It feels like without a clearly defined investment thesis that this is really a public relations campaign with entrepreneurial leaning technologists.