Cerdafied...startups, people & the variety Hour

Rolling Stones Gross All-Time Highs

I just read about how the Rolling Stones tour in 2006 is the highest grossing money of any tour in history. Amazing for some old guys that play classic rock.

Well just after Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, I wrote what I thought was the preface for a lot of the blog entries I'd be making. Those entries are currently manifesting in my tales about how Jangl got started. Here's a preface for a much longer story I'll be getting into in 2007, and it involves the Rolling Stones (one of my favorite bands of all time):

---------

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so very much for waiting. Would you welcome please THE ROLLING STONES!”

It was Fall 1981 in Torrance, CA. I had just started the 4th grade. My uncle Jamie ordered the Rolling Stones Live from Hampton concert on one of the first pay per views on “ON TV”, which was an early cable TV provider. He had the concert piped into 3 rooms, which was a big deal at the time. It was also simulcast on 95.5 KLOS and playing on about a dozen speakers throughout the house. There were about 30 people hanging out. It was a party. A great party. At the young age of 9, I got to see how the grown ups did things. What an impression. Lots went on that night. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the party, but one thing in particular hit me right between the eyes. Without even looking, I found my thing; I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to be on stage. Jamie had one of the early VCRs, so he recorded the show. I was able to replay the concert over and over and over. And I did. I studied it and learned nuances and details in my sub conscience that could never be taught. Technology is cool.

Ten years later, in 1991 I was playing gigs of my own, and eventually had a band called The Names. We were shopping an EP we cut all over the place. On a trip to London a year later, I even sneaked into the Sony Records building, trying to get my tape into the right hands. I got to a receptionist who said she’d get it to the right people. 3 weeks later I received a package in the mail. It was from Epic Records, who I guess was a part of Sony at the time. The tape was about half listened to. There was a letter enclosed saying “thanks for your submission, we enjoyed your music but don’t have a fit at this time. Please send us your next recording.” Hey, at least they listened to it! I was stoked about that. By 1993 The Names were a local favorite in my college town of San Luis Obispo, CA. We’d pack places, and even have people singing along with our own songs. We finally got label interest from a company called Statue Records in Redondo Beach, CA. We were starring at a record deal, although it was clear there was no such thing as a “deal” in the record business. It was more like a student loan. It didn’t matter, because that’s what I had been working toward. Then John, my longtime friend and band mate, quit the band. I thought the band could carry on, but then my girlfriend became pregnant somehow.

With a year left in college, a recording contract, a serious girlfriend, and a child on the way, I had some decisions to make.

It’s now Fall 2006. It’s a rainy Sunday after Thanksgiving. The Stones just played at AT&T Park in San Francisco, CA, on one of their longest tours ever. I married my girlfriend, we have a 12 year-old girl and an 8 year-old boy, I’m the CEO of a technology company called Jangl, east of San Francisco, I play in a rock band called Big Breakfast, I also play in a Latin jazz band called El Desayuno, and I stumbled upon a DVD of The Rolling Stones Live from Hampton from 1981. I’m watching it now. I’m just now connecting the dots of how this journey has come together. It has everything to do with how an utter and complete outsider got inside Silicon Valley. I think I’ll write a book. If nothing else it will be a documentary of things for my kids and their kids and their kids. On the other hand, it might entertain you some and share some insights gained along the way.

Technorati Tags: Jangl, rolling stones, Silicon Valley

10 great people I met in 2006

Ok, this was Pat's idea of course, but if you're ever going to do something like this, now's the time!

Pat Phelan - Props back to him. He's a real human, with a real human story. Read the beginning of his blog to see what I mean. Amazing.

Om Malik - Good dude. He introduced me to Pooj Preena, who I decided to hire. I'll give him scoop anytime.

Shel Israel - I read his book, but then got to meet him. A great way with words, he has.

Rich Distefano - He was in the trenches with me putting the Jangl partnership in place with Match.com. He became a believer in our vision and has done his part for sure.

Philip Rosedale - Although I only had a couple of drinks with him, this guy is freaking smart. And articulate. I think his success with Second Life has been a long time coming.

Jeremy Verba - Somehow I learn something every time I talk to this guy. He's working hard over at Piczo these days.

Chris Shipley - Chris put on the best conference I'd ever participated in at the Guidewire Leadership Event.

Pradeep Belur - This guy is my chief of staff at Jangl. I thought I was hiring a good finance guy, but got a great partner.

Chris Traub - I spent little but such sincere time with Chris in Barcelona. I felt as though we'd somehow keep in touch for years to come.

Alex Vieux - I spent a couple of elevator rides with him in Barcelona at his etre conference. I felt like he was genuinely glad I was there.

-MC

Get a Jangl by SMS

Let's say you want a Jangl number to call me on, but you're no where near a computer... Did you know that you could get a Jangl number for someone by SMS?

If you have mobile phone service with Cingular or Sprint/Nextel/Boost/Helio, text "add mc" to the Jangl short code "52645" (JANGL). See what happens.

Jangl hasn't marketed this yet since we're still wrapping up our process with the other carriers. Hopefully this will happen soon after the Rose Parade. I just wanted some of the early adopters that may be reading this blog to know there's some cool stuff coming. -MC

Never give up.

This post is 11th of many about how Jangl got started. I'm telling tales right now, about our adventures of our initial fund raising. --

Ok, back to this story... with a Storm Ventures term sheet in hand for $5MM, with them participating in 50% of the round, and us working on getting a 2nd firm in place for the other 50%. It was late Spring 2005, and we thought we were just a couple meetings away from having a funded company. We went back to Randy at Outlook, who had so graciously helped us for the prior weeks in meeting great people like TK and a handful of great VC partners. Randy's partners weren't the most supportive of the deal, given the many risks and questions many other firms had already cited. Then Randy was asked to join another board, so his cycles became impaired and the rest spoke for itself. They weren't in. Damn.

Meanwhile, my partner Ben was being asked by his wife just how long this was going to take. Me, having put my family thru this before, didn't get asked as often. But the heat was definitely on. I was getting to be a pain in the ass around the house. It would be good if I could go back to having a job again. And besides, you can only live on your savings from the good ol' days for so long after all.

----------A sneak peek into those good ol' days----------
In the 90s I was slinging systems to ISPs and telcos. I had good success at Livingston, which was a remote access server company. Lucent bought us and I was able to afford my first home, only in my mid 20s. Not bad. Then I was recruited into Redback Networks, where we had the 5th largest IPO to date on the NASDAQ. That was life changing. All of a sudden I was thinking of things in different terms. Fulfilling dreams and comparing those dreams that were becoming realities with my peers was water cooler chat. It was crazy. Here was an award I got that year for blowing out my quota. Big W2 and big equity transactions, ah the good ol' days...

(Om covered the sale of Redback to Ericcson recently).
--------------------

It was those good ol' days my wife was comparing this experience to. It was those good ol' days that I was working hard to try and live up to. Not so fast. We had Summer and Fall of 2005 to keep slugging it out on Sand Hill Rd.

Storm certainly had a great network of friendly firms that they'd worked with before, but since much of Storm's portfolio to date had been in infrastructure, the VCs they turned us onto were quite similar. Since we had the back end stuff covered with Storm, we wanted front end consumer expertise to compliment the round.

Lightspeed Venture Partners
We met with Barry Eggers, Ravi Mhatre and Jake Seid. They were all great accomplished guys for sure. Ravi seemed a bit more consumer friendly than the others. In any case, we started to gain traction. I took an annual trip to Puerto Vallarta and did some diligence calls with them from my hotel. I wasn't popular in my family that trip to say the least. But it had to be done. I came home, we seemed to be making further progress. And then... The firm was raising their next fund and a couple of the partners had left to start another fund. This took us off their radars, and the opportunity dried up. Good guys. Too bad. We'll keep swinging.

KPCB
We met with Randy Komisar and Matt Murphy, two terrific guys. I grooved with Randy because his wife was into yoga as was I. I was also a fan of Randy's book. I grooved with Matt because he was keen to the technology vision and our energy. I thought this could be the one. I was a bit nervous that Matt was invested in an old boss' company. I didn't think that old boss was too fond of me since we had a falling out years back. I'll save that tale for another time.

So the band was playing a gig in downtown Livermore, and during a set break, I got the call from Matt saying that they were interested in digging in. That's VC talk for diligence time. This is time where they bring in other partners to review the opportunity, as well as advisors. Ben and I high-fived and pounded a beer, then had a great 2nd set. During the digging in process, they brought in Russ Siegelman, Scott Sassa (former Friendster and NBC), and ultimately had us do a mini focus group with some college students from Stanford. We were talking about our purpose driven phone numbers for privacy and personalization, but more was focused on privacy since that's what we were doing first. Of course, in order to give two shits about Buzzage (our name at the time) privacy on phones, the subjects needed to be online dating, actively meeting new people online, or selling stuff online. The buzz kill (NPI) was that none of these kids used social networking for dating, so the whole thing was moot. The kids said their school was so small and tight knit, that thru facebook everybody knew who they were dealing with, so privacy wasn't an issue. Shit.

Needless to say, this was the most obvious reason for KPCB passing. As a part of the pass, they told us that we should be raising a smaller round than $5MM in any case. They conveyed that to our guy Alex at Storm too. That position would eventually ring true, and we'd raise less than half of that amount. But I'll get there soon.

Randy was hot on investing in something in the space that we were dancing in. He knew is was emerging as did Matt. Randy eventually seeded what's now called Pinger. (When we went back to KPCB for series B fund raising a year later, Randy was nice enough to suggest Pinger was competitive to us, so we didn't go back in. He is a class act and I really hope to cross paths again. Matt too).

Lessons learned:

1. Don't give up.
2. Never give up.
3. Oh, and profile your focus group subjects well in advance, at all costs.

Technorati Tags: barry eggers, kpcb, lightspeed venture partners, matt murphy, om, pinger, randy komisar, ravi mhatre, redback networks, VoIP

El mundo entero habla español.

My wife went to pick her grandparents up from the bus station this afternoon. She took my Prius, which I'm sure they'll get a kick out of. Her gas guzzling SUV (which is the modern day station wagon in Alamo, CA), was in the shop getting some work done. The dealer called me to say it was done and that a shuttle was on its way to my house to pick me up. Great.

So I got in the shuttle with Jorge, the guy assigned to shuttle duty for this busy day. He took one look at me and said with an accent "You speak Spanish?"

I answered saying "Claro, el mundo entero habla español!"

We laughed and I asked him where he was from. I expected he would say he was from some part of Mexico, but no..he was from Cuba, just outside Havana. I was immediately fascinated. I asked him when he left Cuba, how he got here, why he left, whether he missed it at all, and what Cuban musicians he likes.

Jorge went on to tell me almost a dozen years ago he was in Havana waiting in a long line to get some food. When he got to the front of the line, the food was gone. He was done with that way of life. His best friend suggested they build a boat and try rowing to the U.S. A few months later, the two friends embarked on a 6 day cruise, rowed by just the two of them. They were so nervous they weren't hungry the whole trip. They landed on shore and immigration took them in, sent them to San Francisco, where they got green cards, driver's licenses and room and board for one year. After that, they were on their own. Years later, he gets on just fine, but misses his family; especially this time of year. He said he plans to go back someday before his mother dies, but he has to save up his money and then fly through Mexico to get there. Apparently since he has a green card, the Cuban government views him as an American, so he's able to enter and exit the country. Jorge loves the late Celia Cruz, Israel "Cachao" Lopez, and the late Hector Lavoe. I couldn't resist showing him a photo I had on my phone, of me and Cachao. He wanted me to send it to him, so I gladly did. It's now on his phone.

What's the point of sharing this? Well, this morning I was instructed to go pick up the turkey at Whole Foods. It took me hours to get into the lot and park, navigate the mad house and wait in the extremely long lines. Contrast that with Jorge waiting in line for a ration of food in Havana, and not being able to, then being so pissed off that he risked his life to find something better. Wow. I'll take the Whole Foods mad house any time over what Jorge has been through.

I invited Jorge to stop by Christmas eve if he had nothing to do. I doubt he'll show up, but if he does I'm sure we'll enjoy some great music and turkey. Feliz Navidad!

-MC

Technorati Tags: cachao, celia cruz, Hector Lavoe

Competition is good for everyone.

Oh shit, I have competition. I'm not happy about competition. Like Bill Gates, I would really prefer to have everyone on earth wanting my product, but no one on Earth but me supplying it. But Hell, how on Earth can Jangl be a leader if there aren't any followers?

In Jaxtr, I clearly have a competitor and it seems to me a follower. Jaxtr's offering has some amazing similarities to what we have, curiously amazing. Even the name "ringls" a Jangl bell.

Rafe Needleman blogged about Jaxtr recently, which gave me a real opportunity to see their service in play. In the post, Rafe cited Jaxtr as "simple" and Jangl as "complicated".

Well... Jaxtr is simple because you enter your phone number and hit CALL, then outbound calls launch and bridge you and the Jaxtr person you're calling. It's also simple for me to put in your number instead of mine. Or your daughter's number. Or your boss' number. Do you want all these people getting random Jaxtr calls?

Anyhow, if you're using Jaxtr to keep your number private while exposing yourself in a social network, you're opening up a huge door to self abuse, err... a pranxtr.

Jangl is complicated because it doesn't allow for any of this to happen to you, ever. I'd rather keep customers privacy and control in mind, and then simplify a complicated process. Wait! I do know of a way to make it less complicated, yet still retain the quality we promise. In fact, the Jangl engineering team and I are having festivus with margaritas in a few minutes. I can't wait to talk to them about how we're going to keep the pack nipping at our butts. -MC

P.S. The good news in all of this, is it just got better for customers. Competition breeds better services at better values and price points.

Technorati Tags: Rafe Needleman, jaxtr, anonymous calling, competition

YAAN

I met Chris Herot of Convoq at the Guidewire Group Conference a few weeks ago in Sonoma. Chris posted about YAAN, which he characterized as "yet another anonymous number service. He listed a bunch of companies as having some variation of an anonymous service. Great coverage Chris.

Here was Chris' list. I'm going to tag onto each of them and describe what they do..

Broadvox Direct, Cleveland, OH - mc: long distance arbitrage player, kind of like Vonage, targeting VoIP people

Craigsnumber - mc: temporary, partial anonymity to safe keep from inbound callers, targeting Craigslist users

Hullo, Inc., Gatineau, Quebec - mc: download of chat client, find me/follow me, targeting youth it seems

Jangl, Pleasanton, CA - mc: privacy and control for your mobile phone, targeting dating, social networking, social media (this one is the best of all;)

Jaxtr, Palo Alto - mc: privacy with some long distance arbitrage, targeting social networking

My Ad Box, Inc., Baltimore, MD - mc: messaging for ads, targeting people that place ads in the paper

MyPrivateLine (formerly PrivateTel), Network Enhanced Telecom, LLP, Dallas, TX - mc: facilities based business to business comm services, targeting online dating

PrivatePhone, NetZero, United Online, Inc., Woodland Hills, CA - mc: anonymous voice mail box (not calling), targeting hipsters

SafePhoneCalls, Tego Networks, LLC, Dallas - mc: conference bridge based service for 2, targeting anyone with a pulse SpokenBuzz, LLC, Santa Anna, CA - mc: IP voice portal, VoIP features, targeting those that like Vonage like services without the transport

Staysafe, Liquid11, Lowestoft Suffolk, UK - mc: temporary call forwarding numbers, targeting daters in the UK

TalkPlus, Inc., San Mateo, CA - mc: mobile VoIP client, 10 way conference calling, 1 to many anonymous #, targeting lawyers, daters

Talkster International Inc., Toronto - mc: mobile phone calling to IM clients, targeting enterprise

TalkTrust.com LLC, Palo Alto - mc: one-way anonymous calling, targeting daters, classifieds, and everything else

Tossable Digits, Inc., Falls Church, Virginia - mc: one-way anonymous calling with phone numbers + extensions, targeting classifieds, etc

Verbdate, Verbster Corporation, West Vancouver, BC - mc: dating site using Skype for talking, not sure this is YAAN service

Zogo, Wireless Introduction Network, Inc., New York - mc: mobile dating service

In addition there's a new one called Vumber that is supposed to launch in January. Online Personals Watch guy Mark Brooks is involved there. (He's also writing a comparison of the various companies in the space. My guess is Vumber will win his editor's choice, just as his client Vivox did last year).

-MC

Technorati Tags: convoq, chris herot, anonymous calling

Don't take it personally. It's longer term than that.

This post is 10th of many about how Jangl got started. I'm telling tales right now, about our adventures of fund raising. --

Ok, so it wasn't a quick close...

We went in the following week to pitch to Mark Kvamme at Sequoia. He thought our Ringbling idea had the most legs, and asked us how soon we could get it to market. He thought there might be a potential partnership opportunity for us in LinkedIn and perhaps even YouTube. I remember Mark citing like 4 million users on YouTube at that point. Amazing. Mark made an introduction to LinkedIn's Keith Rabois. The good thing about these kinds of introductions, is they help the company potentially as well as the VC looking for validation/perspective. We went into meet Keith, and pitched him on the notion of "InTalk", similar to how they have "InMail". Here are a couple of mocks I had done:

Keith wasn't into it, citing users didn't care about privacy. We went a few rounds on this but it was clearly going nowhere. We agreed to touch base 6 to 9 months later. We never did get back together with Keith.

Mark, one of the more accomplished VCs out there, passed. We would stay in touch with Mark and try him again later during Series B fund raising.

We went back into Redpoint to see if my old buddy Scott was getting any love for us among the team. Their appetite was very mixed given the early stage we were in, the money required and the bet around consumer phenomenon. Scott was (and is) like a friend of mine, and also a peer since we're around the same age. We'd crossed paths when I was at Redback and he at Northpoint, then when Redpoint was invested in other companies where I worked like Procket and Trapeze, and then again when I was fund raising for Ooma, and finally for Buzzage (Jangl). He knew I was determined, and I always appreciated him making time for me. Scott and his team took a stronger interest once we had a term sheet from Storm, since it was at least some basis of validation. Needless to say though, we couldn't get it across the finish line. I like Scott and the others I got to meet at Redpoint, and like to view our relationship as more long term.

At this point, surely Randy from Outlook, who had been in our corner for a couple months now would syndicate with Storm. At least, that's what we thought...

Lessons learned:

1. Don't assume two VCs you might be courting, have any interest in syndicating.
2. VC turn downs are more common than not. Don't take any of it personally, and swing for the longer term relationship.
3. There are a million ways a fund raising effort can NOT come together, and only one way for it TO come together.

Technorati Tags: Jangl, Mark Kvamme, LinkedIn, Sequoia Capital, VoIP, Scott Raney

ALWAYS GO WITH YOUR GUT

This post is 9th of many about how Jangl got started. I've been blogging about our early days of fund raising and finding our way.
-----
We had multiple VCs pass on our opportunity, but Redpoint seemed like they were at least taking their time to say no - so there was hope. Next meeting was with Storm Ventures. An old Redback colleague named Matt Steinberg had been an EIR at Storm at one point, so he had made an introduction for me to Alex Mendez more than two years earlier. Alex was nice enough to plug me into a potential role at Venturi Wireless back then. The CEO at the time was John Fazio. Great guy, and we got along well. I ultimately didn't pursue it at the time because my company Ooma landed some seed money. My heart was doing a start up from the ground up.

Anyhow, Alex gladly took our meeting. It was scheduled for 830AM on a Friday morning. Ben had been in town staying in our little guest house poolside for a few days, while his family awaited his return in New Jersey. The night prior we had the band over for a jam session and some beers. Below is Eric Launder on guitar (worked with him at Lucent), Bob Knight on guitar (worked with him at Lucent, but also at Ooma), Ben on keys and myself on bass.
Needless to say, my head hurt and I was a little slow on the go that morning. I drove my Prius and Ben drove his rental car, because he would be heading up to OAK to fly home right after the meeting. So we get to Storm, and they had moved into a nice new office on Sand Hill Rd. I expected Alex and Tim Danford to be in the meeting, but to my surprise there was a very full house in attendance. In addition to Alex and Tim, was Tae-Hea Nahm, Andrew Baw, Jong-Heun Kim and Ramneek Bhasin (now of Mobio). We went thru the pitch not feeling a thing. We had spun up some new audio files as demos, to better tell our story. We had various names for our services, i.e. Phonee, Ringbling, PhoneCast, etc. The questions centered around back end systems, given that was the background of the team at Storm.

I realized quickly, that I in particular had something in common with Storm. We were both in the process of reinventing ourselves. Both of us had strong infrastructure and networking backgrounds and wins, both of us realized the world was changing and services had much to do with it, and both of us knew we needed to find our way in this new era. We both certainly knew that from a technology stand point we would be in great shape, and that making this a success would largely have to do with iterating with consumers and figuring it out along the way. I think they were reasonably impressed that Alex may have sourced a diamond in the rough. We finished the meeting, shook hands and said good-bye.

I shook Ben's hand in the parking lot, saying "Let's keep our head up, we'll get there." Ben nodded and drive off to the airport. I went back to spend some more time with Ted Malone at Redpoint, and would meet an old friend for lunch at Krung Siam across from Accel on University Ave in Palo Alto. After lunch I was getting ready to drive back to my pad in Alamo, which feels like worlds away from University Ave. Then I got a call from Alex at Storm.

"Hey Michael it's Alex. Look, the group liked the team and the story, can you come back this afternoon to meet a couple more folks?"

"Well...Ben is in a Jetblue plane watching Sportcenter by now, but I can swing back by."

So my hang over had worn by now, and I was as sharp minded as ever. Plus I had a bit of a swagger, given we were invited back in the same day. This second meeting was with Sanjay Subhedar and Ryan Floyd, two of the four partners. If Alex was to have a productive discussion about us in the coming Monday partner meeting, then it would be good to have both these guys at least partially exposed or even bought in. Sanjay and I connected well.

"Michael, with your background...this is going to be something new for you." said Sanjay.

"I know. The best of us reinvent ourselves right?" I replied.

Ryan was a great guy too. His questions were more like "Do people really want this?"

Of course, that's the bet we were placing, so I pointed to various proxies with IM, mobile and social networking. I felt like I nailed this meeting. On the way out I ran into Ramneek, who was an EIR at the time, working on Mobio. He was cool. He said, "Hey man, I know this voice shit cold, just let me know if I can help in any way."

I left Ben a voice mail which he would hear hours later, saying that we might have a chance here. This would give us (and our wives) a better weekend. (Keep in mind, the wives don't sign up for this stuff. They just want to live life. Why are we causing all this stress???) Alex called the following Monday afternoon and invited us in for the following Tuesday 2PM to talk next steps. He said the team really liked us.

"Look guys we're interested and we think we want to give you a term sheet."

So we began to talk terms. We'd pick it back up the following Wednesday 2PM.

One thing challenged my conscience though... I had just been in touch with well known angel investor Ron Conway and he had done an intro for us to Mark Kvamme at Sequoia Capital. That resulted in a Wednesday noon scheduled meeting. So....what to do now? I felt like we were working in earnest with Alex to get a deal put in place. I like Ron, Mark has a great reputation, and I don't want to pass up an opportunity. Many folks would have shopped the hell out of this if they were in my shoes. I know it's a small valley though. I didn't want to create a reason for Alex to get cold feet thinking we're shopping to a bigger firm, especially since the odds were that Mark would pass anyway. What to do? Ben and I dropped by to see my old friend Dennis Barsema at Benchmark. I asked him for advice and he suggested to follow our gut. So we did.

I cancelled the meeting with Mark, citing a deal was coming together. I attempted to keep the door open for coming back later, once we had a term sheet, in hopes he would consider syndicating the deal with Storm. We went back into Storm to meet with Alex and his legal guy Andrew Baw. We came to terms on a $5 million term sheet. Storm would do half, but we would work together to find the other half. We were stoked. It seemed we could now go see Mark, we had Redpoint in play, and of course there was Randy at Outlook as well. It seemed like it should be a quick close...

Lessons learned:

1. ALWAYS FOLLOW YOUR GUT.
2. Party the night before your pitch.
3. Ron Conway should be one of the first guys you call. Do it early.

Technorati Tags: Buzzage, Mark Kvamme, Mobio, privacy, Ron Conway, Sequoia Capital, Storm Ventures, VoIP

Ted, Jason and Flo - all important people.

This post is 8th of many about how Jangl got started. I'm telling tales right now, about our adventures of fund raising. --

Ok so a handful of VCs had passed on us. Spring 2005 was long, but Summer 2005 would be longer. We were pitching too many service ideas that were served up from the same platform, but they didn't relate from a market focus stand point. We needed to focus, so we did a little more. We went from "Purpose Driven Phone Numbers" to "Phone numbers for privacy, personalization and convenience". We didn't want to look like a one-trick pony, yet we didn't want to look like we had an identity crisis.

We had been following leads from Outlook Ventures' Randy Haykin since he took an early interest in what we were doing. But now, it was time to spread our wings. I would now dive into my network for the next run of meetings. The question was, just how many firms to reach out to? Lots of people have advised me in the past to just tap on the doors of a few firms at a time. The rationale was that since VCs all talk, don't make it look like you're shopping your company all over the place. So I thought to reach out to a handful of VCs that I knew: Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures, August Capital, Selby Ventures and Storm Ventures.

Accel: I knew Peter Wagner from my time with Trapeze Networks and Redback Networks, but I knew Kevin Effrusy was the guy looking more closely at consumer opportunities. So Ben and I pitched Kevin. Inside 5 minutes he said "I get it. Free throw away phone numbers. Neat." Kevin quickly got to a summary point. "We VCs don't know what to do at such early stages. We'll push you to do thinks that probably aren't right for you. You have the instincts and the know how, that's why you're entrepreneurs. Go get some adoption and we can talk more then". More of the talking points around this can be seen on a write up about consumer experience Kevin did. This is a very insightful piece.

Redpoint: I knew Scott Raney from my time with Trapeze Networks, but some of his other partners seemed closer to the consumer space. So we sat down with Scott for a first run. Prior to Redpoint, Scott was a product manager at Northpoint, one of the big DSL focused CLECs in the late 90s. I met him there first actually. Scott brought in Jeff Brody to the second meeting. Jeff had been a part of Onebox, one of the unified messaging companies of Christmas past. Jeff certainly recognized some attributes of Onebox from a service perspective, in our services. We agreed that lots had changed in the marketplace, so time was better on our side. Next, Scott assigned an EIR to spend some cycles with us. That EIR's name was Ted Malone, a former TiVo product guy. Susan Cashen, a former TiVo marketing VP had actually recommended I talk to Ted about our opportunity. That same week, Joe Harris (then VP of marketing at Orb Networks) suggested we talk to Ted as well. I'm glad I met Ted. (A year and a half later, Ted is interim VP of marketing at Jangl). Redpoint was starting to engage a bit it seemed. I'll come back to their conclusion next post.

August Capital: I had pitched David Hornik in another lifetime. I always liked him so thought we should pay him a visit with our pitch. Unfortunately, David gave us the same answer he had given me in the past "I ran it by my partners. It's too early stage." Fair enough. David's a terrific guy and I hope to work with him some day. He's a musician deep down, as am I.

Selby: I had pitched Jim Marshall in another lifetime too, and I knew they did early stage stuff, so we stopped by via a visit to the Dutch Goose. Jim's always been friendly when I've met him. His admin took a different approach than most though. As she escorted us to their conference room, she said "What are you guys doing here?" I kind of felt like I was dealing with Flo on Alice.

I was like "We're searching for money to build a business".

"Well what do you do?" she asked.

"Phone numbers for privacy, personalization and convenience."

"Whatever?"

So then we started pitching Jim, then he says "Hang on, one of our people uses Match.com to date."

Jim brought Flo into the room. "Ok, what do you want here with your phone numbers?" she asked.

"Well let's say you date online or something, and you want to talk to someone without giving them your real number..." I tried.

"Oh, I get it. I use Match.com actually. I would totally use this, but I wouldn't want to offend people while using it.." she concluded.

Very important insight. She was alluding to the psychology of user experience.

Jim liked the reaction, but he said he'd have to think about it some more. He made an introduction to Jason Spievak, the former CFO of Callwave. Jason learned a lot about the virtual phone number business at Callwave. As it turns out Jason and I both worked at Netopia around the same time, so we had some common ground. Jason was supportive of what we were up to, so he fed that back into Jim. Jim passed, citing too many uncertainties. Jason eventually became an advisor to Jangl. I don't think Flo works there anymore, but I'd like to talk to her again sometime.

Next up...our Storm Ventures story. This post is getting long though, so I'll pick this up on the next post.

Lessons learned:

1. Unless you were the founder of a company that had a huge exit and have your choice of VCs, don't keep your focus too narrow. Pitch as many as possible. You'll learn something in the pitching and you'll save time.

2. If you keep being told your deal is too early to invest in, then it probably is. Do more, get more answers.

3. Meet as many people VCs are willing to introduce you to, you never know when it's going to come in handy.