Venture Northwest

At last, a venture conference with an open source play on stage. Scott did a bang-up job for JanRain and did the open source business market a service by showing the path to financial success, demystifying open source business models for the VC and Angel attendees.

But that was the problem. There were too few angels present. Given the sums needed for an open source play, angel investment is a sound and logical place to start. Certainly we are focused on it for now.

Angel Oregon is next, another OEF event which is bound to be well run and well attended. Hopefully we will see a bunch of open source plays there.

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Bend Venture Conference

Very worthwhile; well rounded, well attended, and well located. That three of six companies selected, and both winners were from Bend raised an eyebrow or two, but I thought the two winners were the clear winners in my book.

Of most interest was the mock partners-meeting after the six presentations were delivered. Imitating a Monday morning ritual in any VC office around the world, the investor panel discussed the presentations and planned their due diligence for each presentation. Watching other people handle their public presentations was of great interest.

I think we would have done a great job at Bend. There were no open source plays on the stage, despite Oregon’s leadership in this space. The angel community in Oregon will never learn how open source companies make money without funding a handful of them and seeing what happens. The simple truth is that there is more understanding of open source IP, community creation and management, and development in Oregon than any where else. Coupled with the right business management team, Oregon will produce global leaders in this space, but the money must come first, and fast.

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GOSCON 2006 – Portland

When I was working for a major vendor, Federal sales was well known as a specialist arena. So when GOSCON was being promoted I was dubious of the value to a small start-up, especially one run by two guys who have worked exclusively in Asia since the early ’90s. Anyhow – GOSCON was very useful for me, as a vendor, and more so for the government types who were there.

Of particular interest was Stephen Walli who reminded us that open source is not so totally different than that which we have dealt with over the years. Stephen has posted his slides, so go look for yourselves. Stephen is working on a cool new project which he will announce better than I can/should at this stage…

Bernard Golden gave a useful presentation on how to prepare for bringing open source into an organisation. He neatly bifurcates the areas to focus on helping organisations new to open source prepare and execute cleanly. I learnt that HeadWest is vends an open source process framework – good to know.

There were a number panel discussions that worked very well – the main drift was that people were asking how, not if they should implement open source – all good news.

The key message from the most vocal was that open source represents a chance for agencies to share and enhance over common interests and therefore save the tax payer significant amounts. Coming from 16 years in two totally different jurisdictions it was an eye opening event for me.

First time for everything

One of my great pleasures in life is watching people enjoy things that I like for the very first time.  My wife, Atom, who is from Prachinburi, Thailand, has never seen fall before (autumn where I come from). Walking on Saddle Mountain, near the Oregon coast last weekend was a trip, not only the hike itself, but the happiness of a new experience.

Working should be like that – not everyday, but just enough to keep nose happily on the grindstone.

Today we learnt about a new opportunity at an existing customer – an opportunity that would accelerate receipt of revenues for core product, support, 5-6 months and at a level that would take us 10 months ahead of forecast.

When I was at Apple World Asia in 1992 or so, I saw the new Apple LC and learnt that Apple regarded time to volume much more important than time to market. Let’s see if we can compress our time to volume.

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Sad news

I just learnt that a good friend and trusted advisor passed away.  Dr. Colin De’Ath was a thouroughly good guy. He advised me and my partners when we were running NetSiam and ViewSiam in Bangkok.

I am sorry that I did not go to see him when I was there, which was frequent, even after I moved to Singapore.

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Fast moving

So, back in March 2006, OTBC officially open their doors to us and the of change wheels start spinning. With two families to move – five people, two households we had much to to. Of course, I did the heroic thing and left my wife to handle the movers, packers and closing out the lease with our all so suddenly less helpful landlord. Thanks for that…

FYI – Popping back and forth to Singapore four times in as many months, I certainly got my itinerary smoothed out: if you have to fly via Narita, make sure you stop at the sushi bar near the UA Red Carpet Club. They do take away, so if you are pressed for time, you can eat on board to the envy of your fellow passengers.

The first couple of months were great – hosts of people who wanted to see us – moving from Singapore grabbed the attention of a bunch of local open source aficionados.

We busied ourselves with selection of lawyers, accountants and tax advisors, and learning the business landscape of our new home. At the same time, we started delivery of a consulting contract in Australia for Tabcorp, organising our Australian Business Number, and getting ready to invoice!  All good things.

Product design and architecture now took on new pace with Alec injecting discipline and development experience into my ideas. It all came together pretty well. Product was released in late June, Angel and VC investors were being kept up to date, and we developed a great deal of positive feedback from the local business community in general as well as other software entrepreneurs.

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So that was the catch-up content, moving forward I will keep this up to date.

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Quick-fire decisions

It all happened so quickly – five years and six months in Singapore came to a close in two months. We working away in Singapore looking for support for an open source play and not getting very far when we contacted OTBC. As the world’s first incubator for open technology companies, it seemed like we had a good shot.

I lined up meetings with Holly Files, the interim ED at OTBC and booked a seat at OSBC West in San Francisco. In short, the message from the whole trip was obvious; move to Portland. Holly made a convincing argument, Portland is a, if not the, centre of gravity in the Open Source Universe: ODSL, OSL, POSSE, OTBC, IBM’s Linux research group, Intel’s Linux research team, and a whole host of companies plugging away – JanRain, OpenSourcery, to name a few. Added to that legal counsel that knew about open source frameworks, IP and licensing – none of which existed in Singapore.

As Stuart put it, “we were in Singapore looking for open source opportunities with a candle and saw the huge bonfire that is Portland in the West.” So we headed West and named the company – HeadWest Software, Inc. Truth is though – we flew east – don’t let that bother you though.

That decision was in March after we’d come back to present to OTBC and were accepted as an incubee. It all went pretty quick after that.

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How far have you come?

Singapore seemed so, well, manageable while we were there. Small, good transport, great airport… Happy to be in Portland now though – a real city with real weather, much to do and a great outdoors to explore.

September 2005 – months after leaving an MNC, dusting of an old business plan made suddenly relevant by switching to an open source base instead of reinventing wheels. Two days of spreadsheets – downloads, conversions, cost of support – wow, we have a winner.

October – first partner locked in. Stuart, an ex-investment banker sacrifices life at home to share a 10′ by 11′ office in a dive of a building near Lau Pa Sat in the heart of the financial district.

December – board up to 5 members, me, Stuart, an ex-partner from Bangkok, a CEO of a global multimillion dollar company and a product marketing specialist with the Internet’s largest hardware supplier.

January – exec team flushed out with the addition of Alec who brings all the domain knowledge we need and years of development and open source heritage. Finally! Some legitamacy in OSS circles.

It sure felt like we were moving fast – always does at that stage of a startup. Looking back, well hindsight etc.

All the decisions that brought us here – to follow.

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