BloGiza

Art Break

Linda Hufnagel, Giza's Director of Investor Relations, is also a very talented artist. She has just opened up an online presence to showcase her work.

Check it out here: http://www.lindahufnagel.com

The List - March 22

Every week we run across a number of articles that catch our eye. As a regular feature, we round them up for a little something we call The List:

• Amp'd has gone Hollywood - Orange County Register
• Google Personal Homepage Gets Skinnable - PC World
• Looking back at three years of Web 2.0 investing - Jeff Clavier's Software Only
• Powered by Innovation - SandHill.com
• N3: Bringing Order to Online Video - Business Week
• Patenting Technologies – A Cost-Benefit Analysis - Startup-CEO.com
• The Rise of Niche Social Networks and That Money Question - Business Week
• Being the First to OWN the Market - Startup-CEO.com

At the Com.Vention

The Marker kicked off its second annual Internet Com.vention (a.k.a. "Vardi-gras") today. As it was last year, the convention was the local Internet event of the year, a decent mix of Israeli entrepreneurs, investors, and local and international figures from the Internet world.

So what was the story this year?

• Many, many entrepreneurs. At last year's conference, it seemed that the ratio between investors and startups was, if not exactly even, then not extremely lopsided. This year, the entrepreneurs definitely outnumbered the money people. There were easily several hundred internet entrepreneurs -- many of whom we have seen at Giza over the last few months -- which is the clearest sign of how the Internet has exploded here recently.
  
• The morning panel on "hot trends in 2007" turned up basically what you would expect: video, semantic web, convergence, and user-generated content.
  
  Two interesting comments: Dr. Nicolas Bussard made an interesting point about how changes in Web design make it easier for people in developing nations to build sites and start accessing the net. And Mike Marquez of CBS Interactive spoke of what he called the "open content ecosystem," which is the interplay of all the technologies -- from mobile video to trend analysis to vertical search -- that will allow people to consume content wherever/whenever they want.
  
• The most piquant panel was the afternoon discussion devoted to the question of "So, is it a bubble?". Here, the panelists -- Angels and VCs, including Giza's Eyal Niv -- were split. Some say it is, some say it isn't. Everyone agrees that valuations are climbing, and that the influx of money into the sector increases the danger of companies getting venture funding who really shouldn't be. (Thus siphoning off the talent and time of people who might be otherwise engaged in better companies).
  
  At any rate, the panelists basically agreed to disagree. We may be in bubble land, but at least it seems that everyone is a bit more reasonable than they were seven or eigh years ago.
  

Viacom vs. YouTube, Round 3

First they tried to come to some kind of agreement. Then Viacom sent out a pile of cease-and-desist letters to YouTube warning them to remove Viacom's copyrighted content from YouTube's servers. YouTube complied, but apparently not to Viacom's liking. Now, Viacom has decided to sue YouTube for a whopping $1 billion over what it claims are 160,000 copyrighted clips that were uploaded to the video sharing service.

This lawsuit may have something to do with the deal Viacom recently cut to distribute its content via Joost. Either that or somebody peed in Sumner Redstone's Geritol the other morning. At any rate, it's a doozy.

First of all, join me in saying that sum out loud in a Dr. Evil voice: one billion dollars.

Next, let us bask in the ridiculousness of these numbers. (Or, better, read this analysis from the NewTeeVee site). Viacom is looking to get $6,250 per clip, which is actually pretty cheap considering that the maximum penalty for copyright violation according to US law is $150,000. I guess Viacom didn't want to look greedy or anything.

All this fighting, by the way, over a company that may have had something like $15M in revenues last year.

Presumably, this will eventually be settled out of court, a number of lawyers will get richer, and the online video landscape will be no better off.

TWS 2007

Giza is proud to be one of the sponsors of the.co.ils Web Startup 2007, one of the more exciting upcoming events in the world of the Israeli Internet. TWS is a competition to find the best and brightest young Internet (or mobile Internet) companies and allow them to pitch their idea to a panel of leading VCs, angels, and Internet industry experts.

TWS comes to us courtesy of Yaron Orenstein and Yami Glick (our friendly neighborhood Internet gurus responsible for the.co.ils) and is based in part on startup competitions such as Demo.

The rules of the competition are fairly simple. Participant companies need to be involved in the Internet, need to have a great team, and need to have a product that is at least partially ready to demonstrate at the event. Anyone who fits these criteria is invited to register for the competition.

Companies will be screened by a panel of experts, who will pick the top 10 finalists. These finalists will present their ideas at the TWS event which will be held on April 10. Companies who did not make it to the top 10 are nonetheless invited to the event to benefit from the networking opportunities there. (Full contest rules can be found here).

Registration ends March 20, so hurry up and sign up.

The List - March 11

Every week we run across a number of articles that catch our eye. As a regular feature, we round them up for a little something we call The List:

• Sony to launch virtual worlds as part of 'Game 3.0' push - Technology Review
• After flap over phony academic credentials, Wikipedia to ask some writers to share real names - Technology Review
• Futurists Debate Digital's Emerging Trends - Advertising Age
• Why Google's Schmidt Finds Media Harder Than Technology - Advertising Age
• Google and the beauty of failure - The Utility Belt
• Spoof: Google to Acquire Facebook - Redirect
• Surprises and Enlightenment at Tech Summit - TechNewsWorld 
• The Web Can Humiliate Dumb Companies. Can It Make Them Smarter? - Information Week
• Global Trends 2007: All Eyes on the East - E-Commerce Times
• Internet Killed The Television Star: Reviews of Joost, Babelgum, Zattoo, and More - Read/Write Web
• Is YouTube a Google-Sized Distraction? - Red Herring
• Build Your Own Social Network - Technology Review
• Internet Start-Up to Take a Hybrid Media Approach - New York Times

Snackertainment!

This month's Wired magazine has a large spread on what they are calling "snack culture". What is snack culture, you ask? It's the idea that a lot of the entertainment we now consume comes in small, metaphorically bite-sized, pieces.

You can see this all over the place. YouTube videos have become an entertainment form in their own right. "Webisodes" and "Cellisodes" (two- or five-minute episodes of popular TV shows specially produced for the Internet or mobile) have been increasing in frequency. And ITunes has contributed greatly to the demise of the long-playing record in favor of the single.

Wired also adds to this list of snacks things like ringtones, widgets (why take the whole program when you can just add a few features to your desktop?), and even the lowly blog -- snack reading at its finest.

Why is all this happening? You might argue that peoples' attention spans are getting shorter. Or else we now have the gadgets to allow us to kill five or ten minutes while waiting at the doctor's office.

Whatever the cause, we are clearly seeing some sort of cultural paradigm shift here. And being VCs, we soon ask ourselves, "How do we get in on this thing?" Sadly, YouTube has already been spoken for. But we are seeing other signs of activity in this space. Most recently (and locally) we can point to Evergreen's investment in Aniboom, the "YouTube of Animation". I presume we'll see some more in the future.

The List - March 4

Every week we run across a number of articles that catch our eye. As a regular feature, we round them up for a little something we call The List:

• BitTorrent Rolls Out 'Entertainment Network'; New Client Planned - PC Magazine
• 5 New Jobs of the Web 2.0 Generation - Web Worker Daily
• Search engines emerge from Google's shadow - Library House
• Web Visionary Andreessen Pits Ning Against MySpace - Tech News World
• Game Vet Goes Casual - Red Herring
• Google's new advertising strategy - Unit Structures
• Online ad spending estimated to hit $20 bln - Bambi Francisco
• Social Networking's Next Phase - New York Times

Ali G. pitches a company

Special for Purim, here is one of the funniest investor-related clips I've come across courtesy of Sacha "Ali G" Baron-Cohen: