AllThingsD » Elevation Partners

The Wall Street Death March?

Eric Johnson — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 04:29:12 +0000

I think going public today is almost like a Bataan death march. I think Wall Street — this will insult many people — but I think in many ways it bears a resemblance to organized crime. It is legal today what they do, but what they do is manifestly unfair.

– Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners, in conversation with Bloomberg Television’s Margaret Brennan

The State of Social Sharing With Fred Wilson, Roger McNamee and More (Video)

Kara Swisher — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 17:51:22 +0000

Here’s a panel I did last week at the Privacy Identity Innovation conference on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley.

The panel was called “Social Sharing and the Data-Driven Economy.” And while that sounds a little dry, it was a lively session that included: Jim Adler, Chief Privacy Officer and GM, Data Systems at Intelius; David Glazer, director of engineering for Google+; Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners; and Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures.

All have deep experience in the social networking space and insights into its implications, so it’s a good video to watch if you’re interested in where it’s all going.

Enjoy:

Social Sharing and the Data-Driven Economy from Marc Licciardi on Vimeo.

Goldman Sachs Bets $20 Million on a Facebook-Powered Media Buying Platform

Peter Kafka — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:21:44 +0000

Networked Insights, which helps marketers buy media using data it culls from social networks, has raised a $20 million round led by Goldman Sachs.
The Madison, Wis.-based company, which says it helps allocate $5 billion in marketing spend, has now raised $30 million since 2007. Its client list includes Samsung, Kraft and MTV Networks.
Networked Insights competes with several start-ups selling analytics services that are supposed to help buyers optimize their marketing mix; earlier this year, for instance, Los Angeles-based MarketShare raised $32 million from Elevation Partners. Networked Insights’ pitch is that it is particularly good at picking up cues from Web users on sites/networks like Facebook and Twitter, so that it can help marketers steer their money into some underappreciated, cost-effective buys.

History Repeats Itself at Hewlett-Packard webOS Unit

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:00:42 +0000

History, it is often said, has a funny way of repeating itself. So it appears to be at Hewlett-Packard with regard to its webOS business.

HP has announced to the world that it plans to stop selling its TouchPad tablets and other hardware running the webOS software it got after spending $1.2 billion to acquire Palm last year. Yet it wants to keep the webOS software, guessing, perhaps correctly, that there’s some revenue-generating business to be made of it yet, maybe in patents. Meanwhile, the hardware side of webOS is, after disappointing sales, being shut down, just maybe to be reanimated under the umbrella of the soon-to-be spun out PC business. And it’s building one last run of the heavily discounted TouchPad, to rid itself of parts it has already paid for. It’s complicated!

As it happens, a pair of internal HP memos — which were leaked to PreCentral.net, a site devoted to the Pre, the first smartphone to run webOS — appear to outline how the webOS split is going to go down.

According to the memos, the webOS software business — that is, the bit that HP still wants — is being moved inside HP’s Office of Strategy and Technology, or OS&T, which is headed up by Shane Robison, HP’s executive vice president and chief strategy and technology officer. One of the two memos was written by him.

And what of the webOS hardware group? It will remain within the Personal Systems Group, which is HP’s formal name for the personal computer business it says it wants to spin off as a separate company.

It’s not the first time that the hardware and software halves of what used to be Palm have been split into separate entities. Students of the history of Palm well remember the strange odyssey that began in 2002, when Palm — less than two years after spinning out of its prior parent, 3Com — split into two companies: A hardware company called PalmOne, and a software company called PalmSource.

The idea was that the two halves of the business had different agendas. The software business saw opportunities in licensing the PalmOS to numerous hardware manufacturers. In time, several companies took out licenses: Handspring, launched by Palm’s original founders Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky, was the original licensee, and others followed. Sony made a bunch of handhelds sold under the Clie brand; IBM sold something called the WorkPad; Garmin made a GPS-enabled PDA that could also help keep you from getting lost. Eventually a company called Access bought it and still operates it to this day.

Meanwhile, the hardware business soldiered on under the name PalmOne. In 2003, it acquired Handspring, bringing back its original founders, and in 2005 it bought back the rights to use the Palm name. Then, in 2007, came the big investment from Elevation Partners, the creation of webOS and, well, you know how that turned out.

EA Shuffles Upper Deck With Three Promotions

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:49:22 +0000

Electronic Arts has reorganized its management team to take into account its acquisition of PopCap, once it’s complete, and the departure of COO John Schappert, who left in April to fill the same role at Zynga.

There are three major appointments: Frank Gibeau, currently president of EA Games, will become president of the EA Labels; Peter Moore, currently president of EA Sports, will become COO, overseeing EA’s global publishing organization and online initiatives, including the Origin digital platform; and Barry Cottle, EVP of EA Interactive, will now oversee EA Mobile, Playfish, Pogo, Hasbro and PopCap.

The management changes will be effective Monday.

Along with the promotions, there will be one structural change to the business. EA is expanding from three to four labels — EA Games, EA Sports, EA Play and BioWare — with Gibeau in charge of all of them.

Each label is focused on key game franchises and each is responsible for launching at least one game annually while also creating content for all platforms, including console, PC, mobile and social.

This is the first reorganization since EA CEO John Riccitiello established EA’s label structure when he rejoined the company in 2007; he left in 2004 to be a founding partner and managing director of Elevation Partners, a private equity firm.

In a letter to employees, Riccitiello said that EA has shifted to creating fewer, bigger and better titles with better cost management, while also expanding its digital businesses.

“Our quality has risen dramatically. We’ve built an $800m+ digital business while pushing down operating costs,” he said. “Not all of it was easy but looking back, it was exactly the right structure and priorities for the challenges we faced.”

Gibeau has worked at EA his entire career, joining straight out of college in 1991. Moore was appointed president of EA Sports in 2007, having joined from Microsoft, where he was responsible for leading its Xbox and Games for Windows businesses. Cottle joined EA in 2007 from Palm, where he was COO in charge of overseeing its wireless and Internet division.

Photos: EA’s booth at E3, top right; Gibeau pictured left; Moore pictured right.

Remembering Rajiv Dutta, Veteran of eBay and Elevation

Nick Wingfield — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 04:11:10 +0000

Rajiv Dutta, a veteran Silicon Valley executive and investor, died Monday morning after battling a recurrence of cancer.

Dutta, 49 years old, was eBay’s chief financial officer during its headiest growth period and later ran its PayPal and Skype divisions. He was most recently a partner at the private equity firm Elevation Partners. Dutta died at a Stanford University hospital after checking into the facility last week.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Elevation Partners Keeps Internet Hits Coming With Pandora

Daniel Hausmann — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:14:54 +0000

Private equity firm Elevation Partners is continuing to invest in big-name venture-backed Internet businesses, this time putting a deal together for online radio service Pandora Media.

The technology and media investor – which counts U2 front man Bono as a managing director – signed a letter of intent to buy a stake in a secondary sale from existing shareholders, a person familiar with the deal confirmed. TechCrunch reported the deal earlier.

The deal still has some time to ferment as the shareholders have a right of first refusal. The transaction is expected to move past that point within a month, the source said. The size of the deal and current valuation of Pandora, a darling among techies, wasn’t immediately available.

Pandora and several of its investors declined comment. The company raised $35 million in June, giving it a total of at least $56 million in venture backing, according to VentureWire, from Greylock Partners, Crosslink Capital, DBL Investors, Hearst Corp., King Street Capital, Labrador Ventures, Selby Ventures and Walden Venture Capital.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Exclusive (Sort Of!): Former Palm Product Marketing Exec Mitic to Facebook

Kara Swisher — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 21:52:16 +0000

You’d think someone–like BoomTown!–would have noticed the big I’m-going-to-Facebook post former Palm exec Katie Mitic (pictured here) put on her Wall on the social networking site more than three weeks ago.

But–there it was on July 27 from the well-liked Silicon Valley Internet exec: “Jazzed to be joining the very talented and fun team at Facebook in August.” It was followed by dozens of likes and comments.

So much so that on August 2, Mitic–who also worked at Yahoo (YHOO), as an executive-in-residence at Elevation Partners and at many start-ups–followed up: “Overwhelmed by all the good wishes–thanks everyone!!! Now you’ve got me even more excited ;)”

While Mitic’s LinkedIn profile still listed her job at Palm, Facebook confirmed the move, noting she’ll be a top exec in platform marketing.

Palm Scratches Off First of HP Merger Suits

John Paczkowski — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:16:25 +0000

Palm has cleared from its decks at least one of the lawsuits filed by shareholders over its pending merger with Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday, the company said it reached a settlement with investor Steve Ubaney, who sued it in early May alleging breach of fiduciary duty.

“The proposed transaction is the product of a flawed sales process and is being consummated at an unfair price,” Ubaney said in his complaint, arguing that the deal–which will pay common shareholders $5.70 per share–did not maximize Palm’s value as well as it should have. An understandable point given that preferred shareholder Elevation Partners stands to recoup $8.50 a share on its initial $325 million investment, thanks to the liquidation preference it was able to negotiate.

Now Palm (PALM) has persuaded Ubaney to drop his claim, although just how isn’t clear. Terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed, and in its SEC filing, Palm says they “will not affect the amount of the merger consideration that Palm stockholders are entitled to receive in the merger.”

So one shareholder suit down. But still a few more to go. Says Palm: “A number of substantively similar putative stockholder class action suits also remain pending in the Superior Court of California in Santa Clara County.”

KatieCam: Talking Apple With Tech Types at D8

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:31:13 +0000

Katie walked the lobby at Terranea during registration for D8 and asked CNET’s Ina Fried, Wordnik’s Erin McKean, Elevation Partners’ Roger McNamee, Gearhead Gal Blog’s Leslie Grandy, Wired’s Steven Levy and Laptop Magazine’s Mark Spoonauer about what they hope Steve Jobs will discuss during tonight’s interview.

[ See post to watch video ]

Watch more KatieCam at D8 »

Palm CEO Jon "Ruby" Rubinstein Talks About the HP Deal–He's Staying, Will Always Love the Pre Mirror and Still Will Not Be Touching Any iPhones

Kara Swisher — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 23:03:11 +0000

After an All Things Digital report last week on Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) being the most likely suitor for Palm (PALM)–despite multiple reports of intense interest from HTC and Lenovo from China–CEO Jon Rubinstein jokingly asked how we knew about the deal.

We didn’t! It was a complete guess, Ruby!

Actually it was a very informed one by Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski, but his cogent analysis of the synergies between Palm and HP is pretty much what Rubinstein said drove the action.

“We’ve got great intellectual property with webOS and a great team assembled,” he said, in an interview with BoomTown this afternoon after the $1.2 billion acquisition was announced. “HP is the largest tech company in the world and they are now going to invest in driving it to scale, which we could not do at Palm.”

Getting its innovative webOS mobile operating system software to scale–or, more precisely not being able to at its size–was one of the major issues that Rubinstein pointed to in doing the deal (and, it goes without saying, Palm’s struggles).

“This industry became much more competitive very quickly than we had hoped or could have predicted,” he said, referring to the giant investments in the space by Google (GOOG) with Android, Apple (AAPL) with the iPhone and even Microsoft (MSFT) with its new Windows Phone 7. “We did predict the right marketplace and thought the smartphone market was going to explode, so it was the right direction.”

Now it will be up to HP to drive Web OS, although Rubinstein said he expects most of the team at Palm–including himself–to move over intact.

Rubinstein, who once worked at HP, said more details over who the rivals to nab Palm were will be revealed when regulatory documents are released, although he declined to comment specifically now. Now, it is up to him and HP to sell it to Wall Street.

He said he expected the deal “should not attract significant” government scrutiny, given the high amount of competition in the space.

Which he predicted would be heightened now that HP is backing Palm as its new owner, rather than struggling on its own, as it has been.

“Certainly from a tech point of view, the ability to compete is now profound,” he said. “I think this is a logical and natural match and the synergies are obvious.”

As to missteps, such as its creepy lady advertising and questionable marketing, Rubinstein said no CEO likes to focus on those.

Which is why when I asked him about the silly exchange I had with Silicon Valley VC and Palm backer Roger McNamee about last year’s D: All Things Digital conference about the mirror on the back of the Palm Pre that the “ladies” would love, he joked that—even though McNamee was now out–the overly loquacious Elevation Partners investor would be brought back from time to time to liven things up.

As to Rubinstein’s own controversial quote to me in an onstage interview at a D event at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, where the former Apple exec said he had never used an iPhone, he quipped: “I still haven’t touched one.”

In truth, Palm never really did.

Here is that video, as well as highlights of the appearance by Rubinstein and McNamee at last year’s D7:

[ See post to watch video ]

Video clip: Jon Rubinstein says he’s never used an iPhone.

[ See post to watch video ]

Video clip: Mirror, mirror, on the smartphone…

Palm: Those Were the Videos, My Friend, I Thought Roger McNamee Would Never End (Up Selling)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:27:09 +0000

With rumors flying hither and yon about the sale of Palm–likely to an Asian company, such as HTC or Lenovo–BoomTown is getting all misty for those days of hope that the little innovative smartphone pioneer might actually prevail against the giants.

Not for the creepy lady in the advertising for the Pre, mind you, but everything else.

Thus, here are three videos in which the dream was still alive at Palm (PALM).

The first, below, is an interview BoomTown did with Elevation Partners’ Roger McNamee, who sank $425 million into Palm and talks about the sky-high prospects for the company at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, where Palm was the belle of the geeks.

[ See post to watch video ]

The second is from the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, where McNamee and Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein appeared in June 2009 to talk up the launch of the device.

In it, McNamee pooh-poohed the idea that Apple (AAPL) would care about the Palm Pre mimicking an iPhone in iTunes (which Apple did care about a lot) and had a delightful cat fight with me about the mirror on the phone for the “ladies.” It begins with a mock video Rubinstein and McNamee made for D7 in which they make fun of McNamee’s proclivity for telling tall tales about the Pre.

[ See post to watch video ]

The third is a highlights reel from an interview I did with Rubinstein at this year’s CES, as well as a short clip from that interview of him telling me he had never touched an iPhone.

No, unfortunately, he never did.

[ See post to watch video ]

No IPO in 2010, Yelp Says

Lauren Goode — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:20:44 +0000

Investors hungry for Yelp shares might have to dine elsewhere for now.

Jeremy Stoppelman, the co-founder and chief executive of the user-generated reviews site, said Thursday that it is unlikely to issue an initial public offering for “several years.”

Yelp “will definitely not go public this year,” he said. “2011, who knows? But why rush out the door if I can avoid it?”

There has been speculation about Yelp’s IPO prospects–and those of Silicon Valley companies in general–in recent months.

Venture-capital firm Elevation Partners invested in the company last month after it walked away from a Google (GOOG) offer worth more than $500 million.

Mr. Stoppelman declined to comment on the discussions with Google but said the newest round of private financing will allow Yelp to “grow the way we want and work on the things we say we’re going to work on.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Three's A Trend: First Facebook, Then Zynga, Now Yelp

Scott Austin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:00:41 +0000

Yelp Inc. now has another thing in common with social-networking site Facebook Inc. and online gaming company Zynga Inc. Besides being a fast-growing, venture-backed Internet company, the local-business review site has opted to receive an investment from a private equity firm that gives its employees a chance to partly cash out–and the company more breathing room to remain private.

In a press release that just crossed the wire, Yelp said it received $25 million in Series E funding from Elevation Partners, the private equity firm known for its connection with U2 lead singer Bono and its investment in smartphone maker Palm Inc. (PALM). The Yelp deal also includes a provision in which Elevation Partners would buy up to $75 million of stock from “vested employees and other eligible shareholders.”

Yelp, which The Wall Street Journal and others reported had received an acquisition offer worth at least $500 million from Google Inc. (GOOG), has previously raised $30 million from venture firms including Benchmark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and DAG Ventures.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

With Google Gone, Elevation Invests in Yelp–Just as It Wanted To

Peter Kafka — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:15:46 +0000

Whatever happened between Google and Yelp is now officially kaput. Instead of selling the entire company to the search giant, Yelp’s owners will be taking up to $100 million in funding from private equity shop Elevation Partners.

I still don’t know how close Google (GOOG) and Yelp came to actually consummating a transaction, but Elevation’s involvement does clear one thing up. As I noted in December when news of the would-be Google deal broke, Yelp had already been exploring a large funding round. And now sources tell me that Elevation had been in the mix for months.

Elevation, whose most prominent portfolio company to date has been Palm (PALM), will put $25 million into the local reviews site for expansion and has earmarked up to $75 million more to buy shares from employees. That structure is similar to the deals Russian investors Digital Sky Technologies have done with Facebook and Zynga–and as in those deals, the Elevation bet means any public offering has likely been pushed back by a year or more.

BusinessWeek pegs the value of the round at $475 million. TechCrunch first reported Elevation’s involvement earlier this month.

Former Apple Software Chief Joins Palm Backer Elevation Partners

John Paczkowski — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:50:27 +0000

Add another name to the list of former Apple employees resurfacing at Palm and its chief backer, Elevation Partners. Avie Tevanian, who once served as Apple’s chief software technology officer, has joined Elevation as a managing director.

“Avie and I worked closely together at Apple for many years and I have always admired his engineering talent and leadership, his strategic vision for how software can transform businesses and his ability to execute on that vision,” Elevation co-founder Fred Anderson said in a statement. “We are proud that he has decided to join Elevation and believe he will be a huge asset as we explore new investment opportunities.”

Indeed. Tevanian, who spent nearly a decade leading Apple’s software engineering efforts before leaving in 2006, came to the company from Steve Jobs’s Next Computer, where he helped build the NeXTSTEP operating system, an early precursor of the current Mac OS.

I can’t imagine that Apple (AAPL) is at all happy about Tevanian’s latest career choice.

By enlisting with Elevation, Tevanian joins a group of Palm-backing Apple alums that includes Palm (PALM) Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein, formerly Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering; Senior VP of Product Development Mike Bell, former SVP of product development at Apple; Senior Apple Designer Jeff Zwerner; VP of Public Relations Lynn Fox, who once headed up Mac PR for the Cupertino, Calif., company; and, of course, board member Fred Anderson, who served as Apple’s CFO from 1996 to 2004.

Image credit: Que Nerd

NPR's Honchos Talk Digital at "Think In" in San Francisco (Also, Scoble!)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 01:14:24 +0000

Last Friday, National Public Radio CEO Vivian Schiller and Digital Media SVP and GM Kinsey WiIson came to San Francisco for a “Digital Think In” to pick the brains of some Silicon Valley types about where the public radio icon should go, digitally speaking.

While NPR actually has been pretty fast-forward with podcasts and a robust Web site, it still has to think about what social networking means to it and whether a day is coming when broadcasting online will be bigger than offline.

Also, what’s up with Twitter?

These and other questions were discussed at frog design Friday with a passel of Web types like investor Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners, Toni Schneider of Automattic, craigslist founder Craig Newmark and LinkedIn founder and Chairman Reid Hoffman.

Also, ubiquitous blogger Robert Scoble, who wants NPR to open itself up like a can of beans.

The Think In participants were charged with making suggestions related to five main topics: Social media and connection to the audience, NPR’s national network of more than 800 stations, the potential of its open API, expansion of platforms and how to diversify its revenue model.

BoomTown always likes crowdsourcing innovation, even among the digital elite.

While at the event in the morning, I talked to Schiller, who came to NPR last year after a stint as general manager of the New York Times online unit, and also to Wilson, who previously worked as executive editor for USA Today and ran its digital efforts before that.

Along with my video interview with them, below, you can check out some more detailed information from the event here.

Here’s my video:

[ See post to watch video ]

For Sale: 20 Million Palm Shares at $16.25 Apiece

John Paczkowski — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:12:51 +0000

Palm this morning put a price on its public offering of 20 million common shares: $16.25 a piece. That’s nearly five percent less than Tuesday’s closing price of $17.07, but enough to generate about $313.1 million. At least $35 million of the total will come from current investor Elevation Partners, for whom shares have already been reserved.

Palm (PALM), which reported a narrower-than-expected loss last week, plans to use proceeds from the sale for working capital, general corporate purposes and perhaps to underwrite the additional development required to make webOS 1.2 re-enable synching with Apple (AAPL) iTunes.

Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller Out. Here's the Internal Memo.

Peter Kafka — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:26:39 +0000

Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller, who has run one of the Web’s biggest finance sites for the last nine years, is leaving the company at the end of the summer. No replacement has been named.

Spanfeller’s departure comes amid a flurry of bad news for finance publications. In April, Condé Nast pulled the plug on Portfolio, its business magazine and Web site, after a very expensive two-year run. Earlier this week, publisher McGraw-Hill (MHP) announced that it was shopping BusinessWeek, and observers are floating the notion that the company may end up giving the magazine away to anyone who wants to take on its annual losses.

Time Warner’s (TWX) Fortune magazine has also been battered by the recession, which has been particularly hard on the finance, auto and luxury-good companies that business publications have traditionally relied upon. And Forbes itself has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs since last fall.

In a memo to the company’s employees, Forbes CEO Steve Forbes praised Spanfeller for building out the company’s Web property, which says it receives 18 million unique visitors a month.In the aftermath of the dot.com crash, Spanfeller helped turn Forbes.com, which the family-owned company was close to shutting down, into a powerhouse.

But Forbes’s plan to take the Web property public earlier in the decade never panned out. And once Forbes sold a 40 percent stake to private equity investors Elevation Partners three years ago, plenty of Forbes employees, including me, had speculated that Spanfeller would look for a job that promised a big payout. That said, it wasn’t that long ago that Spanfeller was the victor in a power struggle with Jim Berrien, the former publisher of the Forbes print edition.

The news was first reported by AOL’s Daily Finance. Here’s the company memo from CEO Steve Forbes:

To: All Hands

From Steve Forbes

July 16, 2009

Jim Spanfeller, President and CEO of Forbes.com has decided to step down from leading our website after nine years. In the entrepreneurial spirit that Forbes has always championed, Jim will be setting up his own media management company.

Describing his future plans Jim said, “The world of media has changed rapidly in the past 10 years and the velocity of the change promises only to increase going forward. I’ve had a great run at Forbes and have been deeply involved in the breakthroughs and transformations between traditional and digital media. Now I see a huge opportunity to have my own media management business that will help other traditional media companies make the most of their enormous prospects in digital venues, taking all I have learned here in the past decade and applying on a wider horizon. Forbes.com has truly been a truly wonderful ride and I am deeply in debt to the Forbes family for letting me be a part of it.”

Jim has done a monumental job of bringing Forbes.com to the lead position in business websites, and secured Forbes.com as the must visit site for not only global business leaders but also anyone interested in the finest business reporting and analysis available. At present Forbes.com has 18 million unique visitors a month.

Along the way, Jim has overseen the development and growth of Forbes Digital, which includes Forbes.com, ForbesTraveler.com, Investopedia.com, RealClearPolitics.com, RealClearMarkets.com, Real Clear Sports, and Forbes Business and Finance Blog Network, which together reach 40 million unique visitors a month.

This immense growth on the digital side of the business was spearheaded, pursed, and led by Jim with enormous success. The digital world is still uncharted with few rules, and Jim’s intellect, creativity, and business acumen helped bring us our number one position. For this the Forbes family is very grateful and we wish him all the success in his future plans.

Since Elevation Partners partnered with Forbes three years ago, Jim has worked very closely with them on the growth and development and vision for Forbes.com. Commenting on Jim’s departure, Roger McNamee of Elevation said, “Jim did a fantastic job leading Forbes.com. In an era when competitors feared it, Jim embraced and evangelized the internet, with huge benefits to Forbes and its audiences. We are grateful for his contributions over the past nine years.”

Jim will be staying through a transition period at least through Labor Day. Please join me and my brothers in wishing Jim all the best in the future, which he deserves.

Elevation Partners Managing Director Roger McNamee and Palm Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein: The Full D7 Session

Adam Tow — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:25:03 +0000

As the final posting of the onstage interviews at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, here is one of the sessions that generated a lot of news: The first major interview about the Palm Pre with Elevation Partners Managing Director Roger McNamee and Palm Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein.

The pair are trying to remake Palm (PALM)–see the AllThingsD.com topic page on the Pre here–in a bet-the-company move to recover the Silicon Valley icon’s long-lost glory via innovation.

Palm is trying to muscle into a market with multiple competitors, such as Apple’s iPhone, Android from Google (GOOG) and many more.

In the session with Walt Mossberg and me, McNamee and Rubinstein talked about the new smartphone and its various features, including a controversial way of syncing with Apple (AAPL) iTunes.

Also, McNamee and I had a debate over the Pre’s mirror. Really.

Here’s the video of the full D7 session (along with a very funny intro video making fun of McNamee’s loose lips):

[ See post to watch video ]

Elevation Partners Managing Director Roger McNamee and Palm Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein: The Full D7 Session

Kara Swisher — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:21:06 +0000

The pair are trying to remake Palm (PALM)–see the AllThingsD.com topic page on the Pre here–in a bet-the-company move to recover the Silicon Valley icon’s long-lost glory via innovation.

Palm is trying to muscle into a market with multiple competitors, such as Apple’s iPhone, Android from Google (GOOG) and many more.

In the session with Walt Mossberg and me, McNamee and Rubinstein talked about the new smartphone and its various features, including a controversial way of syncing with Apple (AAPL) iTunes.

Also, McNamee and I had a debate over the Pre’s mirror. Really.

Here’s the video of the full D7 session (along with a very funny intro video making fun of McNamee’s loose lips):

[ See post to watch video ]

Palm's New Pilot: Jon Rubinstein [UPDATED]

John Paczkowski — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:33:58 +0000

“The key thing was our CEO, Ed Colligan, had the insight that once the [BlackBerry] Pearl came out, the smart-phone business was going to be a consumer business, and Palm was not positioned for that and needed a major transformation, and that’s what we got involved in doing. The whole notion was you wanted to take that cultural legacy of innovation that created the Pilot and the Treo and then apply it to the next customer.”

–Roger McNamee lauds Palm CEO Ed Colligan at our recent D: All Things Digital conference

Now we know why it was Palm executive chairman Jon Rubinstein and investor Roger McNamee on stage at D last month talking up the Pre, and not CEO Ed Colligan: Colligan was on his way out.

On Wednesday, Palm (PALM) named Rubinstein as its new chairman and CEO. Come Friday he’ll succeed Colligan, who is leaving the company after 16 years to join McNamee at Elevation Partners. Apparently Palm, who recruited Rubinstein, a former Apple (AAPL) engineer, to turn the company around has decided it would much rather have him in its highest office than Colligan under whose leadership it was foundering.

In a statement, Rubinstein–who has spent the past two years quarterbacking the development of the Pre and its webOS–welcomed his new role. “I am very excited about taking on this expanded role at Palm,” he said. “Ed and I have worked very hard together the past two years, and I’m grateful to him for everything he’s done to help set the company up for success. With Palm webOS we have ten-plus years of innovation ahead of us, and the Palm Pre is already one of the year’s hottest new products. Due in no small part to Ed’s courageous leadership, we’re in great shape to get Palm back to continuous growth, and we plan to keep the trajectory going upward.”

Reached for comment late Wednesday afternoon, Roger McNamee offered up this rather canned statement on Palm’s leadership transition: “With Ed’s decision to step down, Jon Rubinstein is the natural choice to lead Palm into its next phase of growth. Jon has proven to have exactly the right mix of product vision, organizational leadership and operational capabilities to help Palm regain a leadership position. We are grateful for the leadership role Ed has played in initiating this transformation and getting through the successful launch of webOS and the Pre.”

Palm shares are up 3.75 percent at $12.44 on the news.

Palm's New Pilot: Jon Rubinstein [UPDATED]

John Paczkowski — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:33:58 +0000

“The key thing was our CEO, Ed Colligan, had the insight that once the [BlackBerry] Pearl came out, the smart-phone business was going to be a consumer business, and Palm was not positioned for that and needed a major transformation, and that’s what we got involved in doing. The whole notion was you wanted to take that cultural legacy of innovation that created the Pilot and the Treo and then apply it to the next customer.”

–Roger McNamee lauds Palm CEO Ed Colligan at our recent D: All Things Digital conference

Now we know why it was Palm executive chairman Jon Rubinstein and investor Roger McNamee on stage at D last month talking up the Pre, and not CEO Ed Colligan: Colligan was on his way out.

Palm shares are up 3.75 percent at $12.44 on the news.

Rubinstein and McNamee: Remaking Palm

John Paczkowski — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:14:42 +0000

What a wonderful curative the Palm Pre has proven to be for Palm. Especially considering that the device has yet to ship. In early January of this year, the company’s shares were trading below $3, having been dragged deep into the mud by a string of nasty quarterly losses. Five months later, after the Pre’s announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show, they’re trading at over $10.

And Jon Rubinstein and Roger McNamee are largely responsible for that. Rubinstein is an Apple (AAPL) veteran who’s now Palm’s (PALM) executive chairman. And McNamee, managing director of Elevation Partners, is the guy who recruited him for that position. Together, they’re remaking Palm in a bet-the-company move to recover its long-lost glory. Should be an interesting session.

Session Highlights

[ See post to watch video ]

Live Blog

A couple pieces of Palm-related breaking news before we begin. Verizon Wireless (VZ) CEO Lowell McAdam this morning said the company intends to sell the Pre about six months from now. Also, the Pre will reportedly sync with iTunes.
This session is prefaced by video of a faux-advertising shoot in which McNamee makes increasingly preposterous claims about the Palm Pre over Rubinstein’s protestations. It’s funny as hell, and not all that far off from reality if you know the company’s recent history. McNamee, as you may recall, made some silly claims about the Pre’s prowess in a March interview with Bloomberg–so silly that Palm was forced to file a Free Writing Prospectus with the SEC refuting them. So to hear McNamee boast that the Pre is the only handset based on alien technology–well, I wouldn’t be surprised to read that in Bloomberg tomorrow.
While the audience is still chuckling, Walt and Kara welcome Rubinstein and McNamee to the stage.
Walt kicks things off by noting Palm’s history of developing breakthrough devices and asking how the company’s doing now. “We hired a lot of new people into the company,” says Rubinstein. “Palm is a new company today….Palm had tremendous assets. The DNA is there. The way of thinking about great products is there.”
Walt asks McNamee about his claim that all iPhone owners with expiring contracts will switch to the Pre. At what time will that happen? “4:25 p.m,” quips McNamee.
What’s the depth of Elevation’s involvement in Palm? Pretty deep. McNamee says that because the opportunity at the company is so huge, he spends a lot of time on it. He notes that leaders in the smartphone market–Palm and RIM–each have very small market share. That means there’s a great opportunity for Palm to join them. “I wish I had the entire fund in Palm,” he said. “This is the thing that will define us.”
Kara asks how Rubinstein came to Palm. He says it was a compelling idea to take something that needed to be turned around and rebuild it. “It’s so rare to be able to start with a blank sheet of paper and start over. And we were given a blank sheet of paper with the device and the OS. The old Palm OS lasted 15 years but had run its course. We set out to develop a platform that will last us another 10 or 15 years.”
What lessons from Apple has Rubinstein brought to bear on his new work at Palm? “I worked with Steve for many years and learned a tremendous amount from him, the value of user experience and design–taste. I also learned the idea of great marketing…On the engineering side, I helped create the engineering culture at Apple, so obviously, the engineering culture at Palm bears some similarities to it.”

On to the demo. Discussing the idea of synergy–managing information across applications and multitasking. Multiple apps can be run at the same time. Not an infinite number, Walt notes, but quite a few.
On to media. MP3 player includes onboard support for Amazon’s (AMZN) MP3 Store. Files are downloaded directly over the air to the device. Very slick.
Plug the Pre into a PC and you’re offered the option of using the device as a USB drive, charging it or beginning a “media sync.” Interesting, using media sync, the Pre does indeed sync with iTunes, though it’s hamstrung by Apple’s DRM-protected songs. Can’t imagine that Apple’s too happy about that. Presumably, Apple legal is already drafting a letter. Pre appears to make iTunes think it’s an iPod.

How is Apple going to feel about that, asks Walt. Rubinstein dodges a bit, noting that there are a variety of ways of getting music out of iTunes. Walt pushes back, pointing out that this is the first non-Apple device that is recognized as an Apple device by a Mac. Rubinstein dodges again. Seems he’s pretty obviously using his Apple knowledge here. McNamee jumps in. “I don’t think so,” he says. “They are practically a monopolist and this is what consumers want. Consumers own all this media. I find it hard to believe that Apple will get bent out of shape.”
The media sync feature also works with iPhoto and syncs photos to the Pre. That’s not likely to go over well at Apple either.
Moving on now to WebOS, Palm’s new operating system. The key feature is the Web App Catalog, Palm’s analog to Apple’s App store. Palm will have just a dozen or so apps in the store when the Pre launches next week. Kara jokes that Palm should simply port all the apps in the Apple’s App Store over to its own store.
Rubinestein and McNamee demo a download of Fandango. Tap to download. App is downloaded over the air. Apps do not sync with iTunes, they’re stored on the device.
Fandango on the Pre looks and works pretty much as it does on the iPhone and the BlackBerry. It does have an interesting additional feature or two. A simple gesture adds a movie time to the calendar. Tap the screen and the Pre’s calendar ingests info from Fandango. Pretty elegant integration with the Pre’s core applications.
Moving on to universal search. Very slick and something the iPhone lacks. Search for D7 on the Pre device yields no results, but the user is offered the option of searching Google (GOOG), Twitter, etc., for the same query. The Twitter search reveals the following Tweet about iTunes syncing: “Apple may not like this, but it’s damn cool.” Indeed.
McNamee says the model here is “When in doubt just type.” Simple. Elegant.
When the demo ends, Walt asks about Palm’s competitors. Clearly Apple and RIM (RIMM), says Rubinstein. He adds that the battle that’s going to be fought is not about hardware, but software. McNamee interrupts to say the opportunity here is to persuade people to move from the “feature phone” to the integrated device. Apparently, the iPhone is a feature phone and the Pre is the integrated device here. McNamee going on and on about the Pre’s design. Feels great in the hand. The Pre has a mirror. “Never before has a device like this been designed for a woman.” Nice, Roger. Perhaps someday it will include a blow dryer as well.

Walt asks about the Pre’s keyboard, Rubinstein says that there are a lot of people who want keyboards. Applause from the audience. That said, the iPhone’s lack of a keyboard clearly hasn’t hurt it in the market.
More talk about McNamee’s “women like mirrors” comment. McNamee says device makers typically do not target the female audience. They traditionally target a male, testosterone-driven audience. McNamee seems to think the Pre will appeal to a wider audience–one with a larger female contingent than the iPhone and BlackBerry. McNamee appealing to audience to confirm its love of mirrors…
How do you woo developers away from the iPhone? Rubinstein says Palm doesn’t need to. It’s easy to develop for the Pre. “We have a great SDK.” Walt notes that the SDK hasn’t been widely distributed yet and the Pre is just days away from launch. Rubinstein says this was intended. “We’re doing this methodically.” There are hundreds of developers with the SDK right now, and thousands in the queue waiting for it. Why? McNamee jumps in again and says the company wants to get it right, but seems to suggest that the SDK may not be quite as polished as Palm would like.

When the Pre debuts will there be a shortage? Walt cites varying rumors about how many handsets will be available initially. Rubinstein says the company is in full production now and shipping devices every day to Sprint (S). That said, he expects there may be shortages due to high demand.
On to the Q&A: When will there be a GSM version? Palm expects to have one at some point in the future. What about the Verizon deal, asks Walt, noting this morning’s Verizon story. Rubinstein says he can’t comment. We do love Sprint and they are our exclusive launch partner,” Rubinstein said. “It sounds like AT&T (T) and Verizon both want it. I can’t comment on unannounced relationships.” He notes that BellMo will distribute the Pre in Canada.
Questioner wants to know about overlapping features in Pre, iPhone ? Yes, says McNamee, refering to the Pre’s EAS. As a generalization, everything you’re used to in an iPhone will be in the Pre as well. And if it’s not there initially it will be there soon.
Does Palm worry that Apple might break the Pre’s iTunes sync feature? McNamee doesn’t seem to think so. “We’re recognizing their market dominance…and they can’t tell people what to do with their music.
McNamee on his investment in Palm and the Pre: If I could have put everything into it, I would have.
End of Q&A

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as we were able. It was not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

Twitter Guys: We'll Still Be Running This Company in Five Years

Peter Kafka — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:49:55 +0000

Meet the Internet’s It Boys: Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone. A year ago their “micromessaging” platform was unknown outside of a small circle of digerati. Now the service has broken through to the mainstream, or at least to the mainstream media (thanks, Oprah!). But while Twitter has no problem generating attention, it’s still unclear how the company will actually generate revenue. Or maybe it doesn’t need to do that: Last year Facebook offered to buy Twitter for $500 million in cash and stock, and the service could presumably garner a much higher price today–perhaps from Microsoft (MSFT) or Google (GOOG). Or at least that’s what its investors may be hoping for.

Session Highlights

[ See post to watch video ]

Live Blog

After Kara Swisher assists Jill Sobule with a song penned for (and about) Rupert Murdoch, Walt Mossberg joins her on the stage and they thank the audience. “We double-mean it this year,” says Walt.
Walt and Kara explain their “Web 3.0″ thesis, which you can find explained in detail here. They also plug the new All Things Digital iphone app (which is excellent!) and run through a series of less helpful iPhone apps–less helpful because they don’t exist. The Carol Bartz app gets some applause.
Walt: It’s all about apps. Apple (AAPL) dominates that business but we will show some other great stuff at this conference. Kara: Normally we start out with big-company CEOs, but instead, we’re going to bring out the company that everyone is talking about. Here are Biz Stone and Evan Williams of Twitter.
Kara shows off a video that depicts her mother’s low opinion of Twitter. Well worth watching.
Walt: We also have real data about people’s opinions re: digital media, commissioned by an actual polling firm–Penn, Schoen & Berland. For instance, only 51 percent of Twitter users are on the service once a month. What’s the deal with that?

Evan: That’s fair. We know it’s in its infancy. There are lots of ways to fix the adoption curve that we know how to do.
Evan explains the history of Twitter. He sold Blogger to Google, hired Biz, started Odeo, a podcasting company. Walt: “Which got crushed by Apple.”
Biz: I followed Evan to Odeo, and we started working with Jack Dorsey, who had this idea that just involved IM-like status updates that could update via mobile. To Ev’s credit, as CEO of Odeo, he sent us off to work on that.
Evan: A few months later, at Odeo, we just didn’t see a bright future for that. Generally, if I’m not personally invested in the product, and don’t use it myself…
Biz: I started playing with Twitter and I started laughing at Evan’s posts and thought that was a good sign.

Evan: It was so simple. “It didn’t look like a real thing. The simplicity turned off some of our engineers. It wasn’t obvious at all.
Walt: How many users do you have? Biz and Ev won’t comment.
Evan: We wound down Odeo, returned the money to investors and made them whole and went off to focus on Twitter.
Walt points out that most users don’t use the Twitter.com interface. Biz: We have at least twice as much usage via the open API and other clients as we do via Twitter.com.
Walt: Is that good thing? Evan: Yes. Very much so. We’ve never built an iPhone app, but there are at least a dozen of them. You can’t win by trying to corral everything in. We have all these people adding value. We can’t build all the stuff people want with 45 people.

Biz: Openness, open platforms are a big deal. We’re seeing lots of this. And people communicating on these open platforms is a big deal. It’s not just with communication. It’s with open-source software, transparency at companies, etc. People are building a ton of value this way.
Evan: This openness helped create Summize, the search engine we bought a year ago. That couldn’t have happened if we weren’t open with our data. Turns out there’s a huge opportunity with search, and we hadn’t foreseen that.
Walt: Will future projects and developments happen on Web pages or on clients/apps?
Evan: We’re interface-agnostic. We’re more concerned about what the data is and that it should flow to all clients. I don’t think we’ll build a desktop app, but we will tweak the Web site a bit.
Kara: Everyone’s talking about real-time search. But what kind of real business opportunity is available there?
Evan: Real-time search means different things on different platforms. On Google, it’s Web search. On Twitter, it’s Twitter search. It’s different from what other people are talking about when they’re talking about real-time search. One of Twitter’s properties is that it’s low-latency, and speed is important in information dissemination.
Kara: So what’s the value in that? What’s the advertising premise for that?
Biz: When I think about search, I think about a box and a button. When I think about Twitter, I zoom out a bit, and I think of discovery.

Walt: Is there a way to sell that?
Biz: Pfft….There’s a way to make introductions to people, to tell them that things and people are available on Twitter, and there’s certainly money in that.
Walt cites another piece of polling data: 30 percent say they’d be willing to see banner advertising on Twitter. Does that work for you guys?
Evan: I think it’s probably the least interesting thing we can do.
Kara: So you’re least interested in doing it?
Evan: Yeah.
Walt: 24 percent say they’d pay for power accounts. Do you think that’s a good idea?
Evan: Yes, I think it’s a good idea. We’ve talked about it for a long time. Here’s how it might work: Lots of commercial users are on Twitter already. That’s not odd, and it’s happening successfully already. But we could give those users tools to make it better. For instance, here’s how P&G (PG) might sell Tide…Wait that’s a bad idea. How about The Wall Street Journal? No, they’re a media company; that won’t work either. How about Dunkin’ Donuts? People like Dunkin’ Donuts. They have an affinity for that, and they’re already following Dunkin’ Donuts. So one thing we can do is tell new users that the Dunkin’ Donuts account on Twitter is actually Dunkin’ Donuts. To verify that.
Walt: OK, what else could you do with that?

Evan: There’s a million ways, if you’re doing this in real time, to make this useful, and it won’t be annoying to people because if they don’t want that information, they won’t subscribe to a particular account.
Biz on hype: We realize that this constant stream of attention will eventually go away. We have to keep concentrating on the company. “We’re one percent into Twitter.”
Kara: You’ve raised a lot of money. You’ve had a lot of interest from acquirers. Why didn’t you sell to Facebook?
Evan: I have a big thing about building sustainable companies. And I think that’s what Twitter should be.
Walt: So in five years you won’t have sold this? You’ll still be running it?
Evan: Yes. I didn’t expect to be working on this when I spun Twitter out of Odeo. But I came back to it because it was the most interesting thing I could work on.
Kara: Do you have Zuckerberg-like control of your company, where you have the ability to control your fate and turn down a $1 billion offer from the likes of Microsoft?
Evan. Yes. And the board feels the same way.
Walt: You sure your board doesn’t want to sell the company within five years?
Evan: Sequoia likes to brag about YouTube. But they also aspire to start companies like Apple and other cool companies. I think VCs like to brag about starting big awesome companies.
Biz: When we met Bijan Sabet at Spark, I remember telling Ev that I liked him a lot. And Ev met him and said “he’s a little too nice.” Then we met the rest of the guys. [Pause]. And then we were in.
Kara: What’s next big delta for you, the next big innovation?
Evan. We’re not doing a TV show. We look at that like an iPhone platform that can have apps on it, but we’re not doing a show ourselves.
Biz: I think the next big thing is scaling this company.
Evan: Definitely scaling the company. We’re 45 people. We need to make the product better, we need to solve the awareness-to-engagement ramp. We also want to deepen the value proposition. There are lots of head-slapping things we can do to improve the product.
Walt: I was Twitter skeptic. But I really go into it when my colleague Katie told me that this was an interesting way to keep up with news. Is that something you can build on?
Evan: That’s the big secret for people like Kara’s mom, and we can do a better job of explaining that. Twitter disseminates information and it builds relationships. You can do one or both of those things.
Kara: Do you need to raise more money?
Evan: Well, we need to start building a monetizable business.
Kara: When does that begin?
Evan: There will be a moment when we turn something on.

Time for Q&A: Roger McNamee from Elevation Partners begs the guys not to do midday planned maintenance outages. He also asks them to scale faster and to hire more than 45 people.
Evan: Go to Twitter.com, and you’ll see that we’re hiring. We’re not planning on staying at 45 people.
Q: What do you think will be key way you bring in money in a couple of years?
Biz: You need to leave room for emergence to take place. We’re doing that in the way we structure the company and the way we hire people, etc. I’ve always said that if we described Twitter in three sentences, the first two would be about not putting too much fidelity on it, and the last sentence would be “we don’t know.”
Q: What about an Apple-like App Store for Twitter, where you guys could sort and authenticate apps?
Biz: I think exposing apps to people would be a good idea. I don’t know about charging for it. We know that certain apps make Twitter work much better for people, and we should promote them and point people to them. “I would like to do that right now. I don’t know how soon we’ll get to it.”
Q: Not really a question, but a plea to not abuse the access to personal data that Twitter already has.
Evan: We know not kill the goose. There are things that we could do that would be really stupid, and that would be dangerous, but those aren’t even the most tempting things to do.
Q: In traditional media and marketing, we have tools to prove the value of different tools. How to tell marketing clients that they’re reaching the right audience, etc.?
Biz: Start by typing their name in Twitter search and showing them how many people are talking about their product. They’ll immediately want to respond. That’s the easy answer.
Q: What about looking at Nielsen-like partners to help refine metrics and tell marketers who’s looking at what?
Biz: There are lots of interesting things we could do. I think that it will be more compelling when you’re not just following a set list of people. Twitter will be more interesting when it starts telling you things like “You go to Whole Foods a lot…maybe you’d like to know that this is on sale today, etc.”
Evan: But it will always be recipient-driven.
Walt: Biz, please tell me about your name.
Biz: I couldn’t pronounce my name, which was Christopher Isaac Stone, and I said “bzzz” and that was that.