AllThingsD » Sand Hill Road

Former Palm and Twitter Techie Mike Abbott Jumps From EIR at Benchmark to Kleiner Partner

Kara Swisher — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:00:03 +0000

Kleiner Perkins has nabbed former Twitter engineering head Mike Abbott, who left the social communications company less than two months ago to be an entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital.

(Well, that didn’t last long, Mike, but maybe the food was better at 2750 Sand Hill Road than at 2480 Sand Hill Road.)

In an interview this morning, Abbott said that he hopes to stay a VC for 20 years (yipes!), since it allows him to work closely with a wide range of entrepreneurs and also get a broad view across a spectrum of businesses.

“I am really energized about what’s been happening in a lot of places like software,” he said. “From my experience, I think I bring a lot of differentiation for the companies Kleiner is invested in.”

And tech cred too. “We think engineers will be thrilled to have access to Mike and he’s a magnet for talent,” said Kleiner partner Ted Schlein, who compared him to all the comic-book heroes, The Avengers, in one person. “Mike is multi-faceted.”

Abbott was indeed a high-profile hire for Twitter a little over a year ago from Palm, where he served as head of its software and services, in charge of its webOS mobile platform.

He was brought in to provide a level of discipline and reliability to the Twitter communications platform and service, which had been plagued by persistent outages that made the Fail Whale infamous.

Abbott will focus on social, mobile and cloud investments at the well-known Silicon Valley venture firm while working on a team that includes high-profile players Mary Meeker and Bing Gordon.

Here’s the official press release:

Michael Abbott Joins Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as Partner

Engineering Leader to Help Social, Mobile and Cloud Entrepreneurs Build Teams and Ventures

MENLO PARK, Calif., December 1, 2011 – Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) today announced that Mike Abbott, former vice president of engineering at Twitter, has joined the firm as a partner on its digital team. Abbott led the building of innovative, high-performance applications and services at Twitter, Palm and Microsoft. With a deep background in social and mobile applications and infrastructure, Mike is also an expert in enterprise infrastructure and cloud computing and “big data” businesses, having founded Composite Software, and advised Cloudera and Jawbone.

“I’m excited to join KPCB’s partners to build new ventures faster,” said Abbott. “The partner mix of founders, operators and investors is ideal for entrepreneurs racing to scale at this disruptive time.”

“Mike is an exceptional and well-respected leader with an outstanding track record shipping great products,” said Ted Schlein, partner, KPCB. “Mike’s deep expertise from Palm and Twitter will help social, mobile and cloud entrepreneurs win.”

Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, said, “Mike is a huge engineering talent and will be a terrific asset to Kleiner’s technology companies. He was instrumental in helping us scale Twitter’s architecture to support incredible growth ̶ from 100 million daily Tweets in January 2011 to about 250 million daily tweets today.”

In less than a year and a half, Abbott grew the Twitter engineering team from 80 to more than 350 engineers in an intensely competitive recruiting market. Abbott’s team rebuilt and solidified Twitter’s infrastructure. Prior to joining Twitter in 2010, Abbott led the software development team at Palm that created HP/Palm’s next-generation webOS platform. Abbott was previously the general manager at Microsoft for .NET online services, which became Azure. Prior to that, he co-founded Passenger Inc. and founded Composite Software. Abbott has advised and invested in numerous software companies such as Cloudera, Hearsay Labs, Saynow and Jawbone.

Mike Abbott is just the third senior KPCB partner added in three years, joining Bing Gordon and Mary Meeker, each with exceptional records serving mobile, social and cloud entrepreneurs. KPCB’s digital team also bolstered its infrastructure expertise with the recent addition of Ray Bradford from Amazon Web Services, where he helped grow the company’s cloud database business.

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.

Reid Hoffman Talks About LinkedIn and VC Life and Gives Five Tips to Start-Ups (Video)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:28:20 +0000

Earlier this week, I got a chance to sit down with one of Silicon Valley’s best known entrepreneurs and investors Reid Hoffman, who gave me his first interview after the IPO of LinkedIn.

Hoffman is executive chairman of the business networking company, as well as a prominent angel funder (Facebook early on, for example) and, now, a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners.

In other words, he has a lot of jobs.

Thus, I thought it would be interesting to do a video interview with him at the firm’s Sand Hill Road offices, splitting the interview into three parts.

In the first, he talks about the LinkedIn public offering and where social networking is going. In the second, Hoffman discusses his investing theories, including Greylock’s Discovery Fund for seed investments. And, in the third, Hoffman gives five tips for success for entrepreneurs.

Here’s the videos:

[ See post to watch video ]

When Marc Met Mike–Andreessen Interviews Ovitz

Kara Swisher — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:05:22 +0000

There is no question that legendary entrepreneur Marc Andreessen is a power player in Silicon Valley.

Nor that Michael Ovitz, who used to be the power player in Hollywood, is one of the people who did most to disrupt the way business was done in the entertainment industry, with his bare-knuckle approach at his groundbreaking Creative Artists Agency.

So, if you put them together, as happened recently at the Sand Hill Road offices of the Andreessen Horowitz venture firm, you get what turned out to be a very interesting discussion.

In fact, Andreessen actually interviewed Ovitz in front of a private audience about his life and philosophies.

BoomTown attended the event, which had been off the record until now, when a video of the talk was provided to All Things Digital.

The pair met up awhile ago, as Ovitz developed an interest in Silicon Valley after his glory days as an über-agent and his fateful stint as a top exec at Disney.

Here’s the video of the full interview, in which he talks about all of that. It’s long, at one hour, but–as you’ll find–quite riveting:

[ See post to watch video ]

Video: Marc Andreessen Talks About the New $650 Million Fund Burning a Hole in His Pocket

Kara Swisher — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 12:23:15 +0000

As BoomTown wrote recently, Andreessen Horowitz finally officially announced a new investment fund it had been raising.

The high-profile entrepreneur-led venture firm pulled in $650 million from its existing limited partners, as well as some new ones.

That’s almost double its first fund of $300 million, with which Andreessen Horowitz invested in companies ranging from gaming phenom Zynga to Internet telephony Skype to geolocation start-up Foursquare.

Andreessen now has 18 people working at its HQ on Sand Hill Road, and expects to expand.

As before, in an interview earlier today, partner Marc Andreessen said the investments would be made across the board in the general area of computer science and set largely in the Silicon Valley area.

But the size and amount of the investments will vary from seed fundings of $50,000 to $100,0000 to venture deals to putting bigger amounts of up to $100 million into growth companies–such as, perhaps, Twitter?

Here is Andreessen talking about it all in this video interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

Painting Silicon Valley a New Shade of Green

Pui-Wing Tam — Thu, 13 May 2010 07:00:53 +0000

Silicon Valley is trying to become a hub for clean technology–companies that specialize in alternative energy or energy-efficient products. Helping to lead the shift are local venture capitalists such as Vinod Khosla.

The 55-year-old, who co-founded Sun Microsystems Inc. (JAVA) and was a partner at venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, now runs his own firm investing in clean-tech companies.

Last September, Mr. Khosla announced that his firm, Khosla Ventures, had raised two new funds that totaled more than $1 billion, giving him ammunition to nurture clean-technology start-ups.

In a recent conversation at his offices on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park–widely known as venture-capital row–Mr. Khosla discussed the competition to be the nation’s clean-tech center, how Silicon Valley stacks up in that race, and what green products he uses himself.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Andreessen Horowitz's Ben Horowitz Talks About Fat Start-Ups, Being a New VC and What's Hot and Not!

Kara Swisher — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:08:14 +0000

Yesterday, BoomTown motored down lovely I-280 to meet with (relatively) newly minted VC Ben Horowitz, the other half of the high-profile venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Started last summer by the pair–who have worked together since they met not-so-cute at Netscape Communications, with co-founder Marc Andreessen flaming worker-bee Horowitz in an email–it’s a $300 million fund that has plunked itself in the middle of just about every hot thing in Silicon Valley and beyond of late.

That includes being part of a recent huge round in online games rocket ship Zynga, a controversial consortium that grabbed Skype (Horowitz is on the Internet telephony giant’s board), as well as being a key investor in smoking stealths such as Kakai and RockMelt.

Of course, the pair is also in the race to fund mobile geolocation phenom Foursquare against a possible Yahoo (YHOO) acquisition.

Horowitz, who has long had a much lower profile than one-time digital golden boy Andreessen, is now emerging a little more publicly via a new blog, called simply Ben’s Blog.

With the apt quote at the top of the homepage by legendary mathematician and computer pioneer John von Neumann, “There’s no sense in being precise when you don’t even know what you’re talking about,” it’s a pretty saucy effort, especially if Horowitz keeps it up.

Recent posts included “Four Things Some VCs Do That I Don’t Like” and “The Case for the Fat Start-Up,” which he first published on All Things Digital.

We talked about this and more in a breakfast interview at the Rosewood Hotel on Sand Hill Road near Andreessen Horowitz’s offices, so here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

A "Conservative" Estimate: Apple Will Sell 14.4 Million iPads in 2011, 20.1 Million in 2012

John Paczkowski — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:52:23 +0000

Well, Apple has really sucked the air out of the news cycle this week, hasn’t it? There were the reviews. The Sand Hill Road paeans. The content deal breakdowns. And sales estimate after sales estimate after sales estimate–the latest and most aggressive of which landed in my in-box this morning.

Research outfit iSuppli figures iPad shipments in calendar 2010 will top out at 7.1 million. In 2011, the firm projects sales will spike to 14.4 million. And 2012 will see shipments of 20.1 million (see chart below).

Suffice it to say, these scenarios are far more bullish than the ones we’ve heard to date. Which is ironic given that iSuppli describes them as “conservative” and warns that Apple’s (AAPL) decision not to support Flash will have “a limiting effect” on the iPad’s sales potential.

Personally, I don’t see it. I’ve noticed two things since installing ClickToFlash a few months ago.

Safari no longer crashes.
I don’t miss Flash at all.

Remember When Webvan Went Public? Good Times…Good Times.

John Paczkowski — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:09:28 +0000

Sand Hill Road, your day of reckoning is here. The National Venture Capital Association posted its latest Venture Capital Index today and it’s not much to look at (see table below; click to enlarge). Why? Because a decade has passed since the dotcom bubble, and the Index’s 10-year figures no longer reflect that era’s distended returns.

Their presence is sorely missed. Consider this: Ten-year returns slid to 8.4 percent in the third quarter from 40.2 percent a year ago.

That’s a significant fall–no, it’s a horrific fall. And it’s only going to get worse, as the dotcompost that’s been nourishing the Venture Capital Index leaches out once and for all and the effects of the IPO drought that the industry has been suffering through these past few years begin to be truly felt.

“It has taken a full decade after the technology bubble burst for the venture industry to fully realize the impact of that era and its aftermath,” NVCA president Mark Heesen said in a surprisingly candid statement. “The significant returns created by the robust exit markets of the late 1990s have carried the industry for a long period of time.”

No longer. “The new reality is much more somber for many venture firms,” Heesen continued. “There are still healthy returns to be made in venture capital, but until the venture community sees a more vibrant exit market we do not expect marked improvement overall.”

[Image Credit: Audiophile & Synergy Industries]

Another One of These Cloud Computing Rants and You’ve Got Yourself a Stand-Up Routine, Larry

John Paczkowski — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:38:43 +0000

The passing of a year hasn’t much changed Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison’s opinion of cloud computing. Remarking on the industry’s sudden fascination with the concept at Oracle OpenWorld last September, Ellison reduced it to a thin sheen of windshield condensation.

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do,” Ellison said. “I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements….These people who are writing this crap are out there. They are insane. I mean it is the stupidest. Is it ‘Oh, I am going to access data on a server on the Internet.’ That is cloud computing?…Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

In conversation with former Sun (JAVA) CEO Ed Zander at a Churchill Club event a little over a year later, Ellison expanded on those remarks, suggesting that if the cloud is anything, it’s a cloud of BS.

Cloud’s water vapor….Cloud computing is not only the future of computing, it is the present and the entire past of computing.

…Salesforce.com has been around for a decade. And so has NetSuite…and people are saying, “Well, that’s cloud computing.” Google is cloud computing. Everyone is cloud computing….Everything is in the cloud now….It’s this nonsense.

…But it’s not water vapor. All it is is a computer attached to a network. What are you talking about? I mean, what do you think Google runs on?…Water vapor? It’s databases and operating systems and memory and microprocessors and the Internet!

…And the VCs, I love the VCs. [They ask their start-ups] “Oh…is that cloud?” [And the start-ups go] “Oh! Oh! Microsoft Word! Change ‘Internet’ to ‘cloud’! Mass change. Give it back to these nitwits on Sand Hill Road.”

…What do you mean by “cloud computing”?…All the cloud is is computers on a network.

Our industry is so bizarre. They just change a term and they think they’ve invented technology….You can’t just come up with a [slogan] like “Let’s call that ‘cloud.” [But] it sure beats innovation.”

Below, the full video. Ellison’s rant begins around the 45:54 mark.

Kara Visits The Lobby Party on Sand Hill Road (As Opposed to the Sandy Beaches of Hawaii)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:55:23 +0000

Last night, BoomTown went to a lovely party thrown by David Hornik, the August Capital VC who also runs The Lobby conference in his spare time.

He threw the event because those who attend the annual invitation-only gathering in Hawaii wanted to get together again during the year in Silicon Valley for even more schmoozing.

I went to the first Lobby in the fall of 2007 (you can see my video of that below too), so Hornik let me in to have some pizza and beer at August’s offices on Sand Hill Road and use my Flip video to ask those in attendance where they thought the digital sector was in terms of the economy and innovation.

So here’s Hornik, angel investor Brett Bullington (who is also in the 2007 video, but in shorts) and BillShrink’s Peter Pham, as well a merger of MINIs.

Here’s the video (with my 2007 one below it):

[ See post to watch video ]

As Tech Job Cuts Mount, Layoff Rumors Pervade The Valley

Eric Savitz — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:32:38 +0000

When the Internet and telecom bubble burst, Silicon Valley jobs evaporated: by 2005, California’s Santa Clara County–which includes San Jose, Palo Alto, Cupertino, Mountain View and other tech-focused towns–had given up more than 20 percent of its total job base, a loss of over 200,000 jobs. So how bad will it get this time around?

Well, here’s what we know so far. California’s overall employment rate hit 8.2 percent in October, up from 7.7 percent in September, to the highest level since September 1994. Now, that’s not just the tech industry hurting: the construction industry in the state has lost 69,500 jobs this year, for instance. In Santa Clara County, the jobless rate stands at 6.9 percent; San Francisco is lower, at 6 percent, while San Matero County, home to venture capital’s Sand Hill Road, is down at 5.4 percent. Slightly worse off are the East Bay counties of Alameda, at 7.1 percent, and Contra Costa, at 7 percent. The national jobless rate stood at 6.5 percent in October.

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A Tale of Two Parties in Silicon Valley, Part 1: Tony Schmoozing at August Capital

Kara Swisher — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 08:41:33 +0000

There’s is nothing lovelier than a sun-dappled summer night, terrific food and drinks and a giant gathering of khaki-wearing venture capitalists.

OK, strike that last one, but the valet parking was nice.

Last night, it was hearty partying in Silicon Valley, with two big events that attracted the digerati in numbers. Tech folks, for all their earnest seriousness about changing the world, like nothing better than schmoozing (and, last night, bellyaching about the iPhone price cut).

That was all to be found at the luxe affair thrown by August Capital at their even more luxe offices in the heart of Sand Hill Road last evening after work. It has long been one of the industry’s favorite events.

This is your quintessential top-line Silicon Valley party–heavy on VCs talking deals, entrepreneurs sucking up to them and also reps from big acquiring companies like eBay and Google and a passel of press drinking mojitos and being alternately snarky and annoying. Not so trendy, as the later iLike bash, but classic tech festivities.

Ah, it’s a grand life here.

But see for yourself:

[ See post to watch video ]