2009 28
Nokia as a force of good in the European Start up Scene
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Dopplr has just been acquired by Nokia. Dopplr is a web service that lets you share your travel plans with your network and exchange travel tips and advice about cities around the world. It helps you make your traveling smarter and more enjoyable. Dopplr calls this aggregate of collective intelligence the “Social Atlas”, a cutting-edge service that has provided the team with new insight on how people and location interact. I invested with Dopplr on the first round for the same reasons that I make all my investments. An entrepreneur I admire, in this case Marko Ahtisaari, and a product I use, Dopplr.
Nokia is an excellent platform for the development of this know-how. While I really don’t know what Nokia plans to do with Dopplr I believe that an integration of the service with Nokia phones would make a lot of sense. A mobile Dopplr is the ultimate pocket travel guide. Anytime, anywhere and in the palm of your hand you have the best restaurants, bars, clubs etc. that people who you trust recommended. This element, “the people you trust” is very important. There are many sites that recommend hotels. Trip Advisor is a great one. But the problem I have with Trip Advisor, or IMDB is that I many times find that my taste is more like that of my friends than that of the world at large. I don´t care where the average person wants to stay, or where the average person wants to eat, or where the average person wants to go. I care where my friends who are my most trusted advisors want to go. And that is Dopplr.
Lastly I would like to say that is interesting that Nokia continues to acquire companies of friends of mine. Plazes in which I also invested, and Plum. Nokia continues to be the number one technology company in Europe and Europe needs a strong Nokia. And where Nokia is weak is in services, in software small acquisitions make sense.
Disclosure I own Nokia shares.
Congratulations to Marko Ahtisaari, Matt Biddulph and the Dopplr team!
2009 27
Clinton, Matt Damon, Bachelet, Obama at CGI
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
Here´s a personal view on the Clinton Global Initiative. I recommend you watch it in HD.
CGI´s uniqueness lies in the fact that all participants have to commit to do something to improve the world. My commitments have included building wind and solar farms. As you know this is a business but it reduces carbon emissions. Building the Fonera 2.0n is also a business but this fonera replaces computers that are normally on to do the same tasks and that can also be a commitment. CGI is not against you making money, it is in favor of you doing it in ways that is sustainable.
There are friends and friends in life. Some you see all the time. Some you see less than you would like, but when you do see them you feel very close to them. To me, Luis Moreno Ocampo belongs to this group. This post is about Luis and his activities as the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. As you read this post you will realize that Luis is not just my buddy. He is your buddy as well. And the buddy of all of those who believe that those who commit War Crimes and Genocide should go to jail.
I was an admirer of Luis Moreno Ocampo before I became his friend. I admired him because he had successfully prosecuted the criminals who kidnapped and killed my 17 year old first cousin David Horacio Varsavsky in Argentina as well as 20,000 other innocent victims during the so called “Dirty War” in the late 70s. Growing up Jewish in Buenos Aires and hearing about the Holocaust I did not imagine that at the young age of 16 I was going to live through a smaller version of the same phenomenon in my native town. While the Dirty War was not targeted exclusively against Jews, the military who conducted the assassinations were openly antisemitic. Jews represent less than 1% of the Argentine population, they were around 10% of those murdered, David Horacio Varsavsky included. It is still a sad mystery as to what would make the Argentine military choose my cousin as a victim. In our research all we could find out was that it was a “mistake”, that they were looking for somebody else. Well my aunt who is still alive cries about this “mistake” every day of her life. And these “mistakes” happened because when regimes systematically violate Human Rights to stay in power they end up killing not only those who oppose itself a crime, but many more die in the crossfire. And that is what is happening in a much larger scale in Sudan where millions of aunts Sara are crying over the death of their loved ones.
This week in Manhattan Luis Moreno Ocampo described his view of the conflict in great detail to me. This is what Luis Moreno Ocampo says about Omar AlBashir. Omar AlBashir, Luis argues, is a genocidal dictator whose actions have resulted in the displacement of 4 million people, the death of 300,000, the destruction of villages, homes, and forced emigration of hundreds of thousands. Moreover those 2.5 million people who still remain in Darfur live in concentration camp conditions without access to human rights and are dying in great numbers of starvation, disease, and murder. Many women and girl survivors are subject to systematic rape. Moreover this conflict is an attack of a Muslim majority on a non Muslim minority and is carried out by Omar AlBashir with the help of paramilitary groups similar to those that the Argentine military used in the Dirty War. It is common for a military dictator to ask their own forces to operate under civilian clothes or to create other paramilitary or proxy groups who fight for them. In this case the Janjaweed. Here’s an AlJazzeera interview of Luis Moreno Ocampo. I chose it because – while very civilized – it corroborates what Luis shared were the main difficulties of his case and that is the complicity of many Arab countries with Omar AlBashir. Unfortunately Luis is now having to fight not only Arab regimes who support Omar AlBashir’s actions but China who benefits from his oil and a bizarre collection of organizations and countries who for different reasons prefer the status quo in spite of the genocide that is taking place. There are even humanitarian organizations normally operating in Sudan who believe that by turning Omar AlBashir into a global criminal, Luis Moreno Ocampo has helped accelerate his genocide. And interestingly not even USA is part of the International Criminal Court which makes his work even more complex. Luis Moreno Ocampo understands of course that everyone who is having a hard time with his arrest warrant for Omar AlBashir, including the Chinese and most Arab nations who support him would actually prefer that the genocide ends. But it is a wave of conflicting interests that has made us all sit aside and contemplate daily death and that is why I admire Luis even more. Because as it was the case in Argentina he has picked a case that is for justice but that makes a lot of governments, organizations and people uncomfortable around the world. This is what the Wikipedia says about his arrest warrant.
It is suspected that al-Bashir would not face trial in The Hague any time soon, as Sudan rejects the ICC’s jurisdiction.[23] Payam Akhavan, a professor of international law at McGill University in Montreal and a former war crimes prosecutor, says although he may not go to trial, “He will effectively be in prison within the Sudan itself…Al-Bashir now is not going to be able to leave the Sudan without facing arrest.”[42] The Prosecutor has publicly warned that authorities could arrest the President if he enters international airspace. The Sudanese government has announced the Presidential plane will be accompanied by jet fighters.[43] However, the Arab League has announced its solidarity with al-Bashir. Since the warrant, he has visited Qatar and Egypt. Both countries have refused to arrest him. The African Union also condemned the arrest warrant.
And this is the AlJazzeera interview conducted in a critical tone.
I would like to end this post with a video showing one person, one survivor of the genocide in Darfur in his new life in New York City. For some reason all genocides have some survivors in New York City. It would be nice though to live in a world in which genocides and war crimes just don’t happen anymore.
2009 19
Adios to Trolls
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Micro with No Comments
This is my goodbye post for trolls. Trolls: I have had it with you. I want you out of my blog. Each day around 20,000 people read my Spanish and English blogs in feeds or visits. I get a lot of comments on Twitter on Facebook and they are sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but never written with the intention to hurt. In my Spanish and English blogs I get illuminating comments, both positive and negative. But I also get you guys. You may not be more than 10 people. But you are one pain en el culo. Your mission in my blog seems only to be to prove I suck. Well guys if I suck why do you read my blog? Why do you spend so much time analyzing every little thing I say to prove it wrong? Why don´t you just leave and go to any other of the 55 million blogs out there. So today I will do you a favor. I will throw you out of my blog. You are out of here. Adios. And don´t come back.
2009 16
A profitable Fon is more Fun
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
- Image via CrunchBase
At Fon we have an amazing board: Anil Hansjee of Google, Danny Rimer and Mike Volpi of Index Ventures, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom of Atomico (formerly of Skype) and Chris Smith of Coral Ventures. We also have investors from Sequoia Capital, Ebay, BT, Digital Garage, Excite Japan, Marc Andreessen, Joanna Rees, and of course myself, CEO and Founder. All of us together have invested 36 million euros in Fon. All of us a little crazy of course, because the basic idea of Fon, “share a little WiFi at home and roam the world for free” is a far fetched, improbable concept. And it has not been a smooth ride. We have made significant mistakes, among them losing two thirds of our funds subsidizing foneras many of which ended in some lost closet around the globe. It was a year ago in the midst of the crisis and, recognizing these mistakes, that I started to personally finance the losses of the company. I felt it was my turn to show that I was willing to risk it for Fon. But losing around a million dollars a month it really seemed that Fon was going to sink. But this post is the story of how it did not. Most likely because I had been through this before.
I saw Viatel sinking for 9 years until my original 200K, and those of my then key investors like George Soros, ended up being worth over a billion. I saw Jazztel lose large amounts of money as well, but because of the strategic value of its network it was then worth 900 million when I left and my investors Advent, Apax, Spectrum Equity cashed out nicely. I also saw Ya.com, a company that we built with 55 million euros and sold for 750 million dollars, lose tons of money. And we sold it way before it was profitable again because of its strategic value. Both Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom wanted to own the second largest portal/ISP after Terra. And I saw defeat as well. I personally lost 52 million dollars in Einsteinet, a German cloud computing company managed by a remarkable group of people in Munich, but 5 years ahead of the boom of cloud computing. It was a terrible blow for me and my investors, but, if anything, it taught me a simple lesson, not to give up too soon. Cloud computing did make it in the end and Google, my investor in Fon, would have probably bought Einsteinet. This background may explain why last year I decided to insist with Fon.
19 years in technology have trained me to expect the unexpected, to “hang in there”. What the 3 companies that I started and got to be worth over $700 million dollars by the time I sold have in common, is that they were strategic assets that huge telcos wanted to buy. But I still could not make them profitable. I guess it did not matter. In the right markets you can get away with this. But what was true in 2000 was not true in 2003, when I threw in the towel on Einsteinet. Presently the world is like 2003, except that what happened to technology then is happening to everything else now. So last year when I became the only investor covering the losses of Fon I knew that for us it was profits or death. I went for profits.
And a year later I am happy to announce, a la Facebook, that the last quarter of 09 will be our first profitable quarter. And I mean not just EBITDA positive but profitable. I can also share with you that we will probably do around 2.5 million dollars in revenues up from 400k in the first quarter (all figures are in dollars). Currently growth is phenomenal, costs are low and margins are high in our two lines of business; selling foneras, selling wifi access passes alone or with our partners which include some of the largest telcos in the world (BT, SFR, Comstar, Zon and others).
Of course I don’t know precisely where do we go from here at Fon. But since we are not a public company I can share with you at least where I would like to see Fon in 2010. By next summer I would love to be doing around 1 million in profits per month. And for all of 2011 I would be very happy if we did around 20 million in profit. This is not unreasonable but we have to get from here to there. Growth is tremendous but we could stall. To reach these objectives we have to continue making telco deals and make the launch of our Fonera 2.0n a success. I am personally very excited by how well the Fon team has worked to come up with the Fonera 2.0n, a router that not only shares a little wifi at home and roams the world for free, but it is also your “internet assistant”. The Fonera 2.0n is really a PC hidden inside a WiFi router. When you connect it to a hard drive of your choice it downloads torrents, Megaupload, Rapidshare, uploads to Youtube, Picasa, Facebook, Flickr. It also converts 3G to WiFi like the MiFi. It tweets itself so you can follow it away from home and it has a few other tricks such as making money for its owner. We think that for 79 euros or 99 dollars it will be a hit. Or at least we hope so because whatever people in business say, they never really know how successful or not something will be.
Granted, we could lose momentum and be not at 1 million but at something like 300K a month in profits by next summer, in which case recovering the 36 million euros invested will mostly depend on what got me and my partners off the hook in the past, a strategic sale to large players. Telcos who want to own the biggest and fastest growing wifi network in the world. Another source of value may be the partnership with Ubiquisys, the FemtoFonera, which expands the Fonera model to the 3G world. This is unproven value but it could very well materialize. In urban areas it is ugly and absurd to continue to build huge antennas in roof tops when small elegant cells like the ones Ubiquisys makes can give both 3G and WiFi to people in the block. This is especially useful in underground areas, garages, malls, where 3G coverage is very costly and inefficient.
As a start up with 3 years of life, breaking even makes you, first of all, a sustainable company and that we will be… very profitable? That remains to be seen. But turning the corner is huge for us. I would like to end this post thanking all the foneros we have around the world, our partners the telcos who realized how happy customers who pay at home and roam the world for free can be with their service, to our investors who trusted us with a nutty idea and to all of those who have worked and now work for Fon. I would like to thank my now wife Nina, who I met working at Fon, who still works with me at Fon, and who put up with me during the worst moments of this venture.
Muchas gracias a todos!
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2009 15
Fonera 2.0n available in USA and Europe September 23rd
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With the “share a little WiFi at home and roam the world for free” formula, FON got to be the largest WiFi network in the world – currently at over 650K FON Spots. Now, with the new Fonera 2.0n (802.11n) WiFi router that gives Foneros (FON members) an auto uploader/downloader built-in, FON should reach well over 1 million FON Spots.
The Fonera 2.0n is described in the video below. In addition to making you a free, lifetime member in the largest WiFi sharing community on the planet, this is what the Fonera 2.0n does when connected to your favorite hard drive:
– downloads torrents on its own so you can arrive home and watch your favorite content (do not download illegal content, there are plenty of legal torrents available, for example www.legaltorrents.com). You can tell the Fonera 2.0n what you want to download from work or school, from your computer or even from your iPhone or Android.
-downloads from Rapidshare.
-downloads from Megaupload.
-downloads from any site with a file to download, like the latest Ubuntu version.
-uploads videos to YouTube. Send them over WiFi to the Fonera and the Fonera sends those HD monsters to YouTube, freeing up your laptop for the next hours.
-uploads those high quality pictures that take forever to Flickr, or Picasa or even Facebook.
-offers large files for your friends to download.
-prints via WiFi. It sends music to your amplifier via WiFi. It connects to a webcam so you can know what is going on at home. It works with DynDNS.
-converts 3G to WiFi like the MiFi.
-twitters! The fonera is the first gadget to tweet itself. You open an account for your Fonera and the Fonera tells you what it is doing, like “Your video is in Youtube,” or “Somebody connected to your WiFi signal.”
And of course, the Fonera 2.0n is N (802.11n), which means faster WiFi at greater distances. Lastly, if you don’t like to share WiFi and just want to have the Fonera 2.0n all for yourself, or you don’t believe you will make money offering WiFi to others, you can disconnect the FON function altogether…and we will still like you :). But before doing that, you should know that Foneros who share their FON Spot earn on average 6 Euros in revenue (over 8 US Dollars a year), which means your Fonera 2.0n just might end up paying for itself and then some.
More in depth video
2009 15
Fon and Ubiquisys partner to develop a “Femto Fonera”
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I am the CEO and Founder of Fon. Fon has built the largest global WiFi network in the world. We have over 650K WiFi access points distributed in many countries with UK, France and Japan being our best markets. Fon is owned by Ebay, Google, BT, Index Ventures, the management and some other small investors who have invested a total of 36 million euros in the company. The basic idea behind Fon is that “you share a little wifi at home and you roam the world for free connecting to other Fon routers known as Foneras”. Fon´s revenues come from people who do not share wifi at home yet they find Fon WiFi signal and want to use it. Fon operates alone or in partnerships with telcos such as BTFon, or SFRfon and many others. After 3 years of operation Fon is becoming a profitable company in the last quarter of this year.
Now Ubiquisys makes Femto cells. Femto cells are a great idea. Its the same concept as a Fonera meaning a box that is connected to ADSL/Cable/Fiber internet on one side and sends wireless signal on the other. Except that the wireless signal is 3G, not WiFi.
So you can see a match in the making here. And this is what is going on.
Fon and Ubiquisys have entered a strategic partnership to develop the first “Femto Fonera”, which will provide mobile 3G data and voice access from a wireline broadband connection. You can share this 3G signal securely with other Femto Foneros, just like you share your wifi with the other Foneras. Apart from experiencing high quality voice and data connectivity at thousands of community hotspots, Femto Foneros could also enjoy tariff discounts from their mobile operator.
The Femto Fonera is a cost effective way to increase 3G coverage indoors and enable high bandwidth applications which are not possible through the traditional cellular network. It can also be used in public spaces without interfering with the operator’s macro network.
Ubiquisys is currently the number 1 femtocell vendor. Their ZoneGate femtocell offers the best performance of any femtocell, it is the smallest and it consumes very little energy. The Femto Foneras, like the femtocells, will require no setup, they will have no buttons and require no admin software. They will be supplied through a specific mobile operator which would be providing the spectrum. The Femto Foneras will detect the user’s presence, which opens up many possibilities for location based applications and services. This Android app, for example, changes the home screen and the applications available when you enter your home and the phone seamlessly connects to the femtocell. Fon and Ubiquisys are in talks with several mobile operators to evaluate the Femto Fonera concept.
Here is the full press release.
2009 11
Nokia buys Plum
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
My good friend Hans Peter Brondmo just told me that he sold Plum, his start up to Nokia and he is moving from San Francisco to Berlin to run it. Nokia seems to be on a quiet buying spree. They already bought a company I invested in Plazes of Felix Petersen and are looking at many other players in related areas.
Nokia has also made another move that makes sense and is to concentrate social media activities in Berlin. I don´t know if Europe will ever have its Silicon Valley but if it does Berlin will be a contender. It is a fascinating city with a multilingual population in a country that from what I have seen produces the best programmers in Europe and some of the best in the world. Without offending anybody else who works at our company, whenever something really complicated goes wrongly at Fon it is a German programmer who gets us out of the problem. And Berlin is extremely affordable as a city. Living there costs less than in Madrid or any other major European capital. And while the weather sucks if you come from Spain for Nokia´s employees moving South from Helsinki has to be seen as a promotion, at least weather wise.
2009 8
AIDS is a Mass Murderer (literally)
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I hope the censors at Youtube who freak out when they see some nudity leave this ad because whatever you may think of it, it is worth seeing.
2009 7
Verizon plus Fon plus Boingo would be a killer combination
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with Comments Off on Verizon plus Fon plus Boingo would be a killer combination
Now that Verizon made a deal with Boingo, a deal with Fon in which Fon is installed in their ADSL and fiber connections would be great for Verizon as a company.
First of all, it would lower churn for Verizon as people who have Fon and find Fon when they travel (as it happens in the UK for example with BTFon) tend to continue paying for their broadband even when they mostly travel. Not being at home much is often cited as a reason to interrupt broadband service. Secondly, it would increase ARPU for Verizon because when ATT, Comcast and Time Warner cable users connect to the second SSID of the Verizon WiFi routers, they would make more revenues per ADSL/fiber line as carriers who team up with Fon do. Thirdly it would slow price erosion for their broadband offering as value perception increases in customers who can pay at home and connect everywhere. Other advantages are that the coverage of Fon’s mostly residential wifi network (coming out of residential boxes) would be complementary to Boingo´s commercial network, and Verizon would have an incredible WiFi offering to compete with ATT´s in mobile.
An increasing number of powerful, affordable mobile devices are entering the market and allowing users to run increasingly data intensive applications. 3G makes sense for light data applications such as email and web browsing, but it is not commercially viable for applications requiring large data transfers such as watching movies on smartphones when customers are on flat data plans. Mobile operators can reduce capex on 3G networks and overcome their speed and throughput limitations by offloading data traffic onto wifi networks. This is one of the advantages that E-Plus, the 18 million subscriber German mobile operator, saw in partnering with Fon. Also as an example, AT&T has quickly seen the importance of wifi as part of a good user experience with smartphones, having sold the pioneering iPhone. In general carriers who sell the iPhone see the future of smartphones and it is a very, very data focused future.