Hey all,
So, it is about 8:30 and I am sitting down in the lobby with Adam, my roommate, and Kaitlin. Sadly this is the only place we can get wireless, and it is some pretty awesome high speed dial-up. Today we did not have much on the agenda, we were only meeting with one company and then we were done.
The company we met with today is called Hummer Winblad Venture Partners (HWVP). They are a venture capitalist company that is strictly focused on software start-ups. The co-founders are John Hummer and Ann Winblad. John is an ex-nba player (cavs for those who care), and Ann is an entrepreneur from Minnesota. According to an article we read, Ann Winblad is one of, if not the, most powerful woman in Venture Capitalism. Ann is a good friend of our professor's because she was one of the main investors in his company, Net Perceptions. When we got to Hummer Winblad, we met with Ann and another one of her employees. They gave us a presentation about their company and how the operate. Within this presentation there was a lot of very interesting things about the market and how they have to operate before major trends. One of the main things that they try to look for at HWVP is where the world of technology is heading, and look for companies that are taking advantage of this change, or even better, driving it. This is a rather large risk for them because if the trend doesn't make it, they could lose multiple investments in one round of funding.
HWVP looks for companies that do what they call 'B to B' business. B to B stands for Business to Business. They do not deal in companies that are selling B to C (consumer). This really narrows down the companies that they talk to; however, they still talk to an incredible number. Both Ann and her associate had to finally leave because they had other (separate) presentations to go to. Ann said that on average HWVP hears pitches from about 30 companies a week, making 120 a month, and 1400 or so a year. They get these numbers even though they deal in a very specific area.
In terms of success, they are a very successful company. In their first round of investments they invested in 15 companies. Of those 15, seven IPO'ed, seven got acquired, and one failed. IPO stands for Initial Public Offering, meaning the company went public. IPO'ing and being acquired are both acceptable exit strategies for HWVP investments. But, there is still that one failure. This failure was a rather interesting company though. The company was called "Slate". They dealt in what we now call Kindles, and tablet PC's, tablets is the general term. Slate was exactly this, a pen driven computer, which were one of the highest selling products in 2009. Slate was 18 years too early, it was so far ahead of its trend change, that it failed.
After talking with HWVP we decided that we would head to the Exploratorium. So, we walked for over an hour to get there, and walked on some non-touristy streetswhich gave us a really nice view of the real San Fran. During this walk we saw at least 30 minicoopers. Mini's really seem to be the most popular car out here. They are literally almost one per block.When we finally reached the Exploratorium it was a lot of fun. I really felt like a little kid again. Therewere these really cool magnets (pics/vids at the bottom) which they had some magnet sand from alocal beach with (that was worded funny). Basically you would play with the sand on the magnetsand the magnets would catch all the sand. It would stand up in spikes, and if you ran your hand through it it would feel like you were petting a cat or running your hand through some really soft fur. There was a really cool thing where they had an 15,000 volt electrical arc that would travel upwards on a transformer. At the bottom of the tube was a fan that was run by a crank. If you cranked in the right direction fast enough, you could actually manipulate the movements of the arc traveling up the transformer, and pull it back downwards or make it stall.
The whole class elected to stay extra time at the Exploratorium because we were all having so much fun and had not even seen half of the place yet. Once they finally kicked us out because the place was closed we headed back to the hotel to decide where to eat. We headed to a bakery that specialized in sourdough bread. We went as a group and took advantage of the happy hour specials. As a group we ordered like 3 of all the appetizers, and Brad got a burger. This was a great meal, we had a lot of fun and enjoyed the food a lot. Now we are winding down for the night. Tomorrow should be a pretty easy day, we have two visits, both relatively close to the hotel. Luckily for me, the first one is not until 10:00 so I get to sleep in!!
That is gonna do it for the night folks. Please leave a comment or something to let me know if you have any questions, or if there is another aspect of my day that you would like to hear about, or any specific pictures you would like.
Thanks for reading,
Aaron
P.S. There are videos of some of the really cool stuff at the Exploratorium, except the internet here is so slow that they aren't uploading. I will upload them when I get to better internet, which might be back in Buffalo. But, nonetheless they will be on here eventually.
Here are the pictures, I will caption them so you know what is what.
This is the sign for HWVP, pretty basic, but I like it.
This is some random building at the Exploratorium, which is rather large and impressive. We still don't know what it is, or why it is there.
Our group, minus Brad and Drew. From left to right, Bryan, Jeni, Me, Kiflu, Jake, Adam, Megan, Kaitlin. This is by the building pictured above, and some random eroding steps of death.
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