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The May Report
* I received a call late this afternoon from Martin O'Shield who talked a bit about WiFi and described a product he has. His functioning website is http://www.windycitysdr.com/. He talked so fast that I wasn't quire sure what he was saying, but I can tell you that he has a few bones to pick with the Chicago Cable Commission. He said that supposedly they have excess capacity, but if you want a T-1 line, they tell you they can't give it to you, and they want you to take a DS3, which is $25,000. The other issue he raised was that the cable provider, such as RCN, is supposed to be kicking something back to the landlords in the buildings they service. But that isn't happening, he said. I got the feeling that politics is involved -- when isn't it? -- when he said that Bernie Hansen had told him to drop a little something off for Ed Burke. Hey, the city that works....
What I am confused about is why the city is involved in getting a T-1 line. Marty and I talked about wiring the cafes for WiFi, and I believe he is planning to do something in conjunction with WiFi Metro. By the way, Ed Bachner told me last night that the whole WiFi business in the cafes is "a gadget" -- it's not a gimmick, but it's too much fuss for what should be ubiquitous communications.
* The MEF networking event last night was attended by roughly 150 people. Bill Miller, the organizer, and I agreed that the rain yesterday was a contributing factor to lower attendance. A fair number of people apparently attended the America-Israel Chamber of Commerce "AIBEx 2002" event which was being held at the same time.
Here are some people I talked to and things I found out:
-- A man who was the executive director of the operating systems group of WMS, which used to be called Williams Electronics, the game developers. He said that they have about 800 people left, and in January they cut 15-20% of his staff.
-- A former Terasys employee, Rick Costello (630-788-9969; rcostello50@yahoo.com), has started a company called "The Web Site Profit Doctor™." The purpose of Rick's business is to increase your revenue and decrease your costs as a result of your website. He has been in business for three months, has a number of people he is partnering with, no clients yet -- he's still prospecting. He has a competitive intelligence deliverable for $2,500, which tracks three fierce competitors vis-a-vis in the things they do, customer acquisition, etc.
-- I spoke briefly to Marcello Quiroga who told me that he has recently moved and he was somewhat vague in his answer to my question about whether he will be deported. (Marcello is from Bolivia on a visa.) He was talking to Tom Thornton who was in attendance as well. Chris Hemans from the Illinois Coalition was also there. I saw Thornton making a few appointments to meet people, among them a lawyer from Bell, Boyd and Lloyd.
-- I talked briefly to Bruce Hanson of PriceWaterhouseCoopers who moderated the "MoneyTree" panel discussion on May 22. He said that if you look at any one quarter, you are only getting a snapshot. However, over the last eight quarters Illinois has been consistently getting 2% of the total national venture capital investment. Bruce noted that one of the 17 deals and $36 million invested in Q1 2002 was a fairly large follow-on of $10 million for Rivenet.
-- Shelly Nigel runs a group called The Social Network (www.thesocialnetwork.com), aimed toward single professionals between the ages of 25 and 57, to expand their possibilities professionally, socially and romantically. The events range from black-tie charity fundraisers to rooftop parties. They just had a party at Green Dolphin Street; Bin 36 was a previous party locale.
-- FastRoot International is a three-year old company with a group of roughly 45 programmers in their lab in Kiev, with 8 people here. Terry Howerton, the CEO, moved here several years ago from Joplin, Missouri. Their clients are mid-market ($25 million to $1 billion) companies in a wide range of industries, from financial services to real estate. A typical project is developing a custom CRM system.
-- Ed Bachner of Rosetta Wireless gave me a synopsis of the talks given last Saturday morning at the Gleacher Center by a number of well-known scholars and experts. One of the speakers was Robert Fogel, a Nobel laureate in economics, who said that 100 years in 1902, only 7% of the population was above the poverty line. Ed said that one speaker opened his talk with the question "Of what larger story am I a part?" Another speaker made the case that Andersen got the short end of the stick; there were a lot of contract modifications on the same day as the contract which the Andersen people were not shown. The talk on Enron emphasized that fish stinks from the head down; the whole Enron culture emphasized that you can only win by doing whatever it takes to increase sales and profits -- whatever it takes to win.
-- Bob Nuber of MyFootPath.com said that they are generating revenue and have been successful in signing up high schools for their services. While he would not disclose the fees that the schools pay, he did say that it was based on the number of students.
-- Mike Hettwer, who heads up the MEF Entrepreneurial Services Committee, has just returned from Cambodia, where he was taking more pictures. I know that Hettwer owns a copy of the book "The World's Most Dangerous Places," and it is my sense that it is his mission to visit every one of them.
-- Penny Edecker is a very interesting person in our tech world. For the last 35 years, she has been a farmer, although this is the first year that she has not driven a tractor. She and her husband had a farm near a small town 40 miles west of Aurora. Her husband was killed in a farm accident, and her son now runs the farm. They are primarily grain producers. A few years ago she got involved in the tech world by starting a company called Xdyne; the company provides virtual reality CD-ROMs for the travel industry. They re-create the whole environment using still photographs as the basis of their product. An example would be a tour of Navy Pier, although that is probably too narrowly-defined. Penny explained that in the farming business a cooperative spirit predominates. All that matters is that you get your crop in, that you get it out, and that you make a profit. One farmer's profit is not another farmer's loss. She also said that farmers love to share ideas on how to do things, and that they all have their own ideas. In fact, they're fiercely independent in their philosophies about planting, but they are all willing to help each other. When Penny's husband died, farmers came from many miles around to help out. Wendy Tarzian who was also involved in the conversation recommended a book called "Guns, Germs, and Steel : The Fates of Human Societies," which Wendy said lays out a taxonomy of human civilizations and suggests why some are more successful than others.
-- Richard Landman, who does executive search in IT, used to be in the diamond business. At dinner last night, after the MEF networking event, he entertained us with some stories about what it's like to be a jewelry salesman, and how the crooks follow you around (and the crooks can include the cops). He made it very clear that you should not handcuff your diamond-bearing briefcase to yourself because "they will cut your hand off." Richard said that he just got tired of living life on the edge and that's why he got out of it; it's also not the most ethical business in the world. So, Richard, went from selling diamonds to headhunting -- I'm not sure that's a step up or down.
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