A year ago ReadWriteWeb published an article in defense of embargoes with an outline of how startups can effectively manage embargoes and special releases . Lately, in place of embargoes we've received a few requests to sign non-disclosure agreements. While this may simply be a rookie mistake made by early-stage entrepreneurs, NDAs and embargoes are completely different requests. Sending an NDA is absurd for a number of reasons. Sponsor 1. Confidentiality : You just sent a confidentiality agreement to a news outlet. Why the heck would you want a journalist to keep your secrets? Shouldn't we be revealing the brilliance of your products and services? 2. Legality : An NDA is a legally binding agreement between two parties. As Andrew Warner of Mixergy puts it in his post ,"I'm not signing a legal document without a lawyer." 3. Trust : In Venture Hacks' Pitching Hacks book the author advises against presenting an NDA to VCs saying, "You might think an NDA is a barrier to entry for your competitors. Instead, it's just a barrier to getting funded." You likely have competitors in the space and if you're not first to market then we've already seen them. An NDA is making you more difficult than your competitors. We'd rather write the story about the person who works with us than against us. Photo Credits: Marcin Wichary and See-ming Lee Discuss
Read more here:
Why No One Will Sign Your NDA
In a blog post from 2006 titled, " The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy ," Silicon Valley venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki wrote, "you cannot drive your competition crazy unless you understand their strengths and weaknesses." Kawasaki undoubtedly knows what he's talking about, and his advice - while almost 4 years old - still rings true today. If you've got a great idea for a startup, knowing as much about your potential competitors is invaluable, and the people behind Competitious know this as well as anyone. That's why they created their handy application for keeping close tabs on the competition. Sponsor Developed by RivalSoft, the makers of RivalMap , Competitious is a free service that allows users to collaborate on numerous projects for tracking industry competitors. You and your team can gather and collect news clips, build feature comparison matrices and keep an eye on traffic trends with Alexa data. The comparison matrix feature is very useful and we here at ReadWriteWeb are even putting this feature to use in researching an upcoming report. However, entering in individual features for each company can become a bit tedious. It would have been nice to see Competitious offer a list of popular companies whose core features could be automatically placed into a matrix. Users would also benefit from suggested competiors for any given company based on what other users are comparing, but perhaps these features are on Competitious' roadmap for the future. The traffic graphs can only be seen if your competitors are ranked in the top 100,000 on Alexa, which can be a problem for small business with equally small competition. Competitious does claim, however, that they are working on "a much more robust traffic system" for their post-beta release. In the meantime, free site analytics services like Compete and Quantcast can provide data for those hard-to-reach sites. Despite its early flaws, with the ability to easily compare any number of companies in a side-by-side fashion, Competitious is a convenient solution for researching that "competitors" slide in your startup's pitch presentation. Discuss
View original post here:
Know Thy Enemy: Competitious Helps You Stay Ahead
SAP is preparing to launch a potential rival to Google Wave . The application, code-named Constellation, is described as a "virtual war room" where co-workers can collaborate in real-time with information aggregated from different data sources. The cloud-based tool is now in private beta with the code name 12Sprints . The application is being developed by SAP's Business Objects division. Sponsor Constellation demonstrates once again how much effort is being placed on cloud-based collaboration platforms that pull in disparate data sources, stitched together into one lightweight environment. What's unique is how these environments are almost separate from the legacy IT infrastructure that at times looks almost antiquated compared to its web-based counterparts in the cloud. That's the opportunity Google sees with Google Wave, as do other competitors such as PBWorks , MindTouch and a number of other companies looking to bask in the shiny lights of the collaborative universe. According to IDG , which received a demo of the technology, Constellation works best with five to thirty users. There will be the capability to publish to a wider audience through wikis, Sharepoint and other platforms. SAP is also working on an on-premise application, but the initial focus is definitely on the cloud. Users will be able to access their enterprise data by tunneling into the app. For example, buying decisions can be more collaborative as purchasing data can be viewed by a group who can then discuss and make decisions. Applications like what we see with Constellation illustrate how important it is becoming for the enterprise to become more transparent with its information. Email is a data trap. But voice calls can be the same way. Platforms like Constellation open information to a far larger community.
In his keynote this morning, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff continued his critique on software companies for their lack of development and sense of entitlement. And not surprisingly, the full-on pitch continued for cloud computing with a parade of executives showing the applications they developed on Force.com . About 19,000 people attended Dreamforce, the annual Salesforce.com event. Partners lined up to get on stage. David Girouard of Google showed a map with all their customers around the globe. He recounted a story with Eric Schmidt, who was astounded by the frustrations that CIO's expressed about the architecture they inherited. An Accenture executive said that cloud computing is here to stay. He showed the company's applications on Force.com . The Black Crowes performed last night. The pitch is fever high. Sponsor What does this all say about the market? Is this an event that marks the point where cloud computing goes mainstream? Have we reached the apex of cloud computing hype? I asked the question on Twitter: Gartner sees the hype this way: Regardless, this has been a monumental week for cloud computing. The long established software companies have now lined up with their offering. Microsoft launched Azure . Salesforce.com unveiled Salesforce Chatter , Sales Cloud 2 and Service Cloud 2. IBM announced a cloud analytics platform that leverages Cognos, its business intelligence suite. The more established companies carry the benefit of long established customer channels. IBM and Microsoft fit into this camp. Additionally, Microsoft appears to get it. The Azure platform integrates some open-source components. These companies face their own challenges as much internally as from the customer world. But their presence also means that cloud computing is close to being accepted in the enterprise mainstream. Salesforce.com is a more interesting animal. Benioff is a very aggressive CEO. Business Week is calling him " The King of the Cloud." He is never shy to lampoon the established software companies in the market. He calls out his competitors like Sugar CRM , which is fighting right back with its own campaign: Behind The Smokescreen , a play on Benioff's new book: "Behind The Cloud." Benioff has to show off his partners. He never misses an opportunity to tell you how many customers he has. In a way, he has to play this role. He has the big players running. He has to keep them running, on the defensive, so he can move in with Chatter across the enterprise. That's the trick right now for Benioff. Moving as fast as he possibly can to gain that permanent traction. The hype is peaking. It's a different game for the entire market. It's a race now to win the mainstream. Discuss
Excerpt from:
Cloud Computing: Where to Next?
