Hi Everyone,
As a follow up to our September 17th East Coast CIO Forum meeting, we would like to thank Kurt Brungardt and MSD Capital for once again hosting our East Coast CIO Forum event. We so appreciate your hospitality. Very special thanks to our dynamic guest speaker: Mitchell Kertzman, Managing Director at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, who flew in from California specifically to join us at this event, and left us with an evening we shall not forget.
Some thoughts from the meeting included the following:
- Hummer Winblad: invests in early-stage, software companies that focus on enterprise software, particularly infrastructure. They were the first VC to invest 100% in software companies.
- Companies no longer have appetites for big, expensive waves of change
Componentization of systems, (i.e. Cloud Computing) are reducing the need for big waves of change.
A poll in the room showed that those using Amazon (as a public service), using cloud computing, are doing so more for testing and sandboxing. - These have also been challenging times for Venture Capital firms.
- Sales & marketing are moving heavily online, with analytics driving the marketing.
- New trends like multi-variate and a/b testing are in common use.
- VCs are reducing funds for high tech, as much as 30-40% in the next five years.
- As e-mail continues to be a huge, annoying infrastructure problem for everyone, Gmail is starting to appear in enterprise space.
- Trends continue towards buying from single companies (rather than many vendors).
- A poll in the room showed that most companies have $$$ available, but need clear justification for spend.
- Mitchell is not excited about avatar-based computing systems, but does see interest in video (for communication).
- Mitchell’s closing tip: Spend a lot of time on the ‘net learning about new trends.
Thanks to everyone for the dynamic group discussions, agreements, disagreements, and passionate opinions! Thanks for the continuous sharing of information and tips across companies and industries! As for Mitchell, hank you again for your views, your ideas, and the terrific suggestions you provided. For those wishing to contact Mitchell, his e-mail address is: mkertzman@humwin.com.
Hummer Windblad’s entire portfolio is online at www.humwin.com.
Looking forward to seeing you all at our December 2nd meeting. Details to be distributed shortly.
-malka
Malka Treuhaft
Executive Director East Coast CIO Forum &
President
Truision Inc.
646.942.2625 (office)
917.589.1069 (mobile)
718.375.1529 (fax)
www.truision.com
The following companies are currently registered for the September meeting:
MSD Capital, Alliance Bernstein, Imagineer Technology Group, Inc., Morgan Stanley, Exigen Partners, Eton Park, Touro College, Plural Investments, LLC, AEGIS, McCann-Erickson Advertising, Deutsche Bank, Ionic Capital, ESP Technologies Corp, Barclays Capital, Viking Global Investors LP, Traxis Partners LP, SBLI USA Mutual Life Insurance, Bunge Ltd., PSS Systems, XL Capital, Markit, York Capital, Promontory Financial Group LLC, The Harry Fox Agency, Inc., Beth Abraham Health Services, Dun & Bradstreet, PepsiCo, Barnard University, Scholastic Book Fairs, McGraw Hill Companies, Toys R Us, Folica.com, Financial Guaranty Insurance Company, World Education Services, MF Global, Moore Capital, & the Walz Group.
Meeting Agenda:
Interesting Trends in enterprise software and business practices – Mitchell Kertzman
- Positioning and investing in new technology – from a Corporate Enterprise Perspective.
- We don’t want to be too early, we don’t want to be too late, and we don’t have the $$$ for the science experiments…..
- Positioning and investing in new technology – from a VC perspective.
- How do we make sure we are investing in those areas that companies will actually buy, particularly in this economy.
- Hummar Winblad investments in virtualization, collaboration, application development, video delivery infrastructure, Cloud computing, open source, and software as a service.
- The impact of the current economic environment on software companies and their customers.
- The impact of the current economic environment on the venture capital environment.
Mitchell Kertzman Bio
Mitchell Kertzman is a Managing Director at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. He has over 30 years of experience as a CEO of public and private software companies. Most recently, Mitchell was Chairman and CEO of Liberate Technologies, a provider of platform software for the delivery of digital services by cable television companies. Before joining Liberate, he was chairman of the board and CEO of Sybase, Inc. Mitchell was founder and CEO of Powersoft, which merged with Sybase in February 1995.
A former programmer, Mitchell founded Powersoft in 1974 as Computer Solutions. He renamed the company and became a member of the Hummer Winblad family in 1991 when Hummer Winblad invested in the company, which became the leading provider of client-server development tools with its flagship product, PowerBuilder. The merger with Sybase in 1995 was, at the time, the most valuable in the history of the software industry.
Mitchell served as President of the Massachusetts Software Council from 1994 to 1996 and was 1990 chairman of the American Electronics Association. He is founder and former chairman of the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC), a think tank focused on issues related to the standard of living and quality of life of America’s middle class. He served on the New York State Commission on Industrial Competitiveness and chaired its task force on industrial policy.
Mitchell was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He currently sits on the Boards of Five9, nGenera, Palamida, SlideRocket, VKernel, WaveMaker, Widgetbox and YieldBuild.
