Thursday, February 26, 2009

Internship and classes

As I anticipated in my other post, I am conducting an internship at Funambol (www.funambol.com), a software start-up based in Redwood City, who is a supplier of push email and mobile synchronization solutions for billions of mobile phones. Funambol is also the largest mobile open source project in the world, tapping into a global community of 50,000 developers and project participants. The company distributes its open source software for free to end users and sells a commercial version to mobile device manufacturers, portals, independent software vendors, mobile operators and service providers. The internship focuses on marketing, and I work closely with Hal Steger, VP Marketing, and remotely with Stefano Maffulli, Community Manager, based in Italy. In fact, about half of the employees and all R&D are based in Pavia, Italy. My involvement is 9am-5pm Tue-Fri (on Mondays, until 3:30pm), save when there are events or special lectures (e.g. SCLL) organized by the school. I spend over 90% of this time at the company headquarters. The marginal rest consists in working remotely from home, including Skype calls with Stefano in Italy.

Funambol focused since its beginning on the mantra: “BlackBerry-alternative for the mass market”. More recently, they have been promoting an open source Mobile'We' solution for the rest of us, which is a reference to Apple's MobileMe sync service, except that Funambol is open and works with billions of phones, not just iPhones. Their business relates to the “disruptive technology” in the categorization proposed by Prof Hendershott in class, as it incorporates both elements of ideas in that category: 1) Mobile phones are becoming the personal computing platform in the near future for their convenience, portability and cost, and 2) However, mobile phones as personal platforms face a long journey to general adoption due to skepticism of being “found” everywhere and because of the high prices of smartphones. Push email is a necessary component of mobile computing, and some people speculate that it may supplant short text messaging (SMS) in the mid term.

The strategy that Funambol has chosen to enter the market follows the principle of going after a limited set of market segments, as explained by Prof Bruno in his class. Funambol focuses on five segments: mobile device manufacturers, portals, service providers, independent software vendors and mobile operators. Leads from small and medium businesses, governmental agencies and large enterprises outside the mobile industry, and individuals, are redirected to partners or the Funambol community for assistance. This strategy enables Funambol to focus its R&D, sales and marketing resources on high value customers as well as meet the needs of its broader user base and community, a process the company refers to as 'Funambolism' (walking a tightrope).

Prof Griffith told us how to analyze the features of a product to clarify the marketing message, and how to make “intangible” features trigger more “tangible” motivations from the customer’s side. Funambol, as aforementioned, is the leading mobile open source project, which means that tens of thousands of developers worldwide contribute code to the Funambol project. Communicating the advantages of this approach to customers is not easy. Funambol’s marketing message verges on the concept of being able to work with “billions of mobile phones” worldwide, which is a large percentage of the estimated 3.5 billion mobile phones worldwide. This is because Funambol’s mobile client software is adapted by community developers for their handsets and then made available to the community. In this way, Funambol supports the broadest possible array of handsets, much more than competitors. The message about support for “billions of phones” makes this complex mechanism more immediate, easier to grasp, and more “tangible”.

Working in Funambol changed my perception a lot of what it would be like working in a start-up. I come from a career in public research, having spent three years in universities and five years in public research centers. I thought that working in a start-up would be much different but instead it is quite similar. In a start-up (as in a research lab) everybody works very closely with the “practical matter”, i.e. there is very little distance from the typical employee (or researcher) and the product (or research project) being pursued. This is true at all levels, from the marketing assistant (my role as an intern) to top management. It is a team effort, and the free and fast circulation of critical information is seen as an asset, exactly the same way it is perceived in a good research lab. Furthermore, developing and marketing a product in a start-up is very similar to starting a multi-year project in research: in both, you develop a long-term vision, attract funds (or grants, for research), stay focused and keep your team focused (something researchers tend not to do all the time), and efficiently communicate results (publications) to gain credit for your next product (research line) and attract the most valuable people to work with you. Ah, and I had forgotten how much I like foosball.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Full immersion

printf("Hello world!\n");

This is Paolo, I am an Electric Electronic engineer (a "double E", as they say here in the Valley) who left hardware for software for a PhD in Computer Vision. That is more coherent that it may seem, as my specialization as a EE is in laser optics. So "light" is a constant in my life, as it is its speed in the physical world.

Let's make one point since the very beginning: The experience in the Valley is awesome! Before applying for the Certificate in Technology Entrepreneurship I was a bit skeptical. After 5 years of professional R&D and consulting it seemed bizarre to go back to school. Spending hours on books and abroad could actually slow my plans to start a technological company in Italy, so I took my time to decide whether applying for the program.

Now that I am here, I feel stupid I doubted coming. I find that the faculty at Santa Clara University has done a great job in putting together a course focused on entrepreneurship for scientific and technical people. Although there are for certain some things that can be proved in the course (and I understand that they will be improved next year), being at Santa Clara has advantages not limited to the academic curriculum...

There is a whole world out there! I am grasping the opportunity to participate in as many events as possible around the Valley. Earlier this week I have attended a VC TaskForce event (www.vctaskforce.com) where entrepreneurs were pitching for money in front of angel investors. Last week I listened to a talk by Guy Kawasaki, an "icon" of the Silicon Valley, as it has been said. He may be, for his own admittance, a failure as a venture capitalist, but he is endowed with exceptional communication and motivation skills that he directs at encouraging new entrepreneurs to get started. It was a very energetic experience indeed.

And these are only two examples. In the Valley there are entrepreneurs meetups almost every week, new and aspiring entrepreneurs can find infinite possibilities to test their ideas against opinions of other entrepreneurs and knowledgeable professionals. I have met so many entrepreneurs in these months that I cannot count them (my collected business cards stand for over 2 inches thick!).

Another important part of this experience is the internship. I chose to intern in marketing, something every good engineer considers as smoke in the eyes. I am changing my mind, marketing is essential to business and... not that easy either. I work with Hal Steger, Vice President of Marketing at Funambol (www.funambol.com) - a startup doing open source push mail (they are The largest open source project for mobiles worldwide). Funambol has been founded by an Italian entrepreneur, Fabrizio Capobianco (www.funambol.com/blog/capo/), and has a development center in Italy. It is impressive how Fabrizio created such an effective and capable team, and how he runs the business from here and the R&D in Italy. There is a lot to learn in Funambol, apart from marketing...

for(i=0;i<100000;i++) {
printf("Take care!\n";}