Last week we held our first Smartcamp focused on Smart Cities in New York City.  It was less than 12 months since we were last in NYC (a SmartCamp record for returning to a location).  During the week we also announced that we would hold our SmartCamp Global Finals there in Feb 2013.  Both are signals that NYC is now a very active venture ecosystem.  Almost 500 start-ups in New York received venture financing from 2007 to 2011, according to an excellent recent report from the Center for an Urban Future. Mike Butcher wrote about it last week.  Today the New York Times covered the story.

In addition to the growth of the local investment scene NYC is starting to act for a global hub attracting companies from far afield. Of the 4 start-ups selected for our event only 1 was from the metro area.  We also met great companies from Austin, Israel, Turkey, San Francisco and beyond at Disrupt.

The 4 finalists all demonstrated how broad the theme of Smart Cities is:

Enlighted is a Silicon Valley venture-funded start-up dedicated to eliminating energy waste in commercial buildings.

UVAX has developed a Broadband Power Line Communication System which makes street lights more efficient

eVOTZ has a secure mobile voting platform transforming mobile devices into trustworthy election voting machines for the 21st Century

StreetLight Data turns potential customers into actual customers using transportation behavioral data and analytics.

All companies were very strong however StreetLight Data were selected by the judges having best demonstrated the entrepreneurial passion needed to build a big business.  Their solution helps retailers and planners find the best locations by knowing where target potential customers go already.  This blends together Smarter Commerce with Smart Cities and we look forward to working with Laura and the team.

Friday was meant to be catch-up day however I couldn’t resist the invitation to see 10 Turkish start-ups pitch at an event organized by Murat Aktihanoglu from ERANYC who kindly acted as SmartCamp mentor.  It was exciting to see all these companies with real products and real customers start the expansion plans in NYC.

I finished the trip with a visit to Blueprint who have 12,000 sq feet of space in downtown Manhattan and aiming to disrupt the digital healthcare market.  More about that later.

Something is happening in NYC.

This is good lead into a short post about corporate VC vs. traditional VC.  There is currently a lot of interest in corporate venturing.    GCV are fulfilling an important role collecting and sharing data regarding the approach and performance of corporate venturing.  Many big companies are discovering that open innovation can be an effective tool for understanding disruptive technologies and business models.  Earlier in the week I wrote about some of the changes happening in the VC world.  It is worth exploring how these play out for corporate VCs.

First of all corporate VC is relatively immature compared with traditional venture capital.  There are few firms who have been active for more than a decade.  Most came to the party in 2000 only to get into the market just before the crash.  John Moulton highlighted Accenture’s dramatic entry and exit from the market in a very entertaining presentation.  There are exceptions of course but by and large corporates are newcomers to the industry.  In general this is a good thing.  There are less legacy issues to be managed as it has allowed many corporates to watch and learn without committing significant financial and political capital.

Second point of interest is scale.  GCV reports that corporates account for 27% of all venture backed exits.   Stephen Ziff reported that CVC account for $22b which would put it on a par with traditional VC in US.  That is very interesting.  It would appear that this number will increase are corporates get more involved and traditional VC downsizes.  As corporates learn how to work effectively with start-ups and demonstrate additional value in terms of market reach, credibility, etc – they will attract more start-ups and generate more capital.

Along with scale, the variety and complexity of CVC is very interesting.  Fund of funds, minority stakes, majority stakes, spin outs, open innovation, the list goes on.  More importantly many of the people I met have started to figure out what is the balance between hard financial returns and softer strategic benefits.  Like the old adage, 50% of our marketing spend is wasted we just don’t know which half. Same with corporate venturing, however it appears that execs are getting more comfortable with a level of ambiguity that is associated with this activity.  Or at least understanding how quickly the world is changing and how to important it is to understand disruptive change.

We were delighted to be awarded personality of the year award for our work with IBM Global Entrepreneur. It was an honor to collect this on behalf of the corporation and the whole team.  The program has grown over the last 2 years from an internal start-up to a global program with hundreds of mentors helping thousands of entrepreneurs.  This take a committed global team to make a reality.  We are very happy that GCV has recognised this work.

Looking forward to next year already.

Overall there are some fundamental issues which need to be addressed.  Fred Wilson has written about the oversupply of capital.  The industry needs to shrink in size however it is difficult for incumbents to vote for these types of changes.  As importantly the industry needs to innovate.  Dave McClure has written that we can do better.  He is right.

There are many things in this world that are ‘broken’ but for which we lack a workable alternative.  Consider for a moment, the Pharmaceutical industry where the costs to bring a new drug to market costs north of $1b, takes on almost 10 years and helps less than 40% of the target patients. However what is the alternative?  There are many other examples (e.g. Euro crisis, etc) where the situation is suboptimal but we have yet to find a better way.  Same for the VC industry – change is needed however it is still unclear what the new model will look like.

Last week I attended Venture Day at IE business school nMadrid.  They had a very interesting line-up including Jeff Clavier, Ali Partovi, James Tan, Jerry Kennelly, and Gary Steward to name just the first page of speakers.

Madrid reminded me of Dublin2 years ago.  Despite the sunshine outside there were very dark clouds hanging over the room. Unemployment is close to 25% and much higher among the young.  Small businesses and start-ups are seen as an important part of economic development however finding credit (and customers) is very difficult. The local ecosystem of investors, entrepreneurs, educators and public servants are trying to create a new model to support start-ups but it is not yet clear what the model will look like.  Including new developments like Startup Spain

A couple of things struck me.  Firstly, accelerators, super angels, micro VC firms are likely to be part of the solution.  For example Jeff Clavier talked about closing their latest round and doing over 100 investments including 20 exits. The ability to deploy very small amounts of capital over short periods of time as game stakes is interesting.  There are a number of experiments happening in the areas of crowdfunding.  AngelList is hinting at new ways to connect with smart capital. However there are a number of challenges in terms of scale when you think that it is time (or attention) not money that is that main restriction.

Secondly, a lot of discussions of the discussion over dinner focused on copy cats or business model arbitrage as it is called in China.  What role do start-up factories like Rocket Internet have in the ecosystem?  How do investors protect and leverage these opportunities?

Thirdly, disruptive change is rarely started by the incumbents.  There are simply too many vested interests and so it begs the question of the role that the valley will have in creating VC 2.0?

Overall it is clear that the VC industry is still very immature and still evolving.  I’m currently reading Boomerang – The Meltdown Tour by Michael Lewis.  The book tells the story of the financial meltdown as it impacted Iceland,Ireland,Greece and US.  It is an amazing read and the one thing that stand out is how long the old structures remain even when everyone knows the game is up.  I think the same applies to the venture capital industry.

Tomorrow I will attend the Global Corporate Venturing Symposium in London and it will be interesting to see how thinking has developed in the last 12 months.

Corporate venture groups are playing an ever important role and learning from their previous mistakes.  It is clear that something new is happening but it is not clear what it is exactly.

• According to Dow Jones VentureSource, venture capitalists invested $659 million in 91 deals in 2011, up 25.5% from $525 million in 71 deals the prior year
• In the first quarter of 2012, health IT companies raised $102 million, a 75% increase over the same period last year.

On the Forbes Midas List of 100 VCs it is interesting to see who is getting involved in the sector

• Peter Thiel (#8) of Founders Fund is a newcomer to health IT.  Best known as a PayPal founder and early Facebook investor, Thiel led last April a $23 million Series B round in electronic health record company Practice Fusion, and reinvested again in September. Founders Fund is also an investor in ZocDoc, a fast-growing booking site for doctor appointments.
• Joining Founders Fund in ZocDoc were SV Angel’s Ron Conway (#15) and Digital Sky Technologies’ Yuri Milner (#29) who invested $50 million. Conway also has a stake in Practice Fusion
• Michael Moritz (#13) and Douglas Leone (#18) both of Sequoia Capital, sold portfolio company HealthCentral, an online health site to Remedy Health Media this past November for an undisclosed price. Other investments include AirStrip Technologies which securely sends critical patient information from hospital monitoring systems and electronic health records to a clinician’s mobile device, and practice management software ZirMed. This past September, Sequoia invested in Healthcare Quality Catalyst, which provides health care data warehousing software.
• Bryan Roberts (#38) of Venrock is the dean of health IT investors on the list, going back with athenahealth, a publicly-traded web-based practice management and electronic health record vendor, and RelayHealth, now part of McKesson. Last month, Venrock sold portfolio company CodeRyte, which provides medical coding information, to 3M.

Looking forward to a great event in Miami and hopefully more investors will see this as an interesting space.

CaraHealth
Cohealo
Consult-a-Doctor
Emergency Medical Technology
eNano Technologies

Congratulations and best of luck in Miami!  Here is why we think this is an exciting space

Sproxil were the winners of the first SmartCamp after the pilot way back in early 2010.  At the time we were still learning how to really engage in a meaningful way with very early stage companies. I sat with the judges on the day and at the time it really wasn’t clear how we could really work together.  Their offering was a mobile sms based solution not our traditional focus plus they were tackling a very challenging  African market.  However it was clear that this was a massive problem and an amazing team.  We figured that we would work something out over time.  The announcement on Tuesday was confirmation that this was the right decision.  Now here is Ashifi Gogo (founder and CEO)

This is a collaboration between IBM, ERSI and CitySourced.  Citysourced were a finalist at our first SmartCamp in Silicon Valley and they are helping the nation’s second largest school district become one of the greenest and most sustainable by making energy conservation and cost savings as easy as sending a text message.

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is empowering its students, teachers and staff to identify maintenance issues such as leaky faucets and broken air conditioning units by sending text messages and photos through their mobile phones. A mobile reporting solution developed by CitySourced sends the photos and texts for analysis by IBM software that automatically shows staff where the problem is located using geographic information software from Esri.

LAUSD is the largest public school system in California and the second largest school district in the United States with 700,000 students. With more than 14,000 buildings spread out over 710 square miles, the district receives more than 300,000 maintenance service requests a year.

Within the first eight months of implementing the program LAUSD responded to more than 750 maintenance requests and have since surpassed 1,650 reports to date. LAUSD and CitySourced are scheduled to implement an outreach program to socialize the application at school sites in the second quarter of 2012. With the combination of word of mouth and the outreach program, LAUSD anticipates the number of reports to significantly rise in 2012.

Prior to the crowdsourcing app, LAUSD relied on faculty, staff, students and parents to report maintenance issues with the campus plant manager, requiring the manager to decipher and pinpoint the failing unit before submitting the call to the Maintenance & Operations Service Call Desk and routing to the appropriate personnel to solve the problem. With the advent of the mobile application, reports are submitted directly to the Maintenance & Operations Service Call Desk.

“Working with IBM, CitySourced is empowering faculty, students and citizens of the Los Angeles school districts to improve their communities by keeping them cleaner, safer and more efficient,” said Jason Kiesel, Founder and chief executive officer, CitySourced.

A recent Nielson research report showed smartphone usage is surging, especially in the United States where 38 percent of the population owns a smartphone and has the ability to send text or picture messages. By taking advantage of the growing connectivity of the population and partnering with companies like CitySourced and Esri, IBM is utilizing data collected by people to create smarter, more efficient cities and infrastructure.

“People now have the ability to act as living sensors for things they witness in their day-to-day lives,” said Dave Bartlett, vice president, Industry Solutions, IBM. “Through these partnerships, we are arming people with the ability to report problems that impact the efficiency of an ecosystem such as cities, buildings and campuses. And, through IBM analytics, we enable organizations to act on information that will make them more efficient and successful.”

The CitySourced app reports maintenance issues directly to IBM Maximo® Asset Management software.

In the meantime, on a related but adjacent tone we are very happy to support Science Gallery and the  2012 flagship exhibition HACK THE CITY launching in June 2012. HACK THE CITY is curated by Teresa Dillon – Lead Curator/Researcher & artist, Linda Doyle – Director of CTVR, Josh Klein – TED Speaker and author of Hacking Work, Michael John Gorman – Director of Science Gallery and myself representing IBM.

The exhibition and events will explore hacking for good – the repurposing of useful resources, the innovators who customise existing tools for new uses and who purposefully challenge existing hierarchies. What creative ways can we release untapped resources, harnessing what maybe considered as by-products or waste, to create alternative systems for public good?

Science Gallery (Dublin) and Medialab-Prado (Madrid) are issuing an Open Call for projects to be collaboratively developed and presented during Hack the City. Current and Future Needs (July 11 – 26, 2012), with the participation of advisors and technical assistants. 

The workshop at Science Gallery is part of Studiolab, a 3-year Europe-wide initiative that merges the artist’s studio with the research lab. Funded by the EC Seventh Framework Programme in 2011, Studiolab is a network that provides a platform for creative projects that bridge divides between science, art and design.

Call Open: April 19 – May 20, 2012

Selection of proposals: May 21 – 27, 2012
Development of projects (workshop): July 11 – July 26, 2012
Exhibition of prototypes: July 27 – September 7, 2012

Science Gallery will  set up an experimental laboratory to channel hacker culture, and allow artists, designers, makers, doers, data nerds, hobbyists, citizen scientists, tech geeks, activists, edgy engineers and DIY urban planners to take control over the resolution of problems that affect and link together worldwide ‘communities of concern’. It will move citizen science out of the garage/prototype stage and onto the street.

Orientation of the projects:

This workshop of collaborative production is looking for ideas that: 

• Crowd Sourcing Public Data: Crowding sourcing is a means for cities citizens to improve services, however collating, mediating and providing meaningful feedback through crowd sourced data is a considerable challenge. We are seeking proposals that focus on how to crowd source data, visualize it in meaningful ways and provide feedback to both citizens and councils.

• Wellbeing: What constitutes our sense of wellbeing in a city? Is it the way in which your street is organised, or access to resources, green spaces etc. or is it how well you know your neighbour? Within this section we are seeking proposals that address ideas focused on wellbeing, social bonds, and cohesion and community reliance.
• Open Data Services: Over the last 18 months Dublin City Council and its local authorities have made significant advances in opening up their data. Between dublinked.ie and the Fingal Open Data (data.fingal.ie) there are now 200+ datasets online. We are interested in receiving projects, which utilise this data for artistic purposes and interventions key areas of interest including projects that focus on transport and energy.

Submission Guidelines:

From the submission to the call a maximum of 6/7 projects will be accepted for production in a two-week workshop in Science Gallery Dublin in July, 2012 during the HACK THE CITY exhibition. The selected projects will be developed with the aid of several advisors and assistants, in addition to a large group of collaborators.

The open call is aimed at designers, artists, engineers, coders, sociologists, architects, city planners, teachers, programmers, psychologists, journalists, environmentalists, or to any other person interested in the theme of this call.

Proposals may be presented by individuals or groups. Each participant or team may present as many projects as they wish.

Selected projects must be open to the participation of other interested collaborators, who will be able to contribute to the production of the pieces during the development of the workshop. 

Therefore, there are two levels of involvement with the workshop:  

1 – as a project leader
2 – as a collaborator in any one of the selected projects

Once the projects have been selected, the second step in the process will involve a new call for those people who would like to participate in the projects’ production as a collaborator. The call for collaborators will be open from June 1st to July 5th 2012. 

Workshop General Information:

The Dublin workshop aims to be a collective platform for research, production, and learning, offering support in developing the projects selected. The projects will be carried out in multidisciplinary groups comprised by the project leaders joined by interested collaborators, with conceptual and technical advice from the advisors. Science Gallery and Medialab Prado will provide materials for the development of selected projects, as far as possible.

During the workshop, various activities will be scheduled such as talks, presentations, seminars or specific mini-workshops. Work days will be adapted to the specific needs of the projects in sympathy with the activities ongoing at Science Gallery as part of HACK THE CITY events. 

10:00-17:00 Monday
10:00-20:00 Tuesday-Friday
12:00-18:00 Saturday-Sunday

Given that one of the main objectives of the workshop is to foster the development, distribution, and free access to new approaches and new technology tools, participants are encouraged to prepare proper documentation for the developed projects, both during and after the workshop, and to publish the results and source code under licenses that grant access and distribution of the knowledge produced during the workshop.

Technical Requirements:

The evaluation team will assess submitted projects for technical feasibility – successful projects should have clearly specified technical and spatial requirements. Should the evaluation team have doubts about any technical requirements, they will contact the authors of the proposal.

Projects will be carried out and exhibited at Science Gallery. Science Gallery will contribute basic equipment and means to produce the selected projects, pending prior application from the proposal’s author(s). Access and use of Science Gallery’s technical equipment will be supervised by a coordinator from the Gallery. Expenses for material or equipment not planned for or approved will not be covered by Science Gallery nor Medialab Prado, but by the project leaders. The organisers will provide Web hosting as needed for the projects and also the tools and platforms required by participants to properly document the process and the results.

Science Gallery and Medialab-Prado promote the use of free software tools and encourages participants to work with shared and open code applications and environments.

Travel and Lodging Aid:

Pending application, Science Gallery and Medialab-Prado will provide lodging for selected project leaders’ residing outside of Dublin and will cover travel expenses to Dublin. In the case of collectives, Science Gallery and Medialab-Prado will cover travel expenses for only one member.

Submissions:

All those interested in taking part in the workshop must fill in and submit the online submission form

Open Call closes: May 20, 2012

Selection of proposals: May 21 – 27, 2012

Call for collaborators: June 1 – July 5, 2012 

Development of projects July 11 – 26, 2012

Further Information please contact interactivos (at) sciencegallery.com or interactivos (at) medialab-prado.es

Final decision:

The evaluation team will comprise the workshop advisors as well as Science Gallery and Medialab-Prado staff. Projects will be judged based on:

• Project quality
• Suitability to the call for projects
• Technical and logistical feasibility
• Clarity in the explanation of the project
• Combination of various fields of knowledge
• Willingness to collaborate with others in project development
• Use of open software tools and licenses that grant access to the processes and the results
• Educational value

Notification of Selected projects

Selected projects will be announced on June 1, 2012. Applicants will receive notification by email.

Obligations:

The developers of selected projects agree to attend the workshop from July 11th through 26th, 2012 and to finish and document their projects, as far as possible during this time.

Apply here:

Firstly,  Moscow was nothing liked I expected.  The sheer scale and grandness of the buildings, roads, infrastructure was daunting. I have traveled to and lived in big cities most of my life however this was something different.  There were traffic jams at 3am.  It has been  described as the most misunderstood city in the world.  A city of extremes -30c in winter and +30c in summer.  Traveling to and around the city felt like a real journey – exactly how travel used to feel 15 years ago.

I spent most of the time at Digital October which was previously an old chocolate factory which has been transformed into a the meeting place for conferences and start-ups. I believe that physical meeting places are very important in terms of building an open community and supporting collaboration.

What impressed me the most was that organizations like Skolkovo have developed specific programs for start-ups tailored to the needs of emerging markets. Also RVC’s authorized capital of RUB 30,011,320,700 isn’t to be sneezed at.

The conference itself was very diverse and very international.  Aside from representation from the majority of the 400 European networks that EBAN covers there were over 200 Russian delegates. More surprisingly were the big contingents from China, Turkey and US.  There was even representation from Australia.

How exactly the angels will organize across borders remains to be known.  Also how the entrepreneur scene will develop in Moscow will be interesting to watch as well known figures like Esther Dyson, Mike Butcher and Steve Blank spend more time in the city.

We’ll be back soon with details on our plans for SmartCamp in this interesting city.