Did David Gelernter, professor of computer science at Yale, invent a precursor to Facebook only to be undone by a failed launch strategy preferred by his investors?
The Economistreports that Dr. Gelernter’s 1991 book Mirror Worlds – which brought him unwanted and tragic attention from the Unabomber – would later inspire him to form a company of the same name that envisioned an online medium called “lifestreams.”
More than two decades ago, Dr Gelernter foresaw how computers would be woven into the fabric of everyday life. In his book “Mirror Worlds”, published in 1991, he accurately described websites, blogging, virtual reality, streaming video, tablet computers, e-books, search engines and internet telephony. More importantly, he anticipated the consequences all this would have on the nature of social interaction, describing distributed online communities that work just as Facebook and Twitter do today…
In 1997 he and his colleague Eric Freeman formed a company, also called Mirror Worlds, to develop an approach called “lifestreams”—a graphical user interface intended to replace the windows and files of conventional computer desktops with an elegant chronological stream of digital objects.
Looking like an endless Rolodex, a lifestream would extend from the moment of your birth to the day of your death, containing every document, photo, message or web page you have ever interacted with—all in a single, searchable stream, and held safely online. Individual items could be shared with other people. “When I want to make something public, I flip a switch, and everyone in the world who’s interested sees it,” says Dr Gelernter. “I could also blend millions of other streams into mine, with a simple way to control the flow of information so I’m not overwhelmed. It would be my personal life, my public life and my confidential electronic diary.”
If that sounds an awful lot like Facebook, the similarities become almost eerie when Dr Gelernter explains how he hoped to release lifestreams into the world. “I wanted the company to build software for college students, who are eager early adopters. It would be designed not only to eliminate file systems but also to be a real-time messaging medium. Social networking was the most important aspect of it. Starting with Yale, we would give it away for free to get undergraduates excited about recommending it to their friends,” he says. But Mirror Worlds’ investors decided that it would be better to focus on corporate clients, and the result was an organisational tool called Scopeware. It sold modestly to a few large American state agencies, but never took off. Mirror Worlds ceased trading in 2004, the same year that Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook.
It’s not entirely clear from the story precisely how (and who) the launch strategy was chosen, and as the saying goes, “success has many fathers but failure is an orphan.” In our experience decisions such as that one are less about control and more a matter of chemistry: robust debate leading to some kind of consensus which includes contingency plans – with enough credit or blame to go around when the dust settles.
We’ve often written that predicting technology trends is not for the weak at heart – and that’s before one tries to protect the IP and find a way to profit from it. There are reasons we affectionately call the really early stage of investing adventure capital. It’s a long and difficult journey from idea to successful business, during which failure can be counted on to make at least a cameo appearance; so over the long term partnerships will have mistakes (and successes) that are “his, hers, and ours.”
The full article is a fascinating read about Dr. Gelernter, his belief that computers are still too hard to use, and his patent battles with Steve Jobs and Apple.
Ron Mudry, CEO of Tower Cloud, recently offered practial reasons why less populated areas are also excellent opportunities for delivering wireless backhaul services:
85% of mobile backhaul bandwidth is in non-NFL cities or rural areas
Individual sites in those areas have lower cell-site density and require more bandwidth
Existing dark fiber is available to lease from other carriers, utility companies, and municipalities – even if slightly harder to find than in large cities
The same networks that deliver fiber to cell towers can also reach other business locations, helping to amortize the cost of fiber
Tower Cloud operates backhaul networks throughout Georgia, Florida, Alabama and South Carolina and is building additional networks to support national and regional wireless carriers. Speaking about his company’s expanded capacity in Atlanta, Mudry explained, “With the explosive growth of iPhones, Blackberries and Android Smart phones, wireless carriers are rushing to upgrade and enhance their networks to meet today’s demand. Atlanta is a prime example of our ability to quickly and efficiently turn up a network to help bring real-time 4G to consumers.”
Tower Cloud’s recently completed $49 million round of financing is mentioned here in the WSJ’s Venture Capital Dispatch.
Below you can see Mudry discuss wireless backhaul at COMPTEL Plus in Orlando:
The are many excellent pieces/obits about Steve Jobs today. You’ve probably seen several, but we wanted to make sure our network did not miss this one below: video of the 1984 launch of Macintosh. It could be called “nerds gone wild.”
It’s easy to forget the revolution, and how far & fast we’ve traveled since A>chkdsk (click on image to the left if you need a reminder).
Not everyone will believe—that’s OK. But the starting point of changing the world is changing a few minds. This is the greatest lesson of all that I learned from Steve. May he rest in peace knowing how much he changed the world.
Experts are clueless
Customers cannot tell you what they need
Jump to the next curve
The biggest challenges beget the best work
Design counts
You can’t go wrong with big graphics and big fonts
Here is the latest installment in our Vintage Future series (see I, II, and III) in which we take a tongue-in-cheek look at predictions from the past to remind ourselves that today’s trend can be tomorrow’s punchline.
This time, crazy patents from LIFE: eyewear for chickens, animatronic rickshaws, moneyballs, dog power, and more. Think: someone went through the effort and expense to protect this IP.
What has been will be again,” reads the Book of Ecclesiastes. “What has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Nothing new under the sun. Powerful words. But with all due respect to the ancients, they clearly never spent any time pondering the peculiar, mysterious world of patents, and marveling at the wonders revealed therein.
The Wall Street Journal has recently devoted some coverage to dramatic advances in the field of personalized oncology, in which genomic responses to therapies are leading to breakthroughs in cancer treatment. One of our Florida-based portfolio companies, MolecularMD, provides highly validated, standardized pharmacogenomic tests that support regulatory approval and clinical adoption of such targeted cancer treatments.
MolecularMD is a vital part of the growing prominence and promise of the biotech industry in Florida, and is led by CEO Sheridan Snyder and Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Brian Druker. Mr. Snyder is a renowned leader in the biotechnology industry and behind several previous successful start-ups in the field, including Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ) where he served as Chairman, CEO, and President. Dr. Druker is a recipient of the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for his critical role in the development of Gleevec, a drug featured on the cover of Time magazine and described as a “magic bullet” that “convert(ed) a fatal cancer into a manageable chronic condition.”
Below you can find excerpts from the recent coverage of personalized oncology in the WSJ. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network provides an introduction to the topic of biomarkers and targeted therapy here.
(For those who would like to enjoy the inspiring story behind the development of Gleevec, please see “A Doctor in Full” from The Wall Street Journal and this interview in The New York Times.)
New research is signaling a major shift in how cancer drugs are developed and patients are treated—offering the promise of personalized therapies that reach patients faster and are more effective than other medicines.
At the heart of the change: an emerging ability for researchers to use genetic information to match drugs to the biological drivers of tumors in individuals. Studies released at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology here are helping to support previous findings that personalized medicine—introduced more than a decade ago—is closer to being realized as a weapon to fight cancer.
The Florida Innovation Hub at UF recently gave the world a sneak peek during its topping off ceremony (when construction companies typically celebrate completion of the top of a structure). The Innovation Hub is a 50,000 sq.ft. “super incubator” and the first component of Innovation Square – a 40 acre public-private development project in Gainesville that brings together science and technology, business opportunities, and retail and residential space in one 24/7 live-work-play research environment.
Its first tenants this fall will be UF’sOffice of Technology Licensing and UF Tech Connect, the main commercialization offices for the university who are relocating to help anchor the ongoing “Austinization” of Gainesville. Innovation Square has also been favorably compared to similar projects at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Purdue University in West Lafayette, North Carolina State University in Raleigh and Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
The next two Innovation Square buildings scheduled for construction were announced last month by University of Florida President Bernie Machen at the UF Technology and Innovation Conference in Gainesville:
Infusion Technology Center- a 120,000 sq.ft. building that will house existing science and technology companies. (It will share an atrium with the Innovation Hub.)
A “start-up dorm” for entrepreneurial students. This first-of-its-kind residence hall is designed as an entrepreneurial-based academic community, complete with a penthouse suite for visiting CEOs and venture capitalists to stay and interact with students.
This new urban research park environment will complement UF’s Progress Park in Alachua, home to 30 companies and 1,200 employees. Businesses so inclined will be able to choose an urban setting for offices while keeping manufacturing and distribution in Alachua.
From time to time we’ve written of the difficulties and risks associated with very early stage investing, sometimes with a tongue-in-cheek look back at the predictions of past generations of investors and futurists. A “IIIrd” installment like this may mark the beginning of a tradition – but in our line of work it’s good to guard against the hubris inherent in projecting conventional wisdom too far out into the future.
This reminder is courtesy of William Shatner (in a snappy brown suit), who tells us that the telephone is “evolving into the ideal instrument of the electronic age – more and more like a computer terminal… and other far out uses.” Although it’s dated to MicroWorld 1980, the audio track evokes a slightly earlier “look into the future” featuring a different screen icon.
We’ve written before that predicting technology trends is not for the weak at heart – and that’s before one tries to protect the IP and find a way to profit from it. There are reasons we affectionately call the really early stage of investing adventure capital.
Much as I would like to see policymakers encourage more high-growth entrepreneurial activity, I don’t believe that an angel tax credit for SBIR recipients is the way to do it. A capital gains tax cut for shareholders in startups (including angel investor holders of equity) would stimulate more high-growth entrepreneurship with fewer adverse effects than the proposed angel tax credit.
While we agree that broad-based tax relief (for any economic issue) tends to be a more efficient solution than targeted credits, it’s important to support any and all politically feasible means to make early stage investing more attractive. Robert Ackerman, managing director of Allegis Capital, in a widely quoted interview, cites data from the National Science Foundation that illuminate why:
In 1981, 70.7% of industrial R&D took place at companies with 25,000 employees or more. By 2005 that had fallen to 37.6%. At the same time, companies with fewer than 5,000 employees accounted for 39.6% of industrial R&D in 2005, up from 10.5% in the early 1980s.
From the same data we learn that companies with fewer than 500 employees account for just 11% of sales (of R&D-performing firms) while employing 25% of the scientists and engineers. The large (>25,000) firms enjoy 43% of sales while employing only 29% of the scientists and engineers. Over the past three decades it has become more common for small companies to plant while large companies harvest – often by acquiring the same small companies in order to create economies of scale for the innovation. This is a good change for the economy, and fueled in no small part by the growth and success of angel investors (and venture capital firms) who allocate capital more efficiently. These activities should be encouraged with tax credits, rate reductions… or both.
The Florida Innovation Hub at UF recently gave the world a sneak peek 
