Tole's Take

Here's an idea in GPS for a smart entrepreneur

It's time has come - a manufacturer finally created a voice-themed GPS device, this one using KITT from the 80's Knight Rider TV show.

>>It was bound to happen sooner or later: Generation X nostalgia and modern technology have come together in the “Knight Rider” Global Positioning System from Mio Technology.

The Knight Rider GPS (www.knightridergps.com) takes both its sound and style from the 1980s television show about a computerized talking 1982 Pontiac Firebird named KITT. William Daniels, the actor who was the voice of the sleek black car, narrates the unit’s driving directions. The device, which sports a black exterior and flashing red lights, can be personalized to use one of 300 common names in the greetings and random phrases it utters.<<

Who's going to be the first smart entrepreneur to apply the mobile world paradigm of downloadable ringtones to GPS voices?

There's bound to be a market for everything from Shrek's voice and expressions ("You are dumber than a donkey! I said turn left!") to Yoda directions ("Left you will go, young padwan. There is no try, just do").

More entrepreneurial types will of course recognize the potential for, ahem, adult-themed directions as voiced by their favorite screen stars ("Oh you are a bad boy, I said to turn left ...").

Ikea visits Krillion: the YouTube chronicle

A while back I posted that Ikea and the local CBS 5 News affiliate came to our offices at Krillion to film a segment for their weekly feature called "Ikea Ideas".  Usually they cover how Bay area small businesses can put Ikea furniture to use in their daily work, but since 99% of our office was already Ikea, our segment was a lot more fun and design-oriented. 

Well, we finally managed to get our hands on the video and posted it on YouTube here.   Feel free to stop by our office in Mountain View if you like what you see!

Two things I hate hearing about: other people's kids & other people's money

This NYT article about how the merely rich in the Valley are unabashedly envious of the lucky few super-rich got me thinking of something that an old boss at Yahoo! said a long time back, and still rings true today:

"There are two things I just don't give a shit hearing about: other people's kids and other people's money!"

Never were truer words said.  Think about that when you consider the following excerpt -- you just want to shake these folks and tell them to keep it in perspective (you are not in prison/Darfur/breaking bricks in the hot sun all day):

Almost anywhere else, Reid Hoffman would be considered a major success. As an early executive of PayPal, he was in the money when the company was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. These days, he runs a new start-up company of his own while investing in others.

But when greater fortunes are made -- as happened recently to three former PayPal colleagues when YouTube was sold to Google for $1.65 billion -- Mr. Hoffman said he could not avoid a twinge of envy.

... Mr. Hoffman, who made enough from PayPal to "retire to a comfortable upper-middle-class lifestyle," said he felt no spite toward peers who later hit bigger jackpots. Still, he said, "there's always components of, 'Wow, you happened to pick the right time,' and that will always lead to some kind of implicit envy."

The "Holy Grail" of Search: Is It Powerset?

Matt Marshall has a nice writeup on Powerset, the natural-language search engine that just closed a big first round of funding from Foundation Capital and the Founder's Fund.  Big congrats to Barney, Steve and the whole team -- from what we've seen thus far, they are on to something big (Barney is a friend and member of our Advisory Board at Krillion, I should add). 

As to the larger issue, what is the "holy grail" of search?  Is it natural-language search, or something even more futuristic?

Set your Tivo: IKEA films our offices

Michael already has a good writeup on this on Krillionology.  I wanted to highlight how much fun it was shooting an IKEA spot in our offices last week -- it will air on Nov. 30 at 7:20pm on the local CBS news affiliate.

How did it come about?  99% of our office stuff comes from IKEA, and we have had friends walk by our offices in Mountain View and confuse our space with a furniture showroom (seriously).  Michael talked with the local IKEA manager on one of our frequent furniture runs and one thing led to another ...

In case you were interested in the startup economics angle, it's a no-brainer:

• $2000: cost for a brand-new office cubicle
• $800-1000: cost for a used office cubicle (and used means used in this case)
• $130: cost for the IKEA galant desks we chose for the office

Plus, the lack of cube walls leads to impromptu long-distance Nerf football games ...

Maya's Mom launches

I'm a little behind on the postings on this one since others have covered it already, but wanted to congratulate Ann on getting Maya's Mom off the ground.  Ann's a friend from a long time back, and she has a good sense of what it takes to build a community-driven site focused on the mommy demographic.  My initial thought when she showed it to me was that it was sort of a Facebook/LinkedIn/Myspace for moms, but the more I look at it I see the potential to develop About.com-style category owners/editors. 

As with any community site, it all comes down to how they nurture the fragile ecosystem of their users -- they are off to a great start so far, so keep up the good work!