sitting in on the Trends

sitting in on the Trends in Software panel.

Speakers & Soundbites:
  Sameer Gandhi, Partner, Sequoia Capital -- consumer & small business
  Anu Shukla, CEO, RubiconSoft -- "demand" enterprise sw
  Jonathan Abrams, Founder & CEO, Friendster -- cost & connectedness
  Larry Augustin, Chairman, VA Software -- Monolithic sw is dead; ent sw pricing model is broken
  Ann Winblad, Founder, Hummer Winblad -- comm. & collaboration
Moderator:
  Tom Byers, Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Panel opened with the comment "Software is BACK!" :)  Yeah, i guess so -- although was it ever really gone?  Perhaps the *funding* was gone, and the optimism for startups & entrepreneurship disappeared for a few years.  But Ryze, Friendster, Tribe, Orkut all certainly got started on a shoestring during the 2001-2003 timeframe.  Maybe it was enterprise software that vanished, but i'm not sure that's coming back either... at least not based on the way the pricing model used to look.  Maybe now enterprise ASPs are starting to have a life again?  dunno, i don't watch that space much these days, although i guess SalesForce.com is kind of there... tho i think their customer isn't large or small is it?

Jonathan is talking about social networking sites... "connectedness" and consumer services. mentions Spoke.  Sameer sez "we would love to have invested in Friendster, but there was a line out the door...." ;)  Panel discusses annoyances of social networking invitations... Anu mentions getting invitations from people she doesn't know, referred by other people don't know. heh.  Ann sez Stewart Alsop has dumped in the biggest rolodex of contacts into Linked In, and he now serves as the "hub" for all of NEA's contacts in LinkedIn.