The Biz of Coding

Facebook Employees Selling Stock at Valuation of $4-5 Billion

Facebook that has been widely reported with a valuation of US $15 billion is allowing its employees to sell 20% of their vested stock options at a company valuation of $4 billion. This was first reported by Eric Eldon at VentureBeat. The news has been confirmed by the company (Facebook) and BusinessWeek is carrying an article also. Eric had believed that it was a move good for employees but BW suggests that employees are unhappy:

Eric: "this is a nice early windfall for Facebook employees, assuming my sources are correct. the company values its common stock at $4 billion but also values its preferred stock at $15 billion. The reason for the $15 billion preferred-stock valuation is that preferred stock holders have certain rights, including the right to sell their stock first and get their invested money back before common stockholders are allowed to sell any stock. "

BusinessWeek takes a pessimistic view of Facebook: "in recent months, a number of current and former executives have put some of their common stock up for sale. Laurence Albukerk, who brokers the sale of stock in private companies in the Valley, says he knows of at least nine people who have sold or are trying to sell Facebook shares. He estimates that "dozens" are unloading stock, through him or other brokers…Among those who have reportedly sold are founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and departing vice-president Matt Cohler…The sales at Facebook have led to controversy within the graffiti-covered walls of its Palo Alto (Calif.) offices. After employees heard that Zuckerberg and Cohler had sold, there was grumbling among the rank and file, say two sources who have spoken with staff….There are several reasons that Facebook is likely worth less than the $15 billion value it cited when announcing the Microsoft deal. The public equity markets have gotten crushed over the last year, and skittish investors have also lost their appetite for IPOs."

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By Ujwal Tickoo -- 2 comments

Recession Proof Tech Jobs

BusinessWeek has published results from an interesting survey that points out that having a Product Management job is a sure way to survive a Recession. I am actually surprised as typically engineering jobs are considered the safest — I mean you need someone to code the product and typically "management" thinks thats good enough ;). Very often startups have only engineers and product managers are added when the team realizes that they dont know whether they are coding the right product, for the right consumer or market! Similarly Sales people can often survive a recession *if* they can close orders.

Other jobs that are in the Tech Industry and considered Recession Proof by BW:

• Software Design / Development — this is a no brainer! I have explained why I think this job is quite recession proof — especially if you are at mid level and not too expensive ;) 
• Quality Assurance - fair if management believes that minimum quality checks are requried. My guess is the QA ship will be tightly managed
• Project Management — fair, these guys keep projects on track.
• Networking / Sys Admin
• Technology Executives (execs who understand Web 2.0 are in demand according to BusinessWeek — my guess is that they mean Engineering Execs not Marketing / Business Leaders)
• Customer Support — this seems fair. Customers have to be kept happy during a recession. However typically teams are kept tight and people are kept overloaded.
• Database Admins

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

Mobile Usage beats PC Usage by more than 3:1

In 2008 Mobile Usage has already overtaken PC usage by a ratio of over three to one. World wide Mobile users topped 3.3 billion by the end of 2007 with emerging markets showing the fastest growth in adoption. PC Adoption on the other hand would reach 1 billion users by the end of 2008, according to Forrestor Research.

3.3 billion mobile users is about 49% of the world population! According to ITU the global annual average growth rate  for mobile adoption stood at 22 percent. No wonder that mobile application developers and startups are cropping all over the place. PC adoption is much slower than that of mobile. Further according to Forrestor:

there will be…more than 2 billion (PC users) by 2015 — a 12.3% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2003 and 2015. It took more than a quarter of a century to reach the first billion users, but with advancing technology, lower prices, and global demand for a technology-aware population, it will take only seven years to reach the next billion.

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

IBM - Only Tech Firm in Top 10 for Interns - BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek has come up with rankings where Tech companies haven't fared well for Interns. Four of the Top 5 spots are taken by Big 4 consulting firms (some of which have Tech consulting practices). Only 1 pure-tech firm IBM is in the Top 10. The next spot 15th is taken by Intel.

If you are surprised that this ranking does not correlate with the popular FORTUNE's Best Places to work - Top 10 then the reason is in BW's methodology — they began with BW's Top 100 Best places to launch a career in 2007. For example in 2007 FORTUNE ranked Google as #1 place to work but it doesn't have a top 10 rank for Interns. However Delloite & Touche, E&Y, and PwC were in Top 3 of BW rankings in 2007 for launching a career and Google ranked 5th — however it didn't end in Top 10 for interns. So, FORTUNE's worlds best place to work isnt the best place to launch a career. ;)

Top 5 firms for Interns are (IBM is ranked 9th):

1. PricewaterhouseCoopers
2. Ernst & Young
3. Deloitte & Touche
4. Goldman Sachs
5. KPMG

See the slideshow at BW

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By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

Facebook Leads MySpace world-wide but lags in US where Ad-$’s are

Even as Facebook is looking to find a way to make big money to equal the hype that surrounds it on the web, it recently surpassed MySpace as the world-wide King of Social Networking. According to ComScore (CNET report):

Facebook…pulled in 123.9 million unique visitors in the month of May, beating MySpace's 114.6, and 50.6 billion page views compared to MySpace's 45.4 billion.

However, e-consultancy notes, MySpace still leads in US traffic which is much more valuable to Ad Spenders:

While MySpace maintains a significant lead over Facebook in terms of US audience (73.7m unique visitors in May to Facebook's 35.6m), Facebook attracted 123.9m total unique visitors, solidly ahead of MySpace's total of 114.6m.

But this triumph over MySpace might be a hollow victory.

For better or worse, the majority of the Madison Avenue advertisers that upstarts like Facebook hope to court spend most of their dollars trying to reach consumers in the US.

Some international traffic is notoriously difficult to monetize and as many online businesses know, traffic from certain countries is virtually impossible to transform into revenue.

Although many brands serve international markets, as anyone who has sold online advertising will probably attest, international traffic is often a turn-off.

This means that Facebook will probably have to look beyond Madison Avenue in an attempt to monetize its international traffic.

Per Times Online Facebook's expected revenue in 2008 is around $ 300-350 m:

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By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

Yahoo’s future gets murkier with Carl Icahn on Yahoo! Board

After publicly criticizing each other severely many times over, last week Yahoo! Board and Icahn reached a peace deal. Carl Icahn got a seat on Yahoo! board along with two more seats. Wich Ichan on the Board, Jerry Yang would have difficulty in driving his "keeping Yahoo! independent" agenda given that Ichan is a strong backer of selling whole or parts of Yahoo! to Microsoft.

Yahoo! hardly needs more management battles at this hour of crisis. It needs vision and execution that will transform the company into a competitive Internet and Mobile player. Selling Search to Microsoft is a very short term solution. Long term Yahoo! really needs to leapfrog Facebook and Google and build new assets that will emerge as the next generation of magnates for audiences and advertisers by the end of 2009 - early 2010. Till now, I haven't seen any such strategy spelled out in various Yahoo! presentations.

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

India under attack! Serial blasts in Ahemadabad after Bangalore

Terror attacks in India continued a day after serial blasts happenned in Bangalore. This time in the Capital of Gujarat — Ahemdabad. Over 40 people have died and over 100 people have been injured due to the 16 serial blasts that were spread all over Ahemdabad. Interestingly the last 3 serial blasts have happenned in BJP ruled states in India.

Bharatiya Janata Party is one of the two largest national political parties in India and is considered Right Wing Hindu nationalist by several political observers. BJP for long has promoted very strong anti-terror laws in India. It runs state governments in several states including Rajasthan (capital Jaipur), Karnataka (capital Bangalore), and Gujarat (capital Ahemdabad). It seems the terrorists are targeting BJP run states to stifle the growing clout of BJP and its political philosophy in India.

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Bangalore hit by 7 Blasts

Today afternoon, 7 serial blasts have hit bangalore within a span of 1-2 hours. Most of these blasts are in general areas like bus stands, parks etc. — none near offices or complexes of IT companies. Most of the concerns about terrorism in Bangalore have been about hits on key IT companies till now.

These serial blasts are first of a kind in Bangalore though prior to this Bangalore was hit by blasts at a science conference at Indian Institute of Science in which a professor from IIT Delhi was killed.

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By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

Competition is A Constant, Building Imaginative products is the True Variable

I loved this quote from a Yahoo! employee at Alan Wilensky's blog post on "Yahoo Culture - What was, is, and Could Be" (Alan's blog is creatively titled BlogWhine :) ). To repeat the original words, that I modified in the title, "Competition is a constant, and the execution of imaginative products is the true variable." This simple 1-liner captures an essential idea of great product management and I salute the un-named guy quoted in Alan's post.

You can't worry about competition too much or too little. Its a waste. Competition will always be there. But what you can do is build insanely great products that consumers would love. That will keep 'em coming. That is the only mantra. Amen.

My good-old-yahoo-friend Sridhar Ranganathan keeps coming out with witty 1-liners : "Winners take most of it" a Corollary to which was offerred by another good-old-yahoo-friend Ravindra “To Win in a Market, create the Market”. Have fun!

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

Top 3 Indian Websites By Traffic - Rediff, Naukri, Indiatimes

Mint has highlighted interesting stats for most trafficked Indian websites. Rediff.com, a horizontal portal, with 8.1 million unique visitors in the month of April 2008 reached 29% Indian netizens was ranked first. Naukri.com, the job search vertical, with 4.3 million unique visitors reached 15% of Indian netizens and ranked second. Indiatimes.com, a horizontal portal, with 3.1 million unique visitors had a reach of 11% and ranked third.

Ranks 4-10 are unequally spread between horizontal portals (3 - Sify.com, NDTV.com, Ibnlive.com) and vertical sites (Bharatmatrimony.com, shaadi.com, yatra.com, cricinfo.com, moneycontrol.com, techtree.com).

According to the Mint report Naukri.com (42%), has seen much greater ad revenue growth than the horizontal and first placed Rediff.com (8%). Apparently Ad revenue in India is flowing away from horizontal to vertical websites.

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments