I do start ups and turn arounds, both high-risk ventures. Some turn out well; others do not. Everypoint — a turn around — did not. Here’s why.
In the spring of 2008, I joined Everypoint as interim COO, after nearly 85% of the original VC investment had been spent by the previous two CEOs. During my first weeks people at our target customers — mobile phone makers like RIM and Nokia — told us they did not believe that Allan MacKinnon could invent what he claimed; an entirely new platform for developing apps for mobile phones that (a) were stunningly beautiful, (b) consumed virtually no battery, and (c) ran on 92% of the phones in people’s pockets, i.e., “feature” phones.
“Write once, run anywhere” had been promised for years and never delivered. It was clear the only way to prove we could do what others could not do was to
hunker down and get the product finished.
By the winter we had done just that; and we were then able to create stunning apps in a matter of days. The doubters were now believers; they were impressed that Allan had done what no one else had been able to do.
But, though they were impressed, they no longer cared.
Why? Because their world had dramatically changed with the overnight success of the Apple App Store. The senior execs of our target customers had instructed their troops to come up with their own app store on their own “smart” phones. Suddenly no one cared about feature phones anymore.
For example, Motorola was a natural to buy Everypoint; their fledgling mobile unit could have leap-frogged their competition by rapidly adding the Everypoint software onto their entire line of feature phones. But their new CEO, Sanjay Jha, faced a huge cultural challenge and he rapidly decided on major surgery, basically killing their entire feature phone line, and “betting the farm” on the Android smart phone technology, packaged as Droid.
Yes, Everypoint delivered on the product promise we made. But by the time we delivered, it was simply too late. The feature phone market had passed us by.
Everypoint is working on selling its core underlying technology. Who should buy it? Any company that wants to compete with RIM / Blackberry’s hugely successful “push / synch” capabilities without violating RIM’s patents.
I regret Everypoint did not turn out as we had hoped. I prefer turn around gigs that eventually have nice exits; like my first interim assignment, at Eink. And I prefer start up gigs that eventually grow into industry-leading companies, like my second interim assignment at Ember. But I met some great people on the Everypoint assignment; people I hope to work with again down the road.
22 October 2009 at 8:28 AM |
That is such a shame. Thank you very much for introducing me to Allan MacKinnon, who is super-duper-impressive. Actually, I thought that feature phones were mainly supposed to be big outside the USA; has that changed, too?
22 October 2009 at 9:02 AM |
Dan, you are right that feature phones are still big outside the US. However, what also has changed in the market is that the USA is now the “driver” in terms of functionality. For years, the US was behind the rest of the world, with functionality driven by other areas. But with the overnight success of the iPhone, the US operations of most of the phone manufacturers are now “in the driver’s seat.”
As for Allan, he is a great guy. So freaking smart, and so able to “process” so many things at once. Tell Allan that you bought a second hand Buick for your sons because it is such a safe car, and Allan is suddenly noticing — and forwarding — all sorts of articles on the safety of Buicks. How does one brain process so much??
31 October 2009 at 5:17 AM |
My heart bleeds for Allan; but try this:-
In 1989 (yes, that’s right, no mis-type) I invented a software system for creating electronic books which were — and still are — (a) stunningly beautiful, in colour and (b) fantastically economical in terms of power, to the point where an ebook reader with a ten-inch screen wil run off its own solar panel buiit into its lid.
( see my website, http://www.martin-woodhouse.co.uk for details )
Nobody has paid the slightest attention to the twenty or so books, illustrated and in colour, which we — meaning, me and my tiny company, Illumination Publishing Ltd — published on diskette (remember diskettes? We cold stick q 400 page book on a single diskette, including its software) between 1992 and 1995. No interest whatever.
I’m still sending out PowerPoint presentations of Illumination and its capablities to various concerns, large and small, around the world. Usually, I get no reply at all.
There’s a state of affairs called ‘being too far ahead of the game’, I think.
(Mind you: nice flexible e-paper readers are coming onto the market in droves right now. They read html (in the form of .epub) and .pdf files, of course, so they use a lot of watts just in running Windows plus whatever reading software they’re using — the entire Illumination book-reader is a mere 40K and is included with eery Illumination book — so a bit of calculation on the likely market, say ten millon book-readers consuming 15 watts each, against the same ten million consuming zero watts each, may say a little something in the eco-friendly world of today . . .)
Cheers.
(anyone who wants a copy of the Illumination presentation, just send me your email address and I’ll send you the presentation in return)
Martin Woodhouse
31 October 2009 at 10:11 PM |
[...] Change Agent « The Final Chapter at Everypoint; We Did What We Said We Would, But It Was Too Late! [...]
11 November 2009 at 10:01 PM |
[...] No. Startups and turn arounds are both high-risk ventures. Some turn out well. Others do not. But in all cases I’ve worked with great people; and it was these great people – and not I [...]