The Story of Tetris: Henk Rogers (Part 1)

Henk Rogers is an entrepreneurial video game designer who began with The Black Onyx, which he published through Bullet-Proof Software in Japan in 1983. In 1988, he successfully led the effort to secure Tetris rights for the Nintendo. Since then he has founded Blue Planet Software and Blue Lava Wireless.

SM: Henk, let’s go back to where your story begins. Where are you from, and what are the circumstances of your early days?

HR: I am originally from Holland. Both of my biological parents are Dutch-Indonesian. I lived in Holland  for 11 years, and that is where I went to elementary school. My mother remarried and we moved to New York, where I went to junior high and high school. >>>

Deal Radar 2009: IngBoo

IngBoois a web start-up that provides consumers with a simple, free way to organize their ‘Web activities’ in one place. These activities can range from reading news from multiple sources, finding a job on different job sites, tracking deals on Craigslist, monitoring searches on Google and YouTube or getting Twitter and Facebook updates. Users can see all of this in one place, called the ‘IngBoo List’. The service is available on the Web, mobiles and via email. New channels such as Facebook and native RIMM app will be available in the third quarter of this year. >>>

Getting To Plan B: Randy Komisar, General Partner, Kleiner Perkins (Part 7)

SM: In your eyes, what is special about Silicon Valley?

RK: Silicon Valley is unique in the US and the world. The reason is that this community has taken 70 years to build. It started with Terman at Stanford. It was an experiment that he ran effectively that became the innovation industry. >>>

Sept 23 Positioning Roundtable

Thanks to all those who pitched at today’s telepresence roundtable. Hope you found the feedback useful. If you have comments, please feel free to share them.

The next roundtable is on Sept. 23 on DimDim. Please register here. Throughout the fall, we have another six roundtables scheduled, which means 30 more slots to pitch. You can find the dates and recordings here.

More SaaS Roll-Up: Adobe Acquires Omniture

I said earlier that we’d start seeing SaaS acquisitions this year. Intuit predictably picked up PayCycle this spring. Adobe, unpredictably, now picks up Omniture for $1.8 billion. This is a very interesting acquisition moving Adobe towards an enterprise SaaS strategy rather than its original creative professional orientation. More analysis to come on this shortly.

Getting To Plan B: Randy Komisar, General Partner, Kleiner Perkins (Part 6)

SM: I think there are opportunities in both developing economies and in Western economies. I am working on a forward-looking book about India right now.

RK: Perhaps. I see energy as a good example. If India can resolve their unique energy issues in a way that only India can do it, then they would have a big advantage over how we think of addressing those issues here in the United States. >>>

Deal Radar 2009: socialDeck

Established in January 2008, socialDeck was founded with the vision of enabling “anywhere, anyone, anytime” gaming – enabling players to consume their games wherever, whenever, and with whomever they seem fit. Founders Anish Acharya and Jeson Patel left their respective positions at Amazon.com and Microsoft to fulfill their ambition of starting a technology company. >>>

Getting To Plan B: Randy Komisar, General Partner, Kleiner Perkins (Part 5)

SM: What about clean tech or green? How important is that for you?

RK: Green is a different sort of investment. It is capital intensive and it is not an order of magnitude investing like other areas. In other investment areas, you are looking for order of magnitude decrease in cost, order of magnitude increase in distribution, etc. >>>