Vertical Travel Ad Network CEO Cree Lawson (Part 1)

In the world of entrepreneurship, a universally accepted doctrine is doing more with less. In this case study series, I bring you an entrepreneur who has done exactly that. Cree Lawson, founder and CEO of Travel Ad Network (TAN), is our guest this time, and will share his story with all its blood, sweat and tears. Cree’s venture also aligns with the Vertical Ad Network trend that we have been discussing here.

SM: Cree, please tell us about your personal background.

CL: I guess I’m the product of suburban America circa 1980—a time when there really wasn’t anything more to life than contact sports, loud music and the knowledge that the Russians really were coming at any moment. At least that’s all I knew. When I wasn’t dreaming, reading or knocking the crap out of my friends on a field behind the school, you’d find me cleaning floors at cookie stores and pet shops to buy parts for my exceptionally loud car stereo. Yeah—I was that guy. At one point my stereo was worth more than my car, in fact. But the car was only worth $1,000 so that wasn’t hard to beat. >>>

Deal Radar 2008: eHarmony Replacing Yenta

eHarmony is an online dating/matchmaking site that uses its patented Compatibility Matching System™ to match singles.

In November 2004, eHarmony raised $110 million in a Series B round of financing from Sequoia Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures and Tuputele Ventures. It had earlier raised $3 million in Series A from Sarofim Fayez and Co. >>>

Sridhar Vembu: Silicon Valley’s Unknown Indian

Marc Benioff is afraid of him. Mike Moritz wants to invest in him.

Chances are, you have never heard of Sridhar Vembu, founder and CEO of AdventNet, the company behind newly launched productivity suite, Zoho.

Sridhar is a low-profile guy if there ever was one. He is also cheap as hell. Now, if you know anything about being an entrepreneur, you know that frugality is a virtue. A tremendous virtue.

Sridhar has stretched this virtue to extreme limits, and added layers and layers of creativity upon it.

The result? A100% bootstrapped $40 Million a year business that sends $1 Million to the bank every month in profits.

Doing what, you are wondering. >>>

Death of Indian Outsourcing

“Are you kidding? No way!”

In 2008, the IT and IT enabled services (ITES/BPO) industries are supposed to be the major drivers of India’s economic growth. According to Nasscom, the two industries combined will employ 4 million people and account for 7% of GDP and 33% of foreign exchange inflow. The death of this industry is far from anyone’s mind.

Let me tell you a story. >>>

Trend Radar 2008: Simplicity in Design

Simplicity and reduction in design are going to be the mantras in 2008, as industrial designers look for ways to make technology more human-centric.

We are faced with the daunting challenge of delivering convergence devices with umpteen functions without losing the user.

We are also faced with the challenge of delivering highly personalized user experiences in the web 3.0 paradigm.

In meeting these challenges, three of John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity seem particularly compelling to me: Reduction, Learning and Context. >>>

Trend Radar 2008: Miniaturization

Our wish list for what features we want on the convergence device keeps getting longer, while form factor keeps getting smaller. Familiar movie. Unfamiliar outcome. >>>

Trend Radar 2008: Device Usability

Legend has it that John Rubinstein, father of the iPod, left Apple last year because he and Steve Jobs could not agree on one fundamental usability element for the iPhone. Rubinstein wanted the iPhone to have a keyboard. Jobs didn’t.

While the iPhone has broken many records in achieving better usability, the lack of a keyboard remains a problem. The product works better as a media player, phone and “read” device, and not so well as a “read/write device”, which computers have traditionally been.

In 2008, we can expect device vendors to experiment further with various elements of usability challenges that stem from extreme miniaturization.

And that would not only be for the smartphone family of devices, but hopefully other, still somewhat clunky devices like the GPS. Today, software usability in even the top range of GPS products is still pretty poor.

For the convergence device movement to continue marching forward, a key factor will continue to be simplication of the user interface.

Apple is leading the way. But other device vendors also need to come up with their own breakthrough ideas.

Trend Radar 2008: The Convergence Device Movement

I have tried to consistently synthesize trends that I see in the technology industry for my readers. In this new series, I will take a look at where these trends are going in 2008.

The Convergence Device movement is in full swing, and as you have heard me say time and again, this is one of the most powerful trends of the next five years. Although several smartphone vendors spotted the cell-phone-PDA-camera-module integration early on, it wasn’t until the middle of 2007 that the broader market recognized this as a phenomenon. The catalyst, of course, was Apple’s iPhone, and instead of repeating why this is a very significant development in the industry, let me point you back to Frank Levinson’s superb analysis, iPhone and the Future.

So what’s in store for 2008? >>>