Tech world continues to snap out cool stuff

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Tech world continues to snap out cool stuff

By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2002-11-18-bonus-cover_x.
htm>

MENLO PARK, Calif. - Vinod Khosla hasn't lost faith in technology
start-ups - and that's saying something.

Of all the high-profile venture capitalists in technology, Khosla had
the wildest ride through the bubble. A partner at Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers, he made a mark by investing in optical-networking
companies such as Corvis and Juniper Networks.

Many of his companies soared breathtakingly in 1999 and 2000, then
caved like Florida sinkholes the past two years.

Yet Khosla hasn't turned cynical. He sits in his office surrounded by
dozens of poster-size photos of his three children and shakes his
head at the idea that the tech implosion has killed innovation.

"Implementation is slowing," Khosla says, explaining that potential
customers have become cautious about adding unproven technology or
don't have budgets to invest in it. "But the rate of fundamental
innovation is not slowing. Whether it's a good economy or bad, people
come up with good ideas. You just have to be creating a much bigger
technological advantage now to get funding, but that's not a bad
thing."

Cool tech companies are alive and well and doing fascinating things.
They're in Silicon Valley and in unexpected places such as
Huntsville, Ala., and Madison, Wis. Many of them are developing
technology that involves extraordinary software or deep science, in
categories such as molecular electronics and ultrawideband wireless
communications.

"It's less of the entrepreneurs who are jumping in," says Steve
Jurvetson, a venture capitalist at Draper Fisher Jurvetson in Redwood
City, Calif. "You've got to be a Ph.D. anymore or you have no
credibility in a venture meeting."

The start-up scene is nothing like that of 1999, when money flowed
and two or three companies chasing the same idea would get funded at
the same time. Investment dollars are there for the right ideas and
the right people. True, venture investments are expected to be
one-third lower in 2002 than in 2001. But that still leaves more than
$30 billion available for tech start-ups this year, according to
PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Much of that money seems to be funneling into companies in a handful
of categories:

* Deep tech. Trying to understand what these kinds of companies do
and how they do it can be difficult for non-techies.

For some of the companies, though, it's much easier to grasp why they
matter.

Take, for instance, a company called Volterra, originally funded by
Kevin Compton, one of Khosla's partners at Kleiner Perkins. In 1996,
a group of researchers from the University of California-Berkeley
figured out a way to change how power was managed inside computers.
To a non-techie, that can sound like a big, "So what?"

     Related item

But until Volterra came around, that power was regulated and moved
around by individual components, such as tiny coils. Those components
took up space, which meant computers had to be big enough to house
them. While other computer parts have been getting ever smaller, the
power regulators got in the way of further shrinking the size of
computers.

Volterra used software and clever engineering to put all that power
management onto silicon chips, getting rid of the need for coils and
such. The chips can more easily be made smaller and cheaper, so
laptops can get thinner and Pocket PCs can fit in smaller pockets.

Volterra is still a private company and, Compton says, is doing well
despite the economy. "They've ridden through the ups and downs and
never changed," he says.

Another example is KnowNow. Adam Rifkin founded KnowNow based on his
doctoral research at the California Institute of Technology. Though
the technology is far from simple, a way to explain it is that it
creates an open channel through the Internet between your browser and
a server.

Before KnowNow, the only way to see any new information posted on a
server was to hit your browser's refresh button. KnowNow's open
channel allows new information on the server to automatically flow to
your browser.

Why would that matter? Inside a company, a number of people could
have a spreadsheet open, and any time one person changed a number,
the change would flow to the other spreadsheets. KnowNow is being
used in PCs on factory floors. So, as orders change on the server,
the factory PCs are automatically updated.

Like many of the deep tech companies funded during the industry's
bust, KnowNow remains private, small and focused on technology that
has a clear benefit but is hard to do.

* Disruptive communications. The telecommunications industry is in
the pits. But out on the fringes, in places where big telecom
companies dare not tread, start-ups are working on technology that
could radically alter communications five or 10 years out.

<snip>

Archives at: 
<http://web.wireless.com/index.php?name=Mailing_List&fn=viewml&mid=4>


------ End of Forwarded Message

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To unsubscribe or update your address, click
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/