European Wireless Internet: The Alta Berkeley Experience

1
European Wireless InternetThe Alta Berkeley
Experience

• Barun Dutta
• Alta Berkeley Venture Partners
• London-Geneva
• bd_at_alta-berkeley.com

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BackgrounderSwinging for the Fence

• One of the original early stage European VCs
  since 1982 - London and Geneva
• Founding members of both EVCA and BVCA
• All Investing GPs are Technologists,
  Entrepreneurs and Operational Executives in Past
• First Venture Investor in Info-tech, Telecoms and
  Bio-informatics
• 55 investments in the last 10 years with over 12
  Euro IPOs on 6 different exchanges and 8 on
  Nasdaq
• Thus experience makes you a cynic!
• Speaker (Yours Truly) Hardcore Network research
  guy, senior strategic and technical management
  experience but have had two start-up successes
  and was Angel investor before being a VC on both
  sides of the Atlantic

3
Initiative Investing in European Wireless Past
and Present

• Technical Background/Experience and Gray Hair
  driven
• No Statistical Multiplexing in Whole Sector
• Small number of Companies, No strategy by
  CNN/CNBC
• Serious Educated Fortune Telling!
• Identified in 1997 that First generation
  Wireless Internet was Big
• Asked ourselves what we would use and want
• Conclusions
• Smart phones/PDAs and their users have certain
  characteristics
• personal
• timely
• have small screens and bad keyboards
• mobile and roaming

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Case Study I Personal Device

• Personal Device Implies gt Mobile Location
• Look for High Accuracy Device Location
  Infrastructure
• Look for non traditional techniques but creative
  people
• Identified and funded Cambridge (U.K.)
  Positioning Systems (CPS) - Bunch of
  Radio-astronomers!
• What have they accomplished
• Only technology which does not need change to
  handset hardware No cost increase (Non-GPS),
  works in urban valleys
• Only technology to have met US FCC Phase II
  trials - 67 lt 50m and 99 lt125m in current GSM
• Better than 5m accuracy in UMTS
• 11 Trials worldwide - TIM, Voicestream, Vodafone,
  etc.
• Licensing deals with Ericsson, Siemens, Alcatel,
  Nortel, Lucent, Infineon, Motorola
• Control, enable and tax all Location based
  services - Premium Call
• Global Opportunity and great global team

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Case Study II Timely Data

• Timely Data Implies gt Alerting People with Data
• Look for Exceptional Event Detection Technology
• Look for non traditional techniques but creative
  people
• Identified and funded Categoric Software U.K.
  and US
• Bunch of guys from the shipping business
• What have they accomplished
• Only technology which sits on Corporate Network
  and looks for exceptional events in databases,
  text repositories, call centers, ERP and responds
  and take action based on it. Thresholds can be
  set by user and not DBA or Sys-Admin. Mobile/Web,
  IVR, pre-programmed in and out
• Large number of customers and resellers both OEM
  and direct
• Being integrated into major ERP infrastructure
• Mobile operators like Telia are making it
  available as a service corporations - First true
  corporate mobile data application
• Operator Revenue Driver
• Nokia Ventures, T-Ventures as investors pushing
  for handset integration
• Global Opportunity with global team

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Case Study IV Mobile and Roaming

• Mobile and Roaming gt True Multi-band Phones
  (Tri-band and more)
• Look for technology or bottleneck Why only one
  phone on the market?
• Bottleneck is in filter technology and its impact
  on time to market
• Look for non traditional techniques but creative
  people
• Seeded SAWCOM to address these two issues
• What have they accomplished
• Have demonstrated that a fab-less enterprise with
  specific proprietary software can design high
  efficiency SAW filters and duplexers with far
  better performance and time to market than
  anything currently available
• Have built prototypes of filters and delivered to
  handset manufactures for qualification
• Tremendous interest from handset integrators for
  components
• Currently raising first round financing to
  execute on demand
• Most likely will enable multi-band phone with low
  power consumption

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Case Study IV Small screens and Bad keyboards

• Small Screens and Bad Keyboards gt Simple
  Transactions and Needs Provider
• Look for Scalable Technology based Service
  Provider for Wireless ISP/Portal
• Look for non traditional techniques but creative
  people
• Identified the iobox team in Finland
• What have they accomplished
• First and largest pan-European Wireless
  Portal/Service Provider
• Built true multi-national team with presence in
  five European Countries
• In 18 months built 1.2 mil users, became
  benchmark of the industry
• Entrepreneurs of the Highest Caliber on a Global
  Scale
• Largest trade sale ever done in Finland
• Fantastic team balanced in both technology and
  organization/marketing
• Acquisition by Telefonica enables access to the
  fastest growing market
• Leading convergence of Mobile and Broadband

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Initiative Investing Some lessons

• Your startup worked because you saw an opening in
  the market
• one that a large company was likely better
  suited to serve if they could have.
• How do you make sure you dont become obsolete
  someday??
• Great Opportunities exist in Europe but you have
  seek them out
• You Have to be 1 or 2 - Winner take all system
• Each example is the 1 leader in what it does
• Strategy by CNN/CNBC can be counter-productive
• Wireless data is Not like the Internet
• First Generation is Over
• Next Generation might be a European Non-event
• Building true pan-European Business is Not for
  the Faint Hearted

we want to be 1 or 2 in every area that we
participate in - Jack Welch (General Electric)
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The Future3G

• UMTS is the largest tax on the consumer since VAT
  
• 70 of Broadband Auction Winners in US 94
  Auction are dead
• There are few Mobile Data business models
• Consumer focus of UMTS is a non starter
• Additional Spectrum will most likely be used to
  support additional voice customers
• UMTS auctions might have killed Europes lead in
  mobile
• NTT-Docomo is not a good business example for
  Europe
• Dominant Operators will continue to win
• Wireless Opportunities are not in 3G or as stated
  by CNN/CNBC - Great Entrepreneurs will deliver
  it!
• Lets meet next year to see where we are with a
  few more case studies