Microsoft's second attempt at the Surface Pro has brought plenty of improvements, even if is still on shaky ground
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Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Surface Pro 2 Teardown: New Guts, But Still a Nightmare to Repair
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Meet Nexmo, The Telecom API Firm On Track For $40M In 2013 Revenue
Given the massive global popularity of messaging, the market in play is enormous. Nexmo is a quickly growing company that provides carrier-direct SMS and Voice APIs that developers can use to reach phones around the world. Vying for traction in the space with competitors like Twilio, Nexmo has raised raised $3 million earlier this year, and unlike so many other young technology companies, is profitable. However, it is a somewhat quiet company.
I recently sat down with Nexmo’s CEO Tony Jamous to dig into just how quickly his company is growing, how it managed to break into the black and what its next plans are. Jamous is affable, and provided TechCrunch with far more hard numbers than most firms are willing to share. Then again, most companies don’t share, because showing off how much money you lose isn’t too flattering. Nexmo doesn’t have that problem.
I won’t be focusing on the technical aspects of Nexmo and its industry in this post. That’s a discussion for another day.
Growth
Nexmo’s revenue grew at a stable 20 percent monthly for the first half of 2013. That income directly corresponds to the firm’s 20 percent average monthly growth rate of its through-traffic during the same period.
Chronologically, Nexmo began to accelerate around the time of its most recent round of funding – the company has raised a total of $3.83 million. Jamous referred to the cash injection as a “shot in the arm.” Ask any CEO what he intends to do with a new round of funding, and her response every time is the same: Acceleration. Nexmo is no different.
Using its most recent $3 million, Nexmo grew its sales team and signed several new and large clients. But in its favor, existing customers grew in scale, directly boosting traffic through its APIs and, thus, increasing revenue.
Nexmo has been caught in a contented updraft: It counts among its customers, by its estimation, about 80 percent of the “Over-The-Top Content” message market (OTT). Line, Viber and KaKaoTalk are among the larger OTT messaging services, and they use Nexmo. The company also works with other OTT players, but asked me not publish their names, citing private contracts.
To supplement the growth in its SMS business, Nexmo began to support voice calls in June. In July, 4 million calls were sent through the new service. Jamous stated that the voice part of Nexmo grew quickly at launch because existing clients had requested it, putting demand in place from its first day in operation. Twilio, which has been in the call game far longer, recently announced that it is handling about 4 million calls daily. I don’t have Nexmo’s comparable figure. Jamous did tell me that Nexmo has handled more than 1.4 billion voice and SMS API transactions.
Voice currently comprises 7 percent of Nexmo revenue, and the company expects it to rise to 15 percent of its fourth quarter revenue.
Revenue
Nexmo had revenues of $4 million in August. That figure is more than the company has raised, to date, it’s worth noting. That revenue rate puts Nexmo at around a $50 million yearly run rate. The company will exceed that rate in 2013, provided that it continues to grow.
According to Jamous, Nexmo expects total revenue of around $40 million for calendar 2013. Twilio was tipped earlier in 2013 to be on track for about $50 million in revenue for the year, putting the companies on rough top-line parity.
Extrapolating from the August revenue figure, assuming that Nexmo grows at 5 percent monthly – a reduced pace, but one that I think is a reasonable projection – Nexmo would generate just under $9 million in top line next December. That would put it on a nine-figure yearly run rate.
Money
Nexmo is looking to raise another tranche of cash. Why raise when you are profitable? Jamous wants to accelerate the growth of his product and support team. He still handles the bulk of support work himself, something that probably worked when the company was smaller than it is now.
Jamous indicated that he wants to raise more than $20 million, and the company is talking to new investors. Previously, Nexmo raised cash from foreign investors in China and Korea, helping it to build relationships in those markets where it didn’t have local clout. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nexmo raised its next round at least partially from investors of several continents.
Will the company struggle to raise cash? Probably not. Twilio recently raised $70 million. But the companies aren’t complete analogues, so we should avoid over-comparison, but in this context they are relatable. If Twilio can land $70 million (bringing its total raised cash to over $100 million) Nexmo shouldn’t struggle to pick up $22 million or $23 million.
The company also wants to put together a proper marketing strategy. You likely hadn’t heard of Nexmo before today. I only recently became acquainted with the firm. It could use a higher profile.
What’s Next
Nexmo was founded in June of 2010, and the first message went through its systems in January of 2011. So, in a little over three years, it has grown to a company on a $50 million yearly run rate. That’s an impressive tear. Still, the growth of OTT applications that were its clients did contribute greatly to its success, and growth.
To say right place, right time is lazy. Nexmo built a product and scaled as some of its larger firms did the same. Still, growth could slow if OTT app partners slow, and if those applications themselves lose relevance in the notoriously fickle mobile world, Nexmo could suffer from flat or declining incomes.
Also, Twilio is ludicrously well funded, and could begin to hem in on Nexmo’s key customers. Competition is a standard business risk, however, and not one that is unique to Nexmo. Still, for a company that wants to raise money on the strength of its growth, Nexmo has to keep a closer eye on its acceleration than comparable firms.
Provided that Nexmo secures the funds that it is looking for, it can begin marketing with a decent ROI, and can continue to develop its voice business. I don’t see why the company can’t continue steady growth. The days of 20 percent monthly revenue growth are likely past, but that doesn’t mean that the firm can’t keep putting points on the board.
It will be interesting to see how heavily Nexmo invests after it raises, and whether it will be willing to dip into the red for a few quarters to accelerate its top line. Once profitable, there is a certain momentum to making money. It can be uncomfortable to become cashflow negative (we’re speaking loosely here, of course) after being acquainted with profitability.
After digging through the numbers, Jamous and I discussed culture for a few minutes. The operating philosophy of Nexmo is to not hire until the need is painful, and even then to try and solve the need with technology. The company currently has 33 employees, spread throughout the United States, Hong Kong, London, and other locations. I don’t think that we’ll see Nexmo hire half of San Francisco once it secures its new funds.
–
The core challenge for Nexmo is proving that it can continue revenue growth. It doesn’t have to prove that it can generate profits. But to command the valuation it likely wants, it will have to detail how it can grow outside of the OTT as quickly as it grew with it.
I’ll be checking back in with the company towards the end of the year to see how its internal metrics are looking. For now, Nexmo has built a track record that it has to continue to live up to.
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Yahoo to review redacted FISA papers before release
The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has allowed Yahoo's counsel to review declassified documents from a 2008 dispute over data disclosure, after the company said the public release of documents redacted by the government could lead to its role being misunderstood.
The counsel for Yahoo may review the "redacted, formally declassified" versions of documents submitted to the court, Judge Reggie B. Walton of the FISC wrote in a ruling on Tuesday.
It is not clear what are the changes Yahoo may be allowed to make in the redacted documents.
Yahoo had asked the FISC in July to order the release of a secret order in a 2008 surveillance dispute, to show that it strongly resisted government orders. Disclosure of the documents of the 2008 dispute would show that it objected at every stage of the proceedings, but these objections were overruled and a stay denied, it said.
The move by Yahoo came after former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, disclosed through newspaper reports that Internet companies provided real-time access to content on their servers to the NSA under a surveillance program called Prism. The Internet companies have denied the charge.
Yahoo filed last month for pre-publication access to the court documents after redaction and declassification by the government. Yahoo said it wanted to review the government's submissions to "ensure that its redactions are well-founded and do not unintentionally create a risk that the documents will be misunderstood."
Upon receipt of notice from the government that it has provided the declassified documents to the court, Yahoo's counsel has seven days to raise any objections, which will then go to the government for its reply within seven days. Yahoo will then have three days to respond.
The U.S. Department of Justice and Yahoo earlier filed a joint motion before the court in which the DOJ said it had no issues with Yahoo viewing the documents after declassification and before their release. The DOJ is expected to provide a status report by November to FISC on the government's declassification of the documents by Nov. 12.
John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com
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Why HealthCare.gov Isn't Like A Typical E-Commerce Site
The federal government's beleaguered health care exchange site, HealthCare.gov, shares little in common with the e-commerce sites consumers use every day. On most e-commerce sites, prices are simple to find. Not so on HealthCare.gov. And that may be one of the reasons relatively few visitors to the site have actually enrolled.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Now, some suggested that in this era of eBay and Amazon, building an online health care marketplace just shouldn't have been this difficult.
Here's NPR technology correspondent Steve Henn.
STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Sina Djafari has built more than one successful online marketplace. He now builds software to make building new e-commerce sites even easier. And he says when you go to any website to buy something, you usually have just one or two simple questions you want answered before you click buy.
SINA DJAFARI: When I went to healthcare.gov for the first time, my only question I wanted answered was how much is this going to cost me? And I just really wanted that answer, you know, as soon as possible.
HENN: If that's the goal of healthcare.gov, Sina Djafari says it should have been designed to deliver an answer to that question as quickly and painlessly as possible.
DJAFARI: You want to actually encourage people to move as far along in the process as possible without requiring any information from them.
HENN: But before you can see how much your policy will cost, there are pages of forms to fill out. They're buggy. They crash. The reason for all this pain is that the price of insurance on the site will change depending on how much you make. The Affordable Care Act offers subsidies. It's the act's defining feature. So the website was designed to figure out what your subsidies could be as its very first step.
And to figure all that out, the sight requires all sorts of sensitive personal information. It requires passwords and protections and security questions. The Fed's built a brand-new IRS database that would look up tax returns to verify your income. And all of that has to happen flawlessly before you get any kind of answer to that basic question you came with: How much is this going to cost? Sina Djafari says it didn't have to be this way. Just think about how you shop for a mortgage. You can go to any one of a dozen websites and type in your income anonymously, then enter your best guess as to your current credit rating, and then type how much you want to borrow.
DJAFARI: You know, it's a marketplace system.
HENN: In fact, it's a pretty good analogy for the health care marketplace. You have a lot of different businesses offering products through one portal. But lenders on mortgage sites all agree to put off the tedious bits, like verifying your income until after you've had a chance to peruse the goods and make a decision. Still, this system works.
DJAFARI: If you don't put the right information in early on, you're wasting your time. So you might as well put in the most accurate information you can now so that when you get an answer, it's the right answer.
HENN: And in the mortgage industry - at least these days - everyone knows your income will actually be checked. In fact, the IRS offers income verification electronically to mortgage lenders. It's not instant, but it doesn't derail the process for applying a loan, either. Jeff Sutherland is CEO of Scrum Inc. He says problems like these should have been spotted long before the site went live.
JEFF SUTHERLAND: We should stop this in its tracks, reset it, fix it in the right way and probably get, you know, 99 percent of the people involved in this off the payroll, because all they did was screw it up.
HENN: Sutherland helped pioneer a software design philosophy that breaks big projects like healthcare.gov down into small, digestible tasks. But he says given how the site was developed and taken live with little testing, failure was almost inevitable. Steve Henn, NPR News, Silicon Valley.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.
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WWII vet honored with long-overdue medals
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Given the choice, World War II veteran Phillip Coon probably wouldn't want the formality and fuss of being honored on a military base with men and women standing at attention, dressed in full regalia — even if it was with a fistful of long-overdue medals he waited decades to receive.
So it's fitting that the awards were presented to the humble Tulsa-area man Monday evening in an informal ceremony at the Tulsa International Airport, with family and fellow veterans in attendance and little pomp and circumstance.
The 94-year-old survivor of a POW labor camp and the Bataan Death March received the Prisoner of War Medal, Bronze Star and the Combat Infantryman Badge after he and his son, Michael, returned from a trip to Japan to promote understanding and healing with the U.S.
A couple of dozen people applauded wildly after the medals were presented to Coon, who was seated in a wheelchair. He lifted his ball cap in recognition, exposing a shock of silver hair.
"I've been blessed to come this far in life," he said, a tear streaming down one cheek. "I thank the Lord for watching over me."
Japan's Foreign Ministry said Coon visited the site of the former POW camp in Kosaka next to a now defunct copper mine where he was put to forced labor. The veteran also met the mayor and other officials in Kosaka, in Japan's northern prefecture of Akita.
Coon, who lives in Sapulpa in northeastern Oklahoma, served as an infantry machine gunner in the Army. He is also a survivor of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines in 1942, when the Japanese military forced tens of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers to trek for 65 miles with little food or water in blazing heat. As many as 11,000 died along the way.
It's not clear why Coon didn't get his medals before now, but such occurrences with awards are not uncommon in the military.
"It continues to trouble me that there are instances where service members do not receive the service medals they have earned through the course of their careers," said U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, whose office contacted the military three weeks ago about the missing medals. "But It is extremely rewarding for me and my staff to be able to help veterans and active-duty members receive the honors they have fought for."
Retired Maj. Gen. Rita Aragon, Oklahoma's secretary of military and veterans' affairs, said most veterans were — rightly — more focused on reuniting with their families than chasing after military ribbons when they returned after the war. Aragon presented the medals to Coon during the airport ceremony.
Tulsa veteran David Rule, who served in the Vietnam War, helped Coon and his family to find out why his medals hadn't been issued. For the past 10 years or so, Rule has helped recognize about 150 area veterans by memorializing their names, ranks and branches of service on granite plaques that are presented to them and their families.
"I have a passion for these servicemen," Rule said earlier Monday. "They just sacrificed so much. It doesn't matter to me whether they were a cook or a four-star general, just for them to get this million-dollar smile on their face when they know they aren't forgotten."
___
Associated Press reporter Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
You can now stream Apple's iPad Air event online
Did you miss Tim Cook and co. deliver all of Apple's latest and greatest software and hardware updates this morning? Fear not, for you can witness the revelation of the iPad, OS X, MacBook and other news all over again on Apple's website, as it's streaming the event for all to see. Well, what are ...Similar Articles: AirDrop Never Forget 9/11 apple event Clemson University amc
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