Inside some Palo Alto Start UpsReturn to Gene's Home PageToday Palo Alto Joe takes you, the reader, inside two Palo Alto Startups. There are lots of them and the uninitiated probably never notice that an old furniture store has suddenly sprouted two dozen computers and fifteen guys with bad hair cuts and worse diets who sit behind them. But Palo Alto Joe is there to uncover it for you.
My first stop is at a small internet software company we'll call company X, just to disguise the name and protect the guilty parties. Company X is led by a cynical smart-mouthed college drop-out who is convinced that everyone else is a collosal moron. Nonetheless, Palo Alto Joe rates he and his cronies as top-notch coders.
When I stopped in on Company X, they had just secured a couple million dollars in funding from a prominent group of yuppies of the Sand Hill Road variety. The business savvy is practicing Ebonics as he answers the phone shouting "Word" and "You da man!" several times into the handpiece, convinced that he is on the cutting edge of hip.
Through careful questioning I am able to discern what their top-secret software does.
"So what do you guys do?" I ask.
They are making an Internet Ad Server capable of firing off a few million web ads a day targeted directly at web viewers based on the knowledge of the user collected at the last fourteen Internet sites they visited, and ranked by sixteen criteria including shoe size. Immediately realizing the importance of this I ask if I can use this technology to stop getting Monostat 7 commercials on my TV and only get ads that show girls in skimpy bikinis drinking bad beer. They assure me that this technology is coming soon and I buy a few shares of stock.
On the other side of the room is another company we'll call Company Y. They too have secured funding from some yuppies and are developing Internet Applications. Their leader greets me. He is wearing a big blue dot on his nose and his hair stands straight up. Behind him a weight-lifting programmer is convinced that the revolution will start tomorrow and that all IRS agents will be shot. He informs me that he is adding 4 billion bit encryption technology into their product.
"So what do you guys do?" I ask.
They don't want to divulge their secrets but I know that any information I can extract will be worth its weight in gold when I trade in the high-tech secrets market at Mac's Smoke Shop on Friday.
"So what are you guys selling?" I push them hard.
They cave in. The one with the Einstein hair tells me that they are making an Internet Application to broadcast trade shows and academic conferences. Grasping the key concepts quickly I ask to see a demonstration of a virtual booth bunny, a virtual beer-drinking buddy-from-the-Chicago-office and the cyber-hangover I feel every morning of every trade show I've ever been to. Einstein-head shows me a nudy picture and pours me a beer while the Waco kid hits me over the head with a baseball bat. The three simulations combine to give me a feeling I haven't had since the Consumer Electronics Show and the National Strippers Assoc's Conference coincided in LasVegas last month. Its perfect.
I buy a few shares and head off to Mac's to exchange secrets and buy some aspirin.
And there you have it. Palo Alto startups are right there under your noses creating things that will make your tomorrow happen last week. Palo Alto Joe recommends to the interested reader that he, or she, start up their own company today.