Kevin Warnock

Kevin Warnock at Intel Capital CEO Summit 2009

This week Intel Capital held its Global Summit for its Portfolio Companies. This event used to be called the Intel Capital CEO Summit, and I attended in 2008 and 2009 since my company Silveroffice, Inc. is an Intel Capital Portfolio Company. I did not attend this year because only select Portfolio Companies are invited, and I was not invited this year.

I am not upset or complaining however! Frankly, Silveroffice doesn’t deserve an invitation this year because it has been mostly dormant while I work on other projects in life.

I have committed to making Silveroffice a success, and I’m working on it strenuously again, for the first time in years. I have a renewed vision and passion for the company, one that will involve a complete rewrite of the software on a new platform. I am firing on all cylinders again after taking my foot off the accelerator for an extended period of deceleration.

I feel outstanding.

I remain in touch with people from Intel Capital, and perhaps one day I’ll be invited back to their Global Summit. But even if I’m not, I’ll fondly remember the fun I had at past events. In 2008 Intel Capital took over The Tonga Room restaurant at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel for breakfast, so I’ve eaten breakfast by The Tonga Room tropical lake, an unforgettable experience.

I got to meet and have several real conversations with musician and tech entrepreneur MC Hammer, in 2008 and 2009. In 2009 he remembered me from 2008. I’m certain of it because in 2009 I introduced my friend Gail Kantor, CEO of eJamming, also a Portfolio Company, to Hammer. Hammer looked at both of us and pointed at Kantor and said “You I haven’t met” and amazingly then pointed at me and said “You I have met.’ I only spoke with Hammer for perhaps 10 minutes the previous year, and we didn’t stay in touch, not even via social media. Hammer must meet thousands of people a year, and to be able to accurately remember me a year later after talking with me for such a short time was simply jaw dropping.

I recognize many tech entrepreneurs have met Hammer because he’s reputed to be a fixture at Silicon Valley events. But still it was fun to meet a real rock star and have dinner with him like I did in 2009.

I feel I let Intel Capital down by taking my foot off the Silveroffice, Inc. accelerator. They reached out to me to invite me to become a Portfolio Company. Part of my motivation to rebuild Silveroffice and make it a meaningful company again is to prove to Intel Capital that they did not misplace their confidence in me. This might seem like a silly reason, but I carefully debated accepting Intel Capital’s offer, and the negotiation of our deal took roughly a year to complete, so I have something invested, as do they. I started Silveroffice in 2003 so it is deeply a part of my life, and I enjoy working on it. Great things are to come, so stay tuned.

Silveroffice, Inc. doesn’t have a website, which is why the references above are not hyperlinks. Silveroffice created the first true online office suite, way back in 2004. It’s called gOffice. gOffice has been decimated in the marketplace by Google Apps and Zoho, but gOffice was number one in the world for over a year. If only some nice person would write a WikipediA entry for gOffice, I would be so pleased…

If you write a WikipediA entry, don’t overlook that Microsoft lists gOffice by name in its 10K Annual Report as a competitor to Microsoft Office from 2006 through 2010. In 2011 Microsoft stopped naming in its annual report any of its online competitors to Microsoft Office, so that’s why gOffice doesn’t appear in their 2011 report.

Haas School of Business at University of California at Berkeley, November 10, 2011

Poster for Intel Global Challenge 2011

Third place winner of Intel Global Challenge, 2011

Gaitu.com team, which won the 2011 Intel Global Challenge

Yesterday evening, November 10, 2011, the 7th annual Intel Global Challenge final presentations were held in the Anderson Auditorium at the Haas School of Business on the University of California at Berkeley campus.

I took dozens of pictures, and I plan to write an extensive blog post later today. It’s 1:11 on 11/11/11 right now and I’m tired. But I’m posting a few highlights now to get something out. I’ll come back and fill out this post after I get some sleep.

Kevin Warnock's 'office' at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, California USA October 2, 2011

I don’t like working at home.

There are too many distractions, and too few people around. That’s true even though I now have five roommates.

I have looked into coworking spaces like The Hub, Next Space and i/o Ventures.

These spaces are interesting, but they all have issues.

i/o Ventures is too noisy, as its associated restaurant and coffee shop is just over a half height wall that lets in all the sound to the work area. I’ve been there only twice, but both times the coffee shop part was jammed with laptop using customers and the working half of the space was either completely empty or almost empty, with just 3 people visible.

The Hub is bustling with activity, but it’s mainly for social entrepreneurs. That’s great, and I admire The Hub, and I know two companies that use the space regularly. To be admitted, you are supposed to be pursuing a social venture, and right now, I’m pursuing gOffice, which I don’t suspect could qualify.

Next Space is clean, quiet and well situated. It’s my favorite of the San Francisco coworking spaces that I’ve been to. But there doesn’t appear to be many Internet companies there. I need to meet and hang around with other Internet entrepreneurs. I wish that Hacker Dojo was not so far away, in Mountain View, California. I read yesterday that Hacker Dojo just signed papers to expand to 13,000 square feet, making it one of the largest hacker co-working spaces in the world.

What makes the Verizon MiFi device so great is that I can now sit down nearly anywhere in well populated areas of California and work. Coffee shops without wi-fi are my new favorite, because they tend to be quieter. I’m writing this from Muddy Waters Coffee House at 521 Valencia Street in San Francisco. The sound system is set to low volume, and half the tables are empty. There are no conversations taking place, and I’ve been able to get real work done for hours now. I love it.

What sets the Verizon 4G LTE MiFi Wi-Fi hotspot device I am using apart from other wireless connection devices is that this new Verizon device is faster than my home ATT UVerse wired connection. Even at the rear of Muddy Waters, 70 feet from the nearest window, my connection speeds to the Internet are an astonishing 8 megs a second download and 6 megs a second upload. The latency was just 68 milliseconds. The result is that I can access the Internet faster than at home. Never before have I experienced such great connection speeds in the United States.

I bought a Muni Fast Pass public transit pass today for the first time this year. My plan is to roam throughout the City this month, working from dozens of interesting nooks. I predict the down time I experience traveling will be more than made up for by increased productivity that results from fewer onsite distractions and the increase in social interaction inherent with being out of the house.

Partial list of DreamForce '11 speakers (image from DreamForce.com)

This morning I received an email reminder to watch the DreamForce ’11 keynote this morning by Salesforce.com, Inc. CEO Marc Benioff.

I decided to watch, and I am excited about Salesforce for the first time in years.

I’m so excited that I just applied for a press credential to attend the 2011 DreamForce conference at Moscone, which is happening this week.

I have a solid connection to Salesforce.com that I don’t believe I’ve written about on my blog before.

Back in 1999 I was CEO of Hotpaper.com, Inc., the first online document creation company. LegalZoom and RocketLawyer are now the leaders in that category in the United States.

I sold Hotpaper for USD $10,000,000 in 2000. Since the sale was to a public company, the sale is documented online at the website of the Security Exchange Commission.

At the time of sale, Hotpaper had just one large scale customer — Salesforce.com.

Purple Communications, Inc. bought Hotpaper. Back then Purple was known as GoAmerica Communications, Inc., when it traded on NASDAQ under the symbol GOAM.

I lost touch with the project after I left Hotpaper shortly after the aquisition papers were finalized, so I never became closely familiar with the work Hotpaper later did for Salesforce. That means I never saw my software in action live on Salesforce.com. I am sad about that.

I do know that Salesforce was a happy customer for years after 2000, and last I heard stats from then current employees, Hotpaper’s solution was being used frequently by thousands of Salesforce customers. The story I heard as to why Salesforce eventually abandoned Hotpaper was two fold: Hotpaper was shut down by the company that bought it and Salesforce needed a multilingual version for their expanding customer base.

Salesforce approached my current company Silveroffice, Inc., in about 2005. Silveroffice is the maker of gOffice.com, the first true online office suite. gOffice has long ago been surpassed by the capable Google Docs and Zoho products, but is still kicking.

Salesforce wanted to know if I was interested in making an App Exchange version of gOffice. I didn’t want to distract my fledgling company on what I saw then as a side project, so I declined, despite being pestered by their very enthusiastic evangelists for months.

After watching the DreamForce keynote by Benioff this morning, I deeply regret not putting my full energy into the App Exchange version back then.

I am a blogger and journalist now, as evidenced by my hundreds of posts to this blog.

May the powers that be at Salesforce quickly approve my blogger credentials so I can receive a press pass for DreamForce so I can attend this week and blog about the show. This blog received over 7,400 WordPress views last month, and our Alexa ranking has shot from over 12,000,000 in December 2010 to 2,500,458 today (489,476 in the United States).

Hotpaper was funded by BlueRun Ventures. Silveroffice, Inc. (gOffice.com) is an Intel Capital Portfolo Company.

[Author’s note: I recognize that this post sounds like an ad, but I am trying to quickly catch the attention of people at Salesforce who are right now reviewing my application to give me a pass to the DreamForce event that would otherwise cost me USD $1,299. At that price, I will not attend, so this post is my primary vehicle to get into the show. If I am granted a pass, I promise to write at least five lengthy posts over the next week about the show. These posts will have the same quality as the other posts on this site.]

[Additional note: Sadly I wasn’t approved for a full pass, but I attended the expo and Eric Schmidt keynote with a free pass the show offered. I got to talk for about an hour one on one with three Salesforce employees, and I learned remarkable things I’ll write about in a different post. I was able to speak on the phone with DreamForce staff about the press pass. I was told that it was already too late for a pass when I applied, and that the web application was not programmed to stop accepting applications after the deadline.]

Geoff McQueen (photo from CrunchBase.com)

Fortune First, Fame Later – Why You Should Aim for the Enterprise by Geoff McQueen is worth reading.

I’ve been thinking about the enterprise lately as I try to figure out what to do with gOffice, which currently is not a good product, and needs to be completely reworked.

I am heartbroken.

Just a couple of days ago I started to let my chickens out of their large 4 x 10 foot covered home so they could roam and peck in my big backyard. That was a bad decision.

Today, around noon, in full sun, one of my chickens disappeared. I was in earshot the whole time, working on the computer. I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary.

I suspect that a hawk soared in and grabbed my smallest chicken. I think this chicken was a rooster, so he would have had to leave soon anyway. This is not the way I wanted him to leave!

The remaining hens were subdued and all of them even let me pet them. Normally only my Hudan hen allows me to pet her or hold her with just one hand. The other ones scurry away when you try to pet them. I can still catch them. But today, after this sad event, all three let me hold and pet them without objection. They really seemed shaken.

These chickens spent every second together since birth, so this must be so traumatic for them. I don’t see how they didn’t witness their friend being carried away.

I feel so foolish because I saw a hawk just a few days ago flying toward the coop. I didn’t know what a hawk looked like. I thought what I saw was an owl, and that it would not bother my chickens. I described what I saw to my father, and he said I had seen a red tailed hawk. He said he has them by his house, which is just minutes by car from my house. My father grew up on a farm, so he knows a lot more about this kind of thing than I do.

I don’t even have a recent picture of the lost chicken, and I’m a photographer!

Today a company I’m friends with got some great publicity on the cover of the Style section in the San Francisco Chronicle, the primary paper and online newspaper for San Francisco, California USA.

I’ve written about Naked Suits before, soon after I attended their unveiling party on June 25, 2011.

I first met the founders Albert Shyy and Ming Chang in June 2011 when I was a final round judge for the Made for China Entrepreneurial Pitch Competition and Startup Fair at University of California at Berkeley.

I don’t buy newspapers anymore, but I made an exception today because I wanted to have a copy for my library. I snapped two pictures of the article so you can see exactly how great the coverage was. Yes, an underwater Shyy and Chang fill up nearly the entire front page of the Style section.

Congratulations to the outstanding and friendly team behind Naked Suits. I’ve been friends on Facebook with some of the team members, and they are living fascinating lives from what I can glean from their status updates.

It must really be exciting to work at Naked Suits with all that’s happening so quickly.

I encourage you to read the story at the Chronicle website, but if you find that link no longer works, you can click on the photos here to enlarge them, and you may find you can read the tiny text successfully.

Naked Suits in August 21, 2011 San Francisco Chronicle Style section, page 1

Naked Suits in August 21, 2011 San Francisco Chronicle Style section, pages 6 & 7

I am attending the 2011 Intel Developer Forum on Tuesday, September 13, 2011.

Intel Capital graciously gave me a third free pass, since my company Silveroffice, Inc. is an Intel Capital Portfolio Company. It’s a great perk, since the super saver least cost ticket is USD $595 per day. The full three day least cost ticket is USD $1,395, but even if that were also complimentary I wouldn’t attend for three days. Intel puts on great events, but my company is not involved with computer hardware, so it’s frankly of limited value for me to even attend for one day. But I always learn something, even if a lot of the presentations are over my head.

I get a free laptop backpack each year, and I use the latest one all the time, as it’s actually padded and of high quality.

I like the networking and the keynotes.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini speaks at the keynote, and I enjoy his presentations. Intel is really working hard on impressive projects, and I don’t think people appreciate how big and important a company Intel has become. To my knowledge, their Intel Capital venture arm remains the biggest venture capital firm in the world.

In 2009 I saw 3D television before it hit the market, thanks to outstanding presentations at the 2009 Intel Capital CEO Summit.

Thanks to Intel, I’ve had dinner with musician and entrepreneur MC Hammer and lunch with the original Java product manager Kim Polese.

Thank you Intel!

I first got a Bank of America checking account in 1989 when they offered a one day promotion of a no cost checking account for three years. Back then, free checking was not common, so I marked the date in my calendar and visited the 9th Avenue and Irving Street branch on the special day. I still have that calendar, which I recently reviewed since I’m typing my 1976 diary to post to this blog.

My wise filmmaker girlfriend I wrote about last week warned me that Bank of America was not a company I should be doing business with. Sadly, I ignored her advice and went on to endure over 20 years of mediocre and often frustrating interactions.

Today I closed the last of my deposit accounts with Bank of America. I moved my corporate checking account to San Francisco Fire Credit Union, which is the best financial institution I’ve ever dealt with.

As an example of how extraordinary this credit union is, consider that when I sent a message to Darren Herrmann, President and CEO, via a box on the front page of their website, Herrmann called me on the phone 15 minutes later to thank me for my message. Even though this is a small credit union, not a big bank, I was and remain impressed.

I am not and have never been a fire fighter. Anyone who works or lives in San Francisco is eligible to join.

I just read a nice tribute to Michael Traynor, an attorney I was friends with when I worked at Cooley LLP years ago. I haven’t thought much about Traynor since I left Cooley in 1994, but today I was reviewing profiles on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, looking for entries about people I know personally.

Micheal Traynor, past president of American Law Institute

Traynor’s father Roger Traynor has a Wikipedia entry, and Micheal is mentioned in that entry. I knew Traynor was an important attorney when I was at Cooley, but I don’t think I realized that his father had been Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court from 1964-1970.

Micheal Traynor was extremely nice to me. His office was about 40 feet from my first office at Cooley, on the 20th floor of One Maritime Plaza in San Francisco, California. Later, I moved to the 19th floor.

Traynor was aware of the political storms I navigated before I prevailed and got a special promotion and an attendant committee of partners to report to. He offered multiple times to intervene on my behalf with the powers in charge. I never took him up on his offer, as I had others like Tony Gilbert helping me and it didn’t seem kind to involve Traynor.

I knew Traynor for almost five years, and he would always say hello to me, and I always felt like he was my friend and that he approved of the work I was passionate about at Cooley, which was encoding the expertise of lawyers into document assembly software so that less experienced attorneys could create documents that incorporated Cooley’s best thinking on a topic.

Until today I didn’t know Traynor was president of the American Law Institute.

I’m not surprised.