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Courtesy EcoScapes (http://www.ecoscapes.net)

Last year was my first time attending DVCon. So, that was the first time I got to witness the infamous EDA Troublemakers Panel. Last year Peggy Aycinena channeled her inner John Cooley with a provocative panel discussion entitled “EDA: Dead or Alive”. Of course, the EDA world looked very bleak back then, just months after the financial meltdown, Cadence financial woes, EDA layoffs left and right, VC funds shutting down … a forest fire of bad news sweeping the industry.

But just as the wildflowers bloom after the wildfire, optimism is returning to the EDA industry. (Gosh, that sounds really corny, huh). So it’s not too surprising that two EDA veterans will be at DVCon this year heralding EDA’s return. Fellow EDA blogger Paul McLellan and EDA Hall-of-Famer Jim Hogan have become the Captain and Tennille of EDA. They spoke at ICCAD on the future of chip design. And now they are giving another talk during DVCon entitled “So you want to start up an EDA company? Here’s how…”.

I don’t know what these guys are going to say, but if I were them, here are a few things that I’d point out that make for some optimism for starting up an EDA company now:

• There are lots of good EDA people looking for work, so this is a good time to partner with them or to get them on board for a lower salary than you’d have to pay otherwise.
• Small companies are able to use technology to their benefit to lower their cost of development. Development hardware is cheap and even rent-able through cloud computing providers. Open source software tools abound. The biggest cost will be your time.
• The cost of sales is dropping due to new technology. WebEx. GoToMeeting. Skype. Xuropa. These tools and others enable you to reach out to customers globally while never leaving your office.
• Then again, who needs an office? Working from home has never been easier.
• And who cares where you are located? It’s easy enough to collaborate with your virtual team globally. (Xuropa has people in the Bay Area, the LA Area, and France).
  
• The lack of VC money can also be a good thing. You retain ownership and control of the company and don’t have a “timetable” to “cash out”.
• The lack of VC funding also forces you to think about getting cash flow positive as quickly as possible. Rather than wasting time and money designing the perfect product, you’re forced to start selling it early which leads to better feedback and a better product.

The idea that the downturn is an opportunity is not new. In fact, Sean Murphy has been spearheading the whole concept of bootstrapping for some time now. Check out his site for some great advice. Also, Dharmesh Shah, founder of Hubspot, writes a great blog on this subject as well.

I’m still not sure if I’ll make it to DVCon this year, but if I do, I will definitely attend this session. If not, I’m sure someone from Xuropa will be there. Just like my EDA SaaS and Cloud Computing Roundtable last year, it’s not part of the regular program. It will be held Tuesday evening Feb 23rd from 6:30 – 7:30 in the Oak Ballroom at the Doubletree Hotel (where DVCon is going on). This will be right after the DVCon reception, so grab a beer or a glass of wine and head on over.

I hope to see you there.

Posted under Xuropa, business, industry, marketing

Many, many people ask the question, “Social Networking is interesting, but how can it impact my business?”.

This question, and many more are to be explored in a panel that promises to be fascinating and useful.  The event is organized by the Association for Corporate Growth (of which I am a member), and held at Cadence Design Systems in San Jose.

For more information and to register, go here.

Date/Time:

Thursday, January 28th, 2010; 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Location:

Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
2644 Seely Avenue, Building 10
San Jose, CA

Panelists:

Peter Coffee
Director of Platform Research
Salesforce.com

David Sacks
Chief Executive Officer
Yammer, Inc.

Charlene Marini
Director, Corporate Marketing
ARM, Inc.

Dr. Peter Young
Adjunct Professor, New Media
SJSU

Steve Brown
Director of System Design and
Verification Marketing
Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

Garrett Herbert
Partner - Merger & Acquisition Services
Deloitte & Touche LLP

See you there!

Posted under business, industry

Scott Hamilton

With the 2010 Winter Olympics approaching, there has been some talk recently about those sports that Americans talk about once every 4 years. One of them is figure skating.

Now, I’m not much of a figure skating fan myself, but my mother-in-law is. And all this talk reminded me of the time we took her to an ice skating show at the LA Forum. It was not just any old show … it was Scott Hamilton’s return to figure skating after a fight with testicular cancer. Scott was as close to a superstar as there was in men’s figure skating, having invented the back-flip and won the Gold medal in the 1984 Olympics. So seeing him back on the ice was a feel good story.

The show featured a lot of other well known figure skaters, including Dorothy Hamill and Katerina Witt, but the climax was towards the end when Scott Hamilton took the ice. Cheers went through the crowd as he performed move after move, if not flawlessly, at least without major error. Then came the moment of truth. Scott would now perform his famous back-flip.

The lights dimmed. A lone spotlight. A drum roll. Scott Hamilton took a deep breath, began his run, turned backwards, took off ……. and fell

Obviously, it was disappointing. This show was being recorded and going to be shown a week later on Network TV, so unfortunately it would not be as great a moment as we’d anticipated.

When the show ended we started to gather our things when an announcement came over the PA that went something like this: “we’d like to do some extra takes of certain parts of the show. If you would like to stay, please come over to the west side of the forum and fill in the seats over there.”

What happened next I should have anticipated, but for some reason I was naive. The show producers proceeded to repeat parts of the performance where skaters had fallen or stumbled.  And of course, that included Scott Hamilton’s back-flip. Time after time the lights dimmed, the spotlight fell, and Scott skated and tried his back-flip. Finally, I think it was after 4 or 5 tries, Scott Hamilton nailed it and a roar went through the crowd.

I made a point of watching the performance when it aired on TV a week or so later. And sure enough, nobody fell or even slipped up. And of course, Scott Hamilton successfully executed his back-flip on his first try, to the cheers of a huge crowd.

Having been in the EDA business for many years, I know that a lot of EDA tool demos are a lot like Scott Hamilton’s return performance. If features don’t quite work, the demo avoids those features. Or if the feature is critical, then that is the one that gets fixed while other not-so-critical features may be left broken. It’s part of the smoke and mirrors that is the least well kept secret of EDA tool demos. The customer knows that the EDA company is avoiding the holes in its product.

But what if you don’t have big holes in your product? What if your tool really can nail that back-flip on the first pass? What if your tool really is a “game changer”? Won’t they believe you if you show them? After all, seeing is believing!

Unfortunately, customers have become so cynical and jaded about EDA tools and EDA salespeople that they hardly ever believe what they see anymore. I know. I’m also one of those customers. Read ESNUG or any one of the many EDA forums and you’ll know that I’m right.

But what if they could try the tool out themselves? No strings attached. That’s what we are trying to do with the Xuropa labs. To give your jaded, non-trusting, cynical customer a chance to try your fabulous tools himself.

“Seeing is believing” is no longer good enough. “Doing is believing” is the new reality.

If you’d like to see what a Xuropa Online Lab is like, you can try it out here. We’ve got some tools loaded and you can play with them as long as you like. No strings attached.

Oh, and to be fair to Scott Hamilton, here’s a video of him nailing that same back-flip just a few weeks ago. In this case, seeing is believing.

Posted under Xuropa, business, industry, marketing