About Me 0112: Making Money Software

MSFT Rising With Markets
The markets are staging a wild rally as lower yields in Italy and strong housing numbers are producing a major snap back from yesterday. Shares of MSFT are up, although less than the rest of the tech market. Upcoming catalysts include Windows 8 next year; entrance into the tablet market; Windows Phone 7 / Mango rollout and adoption with hardware partner Nokia; strides against current market leaders in cloud computing; making money in the online business, including integration of Skype and improving the search / display business; and continued evolution of Kinect and next generation Xbox. The stock currently trades at 6.9x Enterprise Value / TTM Free Cash Flow.

To Compete In The Cloud, Microsoft Will Have To Sacrifice Margin (Bloomberg)
Microsoft’s push into cloud computing will help the company compete, but it also will hurt profit margins. The company’s cloud software lets corporate customers pay a subscription to manage data with software stored and run on Microsoft’s servers. The cost of which means the company may miss profit estimates for fiscal 2012 according to Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini. That said, no financial data has been released on how Microsoft is doing in the space. If the company really wants to convince the world that it's serious about cloud, it should tell the world how those products are doing.

Bing Gains Search Share At The Expense Of Partner Yahoo! (comScore)
Bing has managed to gain enough market share that it's basically tied for the number-two position in U.S. core search. Unfortunately, those gains have come from its partner Yahoo, rather than its competitor Google. The bigger search picture is still the same, however. Google dominates with more than 65% share, and the Microsoft-Yahoo deal hasn't really dented that. At least it didn't gain any share this month, unlike the previous two.

Chrome Dethrones Internet Explorer As The Most Used Browser (ComputerWorld)
Google Chrome continues its incredible rise, finally overtaking Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the most-used version of a browser, according to a study done by StatCounter. This only applies to Chrome 15 overtaking Internet Explorer 8. If you lump all versions of all browsers together, Internet Explorer still has the greatest marketshare: Chrome 15 (24%), Internet Explorer 8 (22.9%) and Firefox 8 (14%).

Based On DCF Valuation, Microsoft Is Highly Undervalued (Seeking Alpha)
Based on discounted cash-flow methodology (which you can derive and justify any valuation you want), Microsoft is significantly undervalued. Fair value is $39 per share, a significant increase over current levels. Microsoft has an excellent combination of strong free cash flow generation and low financial leverage. Free cash flow margin should average about 29.4% in coming years. Total debt-to-EBITDA was 0.4 last year, while debt-to-book capitalization stood at 17.3%. And the firm sports a very nice dividend yield of 3%+.

Some think Mark Cuban is a genius, some think he’s lucky. Either way, the guy has a knack for seeing value where others may not, for locating long-term investments, and for ending up on the right side of the deal. Some may disagree with his approach, but Mark Cuban is a billionaire, and while making money is a lot easier when you have stacks of it to play with, becoming a billionaire doesn’t happen by accident. (Lotto winners not included.)

For those on the younger side who haven’t yet made their first billion, the investor’s early story should be comforting: After graduating from college, Cuban started his career (auspiciously enough) as a bartender. Next, he worked for a year as a salesman at a PC software retailer, making $18K in salary, before being fired for meeting with a new client to close a deal instead of opening the retail store.

He later founded MicroSolutions, a systems integrator and software reseller, but it wasn’t until eight years after grabbing his diploma that he sold his first business, which CompuServe acquired for $6 million in 1990. And then, a bit more famously, he founded a company based on his mutual love of college basketball and webcasting (Audionet), turned it into Broadcast.com, and sold it to Yahoo at the height of the dotcom boom for $5.9 billion in stock.

Since then, he’s been involved in a number of projects, most notably helping build the Dallas Mavericks, a team in which he bought a majority stake back in 2000, into an annual playoff contender and Lebron-slaying NBA Champions in 2011.

He’s also become an increasingly active angel investor in tech startups over the last decade, (you can get a brief sense of the companies he’s invested in on his CrunchBase profile), and spends quite a bit of his time coaching young entrepreneurs.

So, seeing as he’s spent more than a few minutes growing businesses, investing in startups, and advising companies on how to grow, when to pivot, and how to make money (he even recently wrote a book on the subject), we took the opportunity to ask the investor a few questions on some topical issues facing the tech industry. Check out his responses below:

There’s a big debate going on about whether startups are overvalued / overfunded … is there really a series A crunch and do you think this will end badly?

It really depends on where you live. The approach to startups is far different in Silicon Valley than it is in the rest of the world. Valley startups start big. Everywhere else we take the lean, mean startup machine approach.

The former could run into cyclical financing problems because their success is dependent on exits first and operational profitability second. If the IPO market shuts again, and foreign investment dries up, the capital for Valley startups could be impacted.

As far as overfunding, it seems to me that the prevailing wisdom out West is that the only way to exit big is to start big. With that mindset there is no such thing as overfunding. But its not an approach I ever take. I’m funding multiple companies across the country every quarter. Trust me, none are overfunded. If they execute, they will get the cash they need.

Do you think Groupon is overvalued?

I like Groupon. Their valuation is whatever the market says it is. They can’t pay attention to that noise. They have to be relentless and focused on continuously adding value to their customers at the consumer and retail sides. If they can do it, they will laugh all the way to the bank.

We’ve seen the rise of Pandora and a host of interesting web radio/music services, like Spotify, take off recently. Curious how you view these players both as an investor/advisor. Do you see potential for Amazon/Google Music/Spotify etc to supplant iTunes?

It all comes down to licensing fees from the labels, both direct and statutory. One of my biggest professional mistakes at Broadcast.com was not fighting the DMCA harder. There are so many ridiculous and arbitrary limits that every music company has this as an overhang on their business.

I also worry about patent trolls coming in and killing this business.

As a guy who understands digital video better than most, what are some of the most interesting companies and trends there that you think we should be paying attention to?

Just remember one thing: The future of TV is TV. Television is still the best alternative to boredom. If you look at all the internet video companies that try to complement TV, they are doing well. If you look at those trying to replace TV, they are sucking wind. I categorize Netflix as doing well and a complement. They made a big mistake, but they are still the big dog.

Do you think Facebook has a chance to become the OS of the Internet? Or is social/friendsourcing really just in a bubble of its own?

Right now they are the platform that counts. So yes they have a chance to be the end all, be all going forward. They have become the home page for many of us. That said, their mobile solutions as a platform suck. They are very vulnerable to someone coming along and making social built on mobile a far better and more engaging experience than Facebook currently is.

And, what’s more, as a bonus for readers, Cuban has also agreed to answer a few of the “top” questions posted in the comment section of this post. The three that receive the most “likes” will be chosen, so ask your own questions and “like” away. Also, a word of warning: He won’t answer basketball related questions, so keep your inquiries focused on tech and business.

JungleCents uses a lead generation model — similar to how airlines and travel companies like Orbitz pay sites like Kayak for bringing them new customers — to give publishers supplemental revenue streams.

To do this, JungleCents accepts gift cards from companies instead of cash, then runs those as daily deals, which it offers as discounts. (You can read our initial coverage of the startup here.) In its recent partnership with men’s lifestyle magazine, AskMen, for example, the startup partnered with men’s merchandiser Bonobos to offer discounts on their products, which it then displayed both on JungleCents.com and AskMen.com.

This allows readers of AskMen to take advantage of a deal that’s pertinent to the content of the magazine, without having to leave the site. Customers might pay $48 for a $100 voucher to spend at Bonobos, which users can cash in whenever they want — all at once, or over time.

When I asked the owner what it was specifically that attracted him to JungleCents, he said: “I like the idea of white label deal solutions that allow sites to leverage their own traffic. The core competency of most websites is rarely if ever going to be to source deals. Junglecents can do it for them and take a share of the profits. It’s low overhead, lots of sweat equity so not a big cash investment, but with high leverage if they can match the right deals to highly trafficked sites”.

There you have it.

Update:

Here are Cuban’s answers to some of the top questions asked. Check ‘em out.

Mitesh Bilimoria:

What was the biggest mistake of your career and what did you learn from it?

Professionally, it was not aggressively going after the MPAA and RIAA in negotiations for the DMCA. Another mistake was not applying for patents. I personally think patents are for the most part worthless and don’t protect your business, but at Broadcast.com we did so many original and unique things in streaming, multicasting, uploading of content that now that the climate of litigation has changed, that portfolio would be worth a ton of money.

Benjamin Walker:

We all know about Broadcast.com, but what made MicroSolutions successful?

We were one of the first 5 companies in the country to begin selling/installing/integrating local area networks. Long before anyone knew what they were.

Andrew Platkin:

Hey Mark, are you looking for an intern?

The rules on unpaid internships are killer. It’s more hassle than it’s worth.

Joe McMackin:

If you were 22 again and didn’t have money, what industry would you launch your first startup in?

I would start out by developing apps that allowed people to fine tune the wireless tech in their home. Best location for your wireless router. Testing connectivity between the two. Offering Siri like intelligence on what pieces should be integrated and how.

Pat O’Brien:

What is the best way to be approached by a company looking for funding? This would be if you don’t have major connections or if you wouldn’t be able to have a warm introduction…

Email. Be to the point and tell me why what you have is different versus the competition, what you want from me, and what I get if I give it to you. Simple.

About Me 0112

Monday, December 26, 2011

Making Money Software

Update:

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