Yahoo Unveils Partners for Web TV at CES

Yahoo announced major partnerships with television manufacturers: Sony, LG, Samsung, and Vizio. Under the deal announced today at CES, Yahoo’s web platform will be integrated within television. Yahoo branded services and applications can be accessed while you’re watching television. The applications, mainly widgets to start, would reside alongside television shows and would remain as a means to complement (not replace) television programming.

So imagine watching the Wall Street headlines on CNN and getting instant access to company profiles and charts per Yahoo Finance… or watching the Travel Network and making new connections with people that have been to Peru, your next travel spot. For big sports fans such as myself, watch Monday Night Football (NFL) while beside it, tracking your Yahoo Fantasy team points.

If Yahoo is successful and can lead and open up the way for web applications to converge with television, a whole new Industry can follow in its coat tails. New start-ups would spawn to build widgets and other useful applications for television. Similar to widgets for social networks (per a Clearspring or Slide.com), there would be new applications that make the television viewing experience more social, interactive, collaborative, share-able, and most importantly, more entertaining!

It also creates new business models for existing web application developers:  Companies that rely on advertising revenues and are currently limited to the web only can now distribute their widgets (with clients’ advertising) on CNN, the Travel Network, and Monday Night Football!

New agencies, ad networks, and services companies will also be born around the new TV-Applications Industry.

Event Recap: TheFunded.com Connect :: Tesla Motors

TheFunded.com put on a great event last night at the Tesla Motors dealership in Menlo Park.

In attendance were over 300 CEOs & Founders of bay area start-ups. The energy and excitement were at an unmatched high level. There was such a tremendous feeling of optimism from these entrepreneurs despite the events on Wall St.

I would guess that approx. 80% of the companies in attendance were in the early development to alpha release phase which means no real user base and revenues yet. Lot of the companies I ran in to tonight were actively meeting with angels and VC’s so the main topics of conversation tonight were “how are you talking to” and can we share investor contacts. I met a couple of real interesting companies including one that took online surveys to the next level (I won’t mention the company name because they’re still in stealth).

I think one of the greatest misconceptions most entrepreneurs have is on how difficult/easy it is to raising financing. Having gone through the process myself recently (and meeting with several top early stage VCs and angel groups), I learned that it’s extremely difficult. Especially in these tough times, investors are looking for sure things which means companies with proven product and engineering capabilities, customer base, distribution partnerships, and most importantly revenues.

What would have been really valuable tonight is if they had 1-2 entrepreneurs present their stories on successfully raising capital. Capital is the #1 priority for all of these companies tonight and it would have been a great opportunity for shared learning amongst all the attendees tonight.