skip to main | skip to sidebar
Showing posts with label drupal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drupal. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Drupal 7 UE Redesign: Just Copy Already


So I've been observing the Drupal  7 UE redesign project and have made another tremendous discovery. There is little (probably nothing) new under the sun. So when you want to hit the 80% principle, just copy from others.

So you have some of the intial Mark Bolton concepts & Lullabot's Buzzr UI for Drupal. Then you look at other CMS's, specifically Concrete5 and CMS Box (one of 2008's best UIs according to Jakob Nielsen). And you come to the conclusion that a CMS requires, drum roll please, a header, overlay window and inline editing -- three things that are in each of these CMSs and CMS designs.

This begs the question just how much original usability testing, getting to know your user time is really required. Couldn't you  just copy what has gone before you? Or perhaps it is really good validation that the basic concepts are right on.

And a final thought. These concepts really aren't going to make Drupal unique... something else is required.Hopefully Bolton's concept of a "Tool for Site and Page Structuring" can be that unique element.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Idealware releases new CMS report


So Idealware released the much anticipated CMS report covering Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and Plone. Overall it is a must read and all around general "reference for the ages."

I'll start with the nit picks and then get to the good stuff.

First, the "market analysis" fails what my ex-boss used to call the smell test. Sure the methodology is perfectly defensible, but the result is no where near reality. The 10,000 pound gorilla is Wordpress, not Joomla. Even though Joomla has a lot of traction in the traditional NPO world, I find it hard to reconcile the numbers. Plus, in most of the rest of the world the word "charity" is used instead of "nonprofit" so you might want to also inculde that keyword.

The security methodology appears to be just plain wrong. It appears that platforms with more security advisories are considered less secure. I'll hope that the actual methodology was different, but if not, it shows a fundimental misunderstanding of how open source security works. 

The starting point is that there will always be bugs and security flaws in released software. The security of a platform is measured by the significance of those flaws and the speed at which they are resolved.

There can be both good and bad reasons for a high number of announcements.

Bad
(1) Code quality is poor - more security flaws are released in the the wild

Good
(1) A larger community of people is testing and therefore identifying security vulnerabilities.
(2) The community standard for what constitutes a security vulnerability is more stringent than a comparable project.
(3) A more transparent security process. No security problem is ever fixed without the release of a security advisory.
(4) The lifespan of security issues is very short... no security issues "linger" after they have been identified.

In general, the number of security advisories is a flag to look a bit deeper. High numbers of advisories can be either good or bad, you need to dig deeper to draw a conclusion.

The good stuff is the financial model behind the report. The ad model is really a quite good one. Since charities don't have the money to actually buy the report, get the consulting shops to buy advertising.

I think they should take it one step further. There is little upside to ad sales to cover the production of a report + surplus. Idealware has a good neutral reputation. They do a good job of maintaining it.

Why not broker leads to companies? All the idealware information is "hidden" behind a registration wall. Idealware's interactions with information consumers provide an opt in for vendors to communicate with them. Those opt in leads are sold to vendors. 

This is a lot more involved than the ad model, but has a much higher upside as your volume goes up. Haven't done the numbers to see if this is really viable and don't have a solid sense of what the consulting firms would pay, but I suspect it would work.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Open source vs Antharia

The folks over at Antharia are some true blue mission driven nonprofit technology providers, but I suspect they are buying into the entire open source vs. vendor thing driven by FUD (fear, uncertainty & doubt) generation on both sides. To whit this post.

I think Jordan and I would enjoy having drinks... something about an affinity for a rant. So here goes,

  1. Drupal, Plone and Joomla ARE NOT VENDORS.
  2. Antharia, CitySoft, Convio, etc. ARE NOT SOFTWARE.
When you send Antharia a check you are buying two things:
  1. FourtyFourFish / On Content, their software.
  2. Antharia, the vendor.
Jordan has this comment her blog post that is a common misperception... and the way vendors spread FUD about open source (I'll cover how open source spreads FUD about vendors in a sec.).
If I did not know better I would swear the makers of Drupal, Joomla, and Plone were greasing the pockets of NTEN.
I'm not sure how the 1400 individuals that "made" Drupal by offering uncompensated contributions of software code could or even would slip NTEN a check, but hey, whatever. You are not buying a vendor when you use open source software. End of story.

Now, NTEN can take it on the chin for screwing the pooch on the CMS software survey by conflating the software and the vendors into a single entity rather than having people rate the software and the vendor seperately. Not sure how Drupal can deliver on promises since software doesn't make promises, vendors do.

And the open source guys spread FUD about vendors mostly by using the words lock in and free. If you have a good vendor, your probably pretty happy with your lock in.

Finally, as a big open source proponent, I must pose the question... who can write better software? A small company with a couple developers? Or 1200+ contributors driven by a multi-million dollar ecology?

And props to the small nonprofit technology vendors... who can help out a small nonprofit implement software better? 1200+ conributors who couldn't care less about you? A small company where you are an important customer?

What is the best solution for nonprofits? Excellent software (open source) implemented by excellent vendors (small mission driven shops).

Monday, January 7, 2008

Acquia Valuation- Wow

Acquia, a Drupal start-up from Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal was funded for with a 7ドルM seed round. Actually there might have been a smaller seed round and Acquia has been in stealth for awhile, but that is unclear.

The more interesting thing is to speculate on Acquia's pre-money valuation. Basically (I think) you have Dries, a CEO and a business plan. Maybe you have Dries, a CEO and the core team already committed (seems like the core team has been on board for many months from their posts on the Acquia blog).

So some quick math. Assuming they want to keep the founders stake around 50% for a series A, that means VC equity + option pool (lets say 30%) = 50%. Therefore 7ドルM is should be ~20% of the post-money valuation. Putting post money at 35ドルM.

Sounds super high, so maybe they kept founders + option pool at the 50% level and sold the VCs 49% (lets estimate 50% for the math). Of course this means that in a B-round founder control goes away, though we have no idea about what they've done with preferred stock. But 7ドルM is a bunch of money (15 people for 2 years using a 200ドルK per head per year back of the envelope), so that B round is probably not much of a concern.

So the math is 7ドルM equals 50% post-money putting post-money valuation at 14ドルM.

Whatever the case, two guys, a business plan and maybe a team, were worth something in the neighborhood of 7ドルM-28ドルM pre-money. If I were betting in Vegas, 7ドルM or perhaps less.

Still, a few guys + a business plan is worth 7ドルM? Where did all that value come from? It might be the revenue model, but I suspect it really comes from the Drupal community.

This is the far more interesting part of the Acquia story. Drupal has "spun off" (insert more precise term here) a number of consulting forms that have been growing wildly. Valuations of the CivicActions, Advomatics, Trellons, Lullabots, etc. of the Drupal community are probably pretty good-- general rule of thumb for a profitable consulting firm should be 150ドルK revenue per employee per year, but consulting firms have a hard time growing beyond 3ドル-5M in annual revenue. These guys are feeding their families well, but they aren't making what I would consider "real money" off Drupal.

I think the VC's bought into the idea that Acquia's product has already been mostly developed. They have bought into the idea that customer acquisition costs are low because the customers are aggregated and accessible in a single community.

Now lets look at exits. Acquia is to Drupal as RedHat is to Linux. RedHat's exit was via IPO at a valuation around 3ドルB at ~40ドルM annual revenue with annual revenue growth '95-99 running around 100%. Red Hat's product strategy was pretty retail there and now is far more services/ enterprise related. Not sure how much they raised.

Someone believes there can be a multi billion dollar exit on Acquia, and their press release blurb gives a good story:

The Drupal web platform has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception, and project growth doubles annually. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of Web 2.0 application types including single or multi-user blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and core web content management.
What if a single company could sell all kinds of web 2.0 applications without having to pay for the software development? Anyone what to bet on how many times Ning was brought up with VCs (with their rumored post money of 214ドルM in their recent 44ドルM funding round) ? But that might confuse the VCs, since Ning's an eyeball and advertising dollar play, it appears.

I am really curious how Acquia projects revenue. It is distributions and services, but are the customers existing Drupal community members (i.e. a little more retail)? Is it the enterprise players that come into the community and drive the revenue at the consulting companies? By making Drupal easier, how do they project community growth and what percentage of that community growth do they project capturing?

Do they have a Ning story and a Red Hat story? Whichever plays best with investors?

Bottom line though, is that huge pre-money valuation is driven by the strength of Drupal and, very likely, the inability of Drupal to grow its consumer user base as fast as the Joomal community (i.e. Acquia can capture customers the Drupal community simply is not pursuing and cannot reach).

If I were pitching the VCs I would lead with the Red Hat story, then pose the question, "What if a single company could capture all the revenue you see in the Joomla community?"

I'd invest in that company.

Friday, December 1, 2006

Reinvention of the wheel again...

One of my irritations in life is when dollars dedicated to social change get invested invested in duplicative technical infrastructure.

So I've been looking at DonorsChoose, Kiva and GlobalGiving. From a software perspective, I pretty much can't tell the difference between them. Authenticated user creates project, visitors contribute money to project, project contains some rich information about the project, there is some accountability structure and reporting.

Why did they have to build three incompatible software systems? Why not standardize on single open source platform? That way each organization's investment in the open source foundation benefits all users. Over time the cost of innovating and maintaining the software per organization falls drastically. [I'm not naive... there are lots of good reasons, but still.]

Better question... where is the "micro-project" data standard so small fundraising opportunities (a school in need of a whiteboard, a village in need of a goat) can be syndicated quickly and easily across the Internet?

Lets build our technology with the same eye toward social change we use when developing our projects.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Online communities with fundraising microsites

From the CivicSpace Blog.

We think anyone should be able to create a Kiva or Global Giving style site for their social change project without having to pay for rebuilding the same basic technology over and over. Ultimately, we want to allow anyone to launch a Kiva or Global Giving style site for a low monthly fee with open source software (Drupal/CiviCRM).
The benefits of open source is that you can focus on the mission and share the costs of the technology, building a community of folks supporting social change.

Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)
 

AltStyle によって変換されたページ (->オリジナル) /