Harry Webber 2 Jul 05
Jeremi,You're mixing apples and oranges. Skype gained it's critical mass as a B2B VOiP SOFTWARE play using WOM in the IT infrastructure community.They stayed in stealth mode purposefully until the VOiP regulation issues were settled and the "Big Boys" decided that VOiP was not the AntiChrist.Vonnage is a Consumer Brand. Skype is a Geek Brand. Look for Skype to be aquired within the year by one of the big infrastructure providers. My bet would be on Sun.
Harry WebberMadisonAveNew.com
Jeremi Karnell 2 Jul 05
Actually, I am intimately familiar with the differences between the two services. I am not here to debate those details. My point was regarding whether or not the money Vonage was investing in marketing and advertising was in fact driving respectable business results. My sense is no. Just my opinion based on available data.
Jeremi Karnell 2 Jul 05
I imagine another good topic to discuss is how the Vonage "mad ave" brand approach holds up against the Skype grass roots/WOM approach. If we were to compare the two balance sheets---I bet I know which one wins!
Jim Turner 2 Jul 05
Call me up sometime Jeremi! I heard of Skype before Vonage.
Harry Webber 2 Jul 05
Here's the Vonage rational, "In the past year we have been focused on educating consumers about IP-based communications. We've demonstrated that there is a demand for alternative telephony services in the consumer marketplace, having put nearly twenty thousand lines on our network," according to Louis Holder, executive vice president of product development at Vonage.The real question is who is backing the venture fund at 3i, Meritech Capital Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Institutional Venture Partners . I bet if you scratch deep enough you will find several Sprints in sheeps clothing. Which makes vonage a stalking hourse for the Telcos. Already their complaints about "blocked lines" is stirring up issues at the FCC to provide more fuel for the telecom regulation reform debate.Telcos are the scum of the earth. They will outspend their compeditors 50 to 1just to get their installed base. IMHO none of these spending issues have to do with branding. All of them have to do with "buying" media support in the coming shoot-out.
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Jeremi Karnell 2 Jul 05
Harry,Let's assume your view is correct. Do you think that Vonage is succeeding in winning "media support" for the coming shoot with this approach to advertising?Regardless, I have a hard time believing that Vonage and their capital backers have some deeper & more strategic play that's being executed within their advertising efforts. If you ask me this smells a lot like pets.com. It has all the ingredients. A startup player capitalizing on an emerging network, capital investors caught up in the hype, and traditional ad agencies wetting themselves to get a piece of the pie. At the end of the day Vonages' EBITDA needs to look healthy. Dropping an estimated $120-$240 Million in advertising when you have a 4% churn rate and a subscription service that (at most) yields $300/year per subscriber is lunacy.
Jeremi Karnellhttp://www.karnellknowledge.com/ (I stole your footer idea Harry---hope that you dont mind.) :)
Jim Turner 2 Jul 05
Jeremi I didnt mean to sound flippant before, but I think your point hit home. I ask alot of people if they want to "Skype" me, turning it into a verb. I have never heard anyone talk about "Vonaging". I live here in Colorado in the Dot Com grave yard. I watched as they spent money like crazy. They could'nt get the buildings up fast enough to house all of the dot com companies that were moving in to town. We referred to it as Dot Com Alley. It was along the turnpike from Denver to Boulder.Vonage is spending money like those Dot Coms did, and had nothing really planned for it other than they have an innovative product, but I'm not sure what plans they have to return their investment. I can't understand their strategy.I agree with Harry. I have seen what Telcos do with their competition. They give them a little hip check and the Vonages of the world are shoved aside like a small child. I completely expect that Vonage will soon be in merger talks with a larger player out there. So let's spend huge amounts of money on our brand, and when Google comes knocking, we all walk away with a little cash in our pockets. Sopend the $240 million and sell at about $500 Million.
Jeremi Karnell 2 Jul 05
Jim,Thanks for chiming in. Do I think Vonage will be gobbled up? Yes! (I will put my money on Verizon doing the acquisition.) In fact I think its going to be very tough for many of the Startup VOIP players to stay in business when the traditional RBOC & Cable companies begin to flex their muscle. So if that's the end game, the Vonage approach still seems "stupid" to use their term. Its one thing to brand smartly to raise awareness of your service and seek a strategic merger, its another thing to keep infusing yourself with hundreds of millions of dollars of outside capital (thus diluting your equity position) to piss that money away on a questionable advertising approach (that wrecks your balance sheet.). Do they want to be bought for a premium valuation or in a 363 asset sale under Ch. 11? The peeps at Skype are the ones that will walk away from this whole thing laughing (and toasting each other off the coast of Monaco in their big ass private yachts).
Jeremi Karnellhttp://www.karnellknowledge.com/
Harry Webber 2 Jul 05
Jeremi,This forum is all about self-promotion. At least for me. Be my guest.Consider this scenario. Sprint is the weak sister telco. Sprint lacky Earthlinkis about to jump into the wireles market with the Koreans. Wireless is all about value-add and branding and nothing about infrastructure. Vonage uses Earthlink as a distribution partner. Now we're talking a huge installed base.Earthlink leverages Vonage's name recognition in the VOiP space to give it street cred in the Telco business ( since EL has all but buried its ties to the Sprint mothership) Now we have a wireless/VOiP/Broadband brandwith a competitive share of voice with Vorizon/Cingular and SBC. It's exactly the same play that SBC did with Yahoo. the only people who care about Vonages' EBITDA are the analysts and the retail investors. What if Vonage could care less about the equity markets? What if this was a roll-up in stealth mode? what if the LAST thing they wanted were those pesky institutional investers with the "hard" questions. What if they are smarter than we think they are? Vonage is one of the few high profile brands among GenY and GenXthat has low offering comprehension scores. "I know the name. it has something to do with phones or something." I can't be smarter than they are.But they can damn sure be smarter then I am.3i is the key. The other VCs are just a smoke screen. 3i is the largest privite equity VCs in the world. they could give a shit about EBITDA. They are all about value-creation. And THAT'S why they spent $233 million on building awareness for the Vonage brand among the toughest demo in America to crack. Skype? They're not even in the picture. Nothing is what it seems in this play. Not even me.
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The Institute for Advanced Practices In Advertisinghttp://www.iapia.org/
Jeremi Karnell 2 Jul 05
Harry,I have to take some more issue with your response (but don't take this personally, I love the conversation. Furthermore, your credentials are more impressive then mine...so I don't want to piss you off ;) )I am not sure I follow what your point is in your first para (would you mind taking another shot at the explanation?) Feel free to shoot me an e-mail instead of a post.I also don't know where you are going with the statement that "3i is key. The other VCs are just a smoke screen." I imagine that Bain would take issue with that since they have provided the latest round of funding to Vonage on the magnitude of $200 Million. This represents 50% of the capital raised to date by Vonage and stands as the largest capital infusion in the U.S. thus far in 2005. Just in case you forgot, Bain Capital was one of the late stage funders of WebVan, and we know what happened there. But I digress. 3i's round C funding for Vonage was only $40 Million. I may lack a lot of perspective here but I am sure when it comes to capital investments-size does matter.With 5+ VC investors contributing a total of $408 million in funding, my inclination is to guess an IPO is the only way out for Vonage. EBITDA may not matter so much now in the earlier days while everyone still feels warm and fuzzy about the neat little jingle they stole from Kill Bill, but it will sure as hell make a difference when Wall Street enters the picture. They love bitch slapping companies that pull these kinds of stunts.Two more points. 1. In the mobile space, infrastructure does matter (a subject for another post). 2. x10 Webcams were once top of mind to the GenX and GenY crowd as well at one point-that did not get them very far either.
Jeremi Karnellhttp://www.karnellknowledge.com/
Sherril McCahon 2 Jul 05
Hi JeremiI have only heard of Skype and use it here in the UK (N.Ireland to be precise) and also have all my clients using it too. Never heard of Vonage b4.Best...Sherril
Harry Webber 2 Jul 05
first point:Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear. The only equity that counts is the equity held by the Investment Fund, not the various VCs. It's called "Iceberging" and it's quite popular among corporate venture funds to obscure roll-up and diversification strategies. Remeber, Bain is frequently EMPLOYED by 3i, so I doubt whether they would ever take issue with anything concerning 3i.Second point:"WIRELESS is all about value-add and branding and nothing about infrastructure." God is in the details. No second post required.Third point: Hardware and Peripheral platforms are not Brand Equity Platforms.
Harry Webber Fantazzzmia.com
Jeremi Karnell 2 Jul 05
Harry,I see where you are headed. BTW, you sound like Morpheus and I feel like Neo. Just took the blue pill (skipping off into the sunset)
Woohoo wo who hooo, Woohoo wo who hooo, Woohoo who, Woo who, Woohoo wo who hooo (Think Vonage Theme Song)
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