2,167 REASONS A START-UP SHOULD NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THE GOVERNMENT AND WHY TAILWIND CHOSE TO DO OTHERWISE

TailWind recently struck a preliminary deal with the U.S. Navy. It is a deal we are very proud of, in that we get the privilege of delivering electronic education materials to Navy personnel in need.

TailWind has always taken a path few other start-ups take. We started the company based on a deal with Pfizer, the largest pharma company in the world. Most companies start with smaller fish.

Now, we have done what most VC investors and many business leaders have advised against--getting into business with the Navy. The reasons against are varied and too numerous to go into but the short list would be something like: pace of deal, size of deal, and not market driven. That said, we chose to pursue the deal as a away to ground our revenue stream in a market that will not behave as dynamically as the public sector.

We are building a balanced portfolio if you will. We pursue companies in the public sector and can respond to the dynamics of the market and we are balanced by the grind-it-out but longer term prospects of working with the likes of the U.S. Navy.

I suppose the last strategic approach we should take in order to completely buck all the trends and gossip in the market is to add a consumer business play to our repertoire and then sell the technology to Microsoft. Then our contrarian approach to the everyday advice of the Sand Hill economy would be complete!

Onward!

A GOOD ARTICLE ABOUT TAILWIND IN INSURANCE NETWORKING NEWS

Improving The ROI On Claims Processing

With proper technologies, claims histories can be accessed faster, accurate claims information can be updated on the fly, and errors on new claims can be reduced.

By David Koehn

April 1, 2005 - Although computer technologies have been applied to improve productivity in vast arenas of the American economy, the insurance industry had-until now-limited access to technologies designed to improve the productivity of its highly mobile claims adjusters.
Legacy systems in this market are costly and require intense IT support. Even then, they do not address the unique needs of this mobile workforce. Adjusters are rarely stationary: They are in the field moving from site to site and do not have the leisure to write their reports comfortably.

The advent of laptop PCs and PDAs with WiFi and/or landline secure connectivity to corporate Web sites-along with new software technologies-enables insurers to improve the productivity of this workforce...

See the rest here.

FIELDSPACE IS A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO A HORRIBLE PROBLEM: CAL ISSUES ALERT ABOUT STOLEN LAPTOP COMPUTER

Came across a news item in the Bay Area section of the San Francisco Chronicle. The problem is that people are downloading and moving data via systems that do not encrypt before and during transfer...and keep secure upon download. If this information had been downloaded and kept disconnected with FieldSpace this data would never have been exposed.

The news item:

BERKELEY Cal issues alert about stolen laptop computer It contains 98,000 Social Security numbers -- notifications to warn of identity-theft risk - Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff WriterTuesday, March 29, 2005
A laptop computer containing Social Security numbers of more than 98,000 graduate students, graduate school applicants and other individuals was stolen two weeks ago from an unlocked office at UC Berkeley, campus officials said Monday.
There is no evidence that the personal data was retrieved or misused, said UC Berkeley spokeswoman Marie Felde.
In line with a 2002 state law requiring public notification of large data leaks, the campus is attempting to notify all those whose personal information was in the computer. Also, to address the possibility of identity theft, Cal officials are suggesting that affected people consider placing a fraud alert on their credit-reporting accounts.
The incident is the third serious data breach at UC Berkeley within the past two years and the latest of several recent compromises of personal information across the country that are prompting calls for tougher data protections.

Blogs & Wikis: Technologies for Enterprise Applications?

Found this at THE GILBANE REPORT.

Blogs & Wikis: Technologies for Enterprise Applications?

It would be difficult to find anyone who spends time on the Internet, or indeed who reads newspapers, who has not heard of blogs. Wikis are less well known, though Wikipedia, the free online collaborative encyclopedia is helping to change that. The vast majority of blogs are individual personal journals, many of which have some technical content, but most of which are made up of individual opinions about politics or hobbies. Most of the discussion about blogs is centered around their affect on mainstream journalism, their power as a new communication channel and voice of the people, and how this will impact society. All this is interesting, but what does it have to do with implementing content or knowledge management, or enterprise collaboration applications? IT, business managers, and even analysts can be forgiven for thinking not much. In fact, we have been skeptical ourselves. But, being dismissive of blogs and wikis because of how they are most often used, and talked about, today is a mistake (PCs and web...

TRAVEL BLOGS

Found this great article at Forbes about Travel blogs.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2003/10/02/cx_cv_1002blog.html

It seems that travelers might want a system by which they can download their blogs, create posts, and comment on posts while disconnected from the Web. And then when the traveler comes across a connection, the work they have done on their blog on their laptop would connect to their blogs and put up their posts and comments.

I'm looking for travelers who might want to try such a system. Post a comment here?

BLOGS GO ENTERPRISE

No doubt there is a trend toward leveraging blogs in the enterprise. I have added a few links to THE GREAT AMERICAN STARTUP that illustrate this. In particular I like GM's Fast Lane Blog. It is a pure marketing function but it appears well done and is not overly gimmicky.

That said I am still looking for blogs in use at the enterprise that are more functional and less fluffy. Maybe that is all that blogs are good for, but what I am really looking for are blogs that have found their way into the value chain of the processes in the enterprise.

I'll keep looking...

NOT STEPHEN J. HAWKING'S BRIEF HISTORY OF TAILWIND

• October 2001--We want to start our own software company
• August 2002--We incoporate as TailWind Solutions Inc.
• October 2002--TailWind releases version 1.0 of FieldSpace for the Enterprise
• January 2003--First Enterprise class customer, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals
• August 2003--Raise first Angel monies
• January 2004--TailWind secures Nokia investment
• February 2004--TailWind reaches 1 Million in convertible investment
• March 2004--Board of Directors created
• November 2004--TailWind engages with the Army
• December 2004--Pfizer renews subscription of TailWind's FieldSpace for 2 more years
• February 2005--TailWind launches THE GREAT AMERICAN STARTUP