The engadget guys have pictures of the first Android phone.  Available in black and white the phone is a ’slider’  Check the pictures out at engadget:

OMG! I am pleased and proud to announce that we won Google’s Android Developers Challenge with our GoCart™ application.  Of course, the credit really should go to Rylan Barnes, GoCart’s developer.  Here is the release from Google and the post explaining the contest here.  GoCart was built specifically for Google’s Android mobile phone platform.  GoCart users can easily scan the barcode of any product using their phone’s built-in camera.  Once scanned, GoCart will search the inventories of nearby, local stores using data from the phone’s built-in GPS.  Soon we will port GoCart to the iPhone and enable mobile payments.

Over the past year the Big in Japan team has become more and more involved with mobile applications.  Our initial focus was the iPhone (applications like iPhoneVote), but quickly we began working on Google’s Android mobile phone building a fun application called SocialTones.  Recently we decided to reinvent Big in Japan to focus exclusively on the development of mobile applications.  GoCart is our first serious mobile application with a real business model behind it.

Learn more about GoCart:

Google has announced the missing piece of a healthy mobile application market - a store (called Android Market) where developers can offer their applications for free or for a fee.  Not only that, Eric Chu explained that they, “intend to provide developers with a useful dashboard and analytics to help drive their business and ultimately improve their offerings.”  Nice!

I am pleased and proud to announce that Big in Japan Inc. is one of 50 finalists Google’s Android Developers Challenge with it’s GoCart™ application.  Of course, the credit really should go to Rylan Barnes, GoCart’s developer.  GoCart was built specifically for Google’s Android mobile phone platform.  GoCart users can easily scan the barcode of any product using their phone’s built-in camera.  Once scanned, GoCart will search the inventories of nearby, local stores using data from the phone’s built-in GPS.  Soon we will port GoCart to the iPhone and enable mobile payments.

Over the past year the Big in Japan team has become more and more involved with mobile applications.  Our initial focus was the iPhone (applications like iPhoneVote), but quickly we began working on Google’s Android mobile phone building a fun application called SocialTones.  Recently we decided to reinvent Big in Japan to focus exclusively on the development of mobile applications.  GoCart is our first serious mobile application with a real business model behind it. The newly incorporated company has three co-founders (including me):

Rylan Barnes co-founded Big in Japan and is the developer of GoCart™, one of 50 winners of Google’s Android challenge.  Rylan started his career at HP where his work on XML-based frameworks was widely acclaimed.  Since then he has worked as a software developer for Vertical Alliance and Software Architects working with AJAX, C# and .NET.

Jason Hudgins co-founded Big in Japan and was on the team that developed Tunewiki, one of the 50 winners of Google’s Android Challenge.  Jason has spent the last eight years developing software for companies including Idearc Media, DeviantART and Ariesnet.

Alexander Muse co-founded Big in Japan.  Alexander is a serial entrepreneur with more than a decade of startup experience. He served as CEO of Architel, a provider of outsourced information technology services. Previously, he was founder and CEO of LayerOne, a ventured backed telecommunications infrastructure company he started in the late 1990’s.

Wired Magazine has a picture of the first Google Android phone on their website.  Known as the HTC Dream the device has a Google tag line on it and will be released by T-Mobile.

Huliq News is reporting that the ‘HTC Dream, aka G1′ is going to be launched on October 13th and available on T-Mobiles network.  According to the site you won’t be able to pre-order the ‘HTC Dream G1′ until October 17th (it confused me too).  Huli explains that the phone is,

…a slider, which slides to the side to reveal its QWERTY. The keys on the QWERTY are neatly spaced, which lets your fingers easily type along. At the back of this phone, you can see the words “With Google”. Apparently, the handset is to make use of the big name of Google to get itself more popular.

T-mobile will offer this handset with pre-order price $199 after the instant rebate, and you’ll be bound with a 2-year contract. You’ll also need a GMail account to setup the HTC G1 handset. Since it runs on Android, do expect that it comes bundled with tons of Google services. What are known now are those common ones such as maps with Street View, You Tube, IM and text, Gmail.

Other goodies you can find on HTC Dream G1 handset are a 3 megapixel camera, video playback, music player, memory card slot and an application store. And it’s equipped with a huge touchscreen that is likely to rival the iPhone’s.

Android is the Open Handset Alliance’s mobile software platform. In this video, Google introduces Android and discuss their vision for more open, powerful, and useful mobile devices

Earlier today I wrote about failure.  It was actually repost from an article I wrote in 2005.  The original piece only generated about 1,000 readers, this one found its way onto Techmeme and seemed to resonate with a far greater audience.  Here is the post:

If I had to come up with a single reason I started this blog it was to share my own ’startup’ experiences; the most cathartic of which was a post I wrote in 2005 titled “LayerOne: My Biggest Failure!“  Around 1,000 people read the post back then, but my readership has grown in the last three years to between 50,000 and 75,000 unique people; readers who never heard the story.  I believe some of the most important lessons one can learn are taught by failure and failure is something I have an MBA in.  I thought it might be valuable for those of you who haven’t heard the story to take a peak into my dirty laundry:

I was interviewing a candidate for Big in Japan and I asked him what his biggest failure was. He answered the question thoughtfully and at the end of the interview, as I always do, I asked the candidate if he had any questions for me. His first question, “what was your biggest failure.”

Most of us (well mainly me) have a hard time talking about our failures. I had to think for a minute and then the answer was obvious. In 1999 I founded a telecom company called LayerOne. It was the hieght of the private equity - venture capital funding wave and I caught one of the last waves. The idea was to create pooling points of local haul, local and internet connectivity and charge carriers for connecting between each other. I ran around the country (Sandhill Road, New York, Austin and of course Dallas) looking for private equity. Almost 100 venture capital and private equity groups were not interested in my idea…

I was only 28 years old so I had no idea how bad the odds were that I could raise the money to fund my idea so I rented a loft near downtown Dallas right above the Genesis Hair Salon (you could smell women getting permanents in the afternoons). I polished off my business plan and hired a lawyer from the Austin office of Wilson Sonsini and a secretary. Finally I found a group of investors willing to fund my idea. My series A was $11,000,000.00 on a $22,000,000.00 premoney valuation (not bad for a first time CEO with a business plan and a loft). The round was led by Crest Communications with additional investments from Soros Private Equity, Cabletron, and ADC Telecom. Soon I was off to the races hiring a team to help me build my dream. One of my key hires was detailed in Money Magazine here. I found a small, under funded competitor that was willing to sell and jump started our rollout.

I made every mistake in the book (I had a lot of help making the mistakes). By the summer of 2001 we were well on our way to meeting our goals for the completed ‘pooling points’ but we had not been able to raise the second round that would enable us to complete our nationwide buildout. We had leases across the United States (even a few options on spaces in Europe), but not enough money to build them out. Our original investors were trying to raise their second fund (a fund they never closed) and everyone was scared of the telecom space. We managed to raise another $9,000,000.00 to ‘bridge’ us to the ‘big’ round. Our lead investor, Crest Communications, had a relationship with First Union and suggested that we use their bankers to help us raise our second round. Their effort was extensive (scores of meetings in New York, Chicago and San Francisco), but ultimately unsuccessful.

So I reverted back to my old strategy, call everyone myself and set meetings. Most everyone turned us down, but finally we got a term sheet from TL Ventures for $40MM ($60MM short of the total amount we would need to get to break even). Everything looked like it was going to work out. But soon it became apparent that there was a big catch in our term sheet? TL would need to find (actually I would need to find) other investors to fund $30MM of the $40MM. Our existing investors would come up with $10MM bringing our total to $20MM, but finding the other $20MM seemed impossible. Nortel blew up in the summer and of course Enron crumbling did not help. We were in big trouble. Neither TL or us could find the last $20MM needed to close the round (and no they would not close without the total $40MM).

El Paso Energy had started a telecom business and talked to us about acquiring the company. It seemed like a good option should the fund raising effort fail - something I was getting more and more worried about. We received a term sheet from El Paso that would return 100% of the paid-in equity our investors had made and provide jobs and options to the management team (i.e. me). This was not a great option, but as we would be out of cash by July it seemed like the prudent thing to do. Our investors (Crest) decided that the deal was unacceptable and that we should pursue other options (including the TL deal still on the table). Next, we were contacted by Universal Access about a potential acquisition. We finally came to terms, but the deal did not make sense to us. The deal was for stock (UAXS was traded on the NASDAQ) worth around $5MM and out of the money warrants valued with Black Schoals at something like $20MM. It seemed to me that the warrants would NEVER be worth anything, but on paper this deal looked better than the cash deal offered by El Paso. We signed the deal and Universal Access covered our payroll in June. The deal never closed. By the time the deal was dead El Paso was out of the market - they were paralyzed by the Enron debacle.

So the only option seemed to be Chapter 11. Ug! I was sick to my stomach - bankruptcy was not a good thing to have on your resume. So I started running around looking for capital to fund a reorg. I found two groups who were interested in the deal. We figured it would take $2MM to buy the business in a 363 asset sale and $2MM to get it to break even. We were going to take the sites that were cash flow positive (or near positive) and a reduced staff 12-15 employees and run the business. By the end of August 2001 we had the sale and successfully bought the business out of Chapter 11. We were in bankruptcy for around 30 days - one of the quickest in the history of our jurisdiction. So on September 11th 2001 I was headed to Hughes and Luce to sign the closing documents with our investors so the money could be transferred to the court for the sale. You might recall that the most deadly terrorist attack on our country happened on that day. I figured the deal was dead… But the next day we closed and LayerOne II was born.

The impact? Most of our investors (only three stayed in the new deal) lost everything - $20MM down the drain. LOTS of employees hated me (I assume they still hate me). This was the lowest point in my life. I was able to salvage the business for our clients, a few original investors, a few key employees and my family - but the majority of our investors and vendors paid the price of MY failure. I can blame a lot of folks, but ultimately it was my failure. How did it turn out?

Actually, fairly well. We were able to turn a profit in a few months and grew profits by around $20-30K per month for a couple of years. By 2003 we had made several investments outside of LayerOne and I made the decision (with more than a little help from our investors) to take over operation of Architel and LayerOne was positioned for sale. It took about a year, but LayerOne sold to Switch & Data for a 600% return for the investors ($4MM to $22MM in less than four years). It wasn’t Google but it was a big swing for me. I learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes and ultimately became a better businessman and hopefully a better person as a result.

Reminder the Startup Happy Hour is this Monday at 5PM.  See you there?  Please RSVP HERE.

Are you interested in connecting with the local startup community?  We are working to build a vibrant startup community here in Dallas every bit as interesting and dynamic as San Francisco, Boulder, Boston or Austin.  The first step is engagement.

The first Dallas ’startup happy hour’ went so well we decided to make it a regular thing (every other Monday).  We hope to see you at the INFOMART High Tech Bar at 5PM.  If you need directions or help finding us feel free to call me at 214.550.2003 or if I am not available try our help desk at 214.550.2002 (during business hours only).

Upcoming ‘Startup Happy Hours’ (always on a Monday between 5PM and 8PM):

August 4th, 18th

September 1st, 15th, 29th

October 13th, 27th

November 10th, 24th

December 8th, 22nd

Please RSVP on Upcoming HERE (we are trying to keep the group under 50 people).  Directions HERE.  The ‘Startup Happy Hour’ is sponsored by SpringStage.  If you are interested in sponsoring an event please contact me (Alexander Muse) at 214.550.2003.