Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Although the Vonage IPO has been panned, a couple of folks have chosen instead to speak about Jeff Pulver, the original founder of Vonage, and what might have been.

Andy Abramson writes:

Back in the day when Jeff Pulver was involved with Vonage, before his role was so diminished that he was nothing more than a shareholder, Vonage had someone who saw what was about to occur and was in a position to help. Jeff, who started on Wall Street, could have helped them steer the right course of being different, especially over the past three years, but instead Vonage’s management went their own ways and basically have not changed one thing in the service offering of any note since their launch. Telephone service that comes over broadband.

Andy’s view is that the street’s reaction to the Vonage IPO is an indictment of their management, and their current strategy.  He thinks Jeff could have steered them in a different direction.  I think it might have included some purple minutes…

Similarly, Alan Meckler writes about first meeting Jeff, without passing any judgement on the IPO.  Meckler says:

I am returning on an airplane from spring Internet World 1996 in San Jose and this guy Jeff Pulver sits next to me. He had been at Internet World. Before long he starts to tell me about what is going to happen with VOIP. I sit in wonderment and think: “This is an interesting fellow.”

Alan finishes with “I sure am glad to have met Jeff Pulver”.  I think that goes for a lot of us. Cheers Jeff! 

VentureWire dropped their assessment of the Vonage IPO in my inbox this morning.  They described it as the worst IPO debut in two years.  Some of the most interesting commentary was at the end of the piece, in these two paragraphs:

Citigroup provided what is known on Wall Street as “support” for the deal, which essentially means an underwriter steps in as a buyer to prevent a stock from falling below its offer price. A spokeswoman for Citibank declined to comment on Vonage’s IPO.

But investment bankers at other firms said underwriters have a limit as to how much they will stabilize a stock, usually by taking a short position for about 15% of the total value of the deal, then buying back shares to cover that short position as it trades. If the stock continues to fall beyond what the underwriter can buy in the open market to cover the short position, the underwriter will step out of the way and let the price fall, they said.

This morning it looks as if Citibank has indeed stepped away, as the shares continue to fall and are now trading at $12.75 — down another $2.10

Microsoft debuted Windows Media Photo at WinHEC yesterday.  This new format is apparently capable of squeezing more detail and color into files half the size of today’s omnipresent JPEG format. Moreover, files can be rotated and partially decoded without having to decode, and re-encode the entire file. 

My first reaction?  Sounds a lot like WMA vs MP3.  WMA files do compress to smaller size than MP3, and do sound better than MP3. Just a little.  Not enough that most consumers really care.

The way to sell this format will be to get the device manufacturers on board.  As was pointed out in the CNET interview, the format could result in shorter transfer times and longer battery life on cellular phones, which could be a big deal.

Like so many innovations, this one appears to be looking for a problem to solve.  If Microsoft’s team had been able to increase compression by a factor of 10 without any image loss, it would be a slam dunk.  2x might not be enough to pay attention.

AbbeyNet CEO Luca Filigheddu writes, this morning, about Abbeynet VOW, “a suite of APIs and SDKs to easily create your own web-based VoIP service in a few hours”.  His vision?  To add voice to every portal and website out there.  The APIs allow for the creation and recharge of user accounts, and the control of the Abbeynet softphone.

This is quite a step forward, in that it quite literally allows anyone to become a remarketer of branded voice services, with Abbeynet as the backend service provider.  Moreover, in true Voice 2.0 fashion, it allows anyone to build new applications with voice as just one of the many features.  It’s a voice mashup platform.  Imagine MySpace with voice.

Cool!

Press release here.

CNet News.com reports that Vonage shares dipped 4% to $16.25 in trading this morning.  The reality is less pretty.  As this chart from Nasdaq shows, Vonage shares opened at $16.50, below the $17 they were initially priced at, and have continued to fall.  It looks as if there was a mass of trading at the open, and then the price tanked.  As I write this, they’re in the low end of $15.

How much lower will they go as the day progresses?

UPDATE: 11:28 now trading at $14.55

UPDATE: 12:02 now trading at $15.10.  Are they on an upswing, or is this a blip?