Forbes.com: Shifting Places

BURLINGAME, CALIF. -Blake Krikorian, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Sling Media, burst onto the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial scene three years ago with a compelling idea: He wanted to see his favorite television shows--whether they were delivered on cable or broadcast or plain old TV--on any screen, at any time. Krikorian called the idea "place shifting."

SlingMedia began shipping its boxes for bouncing video from one screen to another in June 2005. Consumers have snapped up "hundreds of thousands of Sling boxes," says the company, which now sells three versions of its box in over 5,000 retail stores in 11 countries. Forbes magazine featured Krikorian as a technology pioneer in its 2004 E-Gang feature.

Yesterday Krikorian truly cashed in on his idea, selling Sling Media to direct-satellite TV maker EchoStar Communications Corporation for approximately $380 million in cash and EchoStar options. EchoStar was also among Sling's early corporate investors.

Krikorian has never been simply a gadgets guy, however. In 2006, Sling Media started an entertainment group, which aims to reach beyond the Slingbox. Among the ideas: a new program, "Clip+Sling," slated to debut this fall, which is designed to let people use their Sling boxes to snip a small video segment and send it, via e-mail, to someone else.

Krikorian spoke with Forbes.com about the deal and about what's next for him and for SlingMedia.

Forbes.com: SlingMedia has been a hot property. Why sell to EchoStar?

Blake Krikorian: We didn't have much interest in selling. We were literally on the verge of closing a series C round of financing when we were approached by a few different companies. We met with Charlie Ergen (chief executive and co-founder of EchoStar) and his team. We had gotten to know them because they've been investors for more than 1.5 years. They share a lot of values that matter to us: We're kind of aggressive, we love to innovate and create and stoke that entrepreneurial spirit. Charlie is a founder, an entrepreneur. He created something from nothing and he's still there. I respect him a ton.

We're truly a convergence company. We don't fit well into the usual categories of "media," or "mobile," or even "hardware." We believe our job is to glue together all the multiple brands of products and services that consumers use to get their video. We didn't want to be beholden to one brand, or one TV or mobile provider, or even one consumer electronics brand. We want to be very neutral. EchoStar wants us to continue to work independently, to sell at retail, work internationally and just let the technology flourish broadly.

Does that mean we won't see a Slingbox integrated into an EchoStar Dish?

It will be great to see Sling embedded in Dish network products. But the first products with Sling embedded may be with a different operator.

What can you do as part of EchoStar that you couldn't do on your own?

Our pockets will be a lot deeper so I don't have to be out there raising money every 12 months. Unknown to many people, even me, is the tremendous technology portfolio and engineering resources that EchoStar has. They've deployed more direct video recorders than anybody else in the world. They've built their entire dish network--and everything that supports it--themselves, including the billing systems, the backend, uplink facilities, and so on. So there's a lot of raw ingredients that we can pull to accelerate our development.

What does EchoStar get for its money if you retain so much of your independence?

EchoStar is interested in the possibility of a spinoff. In EchoStar's press release today, Charlie says: “We believe separation of our consumer-based and wholesale businesses could unlock additional value. "We believe Sling--which will be a standalone subsidiary of Echostar--can help unlock some of that value once our deal closes.

Could there be an IPO in your future after all?

That's your comment. I can't speculate.

John Malone of Liberty Media has also been an investor in Sling. Was he disappointed you signed up with EchoStar?

We gave Liberty a pretty good return on their investment, so I would expect him to be pleased.

What are you going to do next?

I intend to stay with this company, as will the vast majority of the management team and our employees. We're going to continue to run like heck. We're only on step two of 10 that we want to achieve.

We're gearing up to launch our "Clip+Sling" service. I think it really has the potential to revolutionize how people socialize around television. It takes water-cooler conversation and brings it to the Web. When you see something hilarious on TV, you'll be able to literally push a button, chose a limited segment of that content and e-mail it to friends and family--even if they don't have a Slingbox.

It's clip-and-share-TV. But in a very industry friendly way.

How so?

Say you send the clip of The Daily Show to your friends. Your friends get an e-mail link and are brought to a landing page branded with The Daily Show. It says when they can see the show, what channel. They can watch the clip, see a banner ad, a little advertising--maybe even "click here" if they want to see the whole show. It's a springboard to other transactions. For the content providers, we're helping them build and maintain their brand, and giving them a spot to place additional advertising.

Does YouTube hate you?

Nah. YouTube says it's focused on user-generated content. It's easy to upload your videos from a webcam to YouTube. But to do it from a DVR, you have to be pretty techie.

We're focusing on professional content. Clip+Sling is a ginormous leap in choosing and sharing professional video. It's a different focus than YouTube.

You shouldn't have to care where your video comes from. That's what we want to deliver--a unified seamless experience, no matter where you are. So you'll see us do more of these thing kinds of things.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/09/25/slingbox-krikorian-google-tech-cx_ec_0925slingqanda.html

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E-Gang: A Trick Of The Light

On The Cover/Top Stories
A Trick of the Light
Elizabeth Corcoran 09.03.07

For Christiana Honsberg and Allen Barnett, the pot of gold isn't at the end of the rainbow. It's in ripping the rainbow apart to make the world's most efficient solar cells.

In late July University of Delaware researchers Honsberg, 40, and Barnett, 67, set a world record for solar efficiency, converting 42.8% of the sun's radiation into electricity with their prototype cell. That's almost three times as efficient as commercial solar cells. "We think we can do 50%," says Barnett. He and Honsberg are working to build practical devices by 2010, with support from the U.S. military and an industrial group led by DuPont.

The first crushing problem they aim to solve is lightening a soldier's load. Soldiers are walking power supplies, lugging 20 pounds of batteries that last barely a week. Two years ago the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency challenged researchers to create an affordable, rechargeable solar cell, about the size of a postage stamp, which could crank out a half-watt of power.

Honsberg and Barnett were eager to try; it would be their first joint project in almost 20 years. Honsberg first worked on solar cells in the mid-1980s as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware, in Barnett's lab. After earning her doctorate, she wound up at Australia's renowned photovoltaics center at the University of New South Wales. Barnett went into business, spending 14 years running solar power company AstroPower. The company fell into financial turmoil. Barnett resigned and returned to the Newark, Del. campus in 2003. A year later ge bought the assets. When Barnett went looking to staff up a solar research program, Honsberg topped the list of recruits.

Honsberg and Barnett knew that one of the most efficient solar cell designs was a sandwich of three different photovoltaic materials, each of which is triggered by a different wavelength (or color) of light. But to make those photovoltaic stacks researchers must force the crystal structure of one material to match another--a difficult and costly task.

Why struggle with single structure, asked Honsberg, when you could let the constituent parts operate independently?

Honsberg and Barnett proposed a device that uses a concentrator lens to focus light. Another device splits it into colors that are aimed at the various photovoltaic materials. High-energy (short-wavelength) photons are absorbed by one compound semiconductor; mid- and low-energy photons are bounced to other solar materials, such as gallium arsenide and silicon. They figure their device can use as many as six materials, and they can mix and match from among the best or cheapest. No other solar cell design lets engineers swap different materials in and out to balance costs and efficiency, points out Douglas Kirkpatrick, the Darpa manager overseeing the project.

The Delaware lab has built a few dozen experimental solar cells; they can be from 1 to 10 square centimeters. Wiring about three dozen together into a module would be enough to recharge a laptop. Building modules is the agenda for the next six months. Barnett predicts they will be 10 to 20 percentage points more efficient than what's on the market.

Darpa is doubling its funding for the program. With corporate dollars, too, the three-year program will have a $100 million budget. "There's no technological reason why this technology couldn't scale to rooftops," says Kirkpatrick. But first things first: The Pentagon wants solar-powered flashlights and battle gear.

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0903/092.html

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E-Gang: Seeking The Light

FORBES COVER STORY:

Michael Splinter was raised on the most powerful incantation in the tech industry, Moore's Law, which roughly holds that computing power per dollar doubles every two years. During his 20 years at Intel Splinter saw this law deliver exponentially better products and profits.

Now, as chief executive of Applied Materials, the biggest pick-and-shovel maker for the semiconductor and flat-panel display industries, Splinter, 56, wants to forge a sunny-side-up version of Moore's Law. "Can we, with our customers, drive down the cost per watt of photovoltaics?" Splinter asks. "We've got to."

Currently photovoltaics cost $2 to $3 per watt to build, down from $22 in 1980. Splinter thinks he can help drive the cost of solar to under $1 a watt. At that price, even after adding a dollar or two per watt of installation costs, solar power would rival grid-delivered fossil fuel power. (Bear in mind that watts here are measured at midday peaks. Even in California an installation rated at 1 kilowatt will produce only 1,600 kwh a year.)

Ambitious enough to be on Intel's shortlist of future chief executives, Splinter leaped at the chance to run his own show at Applied in 2003. The growth in solar captured Splinter's attention early on. Slowdowns at computer chip makers, who buy nearly all of Applied's equipment, hit hard. The $9.2 billion (revenue) company has a price-to-earnings ratio below that of Kraft Foods.

The solar cell manufacturing industry for years made do with hand-me-down tools from the computer chip industry. But last year solar cell manufacturers bought more silicon wafers than chipmakers--and solar's demand for wafers is growing three times as fast as demand from the rest of the electronics industry. Applied will likely hit $400 million in contracts for solar manufacturing gear by year-end; Splinter wants $1 billion by 2009.

Applied intends to trim the industry's costs in four ways: boost solar factory throughput, improve the productivity of every tool, cut materials costs by using photovoltaic materials more sparingly and raise solar cell efficiencies. Splinter has already spent close to $1 billion to hire hundreds of people for his solar group, buy two small thin-film equipment makers and invest in a silicon wafer firm in California.

Charles Gay, who is leading Applied's solar business, obsesses about speed. Computer chips are made in batches; solar cells are produced continuously. Coating tools once used to put films on sheets of glass are being tweaked so they can also rapidly coat thousands of individual wafers. Thin-film solar makers want to work with the 64-square-foot sheets of glass used by Applied's LCD customers, but solar glass is four times as thick as display glass. So Applied is strengthening the arms of the robots it sells to hold glass sheets. "We'd like to move one ton of silicon wafers through a line in an hour," Gay says. At that speed one factory could produce a gigawatt of solar modules per year, ten times as much as the U.S. is now installing. "This is like the 1970s in the computer chip business," says Splinter, flashing a 200-watt smile.

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0903/080.html

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