Staying up-to-date with the latest in the Software world

September 30, 2009

Making sense of the software and technology industry

As an expansion stage venture capital firm, the team at OpenView is always on the look for the best software and technology-enabled services company in the market. Because of our very specific target profile – fast growing companies with about half of a million dollars in quarterly revenues, we have to be extremely thorough in our market research and reconnaissance.

However, to make sure that we are always up-to-date with the developments in the market, we do look very closely at early stage companies and track their developments. Sometimes we developed long term relationships with entrepreneurs whom we contacted long before their companies were interested in taking on expansion capital.

It is very hard to keep abreast of the development because the technology world moves so quickly and, to make things worse, there is a lot of gossip, speculations and junk out there that might even confuse us.

I just like to share my list of great sources on emerging technologies and IT business trends:

1. Oreilly Radar: There are sub sections on Web 2.0, Emerging Technology and Operations. Do not let the “Web 2.0” tag make you think that this is an also-ran web 2.0 blog – Oreilly has the best, most thought out content in the Internet written by experts and journalists with very diverse interests and viewpoints. I also love the “4 short links” articles, such as this one. Wonderful, irruptive ideas speak for themselves, for those who truly appreciate them.

2. ReadWriteWeb Enterprise: The enterprise-focused section of ReadWriteWeb, a top 10 technology content destination. True to their name, ReadWriteWeb is particularly strong in content-related technologies, such as the semantic web, content management, analysis and social content.

3. ZDNet Emerging Technology Blog: Reporting the truly ground breaking invention and discovery in the science and technology world. Sometimes the ideas presented here might seem far fetching and not very practical for the moment, but that’s the nature of cutting edge technology and it is exhilarating to be able to get a glimpse of the future through today’s research and invention.

4. Techmeme: Techmeme is an aggregator, a ticker tape, an endless newsreel that brings the latest technology news. Put it in your RSS reader, and you will have the latest and most comprehensive coverage of the software world.

Being aware of the latest changes in the software world also helps inform our business development services for our portfolio companies, as we gather important insights aboutnew business models and new markets relevant to them.

Chief Business Officer at UserTesting

Tien Anh joined UserTesting in 2015 after extensive financial and strategic experiences at OpenView, where he was an investor and advisor to a global portfolio of fast-growing enterprise SaaS companies. Until 2021, he led the Finance, IT, and Business Intelligence team as CFO of UserTesting. He currently leads initiatives for long term growth investments as Chief Business Officer at UserTesting.