Marcelo Calbucci posted a link to a TechCrunch scoop broke the news this morning on Seattle 2.0 that Right Side Capital announced that they will be investing seed-stage startup money in 100-200 startups a year.  That’s a lot.  Marcelo links to this Tech Crunch article, which gets into a lot more detail about the announcement and the context in which to place it.

Already startup types are starting the debate about whether this (a) is game-changing after all, (b) will work, or (c) misses the boat on some other criteria.  For the most part the reaction is positive – an evolution / revolution in the classing funding model seems overdue, especially given the drought we went through in the last couple years.  And a  new approach driven more by metrics and less by relationships is … well, interesting, if not necessarily a sure thing.  It will be fun to watch during the lead-up to the funding announcements this summer, and then see what the growth and recapitalization requirements of the original set of companies looks like.

Putting this announcement in a personal context, what would it take for me to get Crowdify off the ground?  Four months of funding?  Six months?  Twelve?  It’s so hard to say, since I have yet to do the hard grunt-work of proving out the market with real live interested customers.  It could be that the first three brand managers I talk to all love it and want to throw business my way.  It could also be that it will take a year and thousands of phone calls / e-mails to get to my first five-figure deal.  Traditional VCs would want to know that the market was there to capture FIRST, before putting any money in, and I can’t fault them.  However, we’ll see if Right Side Capital’s new approach will work, and if it does, what it means to other “idea entrepreneurs” who need time and space to execute.

Interested in your thoughts.

The deadline is approaching for NWEN’s upcoming First Look Forum, to be held on Tuesday, April 13th at the Arctic Club in Seattle.  I’m seriously wondering if now is the time to submit a plan for Crowdify and put myself in consideration to pitch.

First prize is not a new Cadillac Eldorado, but rather free office space for a year in Axios’ space downtown (thanks for sponsoring, Adam!).  But from everyone I’ve talked to, the real value is in the coaching and feedback you get as you progress through the stages of the forum competition process.

I’m looking at the list of screeners and have met only a handful of them, and had meaningful conversations with only a couple of them, but it’s a high-profile list of local entrepreneurs, execs, and VCs.

Thinking…thinking…are you planning on submitting a business plan?  Tell me why in the comments!

Hot from my inbox —

The 15th annual Washington Technology Industry Association Industry Achievement Awards will be held March 4th, 2010 at Showbox SODO.  Organizer Katie Douglas writes that it will be a “casual affair” and there will be lounges that feature some of the tech behind the lifestyle characteristics (such as coffee, wine, and chocolate) that makes Washington such a great place to live.

I involuntarily laughed at the tagline/theme: “Washington Breeds Innovation”.  I’ve been doing a lot of connotative / denotative linguistic research as part of my work on Crowdify, and that phrase brings to mind the State of Washington furiously copulating with a passive, bespectacled, softly moaning Innovation.  I don’t know, maybe it’s a guy thing.  Maybe it’s just me.

Curious who the finalists in the various categories are?  I was too.  I’m most interested in the “Breakthrough Startup of the Year” category, in which Gist is nominated.  As I’ve written elsewhere in these pages, my hindbrain has a sort of unhealthy obsession with the algorithms behind Gist’s service and they all seem to be great people to boot.

I’ve seen the VholdR tech in person, and to my mind, it’s neat, but not as neat as Gist.  Plus they get demerits for funky spelling.  The Google correctly points you to their site if you type “vholder” in the search box, but still….

I don’t know a thing about DreamBox Learning, which is funny considering how many projects I’ve done in the online education space over the years.

I’m rooting for Gist in this category.

Register here: http://www.washingtontechnology.org/IAA

See you there?

Ever known the super-smart guy (typically, they’re always guys) who was just an absolute a**hole and couldn’t work well with others?  A recent GigaOM post, The Five Myths That Can Kill A Startup, refers to Reed Hastings’ term “brilliant jerks” to describe these people.  According to authors Michael Fisher and Marty Abbott:

Intelligence is important, but only insofar as it helps with performance and execution. As Malcolm Gladwell points out in “Outliers,” while some minimum level of intelligence might be necessary for superior performance, in many jobs it’s not in and of itself enough to ensure it. You need people willing and able to work as part of a team, and sometimes superior individual contributors can negatively affect team performance by creating affective or role-based conflict (for more on those, see Myth #3 below). As Reed Hastings puts it, you should eliminate all brilliant jerks from your team.

Which of course led me to Reed Hastings’ presentation on SlideShare that Om references.  I love it, and consider it a must-read for managers and entrepreneurs.  I like this statement in particular:

The real company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.

You ever work at a place and wonder how clueless management could possibly be?  (Scott Adams made a fortune off of this omnipresent phenomenon).  Look around: what are your company’s values?  They’re demonstrated by who gets rewarded, who doesn’t get rewarded, who gets hired, fired, reprimanded, how certain people are treated relative to others, relative pay, etc. etc.  The company’s support or non-support of certain people send an absolutely clear message about what’s important.  Printed mission statements and values declarations can’t hide it.

Now, having looked closely at that, do you still feel like your personal values are aligned with your company’s actual values?

If not, what do you do?

The more I look at Gist, the more intrigued I am.  Maybe it’s the heuristician in me (yes, I made that word up) that wonders what’s going on under the covers.  At any rate, I got a small chuckle this morning when I opened my Gist Daily Digest and saw this:

The fact that it says “No company” is funny for a few reasons:

1. Robert is the Vice President of Marketing for Gist, yet Gist doesn’t know that.
2. Robert just yesterday sent out a couple messages to the STS list containing the keyword “Gist” in the subject line.
3. Robert and I had an e-mail correspondence about six months ago as part of the NWEN Advisors program.

At any rate, Gist’s Daily Digest couldn’t put together all the loose ends on this one – but I remain convinced that there’s something great going on here.

Seattle-area social media monitoring firm Visible Technologies lands a huge Series C round:

Bellevue-based Visible Technologies said Wednesday that it has scored a $22M, Series C funding round for the firm’s social media monitoring software. According to Visible Technologies, the round was led by new investor Investor Growth Capital, and also included prior investors Centurion Holdings, Ignition Partners, In-Q-Tel and WPP.

That’s a good result for a company that has always seemed to be able to stay near the top of a competitive space.  Congratulations to the Visible team!

Greg over at Xconomy commented on the Visible funding news about 17 hours ago.  Interesting to note that the top goal of the company for the use of the new funds is to drive global expansion.  I’m not a great tea-leaf-reader (I think), but what that tells me is that Visible has matured to the point where they are thinking long-term market leadership, and obviously global is a component of getting and staying on top.

Also, interestingly, from a link on the Xconomy piece I found this blog  post which has some pretty negative things to say about social media monitoring in general.  Food for thought, but I don’t agree with the writer.  Social media monitoring has its place in our newly interconnected world and if it brings up problems like “hounding” or “silencing” of critics, well, then that’s a different problem to solve.  Merely getting information in front of people – accurately and quickly – is not grounds for disqualification of the entire segment.

This is a short but intriguing post from Euan Semple about what he calls “hard men” – egotists, bullies, people who throw their weight around; there are lots of synonyms.  The post is nominally about pissing matches amongst the social media elite, but it has drawn a bunch of comments and I get the sense its a very deep, fundamental issue across all walks of life – professional and personal.

He quotes writer Brenda Ueland:

And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the very first ones to get killed off. It is the brutal egotists that survive.

Interesting topic.

In your professional life, do you go out of your way to build people up, or tear people down?  Do you try to focus on the positive, or dwell on the negative? Why?

(h/t Kate Carruthers, via Twitter)

Management gets a bad rap. There are a lot of reasons, but mostly it has to do with the fact that most people in management roles have no fucking idea what they should be doing to “manage” their teams.

OK, that may be a bit of hyperbole, but it’s a topic that I’m passionate about.

First off, people should not be “managed”. Sheep should be managed. Finances should be managed.  Finite energy resources should be “managed”.

People are people – note: not “resources” or “headcount” or “FTEs” – and they have lots and lots of capabilities, interests, ideas, and enthusiasms to bring to the table if we could just stop “managing” in the traditional understanding of the word.

A recent “Global Workforce Survey” of over 90,000 workers found some troubling data:

Here’s what the researchers discovered: barely one-fifth (21%) of employees are truly engaged in their work, in the sense that they would “go the extra mile” for their employer. Nearly four out of ten (38%) are mostly or entirely disengaged, while the rest are in the tepid middle. There’s no way to sugarcoat it—this data represents a stinging indictment of the legacy management practices found in most companies.

Ouch.

What are some of the typical mistakes managers make? There’s a thousand, but here are some big ones:

• Micromanagement
• Being too passive / avoiding leadership
• Assume expertise that they don’t have
• Incorrectly evaluating staff performance
• Infrequent or unclear communications
• Unclear goals, objectives, or priorities
• Thinking that “management” is more important than “people”.

That last one irks me.  I’m sorry, folks, but no piece of paper in the world, no date on the calendar, is worth even 1% of the output of your employees.  You commit yourself to your team, and the things written on your pieces of paper will start to look great, and the dates on your calendar will start to move backwards.  It’s magic.  People are magic when they are treated well.

I’m blessed with a team that, when I leave on vacation, everything gets done. 98% of that is due to the individuals in the team – I’m not about to kid myself here – but I’d like to think that I’m a pretty good manager and do the minimum, consistent, focused set of things necessary to align everyone’s objectives, clearly and quickly, and then step the hell out of the way and let them shine. I give lots of positive feedback where it’s due, and avoid nitpicky negative feedback about things that don’t matter. I try to develop a team-centric attitude. I like to celebrate shared successes. I like to give direct, clear, and immediate feedback if something is going haywire, and then follow up.

I’m not perfect. Far from it. By my own estimation, I do a lot of “manager”-type tasks poorly, still, even after 12 years of managing teams. For example, I’m notorious for forgetting birthdays and other special occasions.  But I like to think I’ve gotten the big things mostly right, and where I learn I have a gap as a manager, I try hard to fill it – first by asking for help, then demonstrating that I can do it myself, then thinking about doing it better and better until it’s second nature.

I also try to do one other thing as a manager: set a good example.  I work hard, treat people (mostly) well, am not afraid to show ignorance and ask for help, and I don’t bitch and moan in public (too often).  I try to be positive, friendly, and encouraging.  I think my team picks up on the way I conduct myself and I think some of my character rubs off on the team’s character.  Ergo: good team.

What do you do as a manager?  What do you hate about “management”?  Sound off in the comments!

Good news for fans of Twilio, the Seattle-turned-San Francisco based startup that has some awesome telephony technology that makes it dead simple to integrate voice functions into your applications:

Twilio Raises $3.7 Million For Powerful Telephony API

Startup Twilio has raised $3.7 million in Series A funding from Union Square Ventures. The startup previously raised $600,000 in seed funding from The Founders Fund, David Cohen, Mitch Kapor, Manu Kumar Chris Sacca, and other angel investors. Twilio creates a powerful API for phone services that allows developers to quickly integrate telephony functionality into their apps. The company plans to use the new funding for growth in sales and marketing and to further the development of new products. Union Square Ventures’ Albert Wenger and Founders Fund’s Dave McClure will be joining the startup’s board.

Great job, Team Twilio!  Obligatory cheese shot of the team, courtesy of Marketing Director Danielle Morrill:

What I’ve been most impressed with about Twilio is the consistent way they’ve rolled out high-quality updates and extensions to their service.  Check them out – you’ll be amazed at the power behind their API.

This two-day program on the wisdom of crowds offered by the MIT Sloan School of Business looks interesting:

Intelligent Organizations is designed to help you understand how to create competitive advantage by harnessing the power of crowds and other new organizational approaches. Drawing on examples like Google, InnoCentive, and Wikipedia, you will learn to identify opportunities for using crowd intelligence, loose hierarchies, and other innovative ways of organizing work to apply to your own business environment.

Crowdsourcing, prediction markets, new and innovative ways of collaborating – all great.  I particularly like this bullet point:

How to move from command-and-control to coordinate-and-cultivate leadership

Coordinate and cultivate: this sounds like a very enlightened way to manage a business.  Find great people, cultivate and nurture and support and encourage and empower them, then agree on goals and get the heck out of their way as they surprise you with their innovation, enthusiasm, and achievement.

As a manager, I know firsthand how important it is to be positive and encouraging with your employees.  It’s equally important to be positive and encouraging with coworkers even if there is no direct reporting relationship.  I’ve seen how negativity – even accidental or unintended negativity – can kill morale, squelch motivation, and put people in a funk.

I try – I don’t always succeed, but I try – to stay positive with the people I work with.  I also try to avoid micromanaging and let my team self-manage to a very large degree.  Perhaps most importantly, I try to keep the big picture in mind.  Performance, for me, is measured across months, not hours; and is calculated in terms of big goals and broad trends, not daily incidentals.

For some reason I’m reminded of a possible counterargument – viz., Rudy Guiliani’s policing scheme in New York City in the 1990’s.  The theory there was that if you had the police relentlessly crack down on small crimes and disturbances, the overall goal of creating a safe, peaceable city would be accomplished.  Regardless if you buy that argument or not, or think that the reduced crime rates in NYC were the result of particular local policies or were coincident with broad national trends, the difference in how one might apply that thinking to a workplace couldn’t be more different than “coordinate and cultivate.”  The Guiliani approach would require managers to call to the carpet any employee who stepped out of line or violated office norms in any way.  Car broke down on the way to work and you’re late?  Sorry, you get written up.  Late reviewing a project brief?  Sorry, you get written up.

I think you know what I think about that.