Yesterday I trekked downtown to the August TechCafe (formerly Seattle Lunch 2.0) event, hosted this time by Fenwick & West on their beautiful 10th-story rooftop deck.  Along the way I ran into plenty of old friends and, as I tend to do at these types of networking events, made some new ones as well.

The theme of the afternoon was “demo”, and three startups were given about 10 minutes each to present their goodies to a crowd of about 60:  Zebigo, a real-time ride-matching service; CrowdMap, a real-time collaborative mind-mapping tool, and IncFlow, a tool for managing trade credit applications.  Although Zebigo stood out for its simplicity and polish, I was really interested in CrowdMap, for a couple reasons: first, I’m a big fan of mind-mapping, both conceptually and in practice; and second, some of my friends and acquaintances in the local Seattle tech scene are part of the team, including Jennifer Cabala, Brian Gershon and Jeremy Lightsmith.  Also on the team is Sasha Pesulka, a fellow Seattle 2.0 contributor, but this was the first time I’d met her in person.

Kudos to the Fenwick & West team for hosting and making all of us feel welcome; and kudos to Josh Maher of TechCafe for continuing to put on one of the top tech networking events in Seattle.

The second annual Seattle 2.0 Awards were held last night at the Bell Harbor Conference Center on the beautiful downtown Seattle waterfront, and just like last year, the event was a big success.  I was there representing Seattle 2.0 in my capacity as a contributing blogger, and I heard I was one of over 400+ attendees.

What I liked:

Smiles. Does anyone have a better smile in the startup community than Glenn Kelman of Redfin?  He accepted two awards: one personally, for Best Entrepreneur Blog, and one on behalf of Redfin, which won Best Startup.  Glenn gave the keynote last year at the inaugural Seattle 2.0 Awards and although I’ve never met him personally, he appears to be the happiest guy on the planet.  Also: he’s shorter than he looks.

George Bernard Shaw. Speaking of keynotes, Jonathan Sposato of Picnik/Google gave the keynote this year and knocked my socks off.  He’s a really great speaker.  No notes!  He quoted George Bernard Shaw, who [paraphrasing] said that “90% of success is casting”, in keeping with a recurring theme of the night – award recipients making a big deal out of the quality of their supporting team.  I like to think Seattleites are especially nice that way.  Also: Cary Grant is cool.

Poker. My friend Bob Crimmins of iMedExchange hustled everybody by winning the inaugural Poker 2.0 tournament at the S2A awards.  I hope it’s continued next year.  I also hope Bob wins again next year, because everybody loves a champion.  Plus, reading the bitchy tweets of the losers will be hilarious.

Diversity. Unlike last year, when it seemed like Picnik ran away with everything, there was a broad set of winners and nobody could be considered to have swept the field.   I think that’s a good thing.  On the other hand, maybe last year’s Picnik win was prescient, what with Picnik getting acquired by Google for a billion dollars or whatever it was.

Leadership. It’s obvious that Seattle 2.0 is in great hands with the addition of Jennifer Cabala as CEO.  She managed the proceedings very well and obviously put a lot of effort into making the night a success.

What could be improved:

Audio. Multiple complaints of poor audio in the back, and the acoustics in Bell Harbor were a little weird.  The gabfest on the demo floor, which was immediately adjacent to the seating for the awards ceremony, didn’t help.

Demo Partners. Was it just me, or did the lineup of demo providers seem a little thin?  I stay fairly close to the community and I don’t think any of the top 100 companies on the Seattle Startup Index were demoing.

Retrospectives. It would be nice to have a little PowerPoint presentation (did I just write that? Gah!) showing key events in the Seattle startup scene from the past year – major acquisitions, funding announcements, new companies, IPOs (what’s that?), etc.  Also, the “Best Startup” category is sort of like “Best Picture” at the Academy Awards, so it would have been nice to have a slide per company describing what they do.  Maybe video!  Just think how many more awards Redfin might have won had Glenn Kelman delivered a video clip to all the voters extolling the smiley-ness of the Redfin corporate culture.

Loved the night.  Loved reconnecting with friends new and old, and I love the Seattle startup community.  See you at the next event!

Axios Law has been my intellectual property legal firm of choice for a couple years now, and their founder (and my friend), Adam Philipp, announced a name change / rebranding today: excerpts below.

I am thrilled to formally announce that AXIOS Law has become ÆON Law!

As we evolved, our clients have increasingly turned to us to meet their intellectual property strategy and acquisition needs. As a result, we have focused on shepherding the products of our clients’ minds from nascent ideas into valuable IP assets. In keeping with this focus, we have adopted “ÆON” (Plato’s term for the “world of eternal ideas”) as the firm’s new name.

Adam and his partners and staff have been huge supporters of the local startup community in Seattle for as long as I’ve known them.  If you have any IP needs or questions, give them a shout – they’re top-notch.

http://www.aeonlaw.com
(206) 217-2200

Direct from Andy Sack, Executive Director of TechStars Seattle, a reminder about the TechStars Seattle application deadline:

Want funding and mentorship for your startup?  

Get your startup funded and off the ground while learning from the best!  TechStars is a mentorship-driven seed stage investment program.  It is now accepting applications for the inaugural 2010 Seattle class.  Applications are due by June 1, 2010 and the program kicks-off on August 16, 2010.  The Seattle program is funded by every major venture capital firm in Seattle.  We are reaching out to every organization in Seattle that works with entrepreneurs to help spread the word about the program.  There is more information about TechStars online, www.techstars.org.

I first heard of TechStars through my friend, Startup Weekend founder Andrew Hyde, who works with the original TechStars team out of Boulder. They’re expanding and by all reports are a first-class organization.

Check them out!

www.techstars.org

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.

Marc Nager of Startup Weekend just sent me this today – I thought I’d repost (most of it, anyway) and get the word out about the next Portland Startup Weekend.

Hey there!

We wanted to let you know that Startup Weekend is coming back to Portland!

Check out the amazing lineup on the website. We have Matt Compton (venture partner at Madrona and ex vp at Yahoo), Rob Wiltbank (venture partner at Montlake Capital and professor at Willamette U), Eric Doebele (Founder/CEO Reliable.remodeler.com), Nitin Khanna (Founder/CEO of MergerTech), Doug Fieldhouse (CEO of Vesta) and of course the guys from Mugasha Akshay and Justin will be there!

When: March 5-7
Where: NedSpace Old Town
More info: http://portland.startupweekend.org
Looking forward to seeing you down there!

I’ve been to three Startup Weekend events in Seattle, but have not made it down to Portland yet.  If you’re in the area that weekend, and are a startup junkie, you should consider attending!

Remember this name, if you haven’t already heard it: Eric Ries.  He’s got a great blog called Lessons Learned that has a ton of great material for startups, coming at the topic from a lean/agile/fail fast angle.

This post on Minimum Viable Products was recommended by somebody on the Seattle Tech Startups list, and is a good sample: just-bigger-than-bite-sized, chock full of information, well supported with evidence.  Sample quote:

MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. If your goal is simply to scratch a clear itch or build something for a quick flip, you really don’t need the MVP. In fact, MVP is quite annoying, because it imposes extra overhead. We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration. In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics and analytics.

The post contains an embedded video from a talk Eric gave at Lean Startup Circle.  Bookmarked.  Enjoy!

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?