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.

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.

From Alyssa Royse at the P-I:

It is very likely that you do, in fact, have access to the people you need to meet. But, you have to ask for it. Yes, everyone knows that you have a startup, but that does not mean that they know you are looking for funding, or what kind of funding, or from whom you hope to get that funding. Only by asking everyone you know IF they know anyone who is an angel investor and telling them what you’re looking for will they know to go through their rolodex and hook you up.

Good stuff. Alyssa’s columns are becoming a must-read for seed-stage tech entrepreneurs in Seattle.