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July 2
By Danielle Morrill
Last night I got an email from Marcelo, telling me he had two presents for me. There has been a lot of discussion at Seattle 2.0 about around how we can make the events calendar more maintainable, and the introduction of the Seattle Tech Calendar by Roy Leban was a healthy catalyst for re-thinking how important this is to our readers.
New Features
1. You can now add events to the Seattle 2.0 events calendar 2. Recurring events can now be specified (they used to be manually added for each week, for those of you wondering why Hops and Chops kept disappearing from the calendar)
Why Don't We List Every Tech Event in Seattle?
A lot of thought goes into what content we put on Seattle 2.0, and what we selectively leave out. Our goal is not to be the Seattle tech source (try TechFlash) or social media source (try Social Media Club Seattle). It's to be the tech startup and entrepreneurship destination, which is why we come up as the first result when you search Google for "seattle startup" (just checked and we're 6th on Bing, hrmm).
Guidelines for Events We Will List
We only list events that:
- Are targeted at Technology Startups in Washington;
- The venue is located on Seattle or the Eastside;
- Are a valuable use of an entrepreneur's time;
- Are available to anyone, either for free or for a price.
We don't list:
- Pure technology events ("Learning CSS", "Ruby on Rails Meetup", "Developing on Google Apps", etc.)
- Social Media events like Tweetups, bloggers gathering, etc. (unless they are startup relevant)
- Events that are more than 20 miles from Seattle. Boundaries are Tacoma (South), Bremerton (West), Redmond (East), and Everett (North).
- Events not valuable to technology startups or technology entrepreneurs;
- Invitation-only events (unless it's "to entrepreneurs only")
We understand some of these criteria are subjective, so feel free to contact us asking if it's ok or not to add an event.
THANK YOU MARCELO - for adding these features!
THANK YOU EVERYONE ELSE - for sticking around and putting up with our less-than-optimal calendar!
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July 1
By Marcelo Calbucci
I got out of the habit of writing about the events I attended, but I should go back at doing that so event organizers can learn from my honest (at times hurtful) feedback. So, yesterday I attended Small & Special, the conference put together by Jackson Fish Market (Hillel Cooperman, Jenny Lam, Walter Smith, Donald DeSantis et al). The one-word review is: extraordinary!
And when I saw “extraordinary” I mean “extra”-“ordinary” as in different, as in good different. I don’t want to bring back the success of the Seattle 2.0 Awards every time I write about an event, but there was a lot similarities why the Awards was successful and why Small & Special was as well. Hillel opening speech said it all: “We wanted a conference for ourselves”. When you do something thinking “I’d like this” or “I don’t like that” you are building it for you. If people are like you, they will enjoy it. If they are not, they won’t. Simple and obvious, I know. And the people on the audience were more like them, than not.
Small & Special was intense, as in just one-break of 15 minutes and non-stop talking for 4+ hours. Primarily, it was like watching an “E! True Hollywood Story” of entrepreneurs. One after the other telling how they got into business, how they funded it, why they love it, how they make a living, etc. I just love to hear entrepreneurs tell their stories. Success stories, failure stories, good stories, bad stories.
And since we are talking about stories… As I got in, I went to register at the front-desk and a person I knew was there and they couldn’t find my name on the list for a few seconds. Then he asked, “Did you pay?”, and I said yes. He thought I’d be on the “special list” for press and “VIPs”. I would never go to a conference put up by a friend (or not) that’s bootstrapping and ask for a free ticket. For me it was only $25, but for them it could mean thousands of dollars if everyone they know and feel are their friends ask for a free pass. It comes out of their pocket, directly.
What worked well on Small & Special:
· The diversity of speakers was critical. I usually learn a lot from people that are on completely different line of business than I am. I guess others do to.
· Hillel did a tremendous job of MC’ing it. Kept it on pace, making jokes, asking questions, etc.
· Food was great.
· I could hear the presenters! Seriously, I’ve been to some many conferences that you can’t hear people on stage, either because the audio was bad or because of the chatter on the room.
· Sponsors were given 2 minutes and they did just two minutes of talking. Yep, I get it, we need the sponsors to pay for the event and they expect some level of exposure, but I also seen people overdoing and presenters just babbling for 5 or 10 minutes on something no one there cared about. Not at S&S.
· Venue was great, but far.
What didn’t work so well:
· I think the conference was underpriced. Ticket was $25. It should have been at least $50 or more (I’d be happy at $75). I actually think the $25 made it look a “cheap” and “low value” event. Yes, people associate price with value, go figure. I honestly believe if it was $50 it would have sold out faster. The biggest problem with under-pricing (or over-pricing) an event is attracting the wrong kind of people. They didn’t have a problem this year, since I think 80% of the attendees were on target, but might next year.
· The website didn’t have enough info. This one is from a person I was talking to, but it’s also something I felt to be true. There was no mention of this being the first instance of this conference. There was very little information why this conference exist or who the organizers were. It’s too easy to assume people are reading our blogs, seeing our tweets or reading our direct messages.
· The food was good, but they didn’t serve anything before the event started, so I was very thirsty and no coffee was served before 4pm (break time) and then on the break there were about 200 people rushing to 3 tables with foods and drinks and you had only 15 minutes to grab something, eat it, drink it, talk with a few people and go to the restroom and back to your chair. I know this kind of feedback might be just picky, but it’s part of the experience. It didn’t work.
· The after-party was an after-thought. Although I met a few interesting folks at the bar next door, there were only about 12 people there. No sign of the organizers and I think just about 3 of the presenters and one sponsor.
About the presentations themselves… Two stories didn’t work for me: Nisha Kelen, a florist and Oliver Chin, a children’s book publisher. Yes, they were passionate and very good people, but I didn’t feel their stories were inspiring to me. Not as much as Rachel Venning from Babeland, Eric Levine from Cellar Tracker, or the awesome story of Jon Rimmerman from Garagiste. These are people not only doing something they love, but being very successful and changing the world. That’s inspiring to me.
No question in my mind I’ll be there next year and recommend to all my entrepreneur friends.
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July 1
By Seattle 2.0 Sponsors
We'd like to thank our sponsors who support the Seattle 2.0 and, like us, are passionate about tech startups and want to make Seattle an even better place for them.  nPost.com is a site devoted to entrepreneurship and startups. The nPost.com Tech Startup Job Board features opportunities with Internet and Software startups. By focusing on the tech startup space, nPost brings together startups with people that are specifically interested in and familiar with the dynamic and high growth nature of startups.  We're driven to inspire others by helping them develop and visually communicate their most powerful identity. For the past ten years, Rocketman Creative has helped organizations create distinctive identity designs that engage and excite their customers and supporters.  Eye Level is an interaction design studio performing at the intersection of design and technology. They create satisfying user experiences from the bones out, strengthening relationships between you and your customers. They’re experts at designing complex websites and interactive media from early concepts, through user testing, to graphic design, to launch.  Emerging technology companies partner with Fenwick & West for a broad range of services, through all stages of growth. We represent venture-backed private companies from formation and initial funding through IPOs and mergers. Through 30 years of partnering with leading technology start-up companies, we have obtained a deep understanding of how companies are formed, financed, grown and taken public or merged and earned the role of key trusted advisor. Fenwick is ranked by Dow Jones as the fourth most active U.S. law firm in helping IT clients raise venture capital and by MergerMarket and as one of the top five technology M&A practices in the U.S. Want to become a sponsor of Seattle 2.0? Learn more
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June 30
By Marcelo Calbucci
In the tech-startup world there are cycles of events. I can think of three different clusters. The “learning” season, which is very hot in October/November. The “traditional” events mostly between March-May and the summer season. This summer there will be 3 very good events coming over the next few weeks. We’ll try to be at all of them.
July 9 (Thursday) – 6pm
Glenn Kelman from Redfin managed to get some pretty famous people (at least on the tech world) at the Naked Truth: Show Me the Money to talk about different ways to make models on the consumer online space. The event will have a panel with Michael Arrington (TechCrunch), Damon Darlin (New York Times), Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) and a few of our home-grown entrepreneurs: Jonathan Sposato (Picnik), Brad Jefferson (Animoto) and Ethan Lowry (Urbanspoon). The event is free and you can check more info here.
July 23 (Thursday) – 4pm
John Cook and Todd Bishop from TechFlash are putting together the Summer BBQ & Ping-Pong tournament. I’ve talked with a bunch of people (entrepreneurs, investors, service providers) last week and it seems this event will be a success. The event is $45 and you can learn more here.
July 30 (Thursday) – 5pm
The WTIA and XConomy have partnered to bring you “Summer Celebration” with “Battle of the Tech Bands”. I have no idea how this Battle will turn out, but it seems they got a good number of bands signed up and any event at the Pyramid Alehouse seems like worth checking out. The price is $35 and you can learn more here.
It looks like the only two Thursdays open in July are the 2nd, which you certainly can go to Hops & Chops and the 16 which has no event yet (Hops & Chops again?)
The Seattle 2.0 might also be sponsoring an event in August. Stay tuned to learn more.
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June 29
By Marcelo Calbucci
If there is one thing people yearn is to be recognized by their efforts and accomplishments. We put the Seattle 2.0 Awards this year because we felt there was a need to better recognize the people doing high-tech startups. Seattle Business Monthly is putting together for the second time the “Top 25 Innovators & Entrepreneurs” award.
I attended the event last year at the Space Needle and some great people from the tech industry were awarded, including Andy Liu and David Niu (founders BuddyTV), Vanessa Fox (at Ignition at that time), Rich Barton (Zillow and Glassdoor), Mike Harrington, Darrin Massena and Jonathan Sposato (Picnik), Henry Albrecht (Limeade), Dan McComb and Lara Eve Feltin (Biznik). You can see them all here.
If you know someone that is a great technology or business innovator, or an entrepreneur that deserves to be recognized by his or her accomplishments, go ahead and nominate them by July 20.
The winners will be recognized on an event in October and they will be featured on the November issue of Seattle Business Monthly.
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June 26
By Seattle 2.0 Follow Friday
Follow Friday (known as #FollowFriday) is a Twitter meme where a Twitter user recommends other Twitter users for his friends to follow. The Seattle 2.0 automatically generates suggestions from our Twitter Directory every Friday based on the number of entrepreneurs and startup people following that person. Today we recommend: Find more Entrepreneurs, CEOs and Investors of Technology Startups on our Twitter Directory.
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June 26
By Seattle 2.0
List of interesting blog posts from the Seattle Startup community on the last week: TechFlash In an opinion piece for The Seattle Times , Imperium Renewables CEO John Plaza rails against the state's policies regarding biodiesel and calls out a... Hillel/Jackson Fish Market John Cook over at TechFlash was nice enough to ask me to do a guest post on bootstrapping. This one is on how much runway you need to get your business over... Brad Hefta-Gaub/Brad Hefta-Gaub One of my favorite Seattle area entrepreneurial focused blogs is written by William Carlet, an attorney at McNaul Ebel Nawrot & Helgrn PLLC. William has... William Carleton/William Carleton, Counsellor @ Law The Treasury Department's whitepaper on financial regulatory reform, released last week, includes a proposal to require venture capitalists to register with... Nathan Kaiser/nPost Blog It looks to be an exciting event this evening at the Columbia City Theater! With over 175 people registered to attend, representing >75 Seattle area... Wade Roush/Xconomy Seattle by Gregory Huang The conventional wisdom used to be that technology startups should be located as close to their venture investors’ main offices as possible. That way, it’s... John Musser/ProgrammableWeb This week we had new web services added to our API directory ranging from small startups to the big names in web APIs. One of the more notable new ones comes... Courtney/Kashless blog Pregnancy TestI'm giving this away: Pregnancy Test I'm in: Haller Lake 98125 Here's more: Yup, it's a pee-stick. Unused and still in sealed package. Worked... Conversation Marketing I'm going to be on a panel at the Seattle Online Marketing Summit (OMS) next week, July 1st. The session is at 3:30 PM, and is titled "Integrating... mishkin/Limeade Blog The headline for this month's Wired Magazine is "Living By Numbers," and brings together some great articles about efforts by individuals and...
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June 25
By Marcelo Calbucci
[Editor's Note: This week we are running several guest posts by people who are boostrapping (or did bootstrap) their businesses. Today's post is by David Geller. Read previous posts by Steve Murch, Vivek Bhaskaran and Hillel Cooperman]
Run it like your first lemonade stand
. That was the idea behind the financing details for WhatCounts, a business I founded in 2001 with the help of my former Starwave colleague Brian Ratzliff. I’m a software developer and Brian is a marketing and business expert. With $50K I had available to start a business, WhatCounts was organized in the summer of 2000. Our mission, and one on which we have remained focused, is to provide an exemplary platform and service organization for creating, managing, deploying and measuring sophisticated email campaigns for companies across a wide range of industries. Today, we have customers on four continents. We help Fortune 1000 companies communicate with their customers. Major news organizations in the US and around the world deliver breaking news utilizing our technology and services.
What about the lemonade thing? It’s simple. Businesses, fundamentally, need to be run like your first lemonade stand. You know, the one you set up outside your house when you were six. Limited resources and 100% cash-oriented. No angel investors (though parents were there to help). No venture capitalists. No preferred warrants. Cap table? It’s called an empty glass jar with some starter quarters put in for market effect.
The plan when you were six was simple. Identify your target market, which was thirsty adults that were suckers for cute kids learning what it meant to operate a small business (avoid slightly older kids that had already gone through this sometimes humiliating ritual and rarely had disposable income). Next, secure the resources and manufacturing rights for your product. In this case it was either real lemons your mom had picked up at the local supermarket and helped you squeeze or some store-bought concentrate.
Execution was only slightly more complex. Basically, build and deploy your product. Market it to folks passing by and start collecting income. How successful you were could be measured any minute of the day by counting what was in the glass jar. No audits. No tax reviews. Just counting.
These principals influenced us when we started WhatCounts. We thought about raising money, but only for about a minute. Even had a few informational interviews with area venture capitalists - mostly friends we had known. It’s funny, when the markets are down, as they were in 2000 and are again now, VCs have lots of time for meetings. In the end, we knew we had a good product and there were lots of potential customers. There didn’t seem like a good reason to take someone else’s money and give away a fairly large piece of the pie. So, we decided against doing so.
In hindsight it might be easy to say our decisions were brilliant and suggested a keen and sharp understanding of capital markets, startup growth and investor return scenarios. In reality, though, we made our financing decisions based on the need to execute quickly and remain 100% in control. We also had some cynicism toward the hockey stick growth patterns that investors wanted, expected and often cajoled startups to design for. And, truth be told, email wasn’t as hot a space as it is now. Raising money is difficult and we just wanted to get on with it. We replaced the notion of having a board of directors willing to give us what they though might be good advice with paying customers that told us what they wanted and how we were doing every time they paid their invoices. We listened when customers told us the lemonade was too tart (needed better customer service) or the portions were too small (deployments needed to be faster and more efficient).
So, with our prototype up and running we did what startups should always do but sometimes fail to do quickly. We started searching for customers. Customers that would pay us. We wanted quarters for our glass jar. Our lemonade was ready and we were serving up a pretty sweet product. Thankfully, we discovered paying customers very quickly and started putting money in the bank. It wasn’t enough to pay ourselves for a while but it was soon enough to pay our first employee. Then our second, and third - and, around that time, ourselves. And, any minute of any day we could calculate how well the business was performing. It was easy. We’d add up what we owed to other people (usually zero; to this day we like to pay our bills quickly) and what was in the checking account. Thousands of clients, 40 employees and numerous contractors later the same basic formula is used. Sure, we use payment processing companies, have employees in two countries and four states (and have to deal with the resultant payroll taxes for each) and even have a matching 401(K) program. But, fundamentally, WhatCounts remains efficiently run and structured in much the same way it was when we started it.
What we’ve learned along the way is what every small company should discover. Namely, building the best product possible combined with the best service possible and an inordinate amount of hard work leads to success. Sometimes the distance from start to success is long. Sometimes it’s shorter than you might expect. It depends on timing, market conditions and, ultimately, the quality of your work. There’s sometimes a little luck involved too, but, it’s mostly hard work.
Bootstrapping a high-tech software or services company might be easier than doing so for other types of companies simply because the startup costs may be lower. While I still believe it’s a great path to pursue if you’re able to do so, it has its downside. And, while some of my previous descriptions of our funding history might suggest a disdain for angel and venture funding, that’s not the case. Both serve potentially vital roles for new companies. I suspect we simply weren’t skilled at raising outside funds when we started. In some ways, funding WhatCounts ourselves was the easy path.
Would I trade where we are today with a strategy that, eight or nine years ago, may have involved outside investors? That’s a hard one. For one, I’m doing something I absolutely love and for which I have a passion. Every day I wake up excited about what we’re doing, what our customers are doing with our platform and the potential for product and company growth.
If we had taken on VC money early in our history it’s possible and even likely I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today. Would I be rich and off pursuing another startup? Hard to say. I doubt it. Venture money is designed to accelerate the growth of a company. It’s not designed to make founders rich. It’s possible WhatCounts could have been many times its current size and would have allowed its founders and executives various exit routes. But, rapid growth (vs the very organic customer-driven growth we enjoy) has downsides too. Bigger companies mean bigger teams, larger expenses and often greater risks. It means changing focus from trying to serve your customers the very best way you can to serving your investors the very best way you can. Often those pursuits are aimed at the same point and are symbiotic. Often, though, they are not. Bigger companies require different management skills. Would the management team of WhatCounts be the right team to lead a 100 or 200 person company? A few years ago the answer would have been no. More recently, though, we’ve attracted top, senior talent that could lead large teams - and have in the past. As Casey Stengel said: “the secret to managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.”
Interestingly, WhatCounts is at inflection point where the notion of raising money has come up again - as it did when we first started. And, the reasons are the same - to accelerate growth. This time, however, the difference is that we have something that’s been profitable for eight years and has zero debt and a clean corporate structure. Financing for growth will be relatively easy if we decide to pursue it. So, how does a startup or a small business (which we still consider ourselves to be, even with 40+ employees) decide whether to bootstrap or take on funding partners? It starts with discovery and analysis, and asking some of very same questions a 3 person startup might ask before their first VC meeting.
Where do you want your business to be in 12, 24 and 36 months? If you plan to raise $ x million dollars, how will it be used? Do you have the team you need to execute your plan? How does organic growth with no dilution compare to accelerated growth and some level of owner dilution? Does your exit strategy require a public offering or an acquisition by a larger company? Are you prepared for your second round of funding in terms of dilution? Your third? What are your funding partners expectations for growth and how you run your company? Are you prepared to spend a significant amount of time working with your board of directors as you chart and execute your plans? Are you prepared to change roles if someone more qualified comes along to run your company?
Andrew Carnegie wrote that “the way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.” While that sounds a little risky as an investment strategy, it might fit in terms of applying a high degree of energy and passion to your own company, or lemonade stand. WhatCounts is lucky to have a great team and customers that benefit from our industry-leading technology and services. We’re excited about the next several years. It still feels like a startup! ----------
David Geller is the CEO and cofounder of WhatCounts, based in Seattle, WA. WhatCounts is a leading email technology and services company. Its clients include Alaska Airlines, Costco, REI, The Seattle Times, Voice of America and many other companies located throughout North America.
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