Author: Robert Pease

Intel Capital portfolio companies on display

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I had the opportunity to participate in Intel Capital's (one of our investors) technology day in steamy hot Orlando, FL on Friday. It was part of the last day's activities for CSC's Technology and Business Solutions conference and they selected a handful of Intel's portfolio companies to give short pitches to the attendees. I met some great folks from CSC and Intel as well as portfolio companies like NewsGator, Dexterra, SpikeSource and Jajah among others.

I really enjoyed chatting with Newsgator CEO J.B. Holston about what they are doing to build on their RSS roots and broaden their social computing offerings.  I also had the chance to drop in on the evening festivities for Microsoft's big TechEd event and enjoyed the entertainment at Universal Studios for the first time on Thursday night with some other Seattleites relishing the Florida heat.

Thanks to the team from Intel for coordinating and the folks at CSC for wanting to know more about Hubspan.

Sales 2.0

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I had the opportunity to attend a nice event today put on by the folks at Scale Venture Partners.  Scale is an investor in Hubspan and hosted a “Sales 2.0” event today at the Four Seasons in Palo Alto.  Some good speakers and great perspective on sales and marketing process in a connected and electronically enabled world.  I’ll consolidate my notes and do a follow up post with some highlights.

This is the type of thing that really sets some VC firms apart from others.  Putting on these types of forums brings fresh perspective and brainpower to the things we do at an operating level every day.  Thanks to the Scale team for a great event.

Can you spot an earlyvangelist?

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More goodness from Stephen Gary Blank's great book Four Steps to the Epiphany.  Key to finding an adopter for a new or early stage product is what Blank terms an "earlyvangelist."  Here is how to spot this rare but important species in your target customer organizations:

1. Has a problem
2. Is aware of having a problem
3. Has been actively looking for a solution
4. Has put together a solution of piece parts
5. Has or can acquire a budget

As the five points above reflect, it is more than just about having the problem.  It is having it, wanting to solve it, already trying something less than ideal, and having the political will and organizational authority to garner the resources to do something more about it.

Piece of cake, right?

Big splash vs. slow drip

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There are lots of approaches to launching a product or company and many are based on the "big bang" of one event.  While major events serve a necessary purpose (as a target date/milestone) they in themselves do not dictate success.  This post from Seth Godin caught my attention and thought this part of the entry really nailed it.

"The best time to promote something is after it has raving fans, after
you've discovered that it works, after it has a groundswell of support.
And more important, the best way to promote something is consistently
and persistently and for a long time."

Definition: Cookout

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We are having a gathering here at the house tomorrow to celebrate (approximately) the little one's birthday.  As such, we are having a "cookout."  This is different than a barbeque as any Southerner knows that this is something you eat not an event you have. 

Here in the Northwest a cookout is a barbeque even if you are eating salmon.

All very confusing and the "cookout" invites have generated questions like "does that mean I bring my own food?", "is it a competition?," or even better "what is that?"

Even Wikipedia will lead you astray.  Instapundit Glenn Reynolds just made the same point.

Just trying to bring a little culture to the Northwest.

An early morning visit to Ballard

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Paid a visit to Carter Saab over in Ballard yesterday to keep the car going strong.  They are a great crew there – better than any of the other Saab dealerships I've experienced in Seattle metro or Atlanta for that matter.  Needed a bit of scheduled work so after arriving for an early morning appointment (7am), headed over to Caffe Fiore based on John's recommendation to pass the time.  Cool place and nice people.

As I've previously pointed out, Ballard is a great area of Seattle that is steeped in a bit of Scandinavian history/culture.  If you visit this city, put it on the agenda and if you are looking for a new/used car, give the folks over at Carter a shot.

Hearing weak signals

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Good post by Stu Phillips on internet noise and how many of the current approaches to "social networking" have increased "noise" but not "signal quality" and in many cases weak "signals" can't be heard above the noise. 

I think this gets at the heart of practical usage of all these platforms now available to connect and share with others.  We all have large numbers of contacts but only a handful (15-20) of highly frequent contacts, some larger number of contacts we interact with less frequently, and a significant number with no recent contact activity.  The challenge is to separate out low frequency contacts that you desire vs. those that are of passing or even no interest.