I first came across My Morning Jacket on a late night viewing of Austin City Limits and I was hooked. Amazing sounds hailing from Louisville, KY. They just released a new album and I highly recommend it – Evil Urges
A huge loss
If you haven't picked this up yet, Tim Russert of NBC News and Meet the Press passed away today from a heart attack.
I am a bit of a Sunday news show junkie and always appreciated Mr. Russert's direct and non-partisan approach to interviews and questions.
In a media age of screaming pundits blathering on based on talking points provided by their respective political party's communciations team, he was truly a breath of fresh air.
I will miss him and my thoughts are with his family.
Jigsaw adds a free piece to the corporate information puzzle
This is interesting. Jigsaw is making its "corporate data" available for free via its Open Data Initiative to CRM systems from Entellium, Landslide, Maximizer, NetSuite, Oracle, Sage and SugarCRM. Looks like a finger in the eye for Hoovers. I did a post a while back on contact information as currency which is Jigsaw's user generated model.
Intel Capital portfolio companies on display
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
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?
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?
Congrats to Nick Mehta
Nick recently joined LiveOffice as CEO. I originally met and worked with him during my time at both Orchestria and MessageGate. He use to run the Enterprise Vault product line at Symantec and we went through the twists and turns of partnership together. He is now heading up hosted email services (Exchange, archiving, compliance, e-discovery, etc.) company LiveOffice. Check out his new blog here.
What my daughter taught me yesterday
Riding the escalators up and down at Bellevue Square (or anywhere for that matter) is really fun. I hadn't really thought much about it but from her perspective it's one step away from an amusement park.
Big splash vs. slow drip
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."
Social media primer
Another clever video from Seattle-based CommonCraft. This one covers the basics (and value) of much hyped social media (via Jeremiah Owyang).
Venture Vice 