Is it me or does the west coast technology scene resemble something of a car accident?

Who's in?  Who's out?  Who gets an unfair look at coverage?  Who charges for what?

Among all that catfighting and negativity, how is anyone supposed to get their startup taken seriously? 

A VC asked me the other day if I was thinking about participating in TechCrunch 50 and I nearly laughed out loud.

I respect Jason Calacanis and Mike Arrington for their ability to self-promote, but remember, its self promotion that's their specialty, not the promotion of others.  Once again, the big news coming out of TechCrunch 50 isn't the companies--we don't even know who they are yet--it's the promoters. 

Let's get it straight.  No company has ever been made or broken on TechCrunch, and the idea that Mike has been called a "kingmaker" is laughable.  If he was a kingmaker, he would have taken the $5 million he had to build Edgio, and made himself a startup king. 

Instead, he found out that there's no substitute for a great product and great marketing.  That's what makes or breaks companies.  If you've built something really great, you need to systematically find your target audience and get them using it, and build in the product features that make it easy to spread.  For most startups, the crowd at TechCrunch50 and Demo isn't anything close to the userbase most of these companies are looking to get.

In fact, if you're participating in anything that has an embargo attached to it, you're wasting valuable opportunities to get in front of reporters when there aren't dozens of other companies all trying to launch at the same time.  You can say that TechCrunch 50 has no cost, unlike Demo, but there's a real cost to it.   Time is money to entrepreneurs, and if you're not allowed to talk to reporters, and each day you burn more of your own or your angels money, participating in this conference is costing you real money. 

That's another reason why I'm happy to be building my company here on the east coast, where we don't let all this startup stuff get to our heads, because our egos are kept in check by the enormity of other industries around us.   When you're big in tech in the Valley, you're huge.  When you're big in tech in NYC, you've still got a ways to go, and for a hungry entrepreneur, that's a much healthier place to be. 

"I believe I can help to grow our community, evolve the purpose of the organization, strengthen our partnerships with related organizations, and evangelize our vision to the greater population. I bring a fresh perspective and want to challenge some of the preconceived notions about what’s possible in this community. We’re at the tipping point of going mainstream and need to prepare for the influx of new professionals to come. I want to help make it happen."

- Whitney Hess

Whitney is super-committed to building community and I'm a big fan of her professional approach.  If you are an IAI member, please consider giving her your vote.

It's almost as if they were writing for Obama in a message to the Republicans:

"I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid... you're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you."   - Neo, The Matrix

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Don't they have awards for this stuff?  It should get one.  It's part of the Unplug your friends campaign.

The other day, someone asked on the nextNY list who my "must read" blogs where.

I went to my feedreader and noticed something interesting.  By almost a 2:1 margin, the people whose blogs I read are people I know.  By and large, they were either blogs of friends, or blogs of professional contacts I had interacted with extensively either online or offline.

So my blog list is really just a list of people I know.  I read very few people just because I feel like I have to read them, and those that used to be in that category I've since tried to meet, if nothing more than just saying hi at a conference and e-mailing.

To me, that makes a lot more sense, because blogs, at their heart, are really made out of people.  They're a social technology, and if you're not socializing as part of your blog reading, as the lolcats say, "ur doin it wrong."   When you read a blog and never comment, never e-mail the author on the side, don't show up to the same meetups and conferences, you're basically treating blogs a passive, non-interactive mainstream media--and really missing out on a lot of potential. 

If you're reading this blog and not commenting, I can't see how you're really getting that much value, to be honest.  You could read about social media and tech stuff anywhere--but you can't get ME anywhere, and I'm just a comment, e-mail, or Plugoo message away.  (Can't say enough about that widget... my mom messages me almost everyday through it.)

The desire to consume and publish content to and from a small group of closely connected people is something tech types always underestimate.  Web 2.0 fanboys often know very little about the dynamics of places like LiveJournal, where an intensely loyal and close-knit community often shared with just 3 or 4 people on average--and there are a lot more LJers than there are Scobles of the world.  I've said it before, but most people don't want to broadcast to the world and be the most popular, nor do they want more content from people they don't know--they want relevance, and a sense of authentic community, which tends to be smaller.   That's also why Tumblr is taking off.  If you think it's just another blogging tool, you're not seeing the people connections in between. 

At the end of the day, I just don't have the time to hear about everything in the world...   but I need to make time to hear about what's going on in my friends' lives, and also to use them as a filter for content.  They are a filter not because we like the same stuff, but because their content meets the most important criteria of them all:

"Stuff someone I care about is likely to talk to me about soon..."

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What are they making a big deal of this for?  I mean, it's not like she'll be a 72 year old cancer survivor's heartbeat away from the presidency...

"...the questions swirling around Ms. Palin... brought anxiety to Republicans who worried that Democrats would use the selection of Ms. Palin to question Mr. McCains judgment and his ability to make crucial decisions."

Disclosures on Palin Raise Questions on Vetting Process - NYTimes.com

This scares me, too.  Kids are too into Paris Hilton and not into science.  We prevent people with technical skills from coming into this country b/c our immigration policy is FAIL. 

"Ms. Estrins book is the latest call to action during the last several years by scientists, technologists and political leaders worried about the countrys future competitiveness in technology. In 2005, the National Academies published Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a report requested by Congress, which found that federal financing of research in the physical sciences was 45 percent less in 2004 than in 1976 and that 93 percent of students in grades five through eight learn science from teachers who do not hold degrees or certifications in the topics. In 2007, the book Innovation Nation by John Kao, a business consultant, revived the debate."

Another Voice Warns of an Innovation Slowdown - NYTimes.com

Let me make this clear:  There's no shortage of money in NYC. 

A lot of deals get funded by random groups of angels, hedge fund managers, and other out of the way pockets of cash. 

There is, however, a shortage of experienced, local venture capital firms actively putting money to work here.  I'm sure people will disagree about the value that a VC can bring to a deal, but in my mind, they bring significant value to the community.

I was talking with a banker today about it, and there's definitely something to the "Silicon Valley VC mafia" phenomenon--that they all know each other and do deals together.  What they also do, which is incredibly valuable, is work with local universities, tech counsels, entrepreneur groups, etc., and actively participate in the community.  Their deals get huge press at funding time.  Their reputation of success is the community's reputation. 

By being consistantly active, they draw startups closer to them geographically.  That doesn't happen when a random hedge fund guy and his buddies put two million in a startup here in New York, because only that startup knows them.  That money builds a company, not a community.  Sure, money is nice, but VC's provide glue for the community in terms of the networks formed among deals they've invested in and support of the local community. 

Unfortuately, we don't have much of that in NYC.  If you're an early stage technology company, you're going to Union Square Ventures, Greycroft, Venrock, DFJGotham, SAVP, RRE, Softbank...and...  and who else?  These are good firms, but they don't represent enough of a critical mass--a mafia, if you will--to attract companies and talent here from the outside the way VC firms in the Valley do.  To be honest, USV and Greycroft haven't even been around for that long, even though their partners have.  RRE, which is a good firm with a successful record, says they generally invest between $5-10 million on their site, although they did less than that in drop.io.  I do hear they're looking to go earlier and smaller, so that's good.  Plus, I suppose Bessemer is in Larchmont and Canaan is in Connecticut.  These are clearly top tier firms, but if you can't go to the Shake Shack for lunch on a regular basis, are you really in the middle of this community? 

Comparatively, I'm going out to the Valley for VC meetings in mid-September, and I've got meetings with a dozen firms in three days--basically within blocks of each other in SF and then two days in similar proximity down in the Valley.  I know there are just a ton more firms out there, but it shouldn't be that there's such a difference in experience for an entrepreneur.

One major difference is community presence.  A lot of NYC-area entrepreneurs can't name more than a handful of NYC area funds and have never met a VC in person at a startup event.  I think a lot of NYC-area VCs could stand to be a lot more visable--attracting more deal flow by participation the way Union Square Ventures does.  Two or three NYC firms blogging and being transparent they way they are would count like 8 more firms doing deals here.

In terms of other firms, there's one firm not listed here that you might not realize that has done 10 technology deals right here in NYC since October of 2005. 

Take a guess.

Figured it out yet?

It's Spark Capital.  Ten out of their twenty-two deals have been done right here in the Big Apple--the most they've done in any city.   Spark has invested in 10 New York companies: 5min, AdMeld, Bug Labs, Covester, iminlikewithyou, Inform, KickApps, Next New Networks, Tumblr, and Clear.  Perhaps Spark should open an office here.  I, for one, would welcome another firm with a presense right here in the city.   Frankly, it surprises me that there aren't more, given the number of deals that get done here.  Even if you didn't plan on making all your investments in NYC, it's pretty centrally located on the east coast to do deals in DC, Boston, even Toronto. 

And it's not like deals aren't getting done here--but by out of town firms.  Redpoint did Right Media.  Accel put a bunch of cash into Etsy.  Emergence Capital just invested in Lotame.  Again, this helps the individual companies, but doesn't really help the community at large as would more early stage players doing similar kinds of tech deals with each other.

So who here is actually doing deals here in the New York Metro area?   I went into Thompson's VentureXpert database and ran some numbers on which firms have done "Early Stage", "Information Technology" deals in the last 5 years.  I'm sure some of the numbers are off (like Spark's number, which would seem to make it the 2nd most prolific NYC investor), but here's a list below of all the firms that had done two or more deals.  I don't have much more to say about the topic... hopefully you guys have some interesting takes on the situation...

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more animals

Zoe got cookied...  I welcome cookies and other forms of culinary schwag on this blog.  An entrepreneur's gotta eat...

"She connected to me through someone I know. Check.

She wrote an honest, friendly and personal email. Check.

She didnt pretend to be a long time reader of my blog. Check.

And there are no obligations as to what I have to write. Check.

Oh...and I get free cookies that are probably going to be delicious! Check!"

Free Cookies from New Moon Kitchen | medium & the message

Don't be shy.  We know you're out there reading, even though you just lurk.

Almost everyday, a recruiter calls our office number, even though we ask people not to on our site.  I'll let you all in on a secret--that number is not a real phone that rings.  It goes straight to PhoneTag and dumps into my e-mail in a transcription, so you're actually better off just e-mailing me.

The truth of the matter is, you all just kind of seem the same to us startup folk. 

You're selling us people...and we're a pretty hyperconnected group.  You'd be hard pressed to convince me that you can find anyone that I couldn't find on my own by just putting in some hours on LinkedIn or e-mailing various usergroups.  When I look up a recruiters name and they have 123 LinkedIn connections and I have 982, I think "What are the chances of them finding someone in NYC before I will?"

You're not selling screening--well, at least most of you seem like you're not, because the profiles I've been sent from recruiters so far are never really that good of a fit--and my CTO will still have to screen them thoroughly anyway.  Plus, so much of screening is about personality and fit, especially for an early stage company, and since the recruiters I talk to don't seem to have much interest in getting to know me as a person, I'm not sure how they could match me with a co-worker personality-wise.

But you know what... I could be totally wrong... and some of you are, in fact, really good at what you do.  The trouble is, I hear from all of you in the same way, leaving random messages on voicemail, or responding to my job posts, so you seem like a dime a dozen.  Where are you actively differentiating yourselves through branding?  Marketing?  Perhaps a little transparency in the process so that I could actually see why I could never accomplish what you could would go a long way--because this Web 2.0 world is all about transparency and we don't trust black boxes.

Good startups try and differentiate themselves by blogging--getting their name attached to good thoughtwork and getting into conversations around ideas.  Where are the really good NYC technical recruiting blogs?  Heck, if a NYC-area recruiter started a blog about hiring in this market, I think we'd all flock to it--and if you were really that good, we'd realize that recruiting is a helluva lot harder than we thought.  You could even post candidate profiles.  Give us your best tips on finding people, because, at the end of the day, most of your clients simply don't have the time or savvy to do what you do anyway, so you wouldn't be losing business by blogging, you'd be gaining it.

Not only that, why aren't you participating more in the community? 

I've met lots of random folks from the nextNY list and the range of people that actively participate here is pretty wide--from venture people to developers, business people, marketers, lawyers, etc...  but I can't think of a tech recruiter actively contributing here.   I don't mean self-marketing... I mean participating in the dialog.  That's partly why entrepreneurs really don't think highly of a lot of recruiters.  You act more like outsiders and salespeople, and less like one of us.

Are their NYC area tech recruiters on Twitter?  (And not just twittering their open positions or people for hire...)  Feel free to follow me at @ceonyc and send me a note!

This community needs strong recruiters, though...   not just recruiting people out of banks, but from out of state. 

Recruiters can be great evangelists for the NYC tech scene--I just don't really see them participating much in it.  
If you're a recruiter, and you're really interested in participating more in the tech community here, maybe this could help elevate your name from the noise in my voicemail.  nextNY will have a special event which I'll announce as soon as I sign the paperwork on it that needs some sponsorship.  E-mail me at charlie dot odonnell at gmail for details.

Given that you could probably cover the cost of sponsorship a couple of times over with just a single hire, and that there will be 200-300 tech folks at this event, I'd think the math would work out for you to take part, no?   I think it would be a really great opportunity to differentiate yourself and to open up a discussion about what you can do for startups, live and in person, not on phonemail.

You all really need to clear your calendars for 9/16 from 6-8PM.  Trust me.  :)  Details soon.

What if I wrote a blog post... 

I've been reading all the right ones, following all the memes.  I've been thinking...about data portability, Facebook, the iPhone, monetization, being an entrepreneur, platforms, VCs, the Loch Ness monster and the theory of Atlantis. 

I have a good theory... err... Top 10 List... that ties them all together.  It's funny, too--even has some lolcats in it.  Yup...  Everyone will be talking about "meme platforms", because that's the new Web 2.0 catch phrase I created for this post.

I'll write it from my blog publishing software, and use Zemanta to suggest links, tags, metatags, keywords, related videos, suggested articles, other books you might want to buy, people you may know, lovers you have had before, fantasy baseball free agents on the upswing, and an appropriate chardonnay to go with this post.  I will not, however, check spelling.

I won't linkbait, but I can't help but quote smart folks like Robert Scoble, Fred Wilson, Om Malik, Henry Blodget, and MacRumors.

But first, I need to tell everyone I know about it--and right away.  This is too important to wait for them to read it in their Google Reader.  I'll post it to Twitter, and Hacker News, because... well..  I'm sure there are some people I know there, too.  I suppose while I'm at it, I'll tag it in del.icio.us, Digg it, StumbleUpon it, Sphere it, Reddit... it... (allow myself to introduce... myself), Newsvine it, Share it from Google Reader, since I of course read my own feed in my feedreader, you know... just to see what the feed looks like and that it's still working, Mixx it, Furl it, Ma.gnolia it, Slap it, Flip it, Rub it down, oh no!! 

And for a few close personal friends, I may IM it to them, too, just in case they didn't get my public DiggBeg.

And then...   I'll wait.

I'll wait for the inbound links and the traffic and all the blog love... and the haters, too.  That's ok.  I'm sure some troll will comment on my Friendfeed about how I have no idea what I'm talking about.  Flame war!  Everyone will start talking about it...  The Disqus comment notification e-mails start pouring in.  I respond and respond... and sometimes I respond to my own responses, creating a small tear in the space-time continuum.  I like words that have two u's in them in a row.  Am I talking in a vacuum? 

All of the sudden... BAM.  There it is... barely perceptible in small font all the way at the bottom, but it's definitely there. 

I'm on Techmeme.

Do I post a call for more links to push it up the list?  Naa... that would be pushing it.  I can't watch.  It's too much.   I need to go do something else.  I'll go monitor the del.cio.us/popular list.  OMG I'm already #3! 

Dammit...  

Stuck behind "100 CSS Hacks for people who still can't get shit to work in IE" and "50 incredible photos of children getting struck by lightning".

I'll never get past those.  Oh well...  3's pretty good I guess.

The real question is how many more RSS readers am I going to tack on?  I need to get to that next psychologically satisfying number...  the big 3000.   Of course, it's really just 1000 people who have inserted my feed into three different readers at one time or another but still... it's a nice looking number, no? 

Hmm... that gives me another idea.  Yes, that's it!  Tomorrow's post!

"Monetizing Meme Platforms...  ...in Second Life!"

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