Back already!! TechCafe is putting on our second demo event!! Everyone really enjoyed seeing a few young startups last time, the startups really enjoyed the opportunity to pitch, and of course we loved putting the two groups together!!
So please join us for our (I don’t want to jinx it) Quarterly TechCafe Presents…
It is a demo event where we have carefully selected two startups from the community that are early enough in their lifecycle that paying to pitch or demo is outrageous – we are talking ramen eating, consulting on the side, (maybe some friends and family money), but really anything to make their passion happen startups!!
Like all of the TechCafe events of the past – this is a sponsored event, thanks to our friends at Fenwick & West LLP for hosting us and sponsoring!! If you want to support young startups by sponsoring a future TechCafe event please let us know.We will have three demos from young exciting startups from the area that are innovating in unique ways. These include:
Crowdmap – CrowdMap facilitates team collaboration by providing an iPad and iPhone interface for real-time mindmapping. Changes to your mind maps are automatically synced across devices and instantly synced among collaborators whether you’re working in the same room or from another time zone. It’s a simple and intuitive tool for sharing and organizing ideas from a lecture, a project or a brain-storming session. Check out CrowdMap for more details and screenshots.
Zebigo.com – Zebigo.com is a web-based dynamic ride share community which matches drivers and riders who are commuting the same way for work, going to events and for one-way trips. Zebigo.com is an innovative new approach to ride share aimed to reduce carbon emissions, alleviate traffic congestion, build a stronger sense of community and help people earn or save money during their regular commute.
Along with one more company that will be named soon.
Each company will have 8 minutes to Demo and 2 minutes for Q&A before we move on. Of course there will be food and drinks on Fenwick’s great deck before and after the Demos!! If you are looking to participate in the NWEN’s First Look Forum – presenting or observing here first is a great step to prepare yourself! This event is a part of the Seattle Geek Week – if you are coming into town for Geek Week or are a Seattle-lite taking advantage of all the geekery – please sign-up with the Geek Week Attendee ticket!!
Of course if you are interested in sponsoring, speaking, or partnering with us in some way – let us know!!
This will be our first event in Fremont!! We’ve done all over downtown (including pioneer square, belltown, sodo, capitol hill), Ballard, Redmond, Kirkland, Bellevue – but this will be the first ever in Fremont…
Pinchzoom builds mobile applications for themselves and others – in other words they have an interesting business model that includes services for other entities and building products that they sell themselves. Certainly an interesting model to look at… and looking at pinchzoom’s new digs it’s easy to see that they are doing executing very well!!
This will be Blue Gecko‘s second time hosting and this time they are going all out! We’ll be hosting just next door at the Red Lion’s terrace deck and Avelle/ Bag Borrow or Steal, Inc will be giving a talk as will Jeremiah Wilton (who should prove interesting for all you database techies)!!
Of course the event is free to attend and there will be free drinks/food, there will also be great people to talk to and network with, and an awesome talk – we changed the name, but we didn’t change the event.
Jeremiah has worked with Oracle technology since 1994. His main claim to fame is having been Amazon.com’s first database administrator, back in the pre-IPO days. For seven years, he helped Amazon.com survive exponential scaling, and a wide variety of nearly-catastrophic technology failures. Jeremiah owned and ran ORA-600 Consulting for a number of years, until it was acquired by Blue Gecko, Inc., a global provider of remote administration for Oracle, MySQL and E-Business Suite. Jeremiah also teaches the Oracle certificate program for the University of Washington. Jeremiah is an Oracle Certified Master, a member of the Oak Table, and a frequent presenter at industry conferences and user groups. His publications and whitepapers can be found at www.bluegecko.net.
This will be a fun way to kick off the TechCafe event series – we will be opening it up to more creative events as well as trying even harder to show off cool Northwest tech companies (at their offices). There are some great events in the works for the rest of summer and there is a lot more content on the site so be sure to subscribe to the feed and stay on this mailing list for information.
This wonderful logo was put together by a Seattle Lunch 2.0 community member – Mark Chrisman. Mark attended a number of the events in the past and when we were asked for the first time to partner with the WTIA on an event, we needed a logo! Mark, loving the events and being a bright guy put together this logo. As we enter the fourth year of Seattle Lunch 2.0 and update our name & brand, I want to thank Mark for all of his efforts and patronage to Seattle Lunch 2.0.
As you may have noticed, our new name is TechCafe. So why the name change? What the heck was wrong with Seattle Lunch 2.0? First, a few things about our new name and mission:
■We don’t have a new logo (yet)
■We are being run by the same folks as always (yes, by we I pretty much mean me)
■We won’t be calling ourselves TechCafe 2.0 just to fit in
■We are still putting on the same great Lunch & Happy Hour events as we have for the last three years
■We don’t plan to earn a living off of these events
■We are still excited about all of the other events and places that exist for people to connect
■We no longer are restricted to “Seattle”
■We are motivated by the great people and companies that come and go here in the Greater Seattle Area
Of course there is the simple naming & logistics problem with Seattle Lunch 2.0 – We’ve been putting on events that happen at lunch time and events that happen during happy hour… which is a little odd sometimes. We’ve been calling some of these events “Seattle Lunch 2.0 Happy Hour @host w/co-sponsor”. I know that Microsoft gets away with branding like this, but they have been outpaced by Apple now as well. We had folks showing up at lunch time for a happy hour event and people waiting until happy hour time for a lunch event. Very confusing for folks. Granted all they need to do is look at the start time – but a lot of people are busy these days so we want to make it easy with naming more like “TechCafe Lunch @Sponsor” and “TechCafe Happy Hour @Sponsor” – much less confusing for our community.
Add to this naming problem, internally we realized that, for us it was time for a change and raising the bar. As all of you are well aware, when you are working on a project that slowly grows over time there always ends up being a point where kicking it up a notch or putting it into the next gear is necessary to really make that project what it can and should be. For us at Seattle Lunch 2.0, we’ve hit that time. Somewhat inspired by the changes at Seattle 2.0, the introduction of so many great organizations (Techstars, Founders Co-op, etc), and enabled by some of the great sponsorship and friends we’ve made (through the events themselves).
June marks our anniversary date, this is the end of our third year of operations and now the beginning of our fourth. We have helped companies launch products. We have helped companies launch themselves. We have helped Seattle’s tech industry hire some of the brightest in the industry. We have enabled companies to get the buzz going about their company. We have inspired entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes. We have connected people in the tech industry for all sorts of reasons. We have enjoyed every minute of it and want to ensure we continue to offer what the community needs.
With the new site, the obvious new partnership with nPost & TechFoam, and a continued passion for the tech community in the greater Seattle area, there are some great plans in the works. These will unfold over the course of the year so you will definitely need to stay tuned here on the new blog.
We’ve been having a few great Seattle Lunch 2.0 events lately and they are definitely a blast!! A few people have been asking me about being able to get in (some of the events fill up the same day)… Some people are asking to get in so that they can meet people, while others are asking to get in so that they can hear the talks…
Recently I started recording the talks at the events, so folks at least have an idea about what went on and where the various speakers were at when the event happened. I want to include a couple here and will start to post them more regularly soon…
Here is the first one – from today Seattle Lunch 2.0 Happy Hour @Symform…
As many of you know, at last year’s Seattle 2.0 Awards I won an award for Seattle Lunch 2.0. I was a bit honored. I didn’t expect to win anything when I started making the event happen. I didn’t want all this in return when I decided more of Seattle’s tech community needed to meet each other and check out the digs of their fellow startupers.
In short, I was unexpectedly suprised and proud when I won the Seattle 2.0 Award last year. I was so thankful to the community that I thought the award deserved a place in my home that was worthwhile of the honor. I immediately knew what to do with it…
Yes, a place in my bed was the perfect location!! No? I beg to differ…. I try so hard, dedicate so much time, that the fruits of my labor should be worthy enough to share my pillow.
For some reason Robin felt that I was sorely misguided and it was the fruits of her labor, the person she dedicates so much time to, that should share her pillow – It was then that I realized that the pillow my award was on was not her spot in the bed but mine… So, I reluctantly moved my award, searching for the perfect place. What was Seattle Lunch 2.0 about anyway? The life of the party, the place where the conversation really happens and the deal really gets done.
Aha!! I know…
The kitchen! What better place… there is food, there is wine, turns out, it is hard to clean after I make one of two dishes I know how to cook on the stove (pasta) – it ended up with red sauce and wine all over it and I am usually responsible for cleaning up after my cooking so, I had to move it.
This time I picked a place where someone else was doing the cleaning on a regular basis…
Yes, that’s right! Our son Quentin does the cleaning here. Plus I figured it would be a great place to show it off to guests – you come to pray to my porcelain god? Well bow down before my award! ok, it only lasted there 30min until it was moved again…
The kids were on vacation anyway so Robin or I would have ended up doing the cleaning. Of course with the kids gone, meals at the family table were lonely – so this location made perfect sense….
Another great way to show off the award, but when the Gabriel came home to find the award in his seat he wondered what that meant for his future, we had to move it again. I searched and searched, it had been through a lot. A long journey and we were both getting tired of finding a place. This time I knew the Seattle 2.0 Awards 2010 were coming up, I also knew that Seattle Lunch 2.0 (being the awesome event that it is) had another shot at getting strong support if not a win. I had to find a place where a few of these things could go….
So, I found a nice place – made room for six of them behind it. Then I took another snapshot, posted, and crossed my fingers and hoped that I was still providing enough value to the Seattle Tech Community to be worthy of another.
Thanks for all of the support, thanks for putting on the event Marcelo, and thanks to the Seattle Tech Community for being great (even if we hold you to your reputation)!!
While reading Plato’s Republic recently, I came across his now famous Cave Allegory. I remember this from an old philosophy class I took and after reading it, I found that the philosophy text books and instructor did not do the metaphor justice. There was a lot of contextual information from the entire book, the time period that Plato was in, and the influences on Plato that made reading the metaphor in its original book more informative and interesting to think about.
The essence of the metaphor is that there are prisoners at the bottom of the cave and these prisoners can talk to each other, but cannot see each other. The only things they have to look at all their lives are the shadow reflections of items from higher up in the cave. If someone were to go higher up in the cave, they would find a fire and people who not prisoners carrying these objects that are reflected below for the prisoners to see. Here some information about the objects could be discovered, for example a tree being carried into the cave would be revealed as a tree with green leaves instead of a shadow of a tree with no color. If a prisoner was to go further out of the cave, they would find that trees actually grow in the ground, etc. In this way, the journey of knowledge is a long one and hard to understand how things truly work. In most interpretations, the metaphor is that as regular people in society we are the prisoners. In other words we understand only the shadow of the tree and not the tree itself.
Plato goes on to say that if a prisoner were to make the ascent, they would be ascending the road to knowledge. This person ascending the road would stop by the fire and see the tree, and make their way outside to discover that trees grow in the ground. Plato then goes on to say that such an intelligent person should take their superior philosophical knowledge and play the role of King or Queen and go back into the cave to rule the people. The thinking here is that the people in the cave can only do limited work because they do not have the knowledge, which means the philosopher King or Queen would do a better job at ruling the people.
Here, Plato is trying to explain an ideal society that he has been building up throughout the book. This is his way of describing his true vision of the different roles in his society in a way that comes across as deeply intellectual. He is saying that as ordinary citizens in his ideal society we are like the prisoners. The things that are harder to understand are things that take most of a lifetime to learn, so we need to send someone on a quest to learn those things so they can then make good decisions and generally rule in a better fashion than someone without this knowledge.
I’m not sure I buy this in regards to society – at least not the society that we live in today…
Plato’s society is a relatively small society; he is dealing in the context of Greece’s small city states, groups of hundreds or nearly thousands, which are drastically different than the millions in our cities. From that perspective it is hard to relate what he is talking about directly into what we view today as modern society.
Yes, this is where the management advice comes in!!
One way to view this is through the eyes of a large company as they are usually made up of a group of people the size of a Greek city state and need to go about their business so that each individual is productive in their own way and the more productive the whole group is, the better off everyone is.
Looking at this paradigm through our corporate view, it is easy to see how Plato’s ideal scenarios would and would not work. Viewing corporations where the most knowledgeable people are running the show and compelling their employees to do particular tasks even though they may not understand the big picture has its benefits. Look at Boeing for example; there are hundreds of employees who focus on a limited number of tasks without understanding how to do other tasks or what is involved in the business of building airplanes. These are prisoner type individuals at the bottom of the cave, who only focus on easy to understand things once they’ve been shown the steps – things like screwing in a few bolts in, installing an engine, etc. Due to their lack of knowledge and lack of ambition to know everything about the business of airplanes, they are able to make a decent living for themselves, be extremely productive, and make a great profit for the company. On the other hand, the philosopher king (McNerney) has an understanding of how everything gets put together. This is obviously a successful model, Boeing and many manufacturers have been using this model for hundreds of years.
Viewing a similar example, but this time with a technology company, it is easy to see where this quickly falls apart. Take any small tech company or startup, in these cases, there are people who play the part of focus and specialization; however, they also understand the business they are in and how the role they play fits together with every other piece of the puzzle. In other words they are not Plato’s prisoners; they are more like Plato’s philosophers who have chosen upon return to the cave to go back to the task that they loved so much before they knew how the world worked. Because of this passion and insight they are extremely more capable at their task and are able to innovate better than a peer who is not as insightful as they are. In other words the programmers truly enjoy the code they are writing, the testers truly enjoy the testing, and so on. The ruler or philosopher king in these companies may not be the most knowledgeable – they just like orchestrating and so they focus on that task that they love so much.
While Plato’s Cave Allegory is immensely popular, it is not applicable and omnipresent in all instances of society and groups that we see operating today. Despite this, it is insightful to show what value there is in working to achieve greater knowledge. Looking at it from an individualistic perspective it is easy to decide for oneself what level of knowledge is truly desirable for oneself. Is doing the simple tasks with no knowledge of why things are the way they are satisfactory for you as a person? Perhaps just seeing that the tree is green is enough to be happy with your life. Perhaps none of the lower levels of the cave are satisfactory and getting to the outside is all that will quench your ambitions. It is easy to see how much help and sacrifice may be required along the way for each level of knowledge and thus plan your life accordingly.
Yes it may be a stretch for the metaphor – but if you think about it… are you in a business where everyone needs to have the mental capacity to run the company even if they choose not to – or – are you in a business where one or few require this mental capacity? It’s something you should certainly know as you hire and develop an internal culture.
I may have some more thoughts on the topic in upcoming posts… On to check out Aristotle!!
I was looking at Seattle 2.0′s Startup Index today and started reminiscing over all of the wonderful startups that are on the list (and the large number of tech companies not on the list) that have hosted, spoke at, or been involved with a Seattle Lunch 2.0 event.
Of course it’s great to see four of the top five as Alumns of Seattle Lunch 2.0 – I’d prefer to see everyone on the list with a chance to get involved with a Seattle Lunch 2.0 (presenting, hosting, sponsoring, demo’ing, just being a part of the community). I’m working hard on additional sources of funding (just partnered with Fenwick & West LLP to host/sponsor a series of events for those startups in the category of bootstrapping), I’m also talking to a few other folks for arrangements like this. Of course there is lots of room for hosting one yourself.
So if you are anywhere on this list (or not on the list – like my friends at Google, Microsoft, Whitepages, etc who have hosted) don’t hesitate to reach out about getting involved with an upcoming Seattle Lunch 2.0!!
Just realized that I never actually posted this from last November – good post though
I recently spoke with Laura Rich from Fast Company about the local startup environment. She is doing a piece on startup ecosystems and has spoken with Fred Wilson, Jeff Bussgang, Brad Feld, Andy Sack, and is making her way around the country to find the things that are special in the growth of startup ecosystems.
We talked about the changing startup environment in Seattle that has grown over the last decade. It was interesting to reflect on the role of Microsoft which has had a major presence in the area as well as our major university in town (UW) and how these have played different roles over time.
Some thoughts that I left with her was that our community is growing and over the last two or three years has really morphed into more of a “startup” place. I use quotes, because in the last decade there have been a huge number of startups that grew up around Microsoft but were only in existence because of the Redmond empire. Most of these kept close to Microsoft and disappeared after a few years of offering a feature the Microsoft missed in one of their offerings.
In Fred’s talk, he attributes the changes in NYC to the people (immigrants, investment focused, creative), the visibility (yes it is New York), and the history of entrepreneurship (again, it is New York). Here in Seattle, I think some of those themes hold true as well. The people coming out of Microsoft, the UW, and Amazon are being accepted with open arms by both the local startups and the investment community just as much as the people coming here for the quality of life and the people who have been here for years doing startups. These are immigrants, business types, and creative types, as well as people who have been trained for years to build profitable products at places like Microsoft. This is different than in the past where transitioning from Microsoft or the UW into a bootstrapped startup was not looked on highly by peers or investors, there was a social norm that restricted the transition of these people. Today, the stigmatism of Microsoft employees being evil is not as great as it used to be. Additionally the number of large tech firms where a young student can be trained in the art and science of profitable software making has grown with firms like Google, Amazon, HTC, T-Mobile, Adobe, RealNetworks, F5, etc all having a large piece of their respective markets and all having a presence here. All of these places are providing a place to learn the tech business, get good with a specific technology, and go build something new.
A major amplifier of this is that now the community is accepting of these people and is happy to talk with and about them. Seattle Tech Startups has been around for a while with it’s unique alcoholics anonymous approach to helping each other is unique to the Seattle ecosystem. Seattle’s friendly atmosphere has extended itself into the tech scene with entrepreneurs always willing to help a fellow entrepreneur because we all know how hard it can be to do. Add to the online support, a number of regular in person networking events like Seattle Lunch 2.0, nPost Events, Open Coffee, GreenDrinks, Hops&Chops, and StartupDrinks the opportunity to meet people to partner with is much better than it was in the past. Add to that the larger events like Seattle 2.0 Awards, Seattle 2.0 StartupDay, StartupWeekend, MindCamp, and all the other various “camps” the accessibility of like-minded people and the accessibility of the best in the industry is much better as is the opportunity to work with those people on a side project.
All of these goings on are now being reported on and talked about by a growing group of local reporters that really like to talk about local tech stuff. The emergence of Techflash, Pomp & Surkanstance, and Seattle 2.0 have given Seattle a much broader platform where we can watch each other and let the world have a peak at us as well.
Of course Fred, Jeff, Andy, and most of the other investment types will talk about how all these things lead to more investments in a particular area. Yes, there are plenty of companies being funded by VCs and Angels, yes this is a good measure of how many companies are growing quickly. However, I disagree that these are the things that really make an ecosystem work. They are contributors but not the only contributor in making a startup ecosystem successful. The community and ability to find smart people to work with is of far greater importance in my opinion. Finding the right person to start a company with or choosing the right third employee are huge tasks for startups and in a sea of talent, finding the right talent can be hard. This is where the community and accessibility show their value and prove to be far more important than how much money you can raise.
Keep in mind….
If you have a crappy team and a lot of money, you can build a lot of crappy products for a long time. If you have a rockstar team and a little bit of money, you can build a small rockstar product in a short amount of time.
I promised a follow-up to my last post, how to get plugged-in to the local network after I spoke at NWEN‘s Entrepreneur University. It’s also a great follow-up to the last post about working less. So if you are looking for work, there are some things here that are good to learn. Thanks for everyone who sent feedback on their thoughts about the Seattle Startup community and networking in general. Here is half of the talk we gave at the NWEN EU event…
It was a lot of fun and interesting to learn from the attendees and co-panelists (Nathan Kaiser, Danielle Morrill, and Dave Schappell) what problems they had with networking and how hidden the local community appears when you are an outsider looking in.
The five points that I found most applicable were:
Do more favors for people in the community than you get from the community. The quality of favors you get in return will be worth it.
Ask for advice, not for assistance.
There are always going to be too many places to network and too many events to go to. Network where it is most convenient for you as you.
It’s ok to mix personal and business networking, it’s more fun when you are doing business with people you enjoy.
Use tools and system to manage who you are networking with, when you are networking, and why. Things like LinkedIn, facebook, twitter, salesforce are all great to help manage all of the connections and conversations. They are all useless if you are not using them to network with the people who will add value to what you are doing.
(6) – bring some breath mints or gum or something – bad breath sucks
A few of the follow-up conversations I had were also interesting…
I spoke with an attendee about the power of LinkedIN and how to go about using it to plan a conversation with someone either online or in-person. We used a scenario of a connecting with a Sr. Researcher at a company of interest. For my brief demonstration, I’ll say that I have a startup where I am trying to build a new touch based device that includes components of augmented reality for a medical purpose. For this I would start with a good LinkedIN search such as:
From here, I would expect to get a few folks in the Microsoft Research team locally and perhaps get some success…
With 9 results, I may not have much luck, but there isn’t too far to go to find out if I have a shot at finding the person that I’m looking for or not. To start, I’ll drill into each of these, keeping in mind that 2nd leve connections are easier to get to than 3rd level connections. So I’ll drill into Patrick Baudisch and see what I can find.
It doesn’t appear Patrick keeps his LinkedIN profile up to date which may be the case for researcher types. Business types are usually different and have a lot of information about what they do on their profile. The important thing though, is that Patrick does point us to his personal website. So let’s have a look…
ok, straight off of his website, this guy has done some projects with multi-touch at a nano level and blindsight (by the looks of the picture and name, I get the sense that he has figured out what is behind an object even though we can’t see it (kind of augmented reality). Hmm, sounds like a guy that may be up my alley, definitely worth following up with. Flipping back over to his profile, it’s time to see how easy I can make the introduction and if this guy would be interested in talking to me.
Looking back at the profile, I see that we are both connected to Scott Bright. I happen to be connected to Scott because of MindCamp (hence the need to attend a few good events, do some favors, so that you have the right connections to leverage when you need them).
In this case, I would ask Scott for some advice on how to meet people in the space that I’m looking for. If he doesn’t offer Patrick as a connection, I would ask directly about an introduction in-person or online.
Crowdmap – CrowdMap facilitates team collaboration by providing an iPad and iPhone interface for real-time mindmapping. Changes to your mind maps are automatically synced across devices and instantly synced among collaborators whether you’re working in the same room or from another time zone. It’s a simple and intuitive tool for sharing and organizing ideas from a lecture, a project or a brain-storming session. Check out CrowdMap for more details and screenshots.
Zebigo.com – Zebigo.com is a web-based dynamic ride share community which matches drivers and riders who are commuting the same way for work, going to events and for one-way trips. Zebigo.com is an innovative new approach to ride share aimed to reduce carbon emissions, alleviate traffic congestion, build a stronger sense of community and help people earn or save money during their regular commute.
