A Sack of Seattle

Updates to investors

We've become huge fans of weekly updates by our entrepreneurs.  Not all of the entrepreneurs are doing this yet....but in time I expect (*hope) all of them do.  The weekly updates have the following benefits:

• Require the entrepreneur to process their thoughts and their progress toward goals regularly.
• Assist investors who care about the success of the advisor to feel emotionally connected to the company
• Enable investors and advisers to proactively make suggestions and proffer guidance 
• Make commitments of milestones (i.e. sales and revenues) to many people. The more people you say you're going to do something the more likely you are to do it -- if you don't do it, you have more egg on your face!

The ping pong case was the give away

I attended the Tech Flash ping pong tourney and BBQ on Thursday. It was a great event. I was a bit unlucky in my ping pong draw -- my bracket had the odds on pre-tourney phenom "nam le" (sp?) in it and in my first and only game I played Isaac of mechanical turk fame (formerly from Amazon).  I knew I was in trouble when he pulled out his ping pong case and it had a selection of 3 racquets. I know lots of people with ping pong racquets. Heck -- I own one. But I don't know many who have the ping pong case!  it was a dead give away for a ringer. I couldnt' do anything with his spin serve -- and lost 2-0. I had fun anyway. Nice job John Cook and Todd Bishop -- the organizers of the event and the founders of TechFlash.

twitter black hat?

I think there's going to be a group of companies that emerge that are considered twitter white, gray, and black hat. There's a whole ecosystem developing around twitter that's going to be fascinating to watch. I've been watching with great interest the evolvement of microblogging, real time search, and twitter development in general. Lots to come.

Big tuna toasted well

This is my new favorite daily order at the high end convenience store across the street from Founder's Co-op. I just ordered it for lunch again and the order gave me a smile. It made me think "am I a big tuna?!" and it also made me think about the daily rituals of my life like:

• a 7 minute steam shower and shave followed by a few tabs of Chanel aftershave
• a single shot non fat latte from louisa's
• a tour of twitter and Facebook
• a quick check of CNBC and stock prices of the S&P, Apple, Google and Amazon
• a walk to lake union to check out the water and the boats
• a review of Google news for headlines and hopefully some of my favorite blogs
• 15 minutes of some kind of exercise (stairmaster most often)
• Lastly -- write a blog post (doesn't happen everyday but I want it to)

Graph of M&A activity

M&A activity, originally uploaded by a sack of seattle.

I thought this graph was interesting

What's the impact of the 2009 financial crisis on American culture?

I was recently asked this question by a reader of my blog -- and thought it was such a good question that I'd ask all of you.

My initial answer -- "I don't know" was accurate but insufficient.  I think that this past year is going to be perceived as having a significant impact on our culture. Below are some random thoughts on the question in the title of this post:

• The crisis was self inflicted and could not be externalized that easily. It's a little like a smoker who develops a bad cough.
• The crisis was not bad enough to cause real crisis in the streets -- or more specifically, the crisis wasn't so bad as to unite people in an emotion of grief, frustration, anger.
• The Madoff story gives both an externalized bad guy and a mechanism for uniting people emotionally. 
• People who were conservative with debt are the ones that worked through this period the easiest. 
• Our way out of the crisis includes the issuance of massive amounts of country debt -- the repayment of which remains a question.
• I like the idea of Pres. Obama and Gov. Schwarzenegger as the best bond salesman in the history of the world.

Is it an ah-hah moment or a duh moment?

I was talking with Tom Staples of Cooler Planet about a recent realization he's had about our SEO and SEM strategy. Tom made the declaration at a recent meeting that he wants to focus on "Solar Energy" as one of the main key words for the company. It is among the highest volume keywords in our niche.  If you started a company in the solar space 2 years ago (and we did) you'd think that "Solar Energy" would be an obvious keyword to focus on ....and it was. But there was something in the process of the past 2 years that made Tom reiterate the need for renewed focus on the keyword "Solar Energy" for SEO and SEM.  In that moment, I wondered if we had both an ah-hah and a duh moment. Well, it was both. But, better to focus on the positive ah-hah moment and really operationalize the focus on the Solar Energy keyword.  Throughput a company's life, you constantly remind yourself of some of the things you knew at the beginning. That is good. This is just one very concrete example.If you're in business online, focusing on high volume (perhaps lower conversion) obvious keywords is a  good place to start....and to return to. Duh.

VCs are worried about exits

VCs are worried, originally uploaded by a sack of seattle.

I thought this was interesting.

Back from vacation

Sorry for my unannounced absence, I hope you figured out that I was on vacation. I'm back and digging out of email back log....plan on writing more this week as I get back in the swing of blogging and working.   Hope you had a nice holiday.