A Few Key People Really Can Make a Huge Difference. Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable I’m in Seattle this week. People keep asking me if I’ve “seen anything interesting.” Of course I have. I’m an entrepreneur at heart so I’m always inspired when I hear stories about innovation. I really liked BigDoor, MediaPiston, OpsCode, BuddyTV, SEOMoz and much more.
But I’m not here trolling for deals. I’m inspired by the enthusiasm of the young, emerging startup ecosystem that is here. The ingredients are all here. As I gear up to give a keynote at the annual Seattle 2.0 awards dinner on Thursday night I started to reflect on what it would take to “change the trajectory” for Seattle or for any regional market, really. And I think about the “Seattle issue” as a metaphor for startups and business in general. “Your number one priority isn’t any of these things. Him: “I know, I know. Me: “Bullshit. My recipe for Seattle or your community: 1. “Rich people don’t create jobs” — Seattle rich guy | Strange Bedfellows — Politics News. Jobs and prosperity are hurt — not helped — by a tax system that bestows its bounty on the super-rich and saps the middle class of buying power, according to a prominent Seattle entrepreneur. Writing in an article for Bloomberg View, Nick Hanauer who founded the internet media company aQuantive, Inc., acquired in 2007 by Microsoft for $6.7 billion, argues: “I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people.
But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate. “That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large and small. “And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. The super-rich paid about 40 percent in taxes during the prosperous 1960′s, argues Hanauer, and about 30 percent during the prolonged prosperity of the 1990′s. The measure lost. Matt Steckler, 1975-2011: A creative force with a million crazy ideas.
Matt Steckler No idea was too small, too silly or too offbeat for Matt Steckler, a Seattle developer and entrepreneur who died this past weekend at his home in Bellevue at the age of 36. “He was a passionate, creative entrepreneur. He was before his time on many fronts,” recalled his mom Karen Steckler. Many of Steckler’s entrepreneurial projects had an offbeat air to them, including a recent service called Arrestly that notified users when a Facebook friend ended up in the county jail. Other projects included “I Am Saint Nick,” a phone-based wishlist service that launched in 2008 and was designed so that parents could covertly gather gift ideas from their kids. Steckler’s entrepreneurial interests started at an early age.
“We remember that day as if it were today, this little guy showing an adult his excitement of being able to look at the computer screen in color,” said Karen Steckler. “It was typical Matt to pull a stunt like that,” said Weiss. Setbacks And Surprises Part Of The Deal For A Startup. Hide captionA crowd mills at Demo Day for the technology incubator TechStars in Seattle, where a group of startups presented their pitches to investors. Marketing firm Bluebox Now pitched their product at Demo Day, but faces tough decisions about their future. Courtesty TechStars Launching a new company is never easy. But in the beginning, the founders of Web-based marketing firm Bluebox Now felt they were on track. The past couple of months have been pretty gut-wrenching for the team at Bluebox Now. "That was a doozy," Reed says with a chuckle. That group wanted the startup to quit using the Bluebox name. "Instead of us paying $40,000 to fight this, we're going to end up changing our name," Reed says.
A Pitch To New Investors The startup's goal is to help its clients increase customer loyalty and spending through the use of online games and prizes, but so far just one company has signed up. After the Demo Day presentation, Bluebox CEO Naresh Dhiman sounded pretty optimistic. Startup of the Week: Zoomingo. Zoomingo co-founder Shirish Nadkarni What do entrepreneurs do during a break from the successful company they founded? Found a brand-new startup, of course. At least that was the case for Krishnan Seshadrinathan and Shirish Nadkarni, co-founders of the language learning site LiveMocha, who launched their new startup, Zoomingo, in October.
Zoomingo, a shopping discovery app for iPhones and Android phones, helps shoppers find the best sales at local retail stores without having to hop from store to store. The service catalogs sale items for a variety of goods, including clothing, jewelry, shoes and furnishings so users can search for items by category, store or brand. We caught up with Nadkarni in this installment of Startup of the Week. What is your elevator pitch? We came up with the idea… After my previous startup Livemocha, I took time off to spend with family. Seattle’s Top Entrepreneurs Band Together.