The Web 2.0 Generation

As I have worked with different companies throughout the Midwest, I’ve noticed that different cities have different characters when it comes to expressing status and image in business. Madison, for example, tends to be a more laid-back city, where the number of Bentleys and other supercars can be counted on a single hand. Chicago is completely different, however, where I frequently see extremely nice and expensive cars. Driving a $100,000+ car seems to be one of the ultimate status symbols among Chicago businessmen, like the Aston Martin DB9 that I recently saw parked near Wabash Avenue:

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I have recently been expanding the design team for Intelli-Computing, bringing in a few people with unique talents that will allow us to create richer designs and web applications. I have quickly noticed something: designing things as a team is fun and effective, but very difficult to do on a deadline. We had a meeting on Sunday, where we worked together to layout a web application, design the color scheme, and incorporate copy and photos from our creative team. We then developed a plan of attack for our programmers to develop the system, and set out to execute it. This all sounds good, but it introduces a lot of latency when different people are responsible for different components of a project, and one person can’t simply stay up all night to finish the project themselves (which I’ve done many times). We use Basecamp to enhance communication and make our collaboration more efficient, but there are still delays when one person becomes a bottleneck. In this case, it is actually me, since I had another project come up yesterday which prevented be from implementing the site layout for our programmers (in this case Mike) to go to work on.

We only have a team of four people: Matt, Brendan, Mike, and myself. I can only imagine what it would be like to try to manage a production team with hundreds or thousands of developers. I remember reading an article in the Communications of the ACM entitled What Road Ahead for Microsoft and Windows?, back when Windows Vista was still in alpha. It describes how Microsoft had so many developers independently working on so many different components of Windows that the OS eventually grew to 50,000,000 lines of code developed by more than 4,000 programmers. Dependencies led to the project grinding to a halt every time small changes were made, and eventually the codebase was scrapped as the team returned to a base of Windows XP to create the version of Vista that we have today.

In my experience, there is a critical mass of developers that you need to optimally solve a problem, beyond which additional staff actually slows down the project. It is the classic dilemma where too many cooks spoil the broth, which is an age old idea. However, big companies like Microsoft seem to have forgotten it. I see startups with teams of less than ten developers churn out huge amounts of well-written code with a speed unmatched by the juggernauts who employ thousands. That’s one of the many things that make startups so exciting, where teams can still work together to create amazing products without being weighed down by the bureaucracy of a large, established company.

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I just got back from three whirlwind days in Chicago, where I worked with MediaRiver to push out several of their widgets. It was great fun to actually meet everyone on the team face to face, and to see what life was like at such an intense startup. MediaRiver is home to a diverse blend of programmers, designers, quality assurance people, and others. Our worked involved widgets for Motley Fool, MSN Money, and Haystack’s Roadrunner Records, which are syndicated on sites to provide contextual content from the publishers. Widgets are a booming market, and MediaRiver is courting some of the biggest companies on the internet with the offer of producing widgets that will virally deliver their content to the masses.

While in Chicago, I took a bunch of pictures that show both my experiences at MediaRiver, as well as other cool things that I saw in the city. One thing that I really liked about visiting MediaRiver is that it feels like a true startup, with long hours, a relatively low-key office, and a casual dress code. Hopefully, some of that feeling is captured in the slideshows below.

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A very interesting offshoot of Flying Cart called eBay Converter has just been announced and is generating quite a bit of publicity, such as a feature on Killer Startups. The eBay Converter tool converts eBay stores to regular online stores, and eliminates the transaction and listing fees charged by eBay, as well as providing all of the other benefits of a Flying Cart store. There is currently a waiting list for invitations prior to the launch of the tool, but it looks like it has the potential to explode in the ecommerce world. It’s definitely something to watch in the coming months, and to check out if you are currently using eBay stores to sell your merchandise.

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I have been following the streaming video market fairly closely over the last year, given my previous involvement with Inzum, and my present work as a streaming video consultant. When Inzum officially launched on April 20th, 2007, we had been in contact with NBBC (the National Broadband Company) about securing NBC TV content for our site. Shortly after our launch, we stopped hearing from NBBC, at which point we learned that NBC was joining with NewsCorp (the parent company of Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch) to form their own streaming video venture, then referred to by the codename MPG. Many people saw it as another attempt at a YouTube killer, although we imagined it to be more of a preemptive Joost killer of sorts. Since then, the venture (rumored to be the brainchild of NBC’s CTO) had fallen off the map and didn’t even have a name or a vague, hinting website like many startups. It became known as Clown Co. after a joke made by some folks at Google, and was mentioned in June on TechCrunch in an article about called Everyone’s Gunning for YouTube. Still, it was not on many people’s radar screens as Joost dominated the streaming video headlines.

This changed yesterday, however. Simultaneous articles on VentureBeat and TechCrunch, titled Providence Invests $100M into NBC-NewsCorp Video Site and Wow - Clown Co. Got That $1B Valuation (Still Nameless Though) respectively. Without a beta, or even a website, Clown Co. has a projected value of one billion dollars! While a venture created by two American TV giants has a lot of potential, it has a long way to go in the public’s eye before it can prove itself to be worth that much. I will be interested to see how the streaming video market grows and solidifies, but with money like this being tossed at it, the expectations are set very high.

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People who know me know that I am passionate about startups native to my home town in Madison, Wisconsin. Ever since my first experiences in the Madison startup scene with Inzum, an abortive idea spawned in a college dorm by my good friend Ashutosh Gupta and I, Madison startups have been close to my heart.

One of the most exciting Madison startups currently in operation is Sharendipity, and I am privelaged to be working with them as they grow. Right now, Sharendipity is still in private alpha, and things are fairly under wraps. The three letters NDA mean that I can’t provide any exciting screenshots yet, but I can point you to the blog Sharendipitous Moments, with an entry by Sharendipity’s Greg Tracy called Answering the Big Question that describes the company’s mission. This is definitely a startup to watch, and you can expect to see much more about them over the coming months.

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