Marketing expertise takes a Denver company global
1110_ 11/14/11 - We're back to check in on Denver based SwiftPage CEO, Bob Ogdon. It's been over a year and Bob tells us Swiftpage's world has become the whole world - in fact they've started actively working in the European countries of Germany, France and soon to be Spain. And, they do a lot of work in South Africa and Australia as well. SwiftPage is an email marketing company. They deliver, for the small business segment, a platform where they can send out their newsletters or marketing messages. It's inexpensive, targeted to that small, micro up to 100 employee type businesses - Swiftpage's main focus. Bob tells us they really get to market through OEM partnerships who have large audiences of small businesses and add a service to their service. And, they are seeing this dramatic change in the market where people have decided to try to get more money out of their existing customers. - So these small companies are trying to add new services rather than spending their money on getting new customers. You can try the SwiftPage service for free then the subscription starts at $15. They also have a service called Drip Marketing which is really bringing automated marketing down to small business. It's something that has been a mid market to enterprise solution. Larry asked Bob, “If you were to sit down with an entrepreneur, given the challenges we've faced over the past few years, what advice would you give them?” "Well as a matter of fact, said Bob, "I do sit down with a lot of entrepreneurs, and they're not all young - a lot of people are going down this path. The best time to start a business is in a down market. You spend the early phase of your business formulating plans, testing, reaching out, finding things that people need. Difficult periods are also times of change and that's when there are shifts in what would be available, opportunities. My encouragement is for people to look for what the world is going to be five years from now. Start building it and be ready when they show up." ...Listen for more details...
Related Links: Swiftpage || Try Swiftpage Free || Sage SalesLogix || Mastering Change Book || Keywords: Bob Ogdon, Swiftpage, Email Marketing, Surveys and Web Forms, Drip Marketing, Call List, Integrated Solutions, Sage SalesLogix, Newsletters - Bytes: bytes=4734540
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Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower
1118_ 11/28/11 - We are here at the fabulous Defrag 2011 event, right here at the Omni Hotel, one of our favorites with founder Eric Norlin. Eric began organizing technology conferences in 1999. In 2002, he became an owner and organizer of Digital ID World, which was acquired by IDG via a joint venture in 2005. More recently, he founded SaaScon (Software as a Services conference) in conjunction with IDG World Expo. Eric's foray into technology began when his father brought home a Commodore 64, evolved into work with the National Security Agency, and transitioned into roles running content for technology conferences, writing articles for technology publications and serving as a vice president of marketing at an identity technology startup (Ping Identity). They started Defrag as something that was supposed to be a topical show where they'd explore a certain theme around information overload and how we're going to deal with that. Eric's running joke is that Defrag was about big data before big data was cool. But over the years, the feedback they received was that people were really interested in passionate people, passionate about specific ideas, as much as they were about having a conversation around a specific theme. So this year is the first time Defrag has been unhinged from any one theme. Larry asked Eric what he saw as the challenges facing people today with all these new technologies... Eric said, "It's interesting, the tech world, especially from the startup side hasn't felt the recession all that much. If anything, they've felt a talent shortage. I think one of the biggest problems that people are facing isn't about raising capital, great ideas or innovation - but once they get over that hump and raised the capital, there aren't the right people to hire. They're just not turning out enough engineering students, or if they are it's in different countries and they're not getting the visas to come work here. So there is a real talent shortage. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected."...Listen for more details...
Related Links: Defrag 2011 || Defrag 2012 || Software Channel || Mastering Change Book || Keywords: Eric Norlin, Defrag, Accelerating the AHA Moment, Digital Identity, API's, Mobile, Social Customer, Platform Shift, Collaboration, Social Networks, Activity Streams bytes=2842856
LISTEN TO: Eric Norlin - Defrag 2011 - 5th Anniversary

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Brad Feld reveals his true beginning while getting Unplugged
1000_ 4/18/11 - Brad Feld was corralled and interviewed by Jill Van Matre, Associate Director of Atlas and co-moderates this last Entrepreneurs Unplugged event for Spring 2011 with Brad Bernthal (BB) who is Clinical Law Professor at the CU Law School and Director of the Silicon Flatirons Center Entrepreneurship Initiative. BB asked Feld, "In terms of getting things started, give us a little background. You have family here, grew up in Texas and some of the more interesting things I've seen in those interviews you've done is a list of influential business people including your grandfather. What did your grandfather do and what kind of influence did he have on you growing up?" (SPECIAL NOTE: Brad is his usual entertaining self - we have a two minute video - please watch. We're sure you'll enjoy!) Brad Feld said, "My grandfather was an immigrant, came here from Austria, (so my father is first generation American). He was an entrepreneur; he had his own clothing factory. The type of clothing that he made is the stuff that has rhinestones on it. The people who carried his clothing were like the knock-off of Marshalls. He had a factory in Florida, this bad, bad, kind of burnt out warehouse in the middle of the worst part of Miami. He was this salt of the earth kind of guy and he didn't believe in anything made after 1950. So every piece of machinery was pre 1950. When machines broke down he'd have to figure out what to do. When friends died, he'd go and buy their machinery for parts and replacements. So I think sort of growing up and watching him sort of make his own way in the world, be completely entrepreneurial was an early inspiration. My dad (Stanley Feld) had his own medical practice that was about a $10 million/year business at the peak. He had four partners and 30 or 40 employees. I remember also watching that grow from one person; he started out in private practice, to a real business. I never really thought hard about not doing my own thing from very early on." Feld shares so much more including in 1978 when he turned 13. "Gold was about $400/oz and Krugerrands were all the rage and when you got Bar Mitzvahed you took your Bar Mitzvah money and bought Krugerrands, that's what all my friends were doing. I thought that was stupid, I wanted a computer. I had about $1,600. a fortune, so I took my dad to a computer store." Part 2 is coming with Professor Bernthal‘s next query: Take us from the community college to MIT and the start of Feld Technologies. Tune in next week!
Related Links: Silicon Flatirons, ATLAS, and ITP || Brad Feld Blog || Brad Feld Video || Foundry Group || Do More Faster Book || Economy Builders || Entrepreneurs Unplugged Photos || Keywords: Brad Feld, Jill Van Matre, Brad Bernthal, Silicon Flatirons Center, Entrepreneurship Initiative, Atlas, Foundry Group, Do More Faster Book, Stanley Feld - 4/18/2011
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Brad Feld: Community college to MIT
1004_ 4/25/11 - This is part 2 of Brad Feld's Interrogation. Jill Van Matre, Associate Director of Atlas and co-moderates this last Entrepreneurs Unplugged event for Spring 2011 with Brad Bernthal (BB) who is a clinical law professor at the law school and Director of the Silicon Flatirons Center Entrepreneurship Initiative interviewed Brad panel style. Part 2 begins with Professor Bernthal’s query: "Take us from the community college to MIT and the start of Feld Technologies." Brad replied, "I was your typical high school kid in Dallas, I did well in school, ran track. I was moderately social when I wasn't reading or playing with my computer. I was a pretty good tennis player until, I discovered computers and girls. And those two things ruined my tennis career when I was about age 14. I never really thought about where to go to college." (Here we have the two-and-a-half minute video, View Video- the MIT experience.) It was the girlfriend... in 8th grade - she was fascinated with MIT. and that stuck in Brad's head so he applied. He got in early and threw away all his other college applications. So, he went to MIT and MIT was a fascinating place. Brad says he's glad he went there. It was the right place for him. "Because," he said, "MIT is a daily assault on your self-esteem. You realize there is no such thing as being the smartest guy in the room... forget it, there's just no way that's going to happen. So that dynamic plays forward in your life when you realize you don't have to be the smartest person in the room to be successful and accomplished. But, you have to work hard, you have to be focused, you have to go after something you really care about. and that's how I got to that place where I started what became Feld Technologies. Next week, Jill Van Matre asks Brad to talk about the beginning of Feld Technologies.
Related Links: Silicon Flatirons, ATLAS, and ITP || Brad Feld Blog || Brad Feld Video || Foundry Group || Do More Faster Book || Entrepreneurs Unplugged Photos || Keywords: Brad Feld, Jill Van Matre, Brad Bernthal, Silicon Flatirons Center, MIT, Entrepreneurship Initiative, Atlas, Foundry Group, Do More Faster Book, Stanley Feld
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Checks for $5,000 to $10,000 a month in college
1016_ 5/16/11 - This is part 3 of Brad Feld's saga,
Jill Van Matre, Associate Director of ATLAS, co-moderates this last Entrepreneurs Unplugged event for Spring 2011 with Brad Bernthal who is a clinical law professor at the law school and Director of the Silicon Flatirons Center Entrepreneurship Initiative, interviewed Brad Feld panel style. Brad started out, "When I was in school, remember I had been tutoring... as a freshman, MIT had this program called UROP, Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, and basically you can get jobs in research labs. I was in computer science and got a job in Seymour Papert's lab, the guy who created the Logo programming language. I spent a semester helping to put the logo language on a new computer coming out. When I say that, I was kind of the junior grunt on the team that was making sure that things kind of worked. And it was alright, but it paid $6/hr, not quite like my tutoring job. So, somehow, I started doing some consulting, spread sheet stuff... The path to starting my own business was, my senior year in high school I got a job, after tutoring, I got a job working for TechCom. This was an oil and gas software company in Dallas Texas in 1982, husband and wife team. I was their first employee. They grew in 83-84 to about 30 people. I wrote two of their products and got paid $10/hr and I got 5% of gross revenue. While I was a freshman in college, I was regularly getting checks for $5,000 to $10,000 a month." I bet Brad has some other on how to 'Do More Faster'...For more, watch and listen to the video...Next week, "What did you take from Martindale to Feld Technologies?"
Related Links: Brad Feld Blog || Silicon Flatirons, ATLAS, and ITP || Brad Feld Video || Foundry Group || Do More Faster Book || Entrepreneurs Unplugged Photos || Keywords: Brad Feld, Jill Van Matre, Brad Bernthal, Silicon Flatirons Center, MIT, Seymour Papert, Entrepreneurship Initiative, Atlas, Foundry Group, Do More Faster Book, 5/16/11

Brad Feld before there was wireless networking
1024_ 5/31/11 - In this 4th Video segment, we get the 'great story teller' and his best friend/partner selling their business. Again Brad Feld is hilarious, we're sure you will enjoy this segment as much if not more than the first three. We will publish the entire two hour audio as we wrap up the five video segments...Brad says, "We never thought about an exit strategy. So we have this business; we're making pretty good money, we were paying ourselves $100,000, so it was pretty high margin for a consulting business. We knew to go from $2 Million to $4 Million we'd still make half-million dollars in profit. So we figured out we hit this inflection scale point that by doubling the business, I couldn't do all the selling - so we'd have to bring in some non-revenue selling people. He couldn't do all the management. We didn't have people in the business that could actually manage upper level... so we're in this kind of what should we do state. One of the companies we did some work with was a cable company. This was back before there was wireless networking. Like coaxial cabling, I mean it was really funny. There might be a problem and you'd tear down the walls in these first class office buildings to figure out where the cable had been chewed threw by a rat that wasn't supposed to be in a first-class office building. We ended up being approached by the people that had bought this cable company. This again not cable TV but cable wiring company. Here's another guy, Len Fassler, he's been an incredible mentor and partner of mine. I remember one day he came to Boston...watch and listen for more...
Related Links: Brad Feld Blog || Silicon Flatirons, ATLAS, and ITP || Brad Feld Video || Foundry Group || Do More Faster Book || Entrepreneurs Unplugged Photos || Keywords: Brad Feld, Jill Van Matre, Brad Bernthal, Silicon Flatirons Center, AmeriData, Len Fassler, Entrepreneurship Initiative, Atlas, Foundry Group, Do More Faster Book, 5/31/11 Bytes: 5365658
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Seth Levine gives advice to leaders and entrepreneurs
1027_ 6/6/11 - We are here at the Glue Conference with one of the founders, Seth Levine. Foundry Group along with their conference partner Eric Norlin put on the Glue Conference every year. This one really focuses on the web platform. In particular this year, they've been talking about API, infrastructure and how important it is to have open platforms and to figure out the right services to connect to those platforms. Seth went onto explain the Glue conference. "This is primarily a technical audience here, but we do have a lot of C level people who come. There are a handful of presentations that are a tad higher level, talking more about direction of infrastructure and technology trends. So we get a bunch of people who come for that, and of course a lot of the CEO's of businesses that are in attendance here are relatively technical. We get the occasional VC who's scratching their head wondering what some of these terms mean." Larry said, "Tell us a little about Foundry Group." Seth replied, "So I founded Foundry with three other guys, Brad Feld, Jason Mendelson Ryan McIntyre, all of whom have been featured on the program. we started the firm in 2006, raised our first fund in 2007 - $225 Million - we invested that in the end of 2007 time period through 2010 and just last October, we raised our second fund, also $225 Million. We invest, primarily in early stage technology businesses, across a couple of different themes and we invest across the country." Seth went onto sharing some great advice to entrepreneurs and leaders in today's environment...Listen and get ready to take some notes...
Related Links: Seth Levine Blog || Glue Conference || Foundry Group || Software Channel || Podcasting Directory || Keywords: Seth Levine, Glue Conference, Technology, Foundry Group, Glue, Eric Norlin, Entrepreneurs, Venture Capital, Brad Feld, Jason Mendelson, Ryan McIntyre - 6/6/11 bytes=7605501
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Carrie Peters: Healthier and happier internet ecosystem
1030_ 6/13/11 - At the Glue Conference, we are meeting some very interesting people and companies. Hearing a lot about API's and cloud services is fascinating, but when you aren't so technically inclined, it's good to talk directly to the folks manning these booths. This time, we've cornered Carrie Peters from BigDoor. We can tell you this is very exciting and we will put some of this information to work. So, you ask, What is BigDoor? Carrie tells us it is a "Free gamification platform". Gamification? Free? The Internet with all the developing technology also means the development of new language skills - So you see, it is important to be out here, talk and get educated... BigDoor’s goal is to provide the means for an overall healthier and happier internet ecosystem. This means more enjoyable and relevant time online for users, and more creative revenue and opportunities for businesses. When employed skillfully, gamification builds a strong bridge between user desires and business objectives. BigDoor is accomplishing this goal by developing a virtual economy platform that helps web developers and digital publishers add customized game mechanics to their sites or apps, thus allowing them to increase user loyalty, better monetize user interactions, and more effectively target new and existing customers. opportunities for businesses."...We have an example of BigDoor - look at the bottom of the w3w3.com window, the black bar. It isn't fully customized yet. But talk about service. Saturday night we met Patrick Murck, BigDoor's 'legal guy'., who answered (to my surprise) a support email - immediately. We were impressed and we look forward to checking out the sharing capabilities and all the other goodies. Nice work!
Related Links: BigDoor || Glue Conference || Software Channel || Glue Conference Photos || Keywords: Carrie Peters, Bigdoor, Gamification, Glue Conference, Technology, API, Cloud Services, Glue, Eric Norlin, Software, 6/13/11 bytes=2911820
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Thomas Burns: The cloud; challenges and choices
1029_ 6/13/11 - The cloud and API were big parts of the discussion and debate at the Glue conference here in Colorado. Larry talked with Thomas Burns who is the VP of Business Development and co founder at Green House Data. They started their company in 2007, on a shoe string - were able to generate revenues and eventually attract investors. We asked Thomas, as an entrepreneur, what he felt was the greatest challenge facing entrepreneurs today. Thomas chuckled, as he pointed out that everybody is still feeling the crunch of the recession and being able to access capital for investment into their own companies. When we asked him what the greatest opportunities might be. His reply was instant, without boundaries...simply said, "Technology is wide open, there is so much going on, especially in the glue space. There have been security challenges and a little fear related to cloud infrastructure." Green House Data is a data center services company focusing on two main products; cloud infrastructure as a service and co-location. Everyone at this conference is talking about cloud, Green House Data has a different approach than companies like Amazon or RackSpace. The technology is a little different and they think, more scalable with a mobile type of infrastructure where companies can essentially deploy private clouds and connect to GHD's cloud which makes it an easier transition into the cloud infrastructure. While there is a lot of techie stuff here, it's really interesting to see how all of this gets transferred into business knowledge...listen for more...
Related Links: Green House Data || Glue Conference || Software Channel || Glue Conference Photos || Keywords: Thomas Burns, Green House Data, Glue Conference, Technology, API, Cloud Services, Glue, Eric Norlin, Software, 6/13/11 bytes=4115124
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Lori Cheek, NYC Architect - Glue'd to TechStars
1025_ 6/6/11 - Well believe it or not, we are at the Glue Conference talking to an architect. We've got a little bit of a twist here, of course being at Glue Con such things do get twisted. As well, there is a TechStar connection here too. Meet Lori Cheek - First an overview about who Lori is and how she went from the art and science of architecture to the world of technology. She is an architect by training and worked in New York City's design and architecture world for 15 years. A few years ago she came up with an idea that led her into the tech world and she has abandoned her career in architecture. It all started when she was out for dinner with a guy friend at a restaurant and they were getting ready to leave. He had written on the back of his business card, "Want to have dinner?", and he slid that to a woman, and we kept going. Lori remembers thinking how mysterious and intriguing that would be to have a handsome man give you this card. Then she thought about taking it to the next level... by not having your personal information on these cards. So Lori created this deck of (business sized) cards called You've Been Cheek'd, based on her last name Cheek. They all have a witty ice breaker such as, "Our fate is in your hands." or perhaps "My dog likes your dog". Then they all have a code that leads to an online profile. It's a little bit like handing your business card, minus the personal information. Lori says, "It's like an online dating service, but you're making the initial connections off line and then you take it online via the code provided on the card. Lori's company just won the TechStar's Startup Madness Tournament, beating out 63 other new startups for the Best New Idea of 2011. One of the prizes was an expense paid trip to Glue Con. Lori says, "It's been a mind blowing experience here. My advice is live your dream."
Related Links: You've Been Cheek'd || Glue Conference || Software Channel || TechStars NYC || NCWIT Heroes || Keywords: Lori Cheek, You've Been Cheek'd, Glue Conference, TechStars, New York, architect, dating, Live Your Dream, 6/6/11 bytes=3045567
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Gary Gaessler and capitalizing on your niche
1026_ 6/6/11 - We're here at the Glue Conference and stopping at one of the 'demo pods' (provided by Lucent) to talk with Gary Gaessler, VP of Sales for Stream|Step, Inc. Now we've known Gary for quite some number of years during which he's started up and been involved with so many excellent companies and organizations. Stream|Step, Inc. is a new emerging software vendor. Gartner just named them 2011 cool company of the year in the release management space. They are an application deployment tool in the software space, providing an automated release coordination tool for large software enterprise development groups. One of Larry's favorite questions, "What are the biggest challenges companies face today?" Gary replied, "I would say it is really just finding their niche. Find out what you do well at, focus on that and don't try to be everything to everyone. Joe Sabah once told me that he didn't know the secret to success but the secret to failure is trying to please everyone all the time. So, being able to focus and being the best at what you do. That's what we do at Stream|Step - we are the best at what we do in the release coordination space." His advice for leaders and entrepreneurs, "Find guys that you like, that you trust and can get along with. And most important find people that you're going to have fun with because if you're not having fun, it's not a fun place to be. I've been blessed to find that, two wonderful founders, one based in Austin, one based in Boston. Just taught me the software business, it's been a great learning experience." ...listen, there's much more.
Related Links: Stream|Step, Inc. || Glue Conference || Software Channel || CTP Channel || Keywords: Gary Gaessler, Stream|Step, Glue Conference, Technology, Foundry Group, Glue, Eric Norlin, Software, Automated Release Coordination Tool, 6/6/11 bytes=3839689
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Those boundaries are completely gone in 2011
943_ 12/20/10- We're talking with JB Holston, founder and CEO of Newsgator, at the DefragCon 2010 conference in Broomfield, Colorado. Recently, Newsgator has been in the news a lot, and everything is looking rosy, a good time to ask for an update. JB said, "Yes, well we're in this hot space, this category called anything from Enterprise 2.0, web 2.0 for the organization, to social business. Gartner Research came out with reports for the last three weeks saying 'An imperative for 2011 for IT is Social Business'. So that's been great, it creates a lot of PR without us having to do a whole lot." Larry asked, "Over the years, you have, and continue to deal with so many different businesses, what do you think some of the challenges are, above and beyond the economic times?" "Right. I really think to some extent it depends on the sector you're in. If you're in the technology space, finding and retaining great employees is harder than it's ever been. I think generally, organizations are trying to figure out how to keep up. Fundamentally that's the issue. As a lot of the speakers here were talking, you know, the world is a small place. We're not competing with the really great innovator in Boulder; we’re competing with someone in China." Larry comments, "I'm thinking back to interviews we've done and things that you've said, even though you're a technical business, it really revolves around the people." JB replies, "Yes, that's central to what we do. In fact, the way we talk about it is collaboration. There's a lot of software around collaboration. The definition has changed, collaboration now is considered to be all about connecting people. So the center of design today for collaboration is around the individual. It's not around some artifact. You and I need to connect in real time with a really good network. The network may be in a document, a blog or who knows what the content type is. It sounds fairly obvious, business was always about people." There's much more, listen now...
Related Links: NewsGator || Gartner Research || Defrag Conference || Defrag Agenda || PodCasting Directory || Keywords: JB Holston, NewsGator, Gartner Research, DefragCon 2010, Software, Collaboration, Network, Fundamentally Social 12/20/10 Chnl: Software bytes=4692744 LISTEN to JB Holston, Newsgator

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2011 Software and the Cloud

Software, it makes reliable diagnostics possible. It impacts every appliance in your home. It guides airplanes and coordinates virtually all actions in your automobile. It controls the national grid and monitors all financial transactions. It is a key to our national security. It is the power behind every computer. It = software... this Media Vault is dedicated to it.

Entrepreneur secrets of the past, present, future
1131_ 12/26/11 - As co-founder and COO, Nancy Phillips has a vested interest in establishing ViaWest as a leader in the market. Phillips, who has over 15 years of management experience in technology, oversees ViaWest's operations, engineering and technical support divisions. Silicon Flatirons, ATLAS, and ITP present Nancy Phillips as the featured entrepreneur with moderators Brad Bernthal, Brad Feld and Jill Van Matre as part of their Entrepreneurs Unplugged series. Previously the Vice President of Operations for RMI.net. Phillips was integral in managing the company's network and technical growth. Prior to helping this struggling Internet Service Provider back to profitability, Phillips also was Vice President of Operations for ITC Worldwide (now Genesys Conferencing) and was Senior Vice President of Operations for ConferTech International (now Global Crossing). Phillips has also been a principal, executive and consultant for numerous successful telecommunications companies including France Telecom, MCI and Qwest. She began her career with Teleconferencing Systems Canada as Vice President of Sales and it was in this role that she met Roy Dimoff - the two have been loyal business partners ever since. In addition to being recognized by ViaWest for her outstanding contributions, Phillips has earned a reputation for excellence throughout the industry. In 2010, she received CSIA's prestigious "Bob Newman Lifetime Achievement Award." She has been named the Denver Business Journal's "Outstanding Woman in Business" in the high-tech category, and...
Related Links: ViaWest || Entrepreneurs Unplugged || Silicon Flatirons || Podcasting Directory || Event Photos ||
Watch a partial VIDEO - or enjoy LISTENing to the full audio program on MP3 Keywords: Nancy Phillips, ViaWest, Data Centers, Brad Feld, Jill VanMatre, Brad Bernthal Entrepreneurs, France Telecom, MCI, Qwest, Silicon Flatirons, Internet Service Provider - Bytes: 62201420
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Spending time in the cloud and developing new products
1109_ 11/14/11 - Here in the midst of DefragCon 2011, [BTW 5th Anniversary] we've corralled one of the keynote speakers, Jason Carolan, the VP of Product Development at ViaWest. Jason says he has the 'funnest' job at ViaWest, he gets to develop crazy new products and see how they're used, spend a lot of time on cloud. ViaWest just had their launch last week and have a couple of different offerings that fit really well in the managed services and collocation side of the business. ViaWest is a super regional data center, collocation, managed services, cloud and hosting provider, with 22 centers across the western U.S., centered in Denver, but also have a big presence in Texas in the Dallas area; Salt Lake; and expanded into Portland and Las Vegas as well. Jason said, "We like to think of ourselves as being that local connection... you've got someone to call and we are really happy about our support staff and that personal data center, IP provider." There's a lot of talk about the cloud. When you talk to different people and they have different definitions or explanations of what it is... the fears and the happiness, so we asked Jason for an overview. "I think it's about getting the right resources at the right time, at the right price." and Jason said he's going to trademark that phrase. For some people it's just having their email hosted, for others it's about hosting complex applications and give them the structure around it - be able to monitor it and secure it. The right time means time to market. Jason says, ”Increasingly, the tools that developers need, which are closely aligned with the business - to get new features out, to go make money, is all about time to market, it's about how fast can I do that. The right price is the CFO, they want to know how much is this going to cost, is it predictable, how much is it going to cost when I scale it - so it's really the whole pricing model that is a big piece of cloud and how we make that very transparent for customers. Transparency is good but it's a challenge. Jason agrees and pointed out he spent 13-14 years on the vendor side of things and logging and telemetry and all these things are sometimes an afterthought. So when you're building all this and trying to get the right data back to the customer it's sometimes a challenge...listen for more...
Related Links: ViaWest || Defrag 2011 || In the News || Software Channel || Keywords: Jason Carolan, Viawest, Cloud, Defrag, Super Regional Data Center, Collocation, Managed Services, Hosting Provider, Innovation bytes=4380110
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Success and sustainability through good and bad times
1073_ 9/06/11 - The path to success isn't always flash, bang, big cash and lots of noise. In the long run it is knowing your customer, getting close, staying close, and understanding your customers needs. That's what Roy Dimoff attributes ViaWest’s ‘good luck' to. It was 1999, when we met Roy Dimoff and Nancy Philips as they started Via West here in Denver. "Back in the day", money was practically being thrown at companies. Here in Denver we had a number of very large startups going back to '99, a little pre '99. Local competitors had the advantage with 100's of millions in investments.... ViaWest took a different path, kind of low key. If you were watching from a distance. But up close it was action packed, prudent and practical. Back then ViaWest had one office which still exists. Today they have 22 data centers in five states and six major markets. Roy has a habit of checking in with his HR department and they keep adding employees, which is a good thing, especially in today's market, and they're well over 300 people now in those five states. "Knock on wood, Larry. For all the things that happened and we've seen in the 12 years that ViaWest has been around. And certainly living through two recessions is one of them. Things are going extremely well. We are part of a great industry. It's nice to be in this position today. To be able to reflect back at those difficult times, knowing that you survived and succeeded in some fashion." Roy said. In fact ViaWest is in a leadership position today. Looking back we remember favorite words guiding their strategic path, prudence and pragmatism. Larry asked about challenges facing business today. Roy said, "You know, I think similar to the stock market, there are a lot of ups and downs and you have to be prepared to alter your business plan if there's dramatic changes in the economy. We really reflect on our capital investment and our cash conservation and really want to reflect on all the touch points there. And, do we want to be a little less aggressive if we see a double dip recession. I think companies should definitely, definitely understand their debt position, their cash position, their growth... and really understand their expense level extremely well - knowing where they can alter if they have to." ViaWest supports the community, sponsors many non-profits and has won many awards...listen for more great advice...
Related Links: ViaWest || Green Solutions || Profile of a Leader || KidsTek || Podcasting Directory || Keywords: Roy Dimoff, ViaWest, Data Centers, Leaders, Team, Management, Green Grid, Computers, Telecom, Canada, Software 9/6/11 bytes=14158265
LISTEN to Roy Dimoff, President/CEO, ViaWest

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Life of the Entrepreneur: Controlling Your Destiny
421_ 9/06/11 [12/10/2007] Nancy Phillips, NCWIT Hero, offers a few keys for being a successful entrepreneur: Maintain a good sense of humor; Overcome the nay-sayers; and Practice real-world economics. Nancy is the Co-Founder, Director, COO of ViaWest and shared her story and poignant points about building and growing a business even in the toughest of times to Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and NCWIT board member, Lee Kennedy along with Larry Nelson. Nancy loves technology and people and has a long history with the Telecom industry. She enjoys the challenges of being an entrepreneur for many reasons including her passion to control her destiny. Nancy says her husband claims, "Because I'm a control freak." Phillips has also been a principal, executive and consultant for numerous successful telecommunications companies including France Telecom, MCI and Qwest. Over 15 years ago, she began her career with Teleconferencing Systems Canada as Vice President of Sales and it was in this role that she met Roy Dimoff - the two have been loyal business partners ever since. Nancy shares some excellent advice for managers, leaders and entrepreneurs. Related Links: ViaWest Home || ViaWest Joins NCWIT's Workforce Alliances || NCWIT Home || NCWIT Practice || NCWIT Blog || Heroes Channel || Keywords: Nancy Phillips, ViaWest, Lucy Sanders, Lee Kennedy, Entrepreneurs, National Center for Women & Information Technology, NCWIT Heroes > 12/10/07 Bytes: 48124972
LISTEN to Nancy Phillips, ViaWest

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Getting technology to leverage and access what is needed
1128 12/19/11 - We're talking to Phil Becker, PLB Ventures, today at the DefragCon 2011. Phil is one of the cofounders of Defrag, although his career began in the aerospace industry [with some pretty impressive accomplishments]. Phil has been in the computer industry since 1967 and has his signature on both the Moon and Mars as part of computer communications projects he built for the Apollo and Viking missions. He has created technology to link computers for both the pre-Internet and Internet eras. As an entrepreneur he has built and taken public companies in the computer communications space. In 1992 he founded ISPCON and grew it to be the premiere Internet Service Provider Trade Show. Phil was the former Editor-in-Chief of Digital ID World and former Managing Partner of Digital Identity World, LLC before selling DIDW to IDG in 2007. Phil tells us that today, that throughout his varied career, he realizes now that what he's always been focused on is the way technology amplifies each of us individually and gives us more autonomy and more control over our world. He said, "I think here at Defrag you're seeing the same thing show up again, sometimes recognized and sometimes unrecognized. That is whether talking about the consumerization of IT in the enterprise, the access to data wherever we are, or whether it's mobile computing - it's really all about how does the individual who is trying to get something in their life, get the technology to help them have the leverage and access that they need. In Larry's latest book, Mastering Change in the Midst of Chaos, he says, "People are the source of all problems and people are the source of all solutions." Phil says, yes and in the end that's what this technology is all for. I mean we aren't building robots to take care of other robots. We're building them to take care of us and make life easier. This conference which Brad Feld, Eric Norlin and Phil Becker put together, is really all about that wave of where it all comes together, what it looks like and to take that next step. What solutions are created by the next step and what new problems are created by the next step. "Every solution is the source of its own problem." There's more....
Related Links: Defrag 2011 || Defrag 2012 || Defrag Photos || Software Channel || Mastering Change Book || Keywords: Phil Becker, Defrag, Accelerating the AHA Moment, Moon, Mars, Apollo, Viking missions, IPSCON, Digital ID World, Digital Identity World, New Wave, Brad Feld, Eric Norlin - bytes=3789534
LISTEN TO: Phil Becker, CoFounder, Defrag Con

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Couple of years after you start your venture
1130_ 12/19/11 - At Defrag 2011 we met and talked with Bart Lorang, CEO and Founder of FullContact. Attracted to his booth by all of the activity, Larry asked Bart to give us an overview of what FullContact was. Bart replied, “FullContact is the API that keeps contact information current. Any software application can 'bake' our capability inside their APP to improve, enrich and de-duplicate their people data.” “That's mailing lists and everything else?” asked Larry. “Yes, emails, phone numbers, titles, photos, addresses, names, all that core contact information that lives inside of software. FullContact's customers are CRM platforms, email marketing tools, marketing automation tools - we work with a lot of people data and make that data better. This is an API for software developers, it's technical, but it's very simple to consume for a developer. It really takes only a few lines of code. Larry asked Bart who runs into many businesses, big and small, entrepreneurs and the like, “What advice would he give business people today?” Bart's reply, "My advice to entrepreneurs is follow your passion, because as an entrepreneur you're facing long odds and if you don't have passion for it, you're not going to love it, and you can't do great work if you don't love it. Most importantly you're going to need persistence to go along with that passion. Because, it really doesn't start kicking in until a couple of years after you start your venture that you really start seeing success. It doesn't ever happen overnight."
Related Links: Defrag 2011 || Defrag 2012 || Defrag Photos || Software Channel || FullContact || Keywords: Bart Lorang, FullContact, API, Defrag, Accelerating the AHA Moment, Digital Identity, API's, Mobile, Social Customer, Platform Shift, Collaboration, Social Networks, Activity Streams - bytes=2760101
LISTEN TO: Bart Lorang, CEO/Founder, Full Contact

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Data Centers Consume 2% of the World’s Total Energy Supply
596_ 9/06/11 [12/8/08]- "If data centers don’t or have not yet adopted a ‘green strategy’ they’ll be left behind by customers are demanding it, left behind in the market place simply because of profit and loss expectations. Adopting an energy efficiency strategy helps drive bottom line performance. So ViaWest benefits both ways, socially our impact is that we are watching out for the well being of the environment through these strategies that we will adopt," emphasizes Don Poulter. In 2007, Don joined Viawest, Inc. as its first Vice-President, Service Delivery. In this role, Poulter has oversight for all data center operations, service provisioning, purchasing, project and product management. Don shared with Larry a number of 'how to's' for employing a green strategy. As an example, "Cold aisle management… air is where we think there are opportunities for improvement. Every piece of new equipment we buy must have a variable frequency drive. That allows us to operate the unit at less than 100% output. Depending on needs that unit can wind up or wind down based on requirements. Lastly we are launching our ‘server virtualization’ which allows us to reduce the number of servers in our data center by putting more applications on to a server and running them at a greater output." Don also talks about the Green Grid which is a consortium of companies dedicated to advancing energy efficiency – ViaWest is a member of that consortium. Listen, there's more...
Related Links: ViaWest || Green Solutions || Conscious Economy Channel || CORE || Keywords: Don Poulter, ViaWest, Data Centers, Green Strategy, Cold Aisle Management, Green Grid, Energy Supply Bytes: 11020228 > LISTEN

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Business Agility with the Cloud: Do you need an IT department/CIO?
741 9/06/11 [11/16/09]- Defrag 2009 - what an education - it was the place to be. We corralled Matthew Taylor, Vice President of Managed Services and IT & IS Operations, ViaWest, covering seven states and 16 data centers. Matt was a keynote speaker at the Defrag 2009 Conference. Matt said, "I have a long title because we wear a lot of hats at ViaWest, there's a real value to that for organizations." Topic Matt delivered: Business Agility with the Cloud. We wanted to know, what is the cloud? Matthew replied, "Well, there isn't a definition for 'the cloud' and depending on who you're talking to they have a different definition of the cloud. What we have to take this back to is, the user, customer or CIO, whoever you are, what is it you're trying to get out of a solution overall? So to a business person how do you get agility out of a cloud? You get agility out of a cloud ... and for some this is a painful answer... through your CIO. There are people out there, the press, organizations that have said, 'now the cloud is out there and you don't need your IT department/CIO' -- That's absolutely not the case. The customer needs to make sure they have flexibility to be able to scale up or scale down; pay for what they have to pay for but not overpay. At the same time they need to make sure they have a high level of security. So when you combine all these things, you start to say, I really need to understand each portion of my company from an application standpoint. What do I need to do with it and make sure I'm managing the data and the way those applications work together. What is your best approach and to me that is a CIO and why today, the CIO is more important than ever." Listen for some additional suggestions. Larry asked about SAAS (software as a Service) "...in the last couple of years, I'd heard that was the cloud." Matt agrees it was one of the first offerings from the cloud, there are load testing applications etc., watch the smoke and mirrors - do your homework. He also provides...
Related Links: ViaWest || Defrag || Economy Builders || Blog || Keywords: Matthew Taylor, ViaWest, Defrag, Business Agility, Cloud, CIO, Hosting, IT Department, SaaS, Change bytes=12195439 - 11/16/09 LISTEN To: Matthew Taylor, ViaWest

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The key is that there is a very strong return on investment
1071_ 8/29/11 - They offer what they call managed video as a service which is a capability that they sell to retailers primarily, that allows them to manage their business more effectively. Envysion is an up and coming company in a new space of Software as a Service companies [SaaS]. Larry sat down with Robert Hagens, CTO, Envysion to discuss their new and growing technologies. Robert pointed out, "As an example, one of Envysion's biggest customers and most long-standing customers is Chipotle Restaurants. They use the Envysion service to improve their operations. That means anything from, what we would call 'loss prevention', which is where they are able to discover situations where employees may be taking advantage of the companies resources, and are able to define that and stop that. They also use our system for many other functions like marketing - market research demographics as well as other operational improvements to their restaurants. The key to Envysion is that there is a very strong return on investment. Customers are able to save money for their companies, that shows on the bottom-line. They're able to increase their revenue and profits by using our system." Larry asked, "As a CTO, with this new kind of idea, are there challenges along the way?" He replied, "The challenge has been trying to bring all the things we've learned in the telecom world to the video world. I learned a lot about service provider companies and offering services from my experience at Level 3 Communications and prior to that MCI. What I bring to Envysion and my team brings is that service provider point of view. That is we're focused not only on selling our service but keeping it up and running for customers." "Do you see anything on the horizon?" Robert replied, "Well yes, there are lots of things coming. Certainly one exciting thing is all the new customers we're signing up. That's on the horizon and getting very close. The other is utilizing mobile technology, figuring out the best way to use an iPhone, iPad or a droid device to be able to offer the same kind of capabilities that we offer today through a web browser. Video analytics is a process where using a program or capability, the system can automatically detect things. There's more...
Related Links: Envysion Home || Zayo || Software Channel || Podcasting Directory || Keywords: Robert Hagens, CTO, Envysion, Chipotle Restaurants, Zayo, Software as a Service, SaaS, Level 3 Communications, MCI, iPhone, iPad, Droid Device, Envysion Market Place, Insight Marketplace 8/29/11 Bytes: 5293351
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In the cloud with a solutions specialist
1023_ 5/31/11 - So we're going to be open and unstuck right here at the Glue Conference in Denver, Colorado. We've been fortunate enough to talk to a number of heavy hitters, all kinds of areas and now we've cornered John Sanderson from Microsoft. John is a solutions specialist with Windows Azure. While there is a lot of techie stuff here, it's really interesting to see how this gets transferred into business knowledge. Give us an overview. John replied, "Windows Azure is really Microsoft's development and deployment platform in the "cloud". Think of it as Windows server and SQL server available as a service that you write code to. Windows code, Java, PHP, Ruby, whatever you want to write. Deploy it to Windows Azure, we'll run it in a wildly horizontal scaleability aspect, make it big or small as you want and you only pay for what you use. You know my paradigm comes directly from the cloud computing world. I tell people I hate the word cloud. Everybody's got a cloud offering. It really depends on what you're looking for - if you want email in the cloud, if you want an application platform, if you want to collocate material, data, software, whatever, someplace in the cloud. So, I think one of the biggest challenges is understanding what you want out of this new thing called the cloud, and then being able to ascertain who's the right vendor. You know Microsoft has lots of offerings, but we're not going to be right for everybody. Amazon, Rackspace, they've got great stuff, it really depends on what you want. If we're talking about the cloud business, or a new business, I think the key is to ask the right questions. Really understand where you want to be, and talk about the problems that you want to solve, then look for solutions that make sense for the problem that you have." Listen for more now...
Related Links: Windows Azure || Glue Conference || Corporate Citizenship || Software Channel || Keywords: John Sanderson, Microsoft Azure, Cloud, Glue Conference, Web Software, Technology, Windows code, Java, PHP, Ruby, ViaWest, Amazon, Rackspace, 5/31/11 bytes=4104257
Listen to: John Sanderson, Microsoft Azure Solutions Specialist
LISTEN to John Sanderson, Windows Azure, Solutions Specialist

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Viral marketing approach which has really caught on
1017_ 5/23/11 - We are here today with Jim Franklin, a guy who has worked with companies that were down and companies that had, let's say a lot of room to grown, and he's really taken them forward. Jim is the new CEO of SendGrid, an email infrastructure company, "where we basically rent email deliverability services in the cloud". And there's quite an interesting story about how the founders came up with that idea. The founders had worked together at three previous companies building web applications. Each time they had to build email services around that one application. None of them felt that was a particularly fun job, so whoever got the short straw had to spend the weekend building out the email infrastructure. And as it turned out, it worked very well. After three times they said, why don't we build a whole company that just does that and does it well? We'll stick it in the cloud and then rent it to other people like us, other web developers. That was essentially the TechStars application in the summer of '09. Larry asked, "So you've been a mentor at TechStars and SendGrid is an outgrowth of TechStars, could you give us a little background there? Jim Replied, "I've been a mentor with TechStars and worked with many companies, oddly not this one in particular. Going through the TechStars program was the exact right vehicle for Isaac and the other founders, to really build their vision for the email services. And then to launch it that summer with the power of David Cohen and Brad Feld writing and blogging about this. They really started a viral marketing approach which has really caught on. Now 20 months later, we have over 23,000 active customers, which has not cost one dollar in sales or marketing expense, which is truly remarkable." Much more to listen to...
Related Links: SendGrid Home || TechStars || Foundry Group || Economy Builders || Blog || Keywords: Jim Franklin, SendGrid, Cloud, Email, TechStars, Foundry Group, Entrepreneurs, Viral Marketing, Vision - 5/23/11 bytes=5382794
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Boulder startup sells for $40M
970_ 2/21/11 - Mobile communications is exploding. We're here with an expert the president and founder of Radish Systems, Theresa Szczurek. While it's talked about a great deal, Larry wanted to know what does mobile communications have to do with business? Theresa replied, "Mobile communications is exploding, millions and millions of smart phones are jumping off the shelves. There were like 166 million smart phones sold in 2009. The projections from a Nielsen study show there will be more smart phones used by the end of 2011 than any other kind of cell phone. So businesses who are thinking ahead should be asking, who are my stakeholders, my customers, my distribution channel, my employees out in the field and are they using a mobile device? And they should be asking, what should we be doing to better serve the needs of those mobile callers? Radish Communications Systems, a fun roller coaster ride. We grew it and sold it in 1996 for over $40 million. It was also in the space of integrated voice data and it became the de facto standard for allowing voice and data to be shared over a plain old telephone line. We were working with small companies like Microsoft, Intel, Rockwell, AT&T." Larry asked, "What are some of the practical points businesses should be considering, having to do with mobile devices?" She replied, First of all know your market. Make sure you're serving the mobile stake holders. What we're finding is that more and more corporations are developing and implementing a mobile strategy. For example do you have a mobile website? Since more and more people are doing business via their mobile device, a mobile website and perhaps a mobile application in order to better serve the needs of your marketplace." Listen, there's much more...BTW, they are looking to hire...
Related Links: TMS World || Radish Sprouts || Software Channel || Blog || Keywords: Theresa Szczurek, TMS World, Radish Sprouts, Mobile Communications, Apps, Cell Phone, Mobile Devices, Radish Communications Systems 2/21/11 bytes=7029554
Listen to:Theresa Szczurek, Co Founder, CEO, Radish Systems

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Contents: Entrepreneurs 2010; 2009; 2008; 2007

2011 Software Channel
Vic Ahmed, Plug and Play 2/7/11
Bass, Richard, Pres., Boulder & Denver Software Clubs
Becker, Phil, PBL Ventures and CoFounder Defrag
Brown, Ian, Dir., Demand Gen., Mashery @ Defrag 2011
Burns, Thomas, Green House Data: The Cloud 6/11
Carolan, Jason , VP New Product Dev, ViaWest
Cheek, Lori, NYC Architect - Glued to TechStars
Dimoff, Roy, ViaWest 9/6/11
Feld, Brad, Entrepreneurs Unplugged (4 part series)
Feld, Dan & Menzie, Kevin, Slice of Lime 10/17/11
Franklin, Jim, SendGrid: Viral marketing approach
Gaessler, Gary, Capitalizing on your niche 6/6/11
Hagens, Robert, Envysion: Video as a Service 8/29/11
Hawk, Su, Colorado Technology Assoc 9/12/11
Heuston, Bill, ViaWest, Building a phenomenal culture
Holston, JB, Newsgator 12/20/10
Levine, Seth, Foundry Group: Glue Conference 6/6/11
Lorang, Bart, CEO/Founder, FullContact @ Defrag 2011
Norlin, Eric, Founder, Defrag Con 11/9-10/11
Ogdon, Bob CEO SwiftPage - Global Presence Nov 14
Peters, Carrie, BigDoor: Healthier Internet ecosystem
Phillips, Nancy, COO/CoFounder, ViaWest, Entrepreneurs Unplugged
Phillips, Nancy, ViaWest (NCWIT Hero)
Poulter, Don, ViaWest (12/08) Data ctr energy usage
Sanderson, John, Microsoft, Windows Azure 6/6/11
Kevin Menzie & Daniel Feld, Slice of Lime 10/17/11
Szczurek, Theresa, Radish Systems 2, Boulder Startup
Taylor, Matthew ViaWest: Cloud... Do I need an IT Department now?

Leads for building your business
964_ 2/7/11 - If your potential clients can't find you, that's a problem. Once they get to your website, if they can't understand or get something out of your website, that's a problem. It's amazing how many businesses don't have those and other important marketing things put together - today we're with an expert. We are interviewing one of the Colorado Companies to Watch winners, Dan Goldstein from Page 1 Solutions. Dan said, "With the Internet the one thing he's seen is constant change. When Page 1 was started ten years ago, Google didn't exist. Now, Google dominates the search engines, on the other hand we have Facebook, YouTube, all kinds of other social media and they are actually garnering more traffic than Google now. So, what you need if you want to be active and successful, is you need to be able to look at those changing environments and be able to react to them quickly." Larry asked for an overview of what Page 1 Solutions does. Dan explained, "Page 1 offers a wide range of solutions. Our slogan used to be, 'Page 1 Solutions: dominate the Internet'." When they started that meant dominating Google. But more and more that means you have to have a successful presence on all of the different vehicles - search engines, social media and all the different ways that people can come to your business or your practice. Page 1 focuses primarily on web site marketing for attorneys, doctors and dentists. They also have a subsidiary, Mega Hunter, that does website marketing for businesses throughout the nation. "We really do everything from soup to nuts. We start by designing their website, we write the content, we work on SEO for their websites, so they show up high on Google. We do lobbying for them. We do all kinds of things with content, some of that includes writing and publishing press releases, building links to come back to the website. More and more though, we're seeing a really high demand for video."...Listen for more...
Related Links: Page 1 Solutions || Colorado Companies to Watch Home || MegaHunter || CCTW Channel || CCTW Event || CCTW Gala Celebration || Keywords: Dan Goldstein, Page 1 Solutions, MegaHunter, Colorado 50 Companies to Watch, Search Engines, Social Media, Google, Facebook, YouTube 2/7/11 bytes=6689335
LISTEN to Dan Goldstein, Page 1 Solutions

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Building your business marketing strategy and development
1096_ 10/17/11 - We're going to be talking about marketing, strategy and development today; we're here in the downtown Boulder office of Slice of Lime with Kevin Menzie, CEO-Founder and Daniel Feld the COO and Partner. Slice of Lime bills themselves as a web strategy, design and development company, and they've been around for ten years. Their focus is on creating results oriented marketing websites as well as user interface designs for web and mobile applications. "Across all of that there is always a focus on strategy", said Kevin Menzie. Before jumping into the design of a client's project, Kevin tells us they spend time thinking about the target audience of their client's project; the goals they want to achieve with the project and planning around those objectives before getting into design. When developing your website, there are some common mistakes to avoid. Don't gloss over determining your target market - that should be step number one. It doesn't make sense to focus on the visual, but occasionally clients will start with a technology they want to use to drive the site, or focus on another site that they like but isn't relevant to their target audience. So, it is a mistake to jump right into the visual, in to the wiz-bang technical stuff without knowing who you're trying to speak to with the web site. Know what it is you want to achieve, do you want the user to buy something, fill out a form and collect information, to drive leads? "Without considering all of that stuff first and planning what the structure of the web site should be to achieve those goals, you'll probably miss the mark. And, that's the most common mistake that we see." said Kevin. Apparently there are a lot of common mistakes being made as Daniel Feld added. "Another mistake is trying to do too much with the content, actually getting too much content to too many different audiences. You have about three to five seconds to make an impression on the web site." Either people understand what you do, and sell, and offer and they want to engage and dig in more, or... Daniel points out that it is a science of refinement and being strategic about who you're communicating to. Edit, be purposeful with your content, your imagery and make sure there is a call to action. Listen now...
Related Links: Slice of Lime || Software Channel || Entrepreneurs Channel || Podcasting Directory || Keywords: Kevin Menzie, Daniel Feld, Slice of Lime, Marketing Strategy, Websites, Science of Refinement, Target Audience, Wiz-Bang Technical stuff - bytes=9280264
Listen to: Kevin Menzie & Dan Feld, Slice of Lime

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Keep plugging away, stay focused, don't be afraid
1083_ 9/26/11 - We're here today with a high-tech guy who is really involved with many organizations - and one of the things we admire are people who can run a business and support the community. Richard Bass, is the president of a number of organizations including the Boulder and Denver Software Clubs, the Business Club for Front Range Software and SaaS and he is the principal of his own company, Executive Software Connections. Larry asked, "What are the biggest challenges facing companies today?" Richard replied, "I speak on the software side and I'm not going to comment outside of that industry. I would say there are three challenges that come to mind. The biggest one that I hear from most all the software CEOs and product development executives here, and product development executives, CTOs, VPs of Engineering is they're complaining about finding talented software engineers especially in a lot of the skill sets. It really is a huge problem here and it is constraining the growth of the locally funded software and SaaS companies. This is even a nationwide problem, but it is as big a problem in Colorado as anywhere." "What are the greatest opportunities today?" He said, "The other challenges for software companies, that I see, are things like marketing. Many of the smaller software and SaaS companies do a good job of getting the 'lowest hanging fruit' sales wise for their business, but they don't segment their markets and pricing enough to get more of the pie. I think the third thing is access to capital has changed for software companies. The VC market has shifted. We've got some very good out of town VCs trying to pick up here like GroTech, Highway 12 and some others. But the market has definitely shifted - TechStars is funding some different type companies -but for many companies this can be quite difficult. Just generally, there's a lot of hype about starting social media company products and services and business. I think it fundamentally comes down to solving a current pressing problem a company or industry has. I've seen a lot of local companies grow and branch out from there. Having said that, a lot of investor money, a great management team and a solid sales team with an emerging product, obviously can work well. Richard and Larry also discussed other sound ideas for leaders today...listen for more great advice...
Related Links: Software Channel || PodCast Directory || Boulder Software Club || Denver Software Club || Keywords: Richard Bass, Boulder Software Club, Denver Software Club, Business Club for Front Range Software and SaaS, Executive Software Connections, Computer Science Graduates - bytes=4595777
LISTEN to Richard Bass, Boulder and Denver Software Clubs

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An industry that is setting new speed records for change
1077_ 9/12/11 - Change is one of Larry's favorite topics. He talks with Su Hawk, president, Colorado Technology Association, as she charges on to stay with and ahead of an industry that is setting new speed records for change. Su gives us an update on Colorado Technology Association, formerly CSIA and a map of the industry's top challenges. Su said they changed their name earlier this year to reflect the work that they're doing for a vibrant technology eco-system. When asked about the greatest challenges facing the industry, Su gave us six items they work on continuously. For context-they have roundtables with industry experts and executives on an going basis to understand what's really most important to them. The number one issue that they bring up is 'talent pool'. and the increasing number of jobs in our industry with the scarce workforce that's available. It's always been an issue with the technology industry, even during our hardest economic times. The unemployment in IT has only been at maybe 3%. The second issue is healthcare. It's become harder to provide for employees, it's harder to find great healthcare plans for their employees. Third thing is patent laws. A growing concern and so are patent trolls. As our companies in Colorado grow they need to be aware of copyright infringement, 'fishing expeditions' - we've really got to pay attention. Fourth issue is international. More and more companies are looking at other countries - so we have to take a look at everything from 'safe harbor' laws to what we can do around talent. The fifth issue is always access to capital. The Colorado Technology Association is always focused on that and figuring out how to provide not only early stage, but second stage companies, that important access to capital. The sixth issue is regulation and policy. A last point/reminder... DEMOgala is coming up October 14th with dozens of great speakers focusing on Colorado this year.
Related Links: Colorado Technology Association || DEMOgala || Software Channel || In the News || Keywords: Su Hawk, Colorado Technology Association, DEMOgala, Talent Pool, Healthcare, Patent Laws, International, Access to Capital, Regulation, Policy, Safe Harbor - 9/12/11, bytes=4968179
LISTEN To: Su Hawk, President, Colorado Technology Assoc.

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Building a phenomenal culture and a real value proposition
1125_ 12/12/11 - We're back at the Defrag Conference, lot of great speakers, super booths, lot of executives, some very interesting people and some money walking around too, by the way. We're talking with Bill Heuston who is senior account executive at ViaWest. We interviewed Bill a few years ago. Bill has been with ViaWest for nine years. Via West is 12 years old so Bill has been around for a good chunk of it. When we last interviewed the co-founder, Roy Dimoff, he pointed out they have a lot of long term employees. Bill adds, "There are. We've got a phenomenal culture - not much turnover, people like to stay here." Larry asked for an overview. Bill replied, "ViaWest, got started in 1999" [Coincidentally that's the same year w3w3.com got started.], "here in Denver, Colorado, slowly growing in the hosting business, and acquiring data centers around the country. And, 12 years later, fast-forward, we are now the largest privately held collocation hosting company in North America." That's quite a success story. Bill's focus is in sales on the entrepreneurial and enterprise space. It's a big gambit, but any company that has a mission critical web application, are the people Bill loves to talk to. He likes to solve problems in a hybrid manner. The thing that ViaWest brings to the table, that's a real value proposition vs. all the other hosting companies that they compete with, is that they have all the core competencies under one roof. They have collocation, dedicated hosting and cloud computing. All three of those are core competencies to ViaWest and value to clients in that they can build solutions that are what Bill calls 'hybrid' and use pieces and parts of each one, all under one roof and cross connected to make it a seamless connection. Larry recalls, way back when ViaWest was first launching there were many other hosting companies that had started but are no longer in business. Bill tells us that seven out of ten of ViaWest competitors when they got started are not longer here. That's 70% and ViaWest continued on to become this super success.
Related Links: Viawest || Green Solutions || Defrag 2011 || Software Channel || Keywords:Bill Heuston, Viawest, Collocation Hosting Company, Dedicated Hosting, Cloud Computing, Green Grid, Defrag, Accelerating the AHA Moment, Value Proposition - bytes=3403340
LISTEN TO: Bill Heuston, ViaWest

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It's all about the data and how it's presented
1129_ 12/19/11 - We're back at the Defrag Conference, lot of great speakers, super booths, lot of executives, some very interesting people and some money walking around too. Based in San Francisco with offices in New York and London, we're speaking with Ian Brown, Director, Demand Generation (for the rest of us, that's marketing) at Mashery. So, what does Mashery do? They help companies with APIs, essentially get those APIs out to developers, whether that be internal or external, but essentially they provide a layer of infrastructure that allows the developers to be able to scale, allows them to analyze who is actually using their APIs. In addition to that Mashery also provide a developers outreach center. At w3w3.com we find this all rather amazing. We started our Internet Talk Radio Show in 1999 and it's changed a little bit since then. Ian agrees, just thinking back to last year, "You would hear API and every once-and-awhile you'd have to throw in what API means [Application Programming Interface], you'd have to actually say that. This year people are throwing API around very nonchalantly assuming everyone knows what that is." On the horizon Ian expects to see APIs forward to individual businesses - more like turning business into a platform. Where now you have individuals accessing data via APIs and to then build other things. Now what's happening is you're seeing a variety of different applications being built based on these APIs and in some cases you're seeing brand-new partnerships being formed thanks to these APIs. It's pretty amazing and from there you can see almost anything happening because it's all about the data and how it's presented. Again, it's up to the smart individuals at Defrag to one day make that happen.
Related Links: Defrag 2011 || Defrag 2012 || Defrag Photos || Software Channel || Mashery || Keywords: Ian Brown, Mashery, API, Defrag, Accelerating the AHA Moment, Digital Identity, API's, Mobile, Social Customer, Platform Shift, Collaboration, Social Networks, Activity Streams - bytes=3100319
LISTEN TO: Ian Brown, Dir, Demand Generation Mashery

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