Wired has a good roundup today where they speak with Tim Westergren, who we spoke with a while ago and featured in an interview.  It comes as no surprise that Pondora can’t survive with the higher rates, which is obviously a concern for anyone who likes Internet music.

The key issue though is that the market simply changes too fast for the government regulators to keep up. How can they, when we barely can?  The same issue applies online privacy.  We featured Auren Hoffman in an interview as well and he spoke at length about how quickly the industry is changing, the number of players, and how data is growing exponentially.

I don’t propose to have the answers, but I think the music industry will have to work with the service providers (Pandora) and others directly.  Either they do or all players fail outright and the important players (consumers) are very unhappy.  As they will be if Pandora goes under.

The RIAA is invested in keeping the labels key players and with the government stepping in they are simply prolonging this status quo.  However, does anyone really think that the labels are necessary for distribution?

So please, regulators keep out of it and let the market decide.  It won’t be easy, and most likely won’t be pretty, but the job will get done!

Pull All Jobs:
http://npost.com/servlet/jobsxmlserver
Filters are inclusive and can be either “searchStates=XX” for state or “searchCities=XXXXXX” for city.  If you would like to include two variables, you may do so with “&”.

Some Examples:
All Jobs: http://npost.com/servlet/jobsxmlserver

For Jobs in California (state):

http://npost.com/servlet/jobsxmlserver?searchStates=CA

For Jobs in San Francisco:

http://npost.com/servlet/jobsxmlserver?searchCities=san+francisco

For Jobs in San Francisco & Los Angeles:
http://npost.com/servlet/jobsxmlserver?searchCities=San+Francisco&searchCities=Los+Angeles

Let us know your feedback as we are always trying to improve the service.  If you simply want to feature a few jobs, feel free to take a look at our widget; http://npost.com/widget1.jsp.

The question is, should we expect a 99.99% reliability of free services?  If not, what should we expect?  Do we have any options if they are down (really, since we aren’t paying)?

Whatever the answer, it isn’t any fun!

Update (08/13/08) – The day after I posted this, someone from Customer support at WordPress posted an explanation about what happened.  I am very impressed by this type of response and think more companies should be out engaging in this way.  Way to go WordPress!

Is there a substitute that would be able to take up the slack however imperfect?

• SMS: Perfect for immediate communications that are limited to one or at most two points.  Mostly limited to one-to-one communications.
• Twitter: Great for general communications, essentially what I call virtual water cooler discussions.  Able to have a one-to-many communication as well as private discussions one-on-one.  Limited to 140 characters, which limits the amount of content and media shared.
• IM: Excellent for one-to-one communications, but the immediacy that is implied can impead discussion and discourse as well as complexity associated with email communications.

Seems like we are going to be using email for awhile yet.  Interestingly, all new forms of communications tend to add to the options available and don’t replace preceeding forms.  So, no replacement for email and when it is down I think we will have to simply deal…

So far, I think there are some interesting take aways:

• Average equity stake for investors is targeted at around 24%
• Average Pre-Money Valuation: $4.7M
  • Consumer Internet: $5.5M
  • Enterprise / ASP: $2.3M
  • Other: $3.4M
• Average Post-Money Valuation: $4.9M
• All companies have 10 employees or less
• Stage of company: (companies, valuation, raised/raising)
  • Concept: 1, $7M, ??
  • In Development: 1, $2.5M, ??
  • Beta: 7, $4.9M, 2 raised / 1 raising / 4??
  • Launched / Live: 6, $4.5M, 2 raised / 2 raising / 2??

Here are the links:
Submit a Company Valuation >>
See the data >>

Obviously, this is not a scientific survey, but I do think the data is quite interesting.  This data does not capture any personal identifiable information is open to everyone to review.

Feel free to share the above links, as the more data we capture, the more usefull it all becomes!

Don’t worry, getting to Ballard is quick and easy… Head North from downtown on Elliott Avenue, which becomes 15th Ave NW or take 45th East from I5. No passport required!

Obviously, we were approaching the valuation from different perspectives and with different goals. That said, I would be interested in seeing a larger data set of startup valuations. I have set up a poll that will collect segmentation, size, company stage, pre-money and post-money valuations and expected raise amounts. We are not capturing who submitted or what company the info is for. All the information submitted will be available to everyone online.

This is a first attempt at gaining a clearer picture of different valuations. Any additional feedback about how to optimize the poll, please contact me directly. Feel free to submit or not, it is completely up to you.

Here are the links:
Submit a Company Valuation >>
See the data >>

• Google Search
  • General
  • Trends
  • BlogSearch
  • News
• Google Analytics
• Gmail
• Google RSS Reader
• Google Calendar
• Google Documents

I use the above services more than any other site, service or application.  I am almost fully online now and am completely at Google’s mercy.  For a quick summary, Google knows who I communicate it, what I am interested in, what I read, what I don’t read, my daily schedule, the traffic that my sites receive, what I am writing about, has detailed understanding of the data that I share with others in the form of Google Docs, and untold data based upon their acquisition of DoubleClick (where I go online, what I see and do, my browsing habits, etc).

The question I ask myself, is what are the risks associated with having all my data controlled by one company?  If they did decide to change how they operate, how much risk would be in?  What if even one employee were to pull data illegally?  Could they access my bank accounts by determining my banks and financial institutions and hacking my passwords (they will have the ability to determine my passwords via email, and my history).

If I do decide that the risk is too high, what are the switching costs?  Who else provides the scalability for all the services mentioned above and how much would I be willing to pay?  I would need to determine how much the assessed risk “cost me.”  When all is said, free is powerful.

I will continue to use these Google services and probably more and more as time goes on and will hope and pray that my fears do not come to pass.

As it stands now, I can fully adopt Google as my alter ego. After all, they do know me better than I know myself.

Then you get into hosting, phone, office, and all the other bills.  How do you keep your costs down?  This is especially true with companies that bootstrap, where everything is out of your own pocket.

Here are a few things that I do:

1. Drink water.  Don’t get a cup of coffee.  If you must, get a drip coffee or even a hot or iced tea.  Save 100% to 50% off the cost of a latte
2. Keep your hosting costs down.  No need to pay for a gazillion users unless you have them
3. Call your phone companies and get group discount/rate for having your entire team on the same plan
4. Use as many free services as possible; Gmail, Google Analytics, WordPress, etc.
5. If you have to drive, try to coordinate all of your meetings in one location. No need to waste gas at >$4 / gallon.
6. Negotiate with your insurance company, see if you can get a discount by threatening to switch providers, works for phone carriers, credit cards, etc.

I have been doing the above, and have saved ~$1,000 / month.  That isn’t pocket change!

Remember, every dollar counts! How do you save $$$$?

Five companies will be pitching and demoing.

Check it out for yourself at http://wiki.npost.com/index.php?title=NPostWiki:Seattle-event-jul.

I am looking forward to the nPost event this coming Tuesday at the Columbia City Theater. Five local startups will be pitching and demoing at the event.

Thanks to Sun Microsystems and Silicon Valley Bank for sponsoring the event and to ClearWire for providing Internet access.

Not only is this practice wrong, it is reprehensible.  If you received an email from me regarding the Yaari site I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.  Do not sign up for Yaari!

See all startup tech jobs >> | Post your startup jobs >>

Microsoft Windows is definitely a platform and the Internet is certainly a platform. Is Facebook a platform? They have >80 million active users, and are one of the fastest growing social networks.  However, MySpace still has over 20 million more users and is continuing to grow. At the core, though, is Facebook at platform? Are services delivered and facilitated by its technology?

Yes and no. A lot was made out of Facebook widgets, but are they providing full communication, lifestyle, business, or other services to Facebook users? The current answer is no. it does have one thing going for it and that is its user base. To become a full fledged platform they need to do the following:

1. Completely open up its data to outside providers
2. Allow developers to create full fledged applications to run internally
3. Become more than a site and expand into a full operating system – via a browswer
4. Expand to more of a mainstream audience – Until my mother uses it, it won’t be a platform (I am calling this the “Mother Test” and it applies to most technology)
5. Needs to integrate with external IM and email.  This having to go to the Facebook site to correspond with people is lame and annoying and a long term hinderance to adoption

I am certainly not an expert on platforms, but I do know it when I see it… If you disagree, I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

I want to also take a look at Twitter. The problems it faces in becoming a platform are relatively simple:

1. Reliability – A platform can’t go down and be unavailable at even a fraction as much as Twitter is down
2. User base – There are simply not enough users on the site to provide the critical mass necessary for a platform
3. Technology – Is Twitter a broad enough service to provide the scope necessary for unknown applications?  Will it be anything more a simple communication system that compliments phone calls, email, IM, SMS, etc?

I know what I think… Do you agree or not?

Starting at 4:30pm Blue Gecko will be hosting a Lunch / Happy Hour 2.0 in Pioneer Square.  Followed directly by the nPost Pub Crawl at 6:00pm going to 7:30-8:00pm.  With the end destination being the Thingamajiggr event in South Lake Union.  We may take a bus, ride the SLUT (South Lake Union Trolley), but we will get there come hell or high water.

Bring your aspirin and bottled war because we will need it.

Historically, recruiting has been all about the rolodex.  Who do you know and how well did they fit the need for a given position at a specific company.  They were similar to the match makers of old, who would connect two people from different families.

Recruiters served a similar purpose, and the two are very different as people often spend about the same if not more time at work with their co-workers than they do with their spouse or significant other.  In that sense, it was important to match up people and companies based on a good understanding of different values, cultures, expectations and of course skill sets.

Now though, with the explosion of online job boards and with much more savvy applicants and companies recruiters are seeing their roles change.  They are no longer about spinning the rolodex and are more about using data to filter out candidates.

With many of the job boards driving tens to even hundreds of applicants for every job, the recruiter is responsible for filtering down to the top few candidates to bring in to interview.

What should every recruiter be doing:

1. Monitoring which job boards send the best candidates for specific types of jobs
2. Compare these job boards against long term performance and retention of placed candidates
3. Try different messaging for getting the attention of candidates
4. Develop key metrics for each employer around culture, performance, technical requirements, location, etc.
5. Develop a vetting process for weeding through candidates
6. Leverage the niche job boards as well as the social networks