I got the following email from a friend today that I hadn’t talked to in a year or so (see – email isn’t dead…).

Brad,

Just wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know I am planning to start using Rally on several projects I am working on as a “Rent-a-cto”. 

Blog + Marketing = Blarketing

I got turned on to these guys from reading about them in your Blog.

Hope all is well in Feldland!

Earlier today, I gave an interview about the used of RSS / Blogging in corporate marketing and sales activity.  I dissed the  “blogs as an extension of a lame-ass corporate marketing campaign” stuff pretty hard.  In the interview, I tried to explain that part of the value of the blog communication is honest, trusted, forthright point of views.  You don’t have to agree with me – but you know I’m saying what I mean.  Once this cycle of trust is broken – which is true whenever one shifts into a “corporate marketing” function (“I’m going to tell you want I think you want to hear in order to buy my product”) – things get stupid and gross pretty fast.

But Blarketing – and Brogging – is different.  I’ve talked about Brogging before in the context of “Bragging about one of my companies” on my blog.  Yeah – it’s promotion – but I’m proud of the work being done and I want the world to know.  Blarketing is similar – I’m trying to tell you about real stuff that I think is good and worthwhile.  If I stear you wrong and BS you, you’ll decide I’m full of crap and start ignoring me.  So – there’s a built in governer on my behavior.  I think this is broadly true for a medium like blogging – I get immediate feedback if I’m spewing out useless shit – and I know this – so I try to communicate relevant stuff, transparently, and with as much clarity and frankness as I can muster.

We’ll go through plenty of ups and downs along the way to using RSS / Blogging as an effective marketing medium.  I’ve already seen a lot of new memes get propagated and I look forward to seeing some of these silly words take hold.

I got this email after my interview.  If I had read it beforehand, I might have accomplished coining a new term today (which we should attribute to my friend Marvin Scaff – thanks Marvin).  Does it count if it’s in print in blog vs. traditional media?

I stole Matt’s subtitle because it’s so cute.  If you are part of either side of the “email is dead, no it’s not” debate, go read Matt’s post on “The Rumors of Email’s Demise …”.  I couldn’t have said it better myself – so I won’t – just read what Matt said.

Return Path just released a study showing that a majority of users of Gmail come from existing Microsoft Hotmail users who are switching to Gmail.  The stats are interesting – of new Gmail users that switched from something else:

• 57% from Hotmail
• 27% from Yahoo
• 16% from AOL, MSN, and Comcast

I don’t learn from demos, conferences, or listening to other people present powerpoint presentations.  I figured out a long time ago that I learn by reading, reflecting, experiencing, and playing with stuff.  The best confirmation of this was my experience at MIT – I was there seven years (through 2.5 degree programs before they threw me out), went to about 33% of my classes, read everything I could get my hands on, and did just fine.

So – it was with great pleasure that I saw Jeff Nolan’s extensive blog coverage of Demo and Weblogs Blogging Demo site.  I hate conferences – they are the convergence of all the “learning” approaches that don’t work for me.  It’s not that conferences are bad, I just can’t bear to sit in a room for a day listening to other people – followed by mid-day and evening schmoozing.  I realize this all has something to do with my upbringing on Planet Grodon as an earth child of a pair of space aliens, but – well – there you have it.

Back to Jeff’s coverage – it’s great.  While the official Demoletter site has a good overview of the companies, Jeff gives his own point of view (as a good blogger should).  As I was reading through his posts on each company, I had a strong feeling that the RSS / Blog universe has entered the “me too zone.”  It started when I read about Five Across (a Six Apart clone, but better – please change the name <g>), saw the aggregator congestion (Onfolio, Pluck), and more blog / audio / video / photo tools (Serious Magic, Imeem, WhatCounts, Photoleap, iUpload). 

Every emerging market hits a point where there is a mad rush of early stage entrepreneurs and VC’s piling in.  In some cases, it drives rapid innovation; in most it creates near term over-saturation, lots of irrational financings, and plenty of carnage as the laws of Darwin play out over the next couple of years.

I’m afraid we just hit that point with RSS / Blogging.  The meme has spread broadly – which is great.  Now we’ll watch all gods children pile in to try to get something up and running in this “space” (more on the fallacy of “space” in an upcoming blog).  Again – nothing wrong with this – it’s the natural dynamic of an early emerging market, but anyone that is experienced (and still has their long term memory intact) knows how it plays out for so many companies, entrepreneurs, and investors.

Clayton Christensen discusses this phenomenon in detail in his classic book The Innovator’s Dilemma – and reaches back to the example of the hard drive industry from 1976 to 1995.  In 1976, there were 17 firms in the hard drive industry.  Between 1976 and 1995 there were 129 new entrants to this industry.  By 1995, of the 17 firms in the industry only one – IBM’s hard drive operation – still existed as a stand alone business.  Of the 129 new entrants, 109 had failed.  Christensen developed his “technology mudslide hypothesis” from this – “coping with the relentless onslaught of technology change was akin to trying to climb a mudslide raging down a hill.  You have to scramble with everything you’ve got to stay on top of it, and if you ever once stop to catch your breath, you get buried.”

Sound / feel familiar?  Christensen then studied a lot more data and concluded his “technology mudslide hypothesis” was wrong.  He concluded that neither pace nor the difficulty of technological change lay at the root of the leading firm’s failures.  This led to Christensen’s theories on sustaining vs. disruptive technologies – where the real meat of the discussion is (and I’ll encourage you to read the book for more – it’s worth it – even if you learn better from conferences then from reading books).

While Christensen addresses what happens in the early stage of a disruptive market, I can boil it down into my own simple phrase – “the me too zone.”  It’s as if the whole world wakes up one day and starts working on the same types of things.  Lots of innovation continues at the core – and the first movers either aggressively extend their lead or completely fuck up somewhere and self-destruct – but in either case a huge number of “fast followers” (or “me too”) companies appear.  VCs suddenly get religion and the funding piles into the sector.  Suddenly everyone is talking about the “hot new “X” space”. 

The cliche “watching a car wreck in slow motion” comes to mind.  It’s definitely fun in a sick sort of way.  Welcome to the me too zone – I believe we just entered it for the RSS / blog world.  There is a huge adoption (and innovation) curve ahead of everyone who is doing stuff with RSS / blogging – and there are plenty of good investments left to make and companies to create – but the noise and clutter is about to get really loud.

Dick Costolo and his gang at Feedburner have been on the front lines of the podcasting explosion.  They’ve got great metrics on the growth and dynamics of podcasting and just put up a post on RSS Metrics, Podcasting that’s must reading for anyone that’s into RSS and/or podcasting.

I’m hanging out at Microsoft for another day during their PAC conference so it was pleasant to see a release from ePartners that they are partnering with 5by5 to use 5by5’s Bridgewerx product as part of ePartners’ Microsoft BizTalk integration services.  Microsoft continues to blow me away in how they work with and manage their partner relationships across all lines of business and – at this meeting – I’m seeing a very clear focus from them on expanding and embracing their partners even further.  One of my other companies – Oxlo – is also a deep BizTalk partner (it’s a key part of their product) – BizTalk and Sharepoint are definitely getting a lot of play as the next wave of Microsoft server-related products.

Fred Wilson wrote today that he and his partner Brad Burnham have officially launched Union Square Ventures and have completed the final close on their inaugural fund. 

I’ve known Fred since the first day I started working with Mobius (called Softbank at the time).  My very first Softbank-related meeting was to do due diligence at a company outside Boston called Yoyodyne and I met Fred, Charley Lax, and Seth Godin (the Yoyodyne CEO / founder) in Yoyodyne’s office (I kept looking for John Bigboote in the office but couldn’t find him.)  Neither Fred nor I knew each other (nor did we know the other was going to be there), but I remember an immediate first impression about five minutes into the meeting of “smart dude.”  Fred went on to start his first venture fund (Flatiron Partners), invest in Yoyodyne (with Softbank – which had a happy ending as Seth sold it to Yahoo! for a bundle well after he had no hair), and build a very successful NY-based venture fund with his partner Jerry Colonna.

Fred and I shortly discovered that we were both MIT grads and I recall one of our first long discussions on a wonderfully warm Boston night as we wandered from dinner in the Back Bay back to our hotel somewhere talking about MIT, getting to know each other, and laughing about how crazy busy things were (this was 1997).  I worked closely with Fred and Jerry on a handful of companies (eShare – big success, abuzz – solid success, Mainspring – got our money back, Appgenesys – big failure, Return Path – success in progress) and adore both of them.

I’ve had the pleasure of working very closely with Fred over the past four years on Return Path – which we became investors in together when we merged an early stage company Fred had funded (Return Path) with an early stage company I had funded (Veripost).  Return Path and Veripost were direct competitors, were both pre-revenue, and were the only two companies that had been funded to create “email change of address” systems.  Fred and I had one of those “duh” moments and worked closely with the management teams to combine forces early, rather than pummel each other before the market matured.  Matt Blumberg – the CEO of Return Path – has done an awesome job building the business and I’m extremely proud of the company Matt and his team have created (and hopefully Matt’s happy with the “help” that Fred and I have provided along the way.)

While I know Brad Burnham less well than Fred, having never worked with him, I watched Fred work with his partner Jerry Colonna and see Brad as another perfect foil for Fred.  As the cliche goes – “every great partnership starts with two people” – and Fred and Brad seem like a superb fit.

Congrats Fred and Brad!

Greg Reinacker – founder and CTO of NewsGator – posted NewsGator’s near term product road map today.  The gang at NewsGator has been heads down cranking on a number of fronts – I’ve been encouraging Greg and crew to be more open about what’s coming next.  Greg historically has been very tight lipped – by his own admission – so we had some interesting (and useful) conversations about this. 

While I’m not a proponent of vaporware or FUD, I do believe it’s useful for young companies to be open about what they are working on.  Customer and partner feedback is hugely valuable as you are developing a new set of software products and it’s easy to get the word out there (e.g. via blogs) and get feedback (e.g. via comments, emails, and cross posts).  In today’s fast moving world of software and short release cycles, I think a clearly articulated product vision, early beta programs, and lots of forums for feedback helps dramatically improve software product quality and value over the long term.

I’m at the Microsoft Partner Advisory Council (PAC) meeting (I’m on Microsoft’s Venture Capital PAC).  Simon Witts – the Corporate VP of the Enterprise and Partner Group – is keynoting the morning session.  It unbelievable (and extremely impressive) how much Microsoft measures about their business.  In his session, Simon has been extremely candid about positives and negatives based on what they forecasted for 1H05 (7/04 – 12/04), how they actually did, how this impacts their partner channel, the feedback loop that results, and what they are changing to perform even better.

While he was talking, I got my monthly status report from Rally.  It’s full of metrics – actual against forecast – and a discussion of the delta.  These metrics are across the entire business – it’s not just accounting, financial, or sales data – it’s information across the business.  Last night, I looked at my weekly report from StillSecure – same story – full of metrics along with discussion of what’s going on in the business.

While it’s easy to get lost in “data” rather than synthesizing and understanding “information”, I find way too many early stage companies measuring very little – thinking this is something that “only big companies both with.”  Microsoft shows how it’s completely ingrained in their culture – in my experience with them, they’ve been measuring everything forever. 

The value of building this discipline into the fabric of a startup is huge.  Automate as much as you can early in your life – turn “data” into information – and continually refine what you are measuring to make sure it’s the relevant stuff.  But measure it.

I recently agreed to be chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology – an organization run by Lucy Sanders (ex-CTO Avaya Labs) – whose mission is to ensure that women are fully represented in the influential world of information technology.  Lucy and NCWIT are the real deal – in its first year we’ve raised over $4.5 million from the National Science Foundation, Avaya, Microsoft, Google, and a number of other technology companies.  Lucy has an ambitious multi-decade vision which – when you sit and listen – makes you say “wow – that’s perfect – yes – absolutely” and other unambiguous affirmative phrases.

Several weeks ago, Larry Summers – the President of Harvard University – generated a predictable controversy when he suggested “that innate differences between the genders could help explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers.”  I cracked up when I heard this for the first time since I figured he was simply being sarcastic and poking fun at his crosstown rival (my alma matter) due to the recent appointment of a woman (Dr. Susan Hockfield) as President of MIT.  But it was clear that he was deadly serious, and after an uproar, several apologies from Summers, and a lot of public discussion, the topic of the level of participation of women in IT has real visibility.

We had a NCWIT board meeting the week of Summers’ remarks.  At the meeting, we decided that the right approach was not to castigate Summers, nor join the “backlash”, but rather to invite Summers to get involved and help us better understand and address the issue (I suggested we ask him to join the NCWIT board).  To that end, Lucy wrote an op-ed the other day that follows.

As CEO of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, I’d like to thank Harvard’s President, Larry Summers. His recent remarks – that innate gender differences might explain the dearth of women in science and engineering – call attention to a critical issue even as they misconstrue it.

Innovation is inherently a creative and highly personal process: from Penicillin to iPods, the most influential innovations of our time reflect the perspectives and experience of their creators. Employing gender diversity in the innovation process yields different products and better ideas, contributing to stronger U.S. economic performance.

While women’s contributions have neared parity in biological sciences and math, women’s position in the information technology (IT) professions has slipped significantly. Women now earn only 28 percent of computer science degrees (down from 37 percent in 1984) and represent only one-quarter of professional workers in IT occupations.

This problem comes at a critical juncture for America: As IT globalizes, many of its products and services become commodities and even high-value IT jobs move off-shore. What will differentiate U.S. performance? Women can, and must play an important role in fostering new IT innovations if the US is to remain competitive.

The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) is a growing coalition of over 40 respected corporations, academic institutions and non-profits working aggressively to understand and solve this problem. NCWIT intends to increase the participation of girls and women in information technology and, through their contributions, to help the U.S. remain at the forefront of IT innovation. From K-12 education to corporate careers, we know that certain approaches work to engage and educate this over-looked talent pool of creative women. We need to put these approaches into action. We are a community of change-agents committed to investing in research and education, determining best practices for progress, and implementing these solutions across the country.

There’s no doubt that women are creative innovators. Debating whether their cognitive abilities match those of their male counterparts is a waste of time; it is in fact our differences that make women’s contributions so essential to our economy and society, no less in IT than anywhere else.

Read it carefully.  It describes the core of what NCWIT is trying to accomplish, why it matters, and how the differences between men and women can impact the innovation process.  Lucy – this is fun!