Gov. Perdue (NC) gives a “shout out” to JUTE Networks
Around 4:00pm EDT today I got a few text messages from people attending the Institute for Emerging Ideas (IEI) Forum in Raleigh, NC. Governor Bev Perdue (D-NC) had just highlighted JUTE Networks as a company that had started a “tech startup” in North Carolina. Thanks for mentioning us Gov. Perdue!
In response, I wanted to say thanks, tell you a little bit about IEI and check out any data I had on Gov. Perdue.
IEI is self-described as:
The Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI) is a public policy, think-and-do tank that convenes leaders from business, non profit organizations, government and higher education to tackle some of the biggest issues facing North Carolina’s future growth and prosperity.
You can learn more at their website: http://www.ncsu.edu/iei/
I went into the data I had readily available from the National Institute for Money in State Politics. What I had were the top donors in NC–just a few people–but two of them had given to her campaign. You can see that and some more visualizations in the gallery below.
(Red = Republican; Blue – Democrat; thick line = a donation of $2k or more)
Montana businesses networks — via implu
I recently came across implu (www.implu.com). It’s self-described as:
implu is an online tool for prospecting, networking and market research. No other site keeps you informed with daily news, custom searches and daily email alerts. No other site provides you with an executive’s business associations allowing you to network your way into new clients. No other site provides comprehensive company information on just one page.
Seems to provide a lot of interesting information by scraping the web. I pulled a CSV file from implu (and gave them big props for having an easy way to do that…) and uploaded into Jute NRM Prototype.
Nothing spectacular in the results, but it’s interesting. It would be much more interesting as a layer of data mixed with my personal data.
Montana Businesses — Whole Network
H&R Block Executives in Montana
Key Networks in Montana Zip Code 63141
What do you think?
Paul Graham is our hero
It’s worth a few minutes of your time to read Paul Graham’s most recent article on “What Startups are really like.”
If you don’t know Paul Graham, you should. Check out www.PaulGraham.com or his Wikipedia page.
You should also look into his book, Hackers & Painters. It is a brilliant summary of designing a startup company, and the software that it delivers to customers.
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Favorite Paul Graham quotations:
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Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as ’suits’.
For the most ambitious young people, the corporate ladder is obsolete.
Everyone by now presumably knows about the danger of premature optimization. I think we should be just as worried about premature design – designing too early what a program should do.
Advanced Analytics & Business Network Visualization
Gartner offered up their top 10 list for strategic technologies in 2010. [read the full article on ZD NET]
Ranking in at #2 is “Advanced Analytics” which aren’t exactly defined, but are address in the quotation below. My perspective is that Jute is a form of Analytics–it’s analytics for your network of professional relationship. Jute helps you make better decisions with the data that you have by converting that data to information. That process of analysis and visualization is the hallmark of great analytics software of every stripe.
Here’s what ZD Net quoted:
On the analytics front, Gartner said in a presentation:
We have reached the point in the improvement of performance and costs that we can afford to perform analytics and simulation for each and every action taken in the business. Not only will data center systems be able to do this, but mobile devices will have access to data and enough capability to perform analytics themselves, potentially enabling use of optimization and simulation everywhere and every time. This can be viewed as a third step in supporting operational business decisions.
The rub: New technologies need to be created to search and organize unstructured content and data.
That’s right. And that’s what Jute offers–a solution to search and organize that unstructured data.
Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009 / 2010
Relationship Visualization: MIT’s flora style
Check out this concept from MIT Information Design Ecology group. It tracks your communication with selected people and shows you an indicator–a plant–with the health of the relationship. Brilliant concept.
MIT's Social Garden app
WooHoo! ImagineOptix raises cash in RTP
ImagineOptix–a fellow NC IDEA grant recipient–raised $1.4MM in equity financing. Great to see a startup grow to that stage of funding.
What you can learn from the best bank in the world
This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while now. A tribute, a thank you note and a shameless act of promotion. All for our bank: Square 1 Bank.
In the up and down world of starting a startup, trusted relationships are more valuable than anything else. (With the possible exception of happy customers.)
We trust our bank…heck, we love our bank. Through thick and thin, our bank has been there to support us. From helping with early sales to making introductions to potential clients and listening to our pitches and helping us refine them, S1B is a true ally. And, perhaps even more important, a great teacher.
There are three things I’ve learned from working with the team at our bank:
1) Great customer service is about treating the customer better than they expect to be treated. Quick example: we were waiting on a big wire transfer to come through. Our account rep realized that I was calling every couple hours (I couldn’t sign a contract until it went through…) and offered to flag the account and call me when the transaction went through. No charge, no strings, no hidden fees. Just a better way to serve our company.
2) Trusted friends make introductions. In the business we’re in, we study the way trusted relationships work between professional organizations. At the end of the day, very few things increase the trust between two individuals as much as sharing each others’ networks. Of all our professional service providers, S1B has been the happiest to make introductions for us. A few of those have led to sales. How awesome is that?
3) It feels good to be treated like a rockstar, even though you’re only playing the local pub. We are a small startup. We have not raised a venture round. We do alright, but we’re nothing compared to some of our bank’s other customers. Yet, we get treated with respect from our bank and our bankers. That feels good. Feeling good is a big deal.
These are values that have become a part of the way I treat our clients and, as we grow, will be inculcated into our organizational behavior. There is a lot of talk in the trades about “customer loyalty” these days. While there are a thousand consultants out there with multifarious strategies for customer loyalty, I prefer to follow an organization that leads by example: our bank.
Thanks guys!
SoCalTech.com Interview with Sean McDonald
Ben Kuo from SoCalTech.com sat down with Jute co-founder Sean McDonald last week. Ben’s posted the interview on his site, which is the leading source of information about the venture / startup industry and culture in Southern California.
Read the article and check out the rest of SoCalTech while you’re there.
Git grows trust…
Linus Torvalds, the creator and mastermind behind the Linux Kernel, recently gave a Tech Talk at Google. At about 27 minutes in, Linus talks about networks of trust. Git, Linus’s distributed revision control system, relies on trust grown between people; about relationships that make the world go round.
Creative Juice. Sponsored by…
You heard it here first, folks. Google has officially sponsored the Creative Juice competition, alongside Asheville start-ups Digital Chalk, American Green TV, economic development leaders Advantage West and yours truly, Jute Networks. The grand prize winners for the national competition will win a trip to sunny Mountain View, CA to tour the Googleplex!
Creative Juice is:
Creative Juice is a collegiate competition which will challenge student teams to create value while communicating a message of environmental responsibility through the use of imagination, innovation and creativity around the use of a “throw-away” item. Teams will record their experience via video and upload to YouTube for judging.
We’re a proud sponsor. Matt and Sean first saw a competition like this at Stanford, when we went for entrepreneur week. It is an effective way to teach innovative practices and foster an entrepreneuring spirit.
(Facebook’ers–take a minute to join the Creative Juice group)