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)
How can you help Matt Raker be successful?
Big news here at Jute Networks: one of the co-founders, Matt Raker, has accepted a new position as “Senior Director of AdvantageGreen” at AdvantageWest, the economic development group for Western North Carolina. Matt’s job will be to help entrepreneurs build “green” businesses in the region, eventually building an ecosystem of green businesses and jobs there.
I have no doubt Matt will be successful. He is smart, talented and incredibly driven. Add to that, he has a depth of knowledge in economics and sustainability that is unrivaled in my network of colleagues and friends.
I will miss Matt, not only for his hard work and critical thinking, but also for his dedication to building Jute, the world’s first Network Relationship Manager. Matt has led the design, product development and QA for the product since Day 1. It will be very difficult to find another partner like that. (Realistically, it’ll take 3 or 4 people to replace one Matt Raker.)
There are a key points I want to make here:
First, Asheville and Western North Carolina couldn’t have a better advocate for this type of economic development. Matt is not a bureaucrat–he is an entrepreneur. He always has been, and I think he always will be.
Second, Matt will continue to use the Jute platform in his new position. I have no doubt that Matt will be the uber-power-user who continues to provide invaluable feedback on how to improve Jute.
Finally (and most important), we all have the opportunity to help Matt build a valuable network. Please take a minute to email Matt, congratulate him, and connect him to the leaders you know in economic development, green / clean technology and investment.
Very few people realize this, but Matt and I didn’t start “just any company” because we were friends. We barely knew each other when we started Jute. But we had a shared vision–really, a remarkable degree of solidarity on what the product should do and on what the user should experience when managing a complex network of relationships. That is why we started the company.
Today, as Matt moves on to his next venture, I have the same admiration for his talent and his goals. I will do whatever I can to help him be successful, and I encourage you to do the same.
Jute goes (RED)
I created a custom visualization for the (RED) campaign. Let me know what you think, and share it if you think it’s important to fight AIDS in Africa.
It’s World AIDS Day today. I don’t think I need to outline why this important, but if you’d like to know more, check out joinRED.com where there are videos and all kinds information. You can even pimp your Facebook page with their tools.
Something that’s really important to me (Sean) is that all kinds of traits transmit through relationships. This is what we call “sociographic” transmission, although the academicians have yet to settle on a lexicon that deems that phrase precise. We’ll leave the vocab up to Stanford…we just analyze networks.
Anyway, what I tried to reflect in this visualization is the idea that we are all influenced by our friends and that we can influence each other. This type of incluence is–obviously–one of the most powerful forces on earth.
So take a minute, do something, and convince somebody else to go (RED).
Trent Reznor is an Entrepreneur
If I go onstage I want to give people everything they want and more. I’ll wash their car for them on their way out. -Trent Reznor
Trent’s a musician…but also an entrepreneur. My kind of entrepreneur…
-Sean
From avclub.com via US Airways in-flight magazine
FDR & The Independent Sector
President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) was quoted recently, in a speech by Diana Aviv, President and CEO of Independent Sector. She quoted him, saying:
“I have the profound conviction that the American people are now determined to put forth a mightier effortthan they have ever yet made … I call for that national effort. I call for it in the name of this nation which we love and honor and which we are privileged and proud to serve. I call upon our people with …absolute confidence that our common cause will greatly succeed.” –FDR
What a great quotation to pull for her speech [pdf link] in a room full of “Independent Sector” leaders–non profit professionals, foundations and the supporting industry members. Ms. Aviv delivered a message of aspiration and innovation. She has a great vision for collaboration across sectors to re-invigorate our nation.
We’re proud to announce that over the next week, we’ll be working hands-on with Independent Sector in DC. We’ll publish some examples of the work we’re doing, and in cases where it will line up with IS’s goals, we may share some of the resources we’re developing for non-profits.
Published from the Charlotte airport…
We’re in DC Nov 12-19
For those who follow the blog and are in DC…Matt Raker and Sean McDonald (Jute co-founders) will be in Washington, DC for an on-site project with a client from Nov 12-19.
If you’d like to meetup while we’re there, email Sean or call him at 828/545.9539. Hope to see you there!
Analysis of Green Markets
We’ve recently started paying attention to the OpenCalais (OC) project by Thomson Reuters. Basically, Sean has a penchant for anything that has “open” in its name…
The project describes itself this way:
Calais is a rapidly growing toolkit of capabilities that allow you to readily incorporate state-of-the-art semantic functionality within your blog, content management system, website or application.
Huh? Translated into human, that means: OC takes information published on the web, identifies people, facts & events, then outputs data that geeks can use. This all happens automatically. With OC output, geeks like us can take it even further to figure out who knows whom, and how. Or, in this case, who acquires whom, who invests in whom and other transactions in the “green energy” markets.
The OC website has a nice “Showcase” function that allows people who have utilized the OC API to post their projects. One of the projects, Who’s Who in the Financial News has developed a listing (spreadsheet) of “Private Equity, Green Energy, Acquisitions and Alternative Investments.” So we grabbed that data and uploaded it to Jute.
The results are very interesting. Part of the intention of this blog post is to find people in the field who can help us interpret the results. If you’re interested, email me and he’ll give you access to the Jute Network Document I used to create this.
So here are the results, and few questions that came up in working with this network. I haven’t bothered to make this a formal report. We’re just feeling it out…
Can we start to extrapolate trends based on a network of relationships? For example, could we identify the next strategic partnership that will be formed based on the existing 2nd and 3rd degree relationships?
Does network proximity indicate corporate strategy? That is to say, does a network that is distant from another network do so intentionally?
What would it take to make this a comprehensive data set? (This is clearly only part of the story…)
What would an investor do with this information?
Getting started: a key for the color-coding of the visualizations
For these visualizations, companies have been "tagged" and color-coded as shown in this index
OIL
companies and tags related to"oil"
"2nd degree" of connections to "oil"
Interesting connections
Why are "oil recovery" and "cement plants" in close proximity to each other?
If you Google “rti international + oil recovery + cement plants” you’ll find that cement can be used to capture CO2 and that the DOE has announced $1.4 billion in projects to capture and store carbon. One company in particular, RTI International has announced major changes in its management team, including a new SVP for “Integrated Value Chain.” (a.k.a. They are building a new network.)
More visualizations of oil networks
"networks within networks" highlighted within the 2nd degree network of oil
VantagePoint Venture Partners is highly connected within the "oil" network
When you start paying attention to the highly connected members of a network, and go learn some more about them at their website, you can see that VantagePoint Venture Partners highlights that:
We were the first large venture capital firm to recognize the opportunity here and have since committed $1 billion for this burgeoning opportunity.
More analysis shows their priorities and their co-investment partners.
a look at VantagePoint Venture Partners' 1st degree network
VantagePoint Venture Partners co-investment network
Whole Network Analysis
A different way to view the data set is to pare it down to only analyze relationships between companies that are “investments” and then identify the best-connected members of the network. You can apply the same analysis to all the relationship types, which is what is documented below.
(Note: use the key at the top of this page to see the color-coding in these visualizations.)
Investments
"Whole network" analysis of "green" investments
M&A
Mergers & Acquisitions within the "green" business world
Collaborations
Collaborations in the "green" business world
Organizations who are drivers in Collaboration
Red circles represent "high traffic nodes" and brown halos represent "power nodes"
Joint Ventures
Notice that most joint ventures--as they appear in this incomplete data set--are among just two partners
Subsidiaries
Alliances
Alliances seem to involve more organizations and to bring in more diverse networks
Looking at the Big Picture
Investments among all relationship types
Investments are dark lines
The dense cluster in the middle gravitates around oil investments
Best-connected member
I ran an analysis of each of the major relationship types and continued to pare the results down by increasing the scale on the “whole network” analysis, which requires that the organization be more connected.
While the visual results are almost irrelevant (they display only one or two results) the list is interesting:
Alliance: GWS Technologies & Praxair, Inc.
Collaboration: OTCBB MNGA, PGE & SSTP Europe
Investments:
Joint Ventures: GWS Technologies
M&A: Cleantech Invest AG
Subsidiary: HSBC Alternative Fund Services & Arotech Corporation
While there is no universal correlation between a position in a network and upcoming activity, I would hypothesize that the organizations that show up on the list above are worth watching if you’re in a related field.
Topic-Specific Visualizations
Wind tree
Solar 3-degree Network
Oil
Natural Gas
Ethanol tree
Electric Car Network
Funding Network
Gallery
We’re offering up all of the visualizations we rendered for this analysis. Some are documented, others are not. If you have questions, just shoot us an email.
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.
Using Meetup.com in the Los Angeles Area
Sean McDonald here, co-founder and sales guy for Jute Networks. Among the many big changes at our company in the past couple months is my move to California to seek new relationships for the company. (And, admittedly, enjoy some time at the beach…)
I’ve spent the last ten years in Asheville, NC, which as I know it, is one of the greatest places a person could ever live. From mountain biking to microbreweries, if you like adventure and progressive culture, Asheville is a wonderland. However, it’s a small town, with less than 100k people in the greater metro area. While there is an emerging culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, it’ll be a few more years until it catches up with Los Angeles…
Things are different in Southern CA. New to town, knowing only a handful of people, I’ve successfully started networking with peers in the technology industry (as well as fellow mountain biking enthusiasts) with a good deal of success. Meetup.com has been the hub of connection for me, but I’ve also used Facebook and Twitter to connect with people in the area, in-person and virtually. These tools, which in this case are connecting complete strangers, do a great job of sparking connections–and it takes just minutes to get involved.
The people I’ve met have been not just amiable, but downright helpful, going out of their way to welcome a new guy to the area. In a town known the world round for a pretentious attitude, I’ve found most people to be friendly and fun to talk to.
I was listening to a podcast from the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders featuring Sheryl Sandberg over the weekend. She said the big vision of her former employer, Google, was to “organize the world’s information and make it useful.” She said the big, giant vision of Facebook, where she is now COO, is to make the web “real” — to give people real identities, honest interaction online. Meetup is in that vein–real people having real meetings with real results. All accomplished in less than a minute of searching a free-to-use ($$ to host a Group) online tool.
That’s a big deal.
If you’re in the LA area-specifically Santa Monica or Venice where I am–contact me. Let’s meetup meet up.
How can we help?
Case study
The team behind the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client has started heavily promoting their Mozilla Service Week, which is coming this fall. Among the projects they suggest that their fan base–largely technologists–take on in local communities are:
- They teach senior citizens how to use the Web.
- They show a non-profit how to use social networking to grow its base of supporters.
- They help install a wireless network at a school.
- They create Web how-to materials for a library’s computer cluster.
- They refurbish hardware for a local computer center.
- They update a non-profit organization’s website.
It’s a great project and I encourage anyone reading this to get involved.
(I’ll point out that, Mozilla does plenty to make the world a better place by creating an open browser and making it successful and widely-adopted. This initiative won’t come close to that level of impact, but it is noble.)
The big picture
This is a great segue to one of the defining questions of our age: who will teach the millions of Americans and billions of people around the world how to put the best technologies of our time to use in their own lives? There are lots of follow-up questions here, including: who is responsible for doing so? should all technologies be designed in a way that they are “intuitive enough” for anyone to use them? should the end user play a role in maintaining the technology or is it OK to have a driver/mechanic (user/expert) relationship with core technologies like a person’s computer? This list goes on and on…
How can we help?
The question for a startup like Jute Networks is: how can we help ensure that all people have access to technologies that make their lives better?
We help most by making our company successful. Jute NRM is a truly innovative user interface for complex relationships data. The better the interface, the more valuable that information is to a broader audience. In a world with more data than our greatest minds know what to do with, data visualization’s great promise is to increase all people’s ability to at least understand data that impacts their lives and potentially make better decisions that increase their quality of life.
From an action-oriented perspective, we’ve got to start finding clients that really need our help to fulfill their missions. Large non-profits, innovative startups…any operation that lives and dies by its relationships. In a perfect world, our clients will be dedicated being the change we want to see in the world (to paraphrase Gandhi). We believe in a progressive approach to business, government and stewardship of the earth. We believe that entrepreneurship and technological innovation offer great promise to create a more perfect union, domestically and the world round.
If you need to get more value out of complex relationship data and your organization seems like a fit, contact me, Sean McDonald, today.
Jute featured in Citizen-Times Story
Asheville Citizen-Times reporter Dale Neal quoted Jute co-founder Sean McDonald in a story on the upcoming Carolina Connect conference.
Neal quoted Sean talking about the startup scene in Asheville, saying “There is a serious community of entrepreneurs and investors here in Western North Carolina…”.
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)