The Suits at OSB

If I'm doing a lot of references back to conferences in my latest posts, forgive me. We tend to write about what we know, and it seems the last 3 months, all I know is conferences.

That said, a very interesting observation from this week's OpenSource Business Conference. I don't usually attend OpenSource events, but the idea of the community and how it might impact the SaaS world was fascinating me. Plus it gave us the opportunity to meet with our critical partner, MuleSource (and have a couple of beers with the great Dave Roberts of Vyatta.)

That said, I figured I'd better wear jeans in order to get accepted with the OpenSource crowd. Unfortunately, I couldn't because of an earlier customer engagement. So at least I left my sports coat in the car.

When I got in the conference, I had to check if I was in the right hotel. Most people were wearing jackets and slacks, and I even saw some suits. This was OpenSource? When I commented on the formal (for the valley) attire, I was reminded it was the OpenSource Business Conference. I hadn't realized the seriousness of the gathering.

I will say I was a bit disappointed. When I worked at GlobalCrossing and MFN I saw them try to become just like AT&T and SBC. Trying to mix new company products with old company style ways of doing business was disastrous. You had none of the consistent revenue stream and institutional history of the old business's, and you sucked the enthusiasim and innovation out of the new business. Both companies suffered mightily.

Hopefully the same won't happen with many of these next generation companies. They will realize that selling to traditional business is as much or more about getting traditional business to change than it is about adapting to their old ways of doing things. Not that I mind the sports coats (it is my usual attire) but I hope losing the jeans doesn't mean losing the passion for changing the way things get done.

Web 2.0 <> Jerks

I've been saying a lot lately that you can tell things are getting good because the jerks are back. 24 year old entrepreneurs who think the world did not exist before ValleyWag and have a shiny new Series A term sheet to prove it. We're just short of having meaningless demo conferences in the desert with thousands of booths populated by incredibly good looking "marketing coordinators" right out of school who can with a straight face swear their PokeApp really is more than five lines of PHP script creating a weather widget, it's the next coming of Google. Once that happens, we'll know we've really made it.

That said I had two very good meetings last week with some companies that are really on the cutting edge of the burgeoning field of utilizing web services to build applications. Dave Rosenberg, CEO of MuleSource, and Oren Michels, of Mashery. Both companies are on the cutting edge of how we take we extend the mashing up of applications beyond the class projects of layering Google Maps onto a smell database of the New York City Subway System and in to real offerings that support business level availability, billing and support. Anybody interested in how to make this work in the real world could definitely do worse than start by talking to these companies.

What struck me about meeting these guys was how we are beginning to see a new breed of entreprenuer and CEO; one who understands the technology and community power of Web 2.0 but who also are grown ups who can discuss business and how to make this all work for real companies. Up to now it seems that many people working on SaaS and Web Applications fell in to two catagories. The first are software guys who don't understand that this is all about the Web for business, not coming up with a new pricing scheme for their old products. The second were guys who have no real world experience and think the whole world revolves their latest Web 2.0 applet, or more simply put jerks.

It's guys like Dave and Oren that I think really differentiate this new wave of technology from the last one. They both really understand the technology and what it's going to take to make real business's work with it. This new breed of entreprenuer is far more visionary than the traditional software guy, but knows that you can't be a jerk if you want to create the long term relationships necessary to build these businesses. Oren is so balanced, he even called me for being a little over enthusiastic about what we do and how great it was (not that I've ever been called a jerk myself.)

It's exciting, because I think that means companies who realize the potential of these technologies will have a much better chance of succeeding this time around. Plus, they'll be a lot more fun to work with.

PokeApps

What's the difference between these two groups of names:

Group 1

BoingBoing
Dekoh
Megite
Nuvvo
Podango
Vimeo

Group 2

Metapod
Weedle
Zubat
Cloyster
MewTwo
Wooper

Group 1 is a list of companies I randomly selected from the TechCrunch company list and Group 2 is a random list from the Pokemon Pokedex from my favorite company Nintendo. This struck me the other day when I realized our sales meetings were sounding exactly like my kids Jack and Madeline discussing their latest captures in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl.

I wonder of the game designers at Nintendo worry that Spoink the Psychic Pokemon might be confused with Spoink the Contact Extractor incubated by BMGI Ventures? Is this someone's full-time job? Do they have to get the legal department to sign off on these things?

And should I be surprised that there seems to be a Wikipedia entry for all 386 Pokemon characters (and that the posts seem longer than the one for Abel P. Upshur our 15th Secretary of State?)

I wonder how many companies on TechCrunch are also Pokemon names. I couldn't find any, but I'm sure someone can write a quick script to check the two lists against each other. Let me know if you can find any.