Toluu

Curious Office

A Seattle-based seed stage investment and technology development organization.

Excuse for afternoon champagne in the Pressplane officesDecember 30 2008

Nice day for Curious CompaniesDecember 10 2008

Congrats to two curious office companies! Wishpot and CoolSpotters are Blogger’s Choice Open Web Awards Winners! Wishpot gets it for best social shopping site and CoolSpotters won for best fashion site. Congrats Max Ciccotosto at Wishpot and Aaron LaBerge at CoolSpotters.

Washington Technology Association: Predictions for 2009November 8 2008

This Tuesday, Nov 11 I’ll be joining a few folks trying to guess what technology innovations are expected in 2009 and beyond. This is my second attempt at this exercise as I did it last year too. One of our Pressplane developers thought he’d help me out by offering “Worldwide economic collapse! Hoard guns and whiskey now!!” Hmm. Good one. I’ll use that.

Maybe I’ll see you there.

What we web folk can learn from plumbersOctober 31 2008

This morning I found a link on the front page of delicious titled: 6 reasons why my VC funded startup did fail. Do you know what the main lessons from the failed start-up attempt were?

• The customer is the most important thing in your business
• The best business plan is to sell people the things they want
• Your business is successful if your earnings are higher than your spendings

Back to basics then! I have worked in big technology companies. I have worked in small technology companies. Along the way I have met and worked with some unbelievably smart people. And I find myself saying the same thing over and over and over.

“The best start-up CEO is the rare marketer who also understands technology deeply”.

Not the smartest technologist in the world who will add marketing later in their business plan.

In this business we tend to like to spend a lot of time thinking about how things are going to get done. We get caught up in the nuance of the project and all the little technical details that will “allow the app to scale”. If I hear one more person talk to me about how they built an app so that it “can scale” I’m going to throw my iPod at their head or kick them in the toe. Forget your scaling. How about trying to find some customers? You think scaling is hard? How about getting people to

Rubitone=Rubiks Cube and PantoneOctober 31 2008