My Creative Walkabout

For the last three months I've been in a hole thinking about new businesses to start. I've set the bar is pretty high – I want this next business to have the potential to become really big (think several hundred Ms or a B). Many of my ideas tap out at certain revenue levels which make the ideas not that exciting. To spur my creative process, on Brad Feld's recommendation, I scheduled a trip to So. Cal. My purpose: meet some cool folks, hear their stories and become inspired. All the companies had one thing in common – the founders saw the beginnings of a trend in the market, realized it wouldn't hit mainstream for a couple of years and started their company so that when it hit they were ready. Below are the companies I visited:

Mir 3 – Amir Moussavian, CEO/Founder: Out of the five companies I visited - Mir 3 is the most mature. They have real revenue and thousands of paying customers. The trend: When stuff goes wrong people need to know quickly. Notifying them is getting harder as people become more mobile and use multiple devices. Companies and organizations (like schools) will most likely outsource that to a service provider. That was Amir's view eight years ago. It took longer than he hoped – but perseverance is paying off.

Memeo – Hong Bui, CEO/Founder: In 2003 Hong realized that with all these digital cameras, mp3 players, and digitization of videos folks are going to need a way to manage large amounts of data. It seemed obvious to him that people were going to need to backup their stuff on something other than their main machine – like an external drive or a second computer. At the time, external drives were not really being purchased by consumers – but it seemed obvious that eventually folks are going to run out of disk and external drive sales to consumer would pick up. So he did a deal with a hard drive company and now Memeo is well on it's way to becoming a great success.

Net Seer – Dork Alahydoyian, VP Product Management: Net Seer is still in stealth mode but the trend they are focusing on is trying to make advertising within search more relevant by identifying related terms to a search query. Say you search for "scuba" they will be able to associate that term with "vacations, snorkeling, swimming apparel, Grand Cayman, nitrogen narcosis, etc…" They believe advertisers will pay more for ads that can be directed to the user in a contextually relevant manner. Accordingly, search companies will need to meet the demand by using tools that give more meaning to the average one or two-word search.

Topspin – Ian Rogers, CEO: Topspin was started in 2007 when two music-technology visionaries saw something happening in the industry that was odd – major record labels, faced with decreasing sales, are dropping their talent and focusing on just the top acts (they are trying to save their way to success – bad sign – always need to focus on top line growth). Many of these bands have nowhere to go and have to manage their careers by themselves. Topspin is building tools to help bands manage their business. The beauty of Topspin, unlike other music startups, their customers are the bands – not the fans. They don't need to "first get a million users" to succeed – each band already has a fan base that needs somewhere to go.

Oblong – Kwindla Hultman Kramer, co-founder: Since they are in stealth mode I'll refer you to Brad's post. Basically the trend they are seeing is one of inevitability. Like a seismologist that claims a major earthquake will happen in CA in the very near future (1 day to 100 years) – these guys believe that it is high time for a major innovation in how humans interact with computers. It's been 20+ years since the mouse came around. This innovation is going to take some serious brainpower and time – but it will happen and these guys are fired up to make that change happen. Visiting Oblong's facilities and seeing the demo simply blows you away – it's just bitchen. But unlike the others their trend is one that will play out over a longer time and will require both computing power to increase and people to embrace the new way of using a computer. It is a huge idea – they are truly a company of the future.

The net: All companies are focusing on a trend they firmly believe will become reality in the future. They all have incredible passion for their business. They all know exactly what they need to do in the next 12 months. They all have surrounded themselves with really smart people. OK I'm inspired, my turn.