This just in! Candid shots from Phil Burns Tag Jungle web 2.0 development basement.

Looks like the Tag Jungle crew have built the next generation of search alright. Just put on this helmet and plug in. You'll find yourself able to search blog posts by sentiment. Of course the sentiment will probably be claustrophobia.

Actually, this is a dorkified helmet from Toshiba via Gizmodo. 

Founder Discount: More on why founders make less than hired guns.

From Canadianbusiness.com: Read the entire article here.

To solve the mystery of the underpaid entrepreneur, Wasserman collected data from 1,200 executives at more than 500 U.S. high-tech companies. After controlling for numerous variables such as experience and company size, his findings were stark: founders earn about $30,000 (U.S.) a year less than hired-gun managers doing pretty much the same job. In fact, 51% of founders earn less or the same as their employees.

The good news: the founder discount isn't forever. It shrinks over time and with the growth of the company. The bad news? Founders' compensation is inversely related to their control over the organization and their own job satisfaction. As I read it, as a company grows and gets more complicated — with more layers of management, boards of directors, outside investors and stricter management-performance metrics — founders get paid more because their jobs get harder.

But why does the gap exist in the first place? In simple terms, it's because founders tend to care too much about their own creations. Outside executives have to be paid market rates or more to join a company, and if their compensation doesn't keep pace with the outside world, they have little incentive to stay. Founders take a longer view. Like Cullen, they often put the company's financial needs ahead of their own. And their boards of directors don't worry that founders will bail out, because they know that founders are emotionally committed to the organization.

And there's this:

Paul Britton, a compensation consultant to businesses big and small, sees this problem again and again. The founding partner of Crossford Consulting in Toronto says there are two stupid reasons why entrepreneurs underpay themselves.

First, he says, some entrepreneurs think they can use their own lousy compensation as a lever when negotiating subordinates' pay. By pointing to their own pay packages, they think they can convince their employees to accept less, too. The problem, of course, is that your best people have lots of job options and know you have an ownership stake; it's generally only less valuable employees who will agree to work for below-market pay.

The other reason entrepreneurs underpay themselves is bad budgeting, says Britton. Instead of factoring in an appropriate salary for themselves ahead of time, founders will wait and see how much money the business makes over the year, and draw from that. When he asks groups of entrepreneurs if they have built a rate of return for themselves into their forecasts, Britton says only about one person in 20 will raise their hand.

RSS Feed List: Business, tech, entrepreneur, angel & VC RSS feeds.

Here is a partial list of the local business, entrepreneur, angel and VC RSS feeds that I subscribe to. Post your own list and link through the comments. Does anyone know how to export a list from Bloglines so that the links work?

Click to read more ...

Linked In is a digital chain letter.

Who likes Linked In? Not Scoble, and definately not Jeff Atwood who thinks Linked In is a digital chainletter.

Of course there's this on Linked In from Mashable. 

Threadless: Sticking it to the man.

You have to love a bunch of guys who are sticking it to the man just because they're too lazy to sign the contract.

Via Jason at 37 Signals:

It’s about time the Chicago press noticed a few dropouts in their 20s selling nearly $20,000,000 worth of T-shirts on Ravenswood Avenue.

“It certainly doesn’t hurt our PR when we go to speak and stuff like that to say, ‘Yeah, we turned down Target. We turned down Urban,’ ” Kalmikoff says. “But honestly, a little bit of it was laziness. We were like, ‘Well, who’s gonna fill out all this paperwork? I’m not doing it. Are you gonna do it?’ It just sat for like two weeks. Then we’re like, ‘Just tell ‘em no.’ We couldn’t take the time away from our client work for our side project to be filling out the paperwork to get into Target.”

Utah Technology Council: Cookies at Wilson Sonsini

This week I attended my first Utah Technology Council event. I wasn't sure what to expect, but hey, I'd paid to join so I might as well find out. I also wanted to hear Niclole Toomey Davis (her blog). It wasn't at all what I expected.

It was held at Wilson Sonsini's offices and Mark Bonham was supplying the cookies. (I'd met Mark before at a Funding Universe speed pitching event where we sat at the same table so I don't really know him but I've heard great things.) Mark alluded to the pizza and beer of Silicon Valley which frankly would have been my preference.

Mark Newman, COO of HireVue was also there and from what I could tell, he was co-hosting since he introduced Nicole. Mark and I both graduated from Brighton High School in SL. I found this out while telling Mark about the student team at Brighton (of which I was a member) that flew the first science experiment from a high school on the Space Shuttle. (It was on seed germination in zero gravity.) I made the comment that that would probably be before his time. He informs me that he was born in 1984. Some of these young, wet-behind-the-ears-types don't know when to shut up. Evidently, Hirevue is run by toddlers.

Nicole obviously knows whereof she speaks. She's with Utah's Centers of Excellence COEP now and it seems that part of her responsibilities extend to trying to get science out of Utah's universities and into the market. Her presentation was short and most of the time was spent in something akin to a round table discussion. All of the talk about SBIC's and such was outside of my experience but I found it all very interesting.

There are a number of networking events around that are fairly focused and cater to specific groups. I'll get together a list and post it. If you know or are part of a group, add it to that post and I'll make sure it's included.

Tag Jungle: It finds blogy things.

Phil Burns and the Tag Jungle crew gave me pizza today for lunch. That always makes me feel kindly.

Phil was trotting out Tag Jungle again before he tries to find money for more than pizza. That's always a good idea and especially for Phil. I'm generally geek-i-fied enough to follow discussions about blogging in general by I actually had to listen to follow some of the whatchamacallit goes in the gobblygook and comes out here stuff.

Jungle looks to be a real world solution for relevant search in the blogosphere and I'm anxious to see it in real world action.  I farted around with the alpha site for a little while and it looks promising. I was going to write a list of what TJ can do but I'll leave that to Phil. I will say that 'jungle juice' was first spoken by me. (I'll want some nachos at Fight Club.)

Phil et al are going on a roadshow to get more pizza money. Guy Kawasaki recommends watching this pitch by Majora. (Watch it online here.) Who am I to argue. 

I spoke briefly with Phil about building a pre-pitch dinner where Phil can pitch and receive feedback from investor types. I have a few people in mind. If I call you you'll get to see Phil gesture wildly and probably come away with a free T-shirt.

Founder Frustrations Blog: From Harvard Business Schools Noam Wasserman

From Noam Wassermans "Founders Frustrations" Blog. Noam Wasserman is a professor in the Entrepreneurial Management unit at Harvard Business School.

Noam's blog is a great read for entrepreneurs looking to understand how to structure ownership in a startup or why investors think they're adding more value than the entrepreneurs running the business. Here's nifty chart.

Table 6: Entrepreneur Expectations
(traces the trend between the entrepreneur’s perception and expectation of
the value-add potential of the investor throughout the various funding stages)

Entrepreneur's perception of investor

 

Build your starup team by consensus, or not.

Paul Allen is putting his pizza where his mouth is. After writing an article in Connect on building a team by putting all interested parties in a room and letting the cream rise to the top, he's setting aside an afternoon to to just that. (Here's the post on Paul's blog.) A one day free for all. Paul must ended up with a good impression of the business problem solving breakout at the last Corporate Alliance Summit. (Personally, I thought the keynote by Chad Hymas was the best takeaway of the weekend. After being teary-eyed through most it I ran out and called my daughter.)

I think that a startup brouhaha sounds like a great idea. I fired off an email introduction to Paul asking if I could attend. We'll see if I'm persona non gratis. I do tend to eat a lot of pizza and that could make for some hard feelings with those left hungry. They might vote me off the island.

Tag Jungle rolling out a beta test.

I really met Phil Burns ten days ago at a Corporate Alliance networking event. (We'd shaken hands and been introduced numerous times at geek dinners and blogger conferences but I'd never really sat down and been able to talk to him.)

Phil, for those of you who don't know, has been busy in his basement with his band of merry men for the last three months after they all took the axe at Provo Labs.

(Paul Allen was at the same event but unfortunately I didn't cross paths with him. Paul's someone I've never met either although I've been in the same room often enough. {Actually, I did cross paths with Paul on the last night but he was headed back to his hotel room with his wife. It was midnight and I thought better of jumping in his path to introduce myself.})

I digress. Phil and I discussed Tag Jungle at some length. Phil gave me a demo and booted up the beta site. I'm impressed. Farting around with TechCrunch as much as I do and seeing all of the web 2.0 apps, I think Tag Jungle has a workable solution that should get use. Technorati beware?

And 42co.? Evidently it's the answer to the entire universe according to Phil and Hitchhikers Guide. Who am I to question it. At least they changed the name.  Provo Labs Solutions = 8 white bread Mormon geeks in a basement.

From Guy Kawasaki's Signal Without Noise Blog: 10 questions with Polly LaBarre

Guy Kawasaki's blog has some excellent '10 Question' interviews with authors. So what if he makes a little money with the Amazon link.

Ten Questions with Polly LaBarre

Barre spent almost two years writing this book. Taylor is a co-founder and founding editor of Fast Company. LaBarre was a senior editor at Fast Company for eight years (and was one of the best reporters on the topic of entrepreneurship and marketing, in my humble opinion). She has made media on Good Morning America, CNN, CNBC, and PBS’s Nightly Business Report. She is also a co-author of The Big Moo: Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable. She is a graduate of Yale University.

Turn that model on its head and you get Pixar’s version of the right way to make movies: a tight-knit company of long-term collaborators who stick together, learn from one another, and strive to improve with every production. A key component of that model is Pixar’s no-contract policy. Famous, talented directors like Brad Bird, Peter Docter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich all of whom could secure lucrative contracts with any studio—are salaried employees of Pixar who contribute to all of the studio’s projects rather than just their own pet projects.

George Lucas buys into the Long Tail

Chewbacca and Jabba will no longer be banking on blockbusters.

"Lucas said he believes Americans are abandoning the moviegoing habit for good."

From the Long Tail Blog:
    From the current issue of Variety:

"George Lucas has a message for studios that are cutting their slates and shifting toward big-budget tentpoles and franchises: You've got it all wrong. The creator of "Star Wars," which stamped the template for the franchise-tentpole film, says many small films and Web distribution are the future.

And in case anyone doubts he means it, Lucasfilm is getting out of the [theatrical-release] movie biz."We don't want to make movies. We're about to get into television. As far as Lucasfilm is concerned, we've moved away from the feature film thing because it's too expensive and it's too risky.

Spending $100 million on production costs and another $100 million on P&A makes no sense, he said. "For that same $200 million, I can make 50-60 two-hour movies. That's 120 hours as opposed to two hours. In the future market, that's where it's going to land, because it's going to be all pay-per-view and downloadable."

 With more than 13000 movies submitted to just the Tribecca Film Festival and only 150 getting real distribution, that's good news for young filmmakers. Distribution will get easier.

But it's terrible news for advertisers. How will you target and deliver a consistant message if you don't have a big channel? It's the same problem that network televison is facing. See Judd Bagleys Connect article and graphs here. 

So where is the paradigm shift? Technology allows more efficient markets and cheap and easy distribution. It is just a better system.

Guy Kawasaki's: The Art of the Start

I'm reading Guy Kawasaki's 'The Art of the Start' for the first time. I've had this book for a while and occasionally have picked it up to rifle through but now I'm reading it cover to cover. It's much better as a cohesive read than taken in parts. It's a wise man that learns from the experience of others.

Guy's favorite book list:

Click to read more ...

If it's so great, why hasn't it already been built?

Matt Asay has a post on 'Self indulgence and Silicon Valley' that gave voice to a question that I've been asking myself about Nimble which is, 'if this idea's so damn good, why 'hasn't' anybody done it already. It's a common question that every entrepreneurs faced with all the time. (10 seconds into the elevator pitch is when the eyebrows start to arch.)  Why? Because there are insulators that prevent people, even really smart people, from having the information they need to make sense of the world. How else could you explain George Bush.

Viral marketing done right: The Mormon Al Qaeda

Viral video marketing performed to perfection. While this was for a comedy show, watch this YouTube video and you'll find a great marketing tool that could work inside a local market.