The Sebastian - Entrepreneurship

The Sebastian - Entrepreneurship http://www.thesebastian.com/ A fresh look into Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Technology in the flat world en Serendipity 1.0-beta3 - http://www.s9y.org/ Tue, 12 Feb 2008 04:47:10 GMT http://www.thesebastian.com/templates/default/img/s9y_banner_small.png RSS: The Sebastian - Entrepreneurship - A fresh look into Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Technology in the flat world http://www.thesebastian.com/ 100 21 Best Austin Jobs http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/45-Best-Austin-Jobs.html Entrepreneurship http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/45-Best-Austin-Jobs.html#comments http://www.thesebastian.com/wfwcomment.php?cid=45 1 http://www.thesebastian.com/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=45 nospam@example.com (Sebastian Brocher) <a href="http://www.bestaustinjobs.com"><img border="0" alt="BestAustinJobs.com" src="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/baj.jpg" /></a> I know, I know... It's been quite a while since my last post. I've been really busy with my custom web application development and technology consulting business, Neomelon. While most of my efforts with Neomelon are spent working for clients, I have finally managed to come up with the time and resources needed to span-off another business which I've been working on for quite a while: <a href="http://www.bestaustinjobs.com">BestAustinJobs.com</a>. Best Austin Jobs is a completely new site for the Austin, TX job market where job seekers, recruiters and employers can connect and interact using state-of-the-art tools and yet through a very simple web interface that doesn't get on their way. In case you are curious, yes, I think it is much simpler, to-the-point and less scary than the huge monster, yet much better than the boring list. If you are a job seeker, you may want to <a href="http://www.bestaustinjobs.com/">search for jobs</a> and <a href="http://www.bestaustinjobs.com/profiles/register">create your free profile</a>. Employers and recruiters: profit from the beta period special! <a href="http://www.bestaustinjobs.com/accounts/get_an_account">Create your account today</a> and start posting your job openings for free, plus enjoy all the other features for free as well! Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:33:53 -0800 http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/45-guid.html Web experiment one. Any takers? http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/41-Web-experiment-one.-Any-takers.html Entrepreneurship http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/41-Web-experiment-one.-Any-takers.html#comments http://www.thesebastian.com/wfwcomment.php?cid=41 0 http://www.thesebastian.com/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=41 nospam@example.com (Sebastian Brocher) So... I've came up with yet another idea: web experiment one.I remember from my engineering days talking about the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method" target="_blank" title="Scientific Method">scientific method</a> in several occasions, with teachers, with fellow students, friends, etc. Not so exciting for everybody... I know, I know. I want to apply it to the web, on a series of experiments. This is the first one. Each experiment shall have a little twist.Experiment one - a simple gameA web site is built specifically for the experiment (part of it being reusable for the other experiments to come). The site allows players to sign-up (very simplified, minimal information is captured). Players get to answer two questions, and then ask one question of their own, to be answered by other players.Visitors can rate answers to questions and, by doing so, they are indirectly rating the user answering the question as well. The questions might be grouped by categories / topics. Users with the best 100 ratings are listed in a "game high-score fashion" (calculated based on their answers' average rating compared to others, but also taking into account the number of questions answered -including an statistical "difficulty" estimated for each of those questions they answered ?--, etc).Questions / answers and players (top 10, most active, etc) are displayed on the main page of the site. There might be a search box too over there.Things like simple profiles / blogs, messages, friends list, etc. could also be added.The site also measures the web traffic, behaviour and statistics. This and other statistical data is also made public. This is (partially) the result of the experiment, which could in turn be used to develop theories and models to describe and further understand social computing and social networking. As an example, this could later be applied to develop new online marketing concepts.As a side benefit, if the quality of the questions and answers is good (which is encouraged by the rating / populatiry concept), this information can also be valuable all by itself.The twist:The site also invites visitors to make a donation to a charitable foundation, as an "incentive" to keep the experiments going, and also as another factor to include as part of the experiment itself. This makes the experiment also be a philantropism effort, and also helps better understanding philantropism by itself. Questions and answers could potentially be related to the charitable foundation cause.Last thoughts: the same platform can then be used as a "research" platform where users collaborate (with proper incentives) with each other. Another one: an online, collaborative "innovation engine", which could be used privately or publicaly, etc. One last one: an online collaborative way to solve problems (e.g.: to solve a crime). The results from the experiment can also be used to improve the platform over time by performing other similar experiments (trying to improve a small number of variables) and compating results. Over time, the platform could be optimized this way.Any comments? Any takers? Sat, 28 Jul 2007 00:16:51 -0700 http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/41-guid.html The narrowing tip. Did I miss anything? http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/40-The-narrowing-tip.-Did-I-miss-anything.html Entrepreneurship http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/40-The-narrowing-tip.-Did-I-miss-anything.html#comments http://www.thesebastian.com/wfwcomment.php?cid=40 0 http://www.thesebastian.com/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=40 nospam@example.com (Sebastian Brocher) It seems to me I've found a small pattern that most of the successful business people I've met follow, give or take 20 cents. They tend to have always a free pizza, some kind of extra value, to bring to the table. They collect various (somehow intangible) assets along the way.Some of them collect valuable stories. The kind of stories that will give you a good lesson based on facts. Very valuable information.Some of them collect strategies, facts, results. They remember numbers, selling and marketing strategies that worked out those numbers, etc. Pretty much like collecting results and stats for your favorite sport star.Some of them ...The pattern seems to be, they narrow their focus on which kind of assets they enjoy collecting, and then collect, collect and collect them along their way. In a little word, this is sometimes called experience. Collecting experience. How to concentrate on collecting the maximum and most useful experience out of each experience.What do you think? Did I miss thie subject in my books and magazines, or is my shelf missing some good literature? Wed, 11 Jul 2007 17:48:13 -0700 http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/40-guid.html Web 2.0 tag clouds fun http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/35-Web-2.0-tag-clouds-fun.html Entrepreneurship http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/35-Web-2.0-tag-clouds-fun.html#comments http://www.thesebastian.com/wfwcomment.php?cid=35 4 http://www.thesebastian.com/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=35 nospam@example.com (Sebastian Brocher) A few months ago, I did a small experiment: I wanted to see how easy it would be to design and program a few algorithms to generate pretty web 2.0 style tag clouds to summarize web sites content, and so I built a mock up. In a nutshell, the artifact goes and reads a web site's content, unscrambles the HTML, analyzes the frequency of the different words (SEO related), reports a histogram and finally generates a semi-random tag cloud image (with some configurable parameters). This is part of a bigger idea, but I just wanted to post a few cloud tags for now and see what you think: <table cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" border="0"><tbody><tr> <td><a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/" target="_blank"><img vspace="0" hspace="0" border="0" align="bottom" alt="Seth Godin's blog tag cloud" src="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/seth_300_300_5000_100_1.gif" /></a></td> <td><a href="http://www.thesebastian.com/" target="_blank"><img vspace="0" hspace="0" border="0" align="bottom" alt="TheSebastian blog tag cloud" src="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/seb_300_300_5000_100_1.gif" /></a></td> <td><a href="http://www.cnn.com/" target="_blank"><img vspace="0" hspace="0" border="0" align="bottom" alt="CNN site tag cloud" src="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/cnn_300_300_5000_100_1.gif" /></a></td> </tr></tbody></table> I might post more about the big idea behind this later on... meanwhile I would love to read your comments! Was the tag helpful to learn what the site is talking about? Did it tempt you to click on it? Do they look cool? Do you want yours here? Post a comment with your URL and I'll give it a try! P.S.: in case you were wondering, the artifact uses mostly <a target="_blank" href="http://www.php.net">PHP</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://processing.org/">Processing</a> to do its magic. P.S. #2: Here goes the cloud for Travis from: <table cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2" border="0"><tbody><tr> <td><a href="http://cultivategreatness.com/" target="_blank"><img vspace="0" hspace="0" border="0" align="bottom" alt="Seth Godin's blog tag cloud" src="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/cg_300_300_5000_100_1.gif" /></a></td> </tr></tobdy></table> Thanks for the positive comment and nice blog BTW! <img src="http://www.thesebastian.com/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> Sun, 25 Mar 2007 18:38:32 -0700 http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/35-guid.html Skype founders now joost http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/32-Skype-founders-now-joost.html Entrepreneurship http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/32-Skype-founders-now-joost.html#comments http://www.thesebastian.com/wfwcomment.php?cid=32 0 http://www.thesebastian.com/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=32 nospam@example.com (Sebastian Brocher) The two Scandinavian entrepreneurs which founded Skype a few years ago launched today their new global broadband television service, named <a href="http://www.joost.com/" target="_blank">joost</a>.Click here to read it from <a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2007-01-16T171932Z_01_L16876659_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-JOOST.xml&archived=False" target="_blank">Reuters</a>. Here are some screenshots from the joost website:<a href="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/J_08blog_Nettwerk_overlay.jpg"><img src="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/J_08blog_Nettwerk_overlay.serendipityThumb.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/J_07blog_Nettwerk_MyJ.jpg"><img src="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/J_07blog_Nettwerk_MyJ.serendipityThumb.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/J_02blog_OTF_nav_info_thumb.jpg"><img src="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/J_02blog_OTF_nav_info_thumb.serendipityThumb.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/J_03blog_OTF_MyJ_thumb.jpg"><img src="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/J_03blog_OTF_MyJ_thumb.serendipityThumb.jpg" /></a>You can go and register to try their beta version for free (it only takes a few minutes), however they will be the ones picking who gets to try the service. I just registered, and can't wait to get to try it (it's snowing in Austin, TX today and so I'm trapped inside all day long!). Once you get invited, you will get tokens to invite other people to try their beta version for free (remember gmail?). From the pics, it seems like this will be a much more exciting television, where you can interact with the community watching the same programs via chat and IM, etc (remember my post about <a href="http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/13-Is-my-TV-becoming-obsolete.html" target="_blank">my TV becoming obsolete</a>?). What about interactive audience and games? what if you could add pics, webcams, voice, ... so many alternatives!Oh... and, did I mention advertisers will probably have, finally, a firm measurement of how effective their ads are? who is watching them? who is clicking them? who is not? once they click, do they buy? do they come back? hmm ... Genious! Traditional TV channels must be so afraid right now. Tue, 16 Jan 2007 13:01:08 -0800 http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/32-guid.html 10 ways to change cameras http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/31-10-ways-to-change-cameras.html Entrepreneurship http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/31-10-ways-to-change-cameras.html#comments http://www.thesebastian.com/wfwcomment.php?cid=31 0 http://www.thesebastian.com/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=31 nospam@example.com (Sebastian Brocher) I'm just back from some excellent vacation time. As usual, I went to visit my family and friends in Buenos Aires for Christmas and New Year. Holidays season is perfect for this because we all have more time off, and also because it happens to be summer over there! Needless to say, this time of the year is always very refreshing and revealing for me. I always come back full of energy and new ideas. Somehow, the distance from the day-to-day routine and responsibilities lets me [mostly involuntarily] set and analyze my goals, ideas and problems alike from another perspective, from another camera. So here goes a list with my top 10 camera-changing strategies and exercises: <ol><li>Go on vacations! <img src="http://www.thesebastian.com/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> </li><li>Change planes. No, not the flying ones. I meant the mathematical ones. Analyze the project from a different plane. Pick two variables and forget the rest. Then pick another two variables and repeat until you have a good understanding of all the different planes. The n-dimensional shape will become clearer as your brain blends all those planes, and you migh discover hidden places and shapes (combinations) you might not have thought about before. </li><li>Change time. Imagine, for a second, you only have half the time to implement your idea or finalize your project. Then imagine just the opposite, that you have double the time. By temporarily eliminating the time constraint, this will help you concentrate and get first the big picture, then the details at the same time on your mind. If a factor of two doesn't work well, try a bigger one. </li><li>Repeat 3. with other constraints (resources, budget, etc). </li><li>Explain your idea to a kid or teenager. Then write down the story. You will probably end up with either an executive summary, or an excellent marketing collateral. </li><li>Change roles. If you are the entrepreneur, imagine you are the customer. Then imagine you are the partner, the supplier, the investor, the consumer, the engineer, the marketer, the ... You will discover that each individual will see different n-dimensional representation of the problem or idea. Extra-ball: practice the other 9 ways for each role! </li><li>Change the problem. Try thinking about a bigger idea that encapsulates the original one. Then do the opposite, break down the idea or problem into a combination of smaller ones. Extra-ball: you are smart enough to discover it on your own! <img src="http://www.thesebastian.com/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> </li><li>Change the rules. Imagine a different market, a different objective, different players, different technology. For example, if you are trying to build a very profitable business, imagine your idea or problem on a non-for-profit environment. You will discover you can borrow some of those new ideas to contribute back in your original world. </li><li>Tell a few friends about your idea or problem. Ask them to concentrate, listen to you, ask any necessary questions and try to remember it. Then ask them, a few days later, to repeat it back to you. If there is no clear intersection between the different stories, that probably means the story isn't clear to you either. The differences will help you realize where you are failing. The solution: go through the other 9 points, then repeat this one until the intersection is significant. </li><li>Be a kid. Ask why. Then ask why again. You will be surprised to know how many people get it wrong. Most of the times, there is a bigger agenda behind it, a bigger why and a bigger reason. If you are not there yet, try to guess it. Once you get it, that's the real problem or idea you wanna think about. Imagine. Go a few years back in time and see the problem or idea as something you might do in the future. Think how would you prepare yourselve (and the world) for it. Then go forward in time and see it as something you did and how the world changed because of it. Then match the expectations from a past view with the results that would make you happy from the future view. Re-set your goals and repeat. </li></ol> Thu, 04 Jan 2007 18:24:38 -0800 http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/31-guid.html The Flow. As and Bs. http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/25-The-Flow.-As-and-Bs..html Entrepreneurship http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/25-The-Flow.-As-and-Bs..html#comments http://www.thesebastian.com/wfwcomment.php?cid=25 0 http://www.thesebastian.com/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=25 nospam@example.com (Sebastian Brocher) I was first introduced to The Flow (as such) sometime ago at a leadership training. It goes more or less like this:<img vspace="0" hspace="0" border="0" src="http://www.thesebastian.com/uploads/theflow2.gif" />The concept (apparently borrowed from psychology) states that, when you are faced with a problem, project or activity challenging enough so that you use a significant percentage of your skills and analytical horsepower, you will enjoy doing it. You enter The Flow state of mind, where you may loose track of time. You will be very focused and get less distracted by insignificant details and the outside world. This happens to professional runners when racing, to chess grand masters during a good game, to programmers when coding a complex algorithm not found in any book, to professional golfers during a good round, to researchers when developing that new exciting theory. Facing an excessive challenge for which you are not prepared enough could get you frustrated or stressed. On the other end, working on something which doesn't exploit your skills or talents will probably get you bored or unmotivated. If you are a good leader, you will do everything you can to have all your team members in The Flow zone, at least most of the time. You will also make sure to develop your team and keep giving them bigger or different challenges every time. If you are a good mother or father, you will want your kids to experience this as often as you can (of course, they need to play too!).Building up. My take on The Flow.There are some persons, however, that do not like challenges as much. They don't need to progress. These are type-B persons. Bs stay wherever their comfort zone is and don't move up in the graph. They are usually the same ones who fear (and oppose to) change. They like the status quo, they are happy to stay with what they know or have and are afraid to try anything new or take any risks. They can be average runners, but will never become professional runners, because it takes too much effort to get there and there is no guarantee of success. They don't get bored doing repetitive left-brain tasks. They don't like the idea of learning from their own mistakes. Then, there are As. They need be challenged all the time. They are always trying to go up in the graph and don't like to stay where they are. They are ambitious. They can't stand not using their right-brain. They become stars at whatever they do (they won't do something they can't thrive at, at least not for long). They are always learning, reading, teaching and developing their skills. They keep taking bigger challenges every time. They know what their talents are, and exploit them as much as they can. These are excellent programmers, writers, leaders, entrepreneurs, researchers, professional runners, golfers, chess masters, you name it. They learn from their mistakes. In some (most?) organizations, there are jobs designed for both As and Bs. They claim they need Bs (pun intended) to do those B jobs (that As won't take), and that those B jobs are necessary for the business to run well. They sometimes put As to do B jobs and vice-versa. Consequences are usually pretty bad. What they don't get is, they probably experience these problems because the people that designed the organization, processes and roles did the mistake at the first place. Or they hired the wrong guy. Why have B employees? Why have B jobs? What's the value of a B job? Can they buy that service or product from someone else? Can they create a new, different process? Or use innovative technology that automates it? Can they outsource it to another company that can? Bad processes and ideas stick around for long time because they are hard to change (probably because of the same type-B employees?) once they become the standard way of doing things. In the Software Engineering discipline, it is well known that a mistake during the requirements gathering, analysis or design phase will be much more costly to fix than a mistake on the implementation phase (aka bug). I claim that this rule is also valid when designing businesses, organizations, processes and roles (it also applies to, for example, building houses). When starting a new team or small business, is there a way to design the organization and its processes so that there are no type-B jobs? Are you a type-A or type-B person? Do you like working with Bs? Bs are usually boring, because they tell the same story every time. I admit, there are some bad generalizations here. They are a cheap way to induce your comments and also to make my point. In reality, matching roles and their challenges with employee skills and talent is tough and it is not an A or B binary problem. But it is the willingness to improve, to develop and to take different and bigger challenges everytime that makes the big difference. Besides this generalization, is there a way to combine employees, jobs, processes, projects and roles so that challenge, skill, knowledge, talent, analytical horsepower, creativity, potential and human capital investment and development all come together to an optimal maximum? In the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/worldisflat.htm">Flat World</a>, and when <a target="_blank" href="http://www.sethgodin.com/small/">Small is the new big</a>, is there a point in creating a small business that will need hire type-B employees? I don't think so! So be small, dream, think and design big, then thrive implementing it with As. Now go change the world! <img src="http://www.thesebastian.com/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" /> Fri, 01 Dec 2006 17:55:15 -0800 http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/25-guid.html Web-enabled self-service Social Soda Machine and the futuristic bar http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/16-Web-enabled-self-service-Social-Soda-Machine-and-the-futuristic-bar.html Entrepreneurship http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/16-Web-enabled-self-service-Social-Soda-Machine-and-the-futuristic-bar.html#comments http://www.thesebastian.com/wfwcomment.php?cid=16 0 http://www.thesebastian.com/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=16 nospam@example.com (Sebastian Brocher) Imagine for a second that you go into your favorite restaurant and find a completely new soda dispenser machine. Not that old one you are used to, but a completely brand-new design which is plugged into the web. At first, it looks a bit futuristic, it doesn't have any triggers to pull your favorite soda, but instead a large touch screen.From the screen, you can select one of three options: 1) Create your own personalized soda/juice mix:Will take you to a menu where you can select exactly which percentage you want (let's say, in increments of 5%) of each ingredient. There are probably about 10 or 15 different ingredients. So, to illustrate, something in the lines of: give me 15% of this cola, 15% of this other one, 50% orange juice and 20% mango juice. Once you are done, the machine will prepare your mix, but will also let you save it under a nickname of your choice. So you can type in this is my "Seb01" mix. The machine will give you back a ticket with a number that uniquely identifies yourselve.You can later go to a social 2.0-ish website where you can login with that number and see how "Seb01" is doing. You can link it to your profile and write your own comments about it. You can link your profile to your personal blog or myspace address. Other people can order a "Seb01" from any of the machines in the "web" of cool restaurants and places having this new kind of machines. You can tell your friends to try it out, and you could "perfect" it little by little (Seb02, ...) They can also login into the website and post comments or recommend your "Seb01" drink to their friends, and they can also see the components inside "Seb01" (so they can experiment with variations of their own).2) Select from most popular mixes:You will get a menu with the 10 most popular mixes. Mixes get more and more popular depending on how many people drink them, how many people read about them on the site, post a comment about them, "digg" or "dugg" them, you-get-the-point. You also have a place where you can type "Seb01", even if it is not the most popular one, you can still order it if you've heard about it!. There might also be a menu with the less popular ones, the most exotic ones ("different" ones), etc.3) Select from the existing "boring" commercial mixes:Here you can get your boring 100-years old mix that has been there forever. Or may be you can also find new ones being pushed by known brands so that you can try them out.There are a few more twists:a) All personalized mixes formulas are in the public domain (exept may be for some of their ingredients from the machine). The company having these machines could also commercialize your popular creation in cans, etc without owing you any royalties or license fees, but you could also do exactly the same.b) If you get to author a popular mix, the company will give you some incentives, gift, or may be hire you! <img src="http://www.thesebastian.com/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png" alt=":-)" style="display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;" class="emoticon" />c) The social site could also collect some ad-related revenues, subscription fees to extended services, etc.OK... I'm running out of ideas right now. It seems to me this would be really cool, but mostly for kids and teenagers. Some adults may also enjoy it. Another twist: The futuristic bar. Where you can sit down and have your display on what you want to mix in your own cocktail (alcoholic or not), and everybody can also see on their displays what everyone else is mixing and drinking ... you can also enter your profile (...), save it, etc. There could be a "web" of these futuristic bars, where again the same ideas apply: a social 2.0-ish website puts them together and creates a world-wide phenomen... You can send IM messages to other people if they are in another bar, or you can just go talk with the people there... so many possibilities... The site also has videos from different bars and locators to other bars in the "web", should it happen that you are travelling.I'll post this one on the Entrepreneurship category. Simply because I believe these are particular examples of some broader, more general ideas behind it... Sun, 29 Oct 2006 12:28:40 -0800 http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/16-guid.html Two online customer feedback startups adquired by Austin Ventures http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/6-Two-online-customer-feedback-startups-adquired-by-Austin-Ventures.html Entrepreneurship http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/6-Two-online-customer-feedback-startups-adquired-by-Austin-Ventures.html#comments http://www.thesebastian.com/wfwcomment.php?cid=6 0 http://www.thesebastian.com/rss.php?version=2.0&type=comments&cid=6 nospam@example.com (Sebastian Brocher) The <a target="_blank" href="http://www.statesman.com/">Austin American-Statesman</a> published today on their Tech Monday section a small article mentioning the adquisition of <a target="_blank" href="http://www.perseus.com/">Perseus Development Corp</a>. and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.websurveyor.com/gateway.asp">WebSurveyor Corp.</a> by <a target="_blank" href="http://www.austinventures.com/">Austin Ventures</a>.Both companies are now listed at the Austin Ventures' <a target="_blank" href="http://www.austinventures.com/portfolio/portfolio.asp?id=238&js=1&category=6#co238">Information Services page under Growth Equity portfolio</a>. They will be combined and led by <a target="_blank" href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Dean+Wiltse&btnG=Google+Search">Dean Wiltse</a>, former CEO of <a target="_blank" href="http://www.greenfieldonline.com/">Greenfield Online.</a> GreenField Online has <a target="_blank" href="http://www.msdcapital.com/what.html">MSD Capital</a> as one of their investors. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 11:47:09 -0700 http://www.thesebastian.com/archives/6-guid.html