I’m worried.  Maybe I’m worried in that “you’re getting old and grouchy sort of way,” but still I’m worried.

I’m worried that there are so many really big problems to solve. The kind of problems that get solved when you put an entrepreneurial mind to them. I’m not talking about world hunger, profound poverty, or peace in the Middle East.  I’m pretty sure there is no app for that.

It’s the other big problems that have me worried.  And not the problelms themselves, per se, but the gross lack of entrepreneurial attention they currently receive. Over the last several months, I’ve evaluated business pitches from nearly 1,000 companies.  What strikes me most about these business is that they are doing nothing of significance.

Indeed, the collective attention of young entrepreneurs seems be have been hijacked by all things trivial. How many knock-off AirBnB sites does the world need?  Or new vertical social networks for niche groups that can’t figure out how to create a Facebook page?  Or Foursqure meets Match.com meets World of Warcraft?

Presumably, these proportedly hot startups are endorsed by the taste makers of the angel investor scene.  And if you’re an investor, these businesses may be a good way to turn a quick profit – for you, if not the entrepreneur. But, really,  where’s the long-term positive impact?

Building a startup, regardless of the target market or customer, is crazy hard work.  It can suck the life out of you if you’re not careful.  So if you’re going to work that hard, why not work on someting that matters?  Solve tough problems, make an impact.

Over the last two issues of this newsletter, I offered up the support of Guidewire Group to any young business that was tackling tough problems in the areas of health and wellness, financial literacy, sustainable energy.  Exactly one entrepreneur rose to the challenge. The offer still stands.

Do something.  Do something that matters.

As I write this, the President of the United States is taking his place at the front of a joint session of Congress to present his jobs plan for America. A critical speech to a supremely critical audience – the Republican caucus, most certainly, and the American people at large. He will talk about extending unemployment benefits, tax breaks, and public works projects. His critics will talk about bigger tax breaks and cutting away at regulation. And some pols may even pay lip service to small businesses and entrepreneurs as the engines of job creation.

Meanwhile, all across the country in small offices, dining rooms converted into command centers, co-work spaces, coffee shops, libraries and just about anywhere an entrepreneur can jump onto a WiFi network, startups are going about the work of actually creating jobs.

I was talking about this reality to my colleague yesterday morning and the light went on. The only way we can move from the recipients of lip service to an empowered seat at the table is to actually show the nation exactly the impact we have. So, we went to work to create Startupjobscount.org. It’s a very simple Web app that asks entrepreneurs to register the number of jobs they have created. We’ll keep a running total, as well as roll call of the nation’s Jobs Creators.

No matter what market or industry you are in, please take a minute now to be counted as the Jobs Creator that you are. Let’s show Congress exactly who’s doing the hard work of putting America to work.

Special thanks to Dierdre Gibson, Guidewire Group’s senior developer, and designer Tom Loveman for scrambling to put this site together so quickly. StartupJobsCount.org went from idea to launch in under 30 hours.

Running a startup is like riding a monster roller coaster. You push your way through line, excited and a little nervous, maybe even scared. You talk a good game to all your friends, while secretly stealing an envious glance at some of the seemingly safer rides. As you approach the ride, all the signs warn of the dangers. You must be so tall. Not advised for people with this condition or that. You press on, strap into the car, and go for the ride of your life, climbing up until the bottom drops out, then climbing again. In a split second, the ride is over. You stagger in to the daylight, throw up, smile, and get back in line again.

Which is to say that being an entrepreneurial leader is exciting, scary, relentless – and some days, the days when you don’t throw up, it’s an incredibly rewarding job.

It seems to me that it may have gotten a bit surreal these last few months. The global campaign for entrepreneurship has spiked a fever. Public and private programs champion the entrepreneur as the engine of the economy, yet the economy hardly supports a budding startup. Seed financing is abundant yet difficult to find. The magnetic north that is Silicon Valley drags foreign entrepreneurs to its center even as politicians and pundits promote new business as the catalyst for emerging markets and revitilized cities.

A sort of Startup Industrial Complex has quickly grown up to support the business of starting businesses. Meetups and camps, seed funds and inclubators, trade missions and partnerships, media and events – all there to “help” the entrepreneur.

But are they really helping? Has all the attention on entrepreneurship shifted, even a little bit, the odds of success to the favor of the startup. Surely, so-called super angels are making money and politicians are nailing their talking points. Lots of people have met, camped, communed. But are they really getting what they need? Are they now really able to build better, sustainable businesses?

My guess is that these programs do catalyze some businesses. My suspicion is that they are hugely inefficient, and waste as much entrepreneurial energy and resource as they hope to create in the form of new companies. My fear is that would-be entrepreneurs have become the fuel in a machine that creates status and capital returns for a few Startup Industrialists while leaving the entrepreneurs themselves to live in proverbial company towns working for a new digital age “Man.”

The irony here is that these mostly well-meaning folks really are just trying to help. Maybe, though, the best “help” is a little less help. Give entrepreneurs open, transparent access to the tools and information they need to build their business. Be candid and respectful with your feedback. Provide mentoring when they ask, and encouragement even if they don’t ask. Reach into new communities, sharing best practices and leaving some of your DNA there to encourage a new crop of entrepreneurs grow in place.

That’s what we’re trying to do at Guidewire Group: build an open platform and information exchange. We are by and for entrepreneurs, creating an alternative to the Startup Industrial Complex. We are looking for partners who share our values and commitment. If this sounds like your kind of monster roller coaster, drop me a line. chris@guidewiregroup.com.

Remember the iconic movie scene in which Dorothy’s black-and-white Kansas becomes Technicolor Oz?

Life might feel a little like that for the engineers at Cooliris, watching Silicon Valley tastemakers speculate about Color and its $41M venture round, except that the Cooliris folks have been working in living color all along and the rest of us are just now catching up.

Founded in 2006, Cooliris established itself the most prolific and avant guard graphical UX firm that you must be continually reminded of, which is to say that you’ve probably heard of CooiIris and likely used its photo wall application.  But this decidedly engineering-focused company has never been a hype machine.  Instead, it steadily created incredibly beautiful, high-performance applications, testing user appetite for media consumption and sharing, while building a robust platform for graphics-driven commerce.  The company counts more than 40 million downloads worldwide of its desktop products, and more than 23 million page views per month delivered by third-party Web sites using the Cooliris embedded photo display tools.

After 5 years of development focus, Cooliris is turning its attention to commercialization and marketing.  The company has developed a 3-D advertising platform for the iPad.  In partnership with InMobi, the Cooliris Immersive Ads platform transforms ordinary photos into engaging three-dimensional ad experiences. Cooliris Immersive Ads is just rolling out with some significant (soon to be announced) media partners, but early experiments suggest that the platform has the potential to drive up the value of the InMobi remnant ad inventory to levels approaching $20 CPM.

All of that is great, but if you’re an engineer in an engineering culture pushing the envelope of graphics technology, it’s as important to get your props from the technical community as it is to see your technology come to market.  And that’s where the Cooliris LiveShare and Deck products for iPad and smart phones platforms should come in.  They are both outstanding accomplishments of graphics manipulation and user experience.

These companies slipped quietly into the market at just about the time that Color announced a staggering valuation that has stumped most Valley pundits and launched a first product that has just about everyone scratching their heads. (For the record, I have no idea what secret sauce accounts for the $41M venture investment, but I’m pretty sure it’s the company’s founder and CEO Bill Nguyen.) As a competitive product, Cooliris’s LiveShare runs circles around Color.    It delivers a rich experience, intuitive and social.  Color, not so much.  At least not yet.

While lesser developers might be tweeked that a baffling beta is the talk of the town while the technically-superior product is, on a comparative basis, overlooked, Cooliris developers aren’t like other engineers.  They remain heads down and proud of their work.  And they know they have work to do to make a market for their products and a name for themselves.   To that end, Color may be the best thing that happens to Cooliris, at least insofar as marketing is concerned.  Color has started a conversation in the market, and Cooliris deserves its place in that discussion.

Steve Larsen is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur.  By his own admission, he’s not the “world’s greatest CEO” or even the “idea guy” of young businesses.  But by my observation, he is among the most willing among experienced executives and entrepreneurs to share his experience with those who have yet to cut their startup teeth.  Steve spent the day at Studio G, delivering a Master Class to our startup CEOs, sharing his observations and experience gained from over nearly 20 years of leading emerging businesses.

Blogger Judi Clark captured much of the great advice for ManyMedia.

It’s been my experience that when Steve mentors, a-ha happens, and I had one of those moments as I listened to Steve talk about the 10 Reasons Startups Fail.  He addressed each reason as a separate, potentially deadly challenge for young companies, but for me, Reason #6 (“Don’t Pay Attention to your Customers”) and Reason #4 (“Fail to State a Clear Mission and Focus”) came together as both problem and solution. While he was making the point that companies ignore their customers at their peril and that too many startups go sideways because they pursued too many “opportunities,” I heard the solution to problem #7 by solving #6.  Your customers will tell you what to focus on, if you just listen to them.

A case in point.  I was working with a startup team recently to help them develop their strategic messaging.   We talked for several hours about the company’s technology, its leadership in cloud computing, the evolution of the enterprise software market.  We drew on the whiteboard and argued perspective. After three hours, we agreed to a story arc, the company’s position in a rapidly evolving market, the coming disruption and the company’s opportunity to exploit that change.

Then we took a break.

After a 30-minute breather, I asked to see the customer testimonials that had been recorded for the soon-to-be launched marketing effort.  A virtual parade of customers talked about the company’s ability to help solve a critical problem. They talked about cost savings, but then only as an afterthought to real benefits the software delivered. They used lots of words to describe their happiness with the product –few of them the words the company echoed in its marketing and none of them that the company would have said was its focus.

Yet in just 10 minutes listening to customers, the four executives dispatched to the task of identifying the company’s marketing message found agreement in the company’s focus.  Perhaps most remarkably and what may have been the first time,  the company’s founder, product lead, marketer, and salesman reached quick agreement about the business and collectively knew they could sell the message – and the focus – to the rest of the company.

Why the instant Kumbaya?  Because the message came from customers.

Too many startup execs are convinced that the startup must teach and groom the market and when that strategy fails to deliver business performance, they chase to another opportunity and then another.  In the most extreme case, a prominent Web 2.0 entrepreneur suggested that his customers – by which he meant every consumer in America if not the world – were just not smart enough to understand the greatness he was bringing to their lives.

It turns out, though, that customers don’t have to be “smart” to make a decision to buy or not.  But entrepreneurs have to be genius in listening to the “why” in that decision if they ever expect to build a business.

Last night, 200 intrepid souls took on torrential rain storms to bring warmth and good wishes to our new offices and home of our Studio G program sin Silicon Valley. Dedicated to the startup community in Silicon Valley and around the globe, Studio G is designed to be a high-energy hub servicing entrepreneurs, their mentors and partners –working together to build the next wave of high-value and innovative technology companies.

If you missed the ribbon cutting, you can catch Kara Swisher’s video of the event here.   And catch some photos of the festivities here.

In the early days of any company, it is critical for entrepreneurs to spend their time wisely. One of the smartest things that they can do is to surround themselves with the right resources to ensure maximum efficiency. Studio G delivers resources such as strategic intelligence, programs and curriculum, and a network of mentors and advisors and a community of engaged fellow entrepreneurs working collaboratively towards a common goal — helping startups accelerate the value of their businesses.  This program really is all about shifting the odds of success to the favor of early stage startups and those who work with them.  Based on the fundamental belief that smart people working together build better businesses, Studio G is designed to provide an easy way for entrepreneurs to access resources, advice or guidance so that there is nothing to hold back a talented team of entrepreneurs from reaching its potential.

More than a place or a program, Studio G is where innovative technology meets business innovation. It is a practice of mentoring, resource sharing, and networking that gives startups the right help at the right time to drive predictable improvement into their business and market position. Studio G is a dynamic entrepreneurial community that helps companies achieve their growth objectives with clarity of purpose, speed and efficiency.

A select number of startups and more established entrepreneurs will be invited to become Studio G Resident Members, working from the facility in Redwood City. Studio G will be supported by a vibrant online network where members can exchange advice and ideas, find-pre-qualified service providers through the Studio G Partner Network and access research and other shared resources in a private, confidential environment that embraces the practice of design thinking and performance-driven engagement.

The new Studio G office is located on 806 Winslow Street in Redwood City, easily accessible by car or CalTrain. Entrepreneurs interested in learning more about the space and the resources should contact us at info@guidewiregroup.com.

Congratulations are in order for our partner, the City of Zaragoza in northern Spain, which completed a key milestone in the city’s transformation to an information economy.  Centro de Incubación Empresarial (CIEM) a 2,000 sq meter facility opened this month to house up to 30 young companies building businesses in information and green technology and alternative energy.

Designed to be a zero emission building, the center was conceived in response to the economic crisis that hit Spain in 2009.  I was in Zaragoza less than two years ago when city leaders proposed the incubator as a means of fostering startups and creating new, high-value jobs in the region.  The city broke ground for the facility last May and opened its doors less than 10 months later.  The quick pace from conception to completion gives one hope that governments can move decisively and quickly when opportunity avails itself, and Mayor Belloch and his team should be congratulated for the vision and will to get the job done.

CIEM will be managed by another visionary institution in Zaragoza, the City of Knowledge Foundation, managed by my friend Ricardo Pedrol.  The Foundation was conceived by the Belloch administration as the instrument to create and engage with innovative programs that advanced the city’s quest to embrace information technology and entrepreneurship as a new economic driver.  By empowering the Foundation to act on new innovation initiatives, the city can move quickly to institute new programs without getting bogged down in political squabbles.

While CIEM will focus initially on housing and supporting local and regional companies, the broader vision for the Center is to serve as an incubator for Spanish companies generally, and ultimately as a gateway for companies outside of Spain seeking to move into the Spanish market.  For entrepreneurs in the Guidewire Group network, CIEM becomes an important node in global network of organizations supporting the global ambitions of startups.  Just as Guidewire Group’s Studio G is a “soft landing” for companies making forays into Silicon Valley, CIEM will become a landing zone for  U.S. companies seeking to enter the Spanish and European market.

Guidewire Group has enjoyed a long relationship with the City of Zaragoza, which played host to our Innovate! conference series since 2005, and which helped us transform our model into a business acceleration program that enables foreign Economic Development Agencies to support their entrepreneurs with a greater global understanding of the innovation ecosystem.   In fact, Guidewire Group will return to Zaragoza the week of June 20, 2011 for an intensive week of Studio G workshops.

I’m looking forward to our return to Zaragoza and exploring this important new facility.

For more information about CIEM, Contact Ricardo Pedrol

A year ago, Guidewire Group embarked on an ambitious plan to seek out the Innovate!100, a global list of the 100 startups demonstrating high potential and higher velocity as they build their businesses from idea to sustainability.   Today, after more than 30 Pitch Slam events in more than 30 cities on five continents, we’re proud to announce the Innovate!100 for 2010.

It’s been an incredible year and an incredible honor to meet, assess, and in some cases work closely with so many innovative companies, founded and run by an extraordinary group of entrepreneurs.  At each  Pitch Slam, startups presented their businesses to panels of judges who used our G/SCORE assessment methodology to evaluate how far each company was along seven key vectors of business growth.  The G/SCORE measures a company along seven factors: overall concept, market opportunity, competitive risk, product development, business development, team, and business model.  In each factor, our judges compare the company to key milestones that represent achievement in business building.

Using the G/SCORE data, combined with other information about the companies, our judges ranked the startups at each event.  The top company at each Pitch Slam event automatically made the Innovate!100 List.  Then, we selected the top-scoring companies, overall, and then the top five companies in each of our growth stage tiers (prototype, beta, product complete, revenue).   Finally, this week, 16 companies honed their pitches at the Guidewire Group Studio G workshop in Zaragoza, Spain.  Yesterday, the companies competed in the final Pitch Slam at the Innovate!Summit 2010, received a G/SCORE benchmark assessment, and answered questions before our panel of judges.  By the end of the day, one company- Anboto Group – took the top spot upon the Innovate!100 List for 2010.

We wish to thank all the companies that applied and pitched at an Innovate! event this year, as well as the many judges and attendees who worked to make the event a success.  We’re also grateful for the sponsors that made this quest possible, including Microsoft BizSpark, SWIFT, Atlassian, Microsoft Bing and Microsoft Azure, Cisco, O2 Litmus, PayPal,  and Quickstart Global, along with our long-time partner, Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation.

On behalf of all those entrepreneurs, sponsors, and supporters, we’re delighted to announce this year’s Innovate!100 List.

The Innovate!100 2010

Rank	Company	Country
1	Anboto Group	Spain
2	Artesian Solutions	United Kingdom
3	RedOxygen	Australia
4	NUMENUS GmbH	Germany
5	ividence	France / United States
6	myERP.com	United States
7	Relay Foods	United States
8	Intelia Consultores	Spain
9	SocialSmack	United States
10	NUITEQ	Sweden
11	FonYou	Spain
12	PetsMD	United States
13	Now!Innovations	Estonia
14	iAsset	Australia
15	Gumiyo.com	United States
16	Homing.com	Spain
17	Anneysen.com	Turkey
18	Sopima Oy	Finland
19	iletken / SocialWire	Turkey
20	FanFeedr	United States
21	iFacturas	Norway / Spain
22	LUMA International	Netherlands
23	Spring Gully Foods	Australia
24	Innovalley	Spain / United States
25	me & goji	United States
26	Evanscorp	Australia
27	Skimlinks	United Kingdom
28	Optify	United States
29	Canatu	Finland
30	Smart Logic	United Kingdom
31	Waze	Israel
32	Scense B.V.	Netherlands
33	TicTacDo	France
34	SentiMetrix	Italy
35	Smart Grains	France
36	TellMeWhere	France
37	Myworksearch Ltd	United Kingdom
38	Siondo	United Kingdom
39	Kobojo	France
40	Paycheck Manager	United States
41	3ScaleNetworks	Spain
42	CloudShare	United States
43	EventElephant	Ireland
44	Inference Communication	Australia
45	Over The Top Games	Spain
46	Sonru.com	Ireland
47	Werkadoo	United States
48	Apica	Sweden
49	Ulteo	France
50	Taleee	United States
51	Leetchi	France
52	EcoVadis	France
53	TaxiPal	Estonia
54	Novapost	France
55	Stupeflix	France
56	Cellictica Ltd.	Finland
57	Hiive Systems	Australia
58	Green Revolution Cooling	United States
59	Austrailian Survey Research	Australia
60	Conceptic	Israel
61	Kinamik	United States
62	Sentinel	Spain
63	Valt.X	United States
64	Sparkeo	Israel
65	The Gifts Project	Israel
66	Hypios	France
67	BehavioSec	Sweden
68	Wozaik	France
69	Pantea	Italy
70	Pervactive	Italy
71	Spreaker	Italy
72	Kade System	Turkey
73	MyLawsuit.com	United States
74	Shutl	United Kingdom
75	InternMatch	United States
76	DriveK	Italy
77	SocialAnnex	Spain
78	TaskPoint	United States
79	Tracks & Fields GmbH	Germany
80	Tribe of Noise	Netherlands
81	Vanios	Spain
82	WOT Services Ltd.	Finland
83	Bookioo	Spain
84	Edicy	Estonia
85	Whereoscope	United States
86	Aviator Controls	Australia
87	Fits.me	Estonia
88	Tinypay.me	Netherlands
89	Jasondb	Australia
90	iris2iris BV	Netherlands
91	AdTaily	United Kingdom
92	Threeplicate	Italy
93	Tryane	France
94	Sordu.com	Turkey
95	IDU Biometrics	Israel
96	Nutiteq	Estonia
97	GrabCAD	Estonia
98	Getitkeepit.com	Ireland
99	OrderMapper	United States
100	Groupvine	United States

Those of us who live on the coasts can easily regard the space between New York and San Francisco as little more than a six hour plane flight.  After all, the brains of American innovation are in Silicon Valley and the pocket book to pay for it is in the Big Apple.  At least that’s what we’re led to believe by our own arrogance and the perennial question “How can we become the Silicon Valley of Fill-In-The-Blank?”

On the face of it, it’s a silly question, sort of like me wondering how I can become the Heidi Klum of overweight, middle-age women.   You, dear Fill-in-The-Blank, cannot.  No more than I can become a supermodel at this or any age.  We don’t have the right stuff and trying to fake it just makes us look silly.

That’s not to say that Fill-In-The-Blank doesn’t have the right stuff to be the center of its own business universe or that great companies can’t be fostered in the Fly Over states.   In fact, they are.

I had the honor of working with ten such companies earlier this month as part of the PIPELINE program, funded by the State of Kansas and expertly led by CEO Joni Cobb.  In each of the last four years, PIPELINE has identified 10 high-potential companies to participate in a year-long immersion program.  The companies come from a broadly-defined technology sector, and represent remarkable innovations in bioscience, materials engineering, consumer Internet applications, education, energy efficiency, robotics, pharmaceuticals, and a host of industry-specific enabling applications.   Over the course of the year, they receive support for business planning, run market validation studies, learn effective communications skills, and connect into a national network of business mentors.

Then, they grow their businesses in Kansas, hiring local talent, investing in local infrastructure, paying local taxes, building the local economy.   Indeed, PIPELINE is driving these entrepreneurs to better outcomes than a typical investment portfolio might experience.  These companies are doing astoundingly well – and during an economic downturn, no less. Most have exponentially grown their businesses, and others have retooled and started newer, higher potential companies after realizing they were not on the right track.  And in this awful economy,  we’ve seen PIPELINE companies with substantial exits completed or in process.  Most importantly, the entrepreneurs at the head of these PIPELINE companies are paying it forward by encouraging others to start and grow new businesses.  As the program enters its fifth year, it has spawned an active alumni network in which past Innovators, as the program participants are called, become active mentors to current participants and to entrepreneurs at large.

No doubt State and local legislators eager to see big change fast – or at least in time for the next election cycle — wring their hands and wonder why Kansas isn’t the Silicon Valley of the Heartland.  They may worry if one little program can do enough to revitalize the economy and stem the brain drain to the vaunted coasts.   I don’t have the numbers to make my case, but I have to think the bang for the buck of this little program is remarkable.   PIPELINE – a relatively low-cost, high-impact business development program —  is a model for economic development throughout a country where once vibrant towns and cities are struggling to remake themselves for the Information Age.  And through a network of national mentors, the program is making footprints in the Innovation Ecosystem far beyond the borders of Kansas, becoming an emerging brand for programmed mentorship.

No question, by comparison, Kansas is no Silicon Valley and never will be.  And that’s okay.  In fact, it’s better than okay; it’s essential.  Kansas, and every other Fill-In-The-Blank region, has a fundamental responsibility to foster economic growth, and nothing drives growth more effectively than entrepreneurship.  Delivering programs that shift the odds of success in favor of the entrepreneur and driving policy that incites young businesses to invest and grow locally are building blocks of economic growth and sustainability.    PIPELINE does both.  It is an effective program that other states and regions would do well to model.