Having observed startups as an analyst for Guidewire Group and a key part of my DEMO team, Carla saw an unmet need.  Women founders and business owners need a community.  They need and want a place to talk, mentor, and be mentored.  They want to focus on business, not women in business, and too often women-centric communities devolve into yet another venue for work-life-balance, husbands-and-diapers, may-male-boss-hates-me bitch sessions.  Carla had a vision of something better, something more valuable.  She created Sharp Skirts.

Like every startup, Sharp Skirts put a stake in the ground when it launched last year.  And like every startup, Sharp Skirts has evolved. The company has made the turn to become a new media brand to serve women business builders tired of poor representation in media and events.  Carla talks about that evolution better than I ever good.  Read her post  here.

What I have always loved about Carla – and by extension, Sharp Skirts – is that she has a point of view.  She’s also persistent as hell, and she’s managed to be doggedly persistent without sacrificing her point of view.  Her never-surrender attitude has led to the relaunch today of Sharp Skirts.  Still, there is “no pink, no platitudes.”   And the goal is unchanged: to “make our numbers count as an emerging force in business.”

The new direction, an online and offline media property, has tremendous potential.  And while I will likely never asked Carla “what do you really want to do” again, I don’t need to.  She’s going to build this company, be the original Sharp Skirt, and make me wish that I had worked for her.

Congratulations, Carla, on the restart, and best of luck to you and all the Sharp Skirts in your community.

Thanks to those entrepreneurs who have already completed their applications. They have thrown their hats in the ring to compete with an impressive group of startups and we wish all of them good luck!

From the applications we receive by the deadline, 36 companies will invited to compete in the next round of judging. Companies will submit a short video pitch that tells us why your company is among the most innovative in the SoLoMo space. We’ll contact contestants by October 31 with the results of the first round of judging. If you’re in the next round, we’ll share details about the video competition.

All applicants to the LeWeb Startup Competition have early, complimentary access to Guidewire Group’s G/SCORE Analytics application to benchmark their businesses and track their progress against other startups. By keeping the G/SCORE profile up to date, your business’s progress and success will also be visible to investors, corporate partners and M&A executives who use the G/SCORE Analytics application to find and track innovative startups.

For those who have not yet completed a LeWeb Startup Competition application, please see the instructions below for logging in to complete a profile and  G/SCORE self-assessment. It only takes a few minutes to complete the process. Applications are due by October 15, 2011 and we can only consider completed applications.

Steps For Completing Self-Assessment:
Once you’ve logged into the application (http://leweb.guidewiregroup.net), there are three tabs at the top: FOLLOW, DISCOVER, and SCORE. Click the SCORE tab. You should then see a drop down that contains all the companies you’ve created and are following. Select your company in that drop down if it’s not already selected. Click Begin Assessment to complete self assessment.

Steps for Requesting Certified Assessment:
After Completing a Self Assessment, you will be taken back to the main SCORE page. This page will now show the date which you created the assessment and some options to perform on that assessment, such as Publish or Request. Click the Request link to request a certified assessment. You will then be taken to a form. Provide a URL to a video if you so choose. Make some notes for the reviewer also if you so choose. Lastly, click submit. Then you’re done.

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.

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.

It is that methodology – The G/SCORE(tm) – that has set Guidewire Group on a new path to becoming a software company. In February, Guidewire Group received a grant from the National Science Foundation to commercialize a SaaS application that enables entrepreneurs to profile and benchmark their businesses and helps large organizations discover and follow startups with which they seek to do business. The core of that application, G/SCORE Analytics, is in the midst of early beta testing, and we intend to open the platform to more and more entrepreneurs as the summer turns to fall.

As we built and tested this platform, one thing became very clear to us: we have a passion for startups, absolutely, and the best way to have the greatest impact in the global market is to deliver the tools and services at scale that enable entrepreneurs around the world to more effectively manage and grow their business, while delivering the tools and data large organizations require to more effectively and efficiently engage with startups in the innovation ecosystem.

That scale comes from software. And so, today, Guidewire Group is making the pivot, away from a business built on hands-on advisory work and toward a scalable company based on a growing platform of software tools and services.

We are just at the beginning of this new journey, and we’re super excited by the vision and the potential to have real and sustainable impact. We haven’t lost sight of our mission: empower entrepreneurs to build substantial and sustainable businesses. But now, we have a stronger platform from which to achieve that vision.

And, of course, everyone at Guidewire Group would like you to be a part of this next chapter in our company’s history. If you’re interested in taking the new software for a (beta) test drive, please let me know by emailing me at chris@guidewiregroup.com.

While analytics remains at the heart of the Rumbafish offering, the company, driven by Founder and CEO Michelle Bonat, has made the pivot from brand marketing to social commerce. Rumbafish offers a turnkey platform to enable viral social commerce, putting group buying power on the Websites of community organizations, brand aggregators, and shopping collectives.

This new approach enables organizations to generate revenue for themselves and their retail partners and members, al the while delivering the analytics to guage engagment and map their social graph.  Rumbafish is rolling out the new platform now, and is laying plans to begin its Series A capital raise.

So there I was trying to jam out a “slide deck” with the clock ticking down to a noon deadline. And I was frustrated.  Prezi doesn’t work at all like PowerPoint. It doesn’t work like any presentation software you’ve ever known.  Everything I know about slides and builds and transitions wasn’t working for me. I muddled through, made the deadline (plus or minus 30 minutes) and sort of decided that I’d use Prezi sparingly.

Last Tuesday, Drew and I shared a flight from SFO through Denver and on to Columbus. On the ride to the hotel, I broached the subject of Prezi. “It’s a very different user experience,” I said diplomatically.  Roughly translated: “It’s f***ing impossible.”

As we started talking, though, I quickly realized that Prezi wasn’t the problem, and, just maybe, neither were my abilities. Powerpoint is.

Powerpoint gets the blame for so much bad communications, and I’m about to pile on; Powerpoint is to blame for so much bad thinking.

Over the 20 years+ history of Powerpoint and its precursors (Lotus Freelance, Harvard Graphics have to share some of the blame) have compelled today’s business leaders to think in outlines, slide titles, bullet points, and clipart.  In short, the framework to present ideas has been the constraining framework of ideas themselves.

So along comes Prezi, offering a large blank canvas, and the first thing I try to do is build an outline, bullet points, and builds.

As anyone who has ever sat in a strategy meeting with me knows, get me within reasonable proximity of whiteboard and I’m scribbling all over the wall.  I pick up the marker as a way to think.  Freeform, graphical, erasing, highlighting.  So why was Prezi such a leap?  Because I was thinking about a presentation rather than thinking.  Maybe worse, I was confusing presentation for thinking.

It’s commonplace to blame PowerPoint for the epidemic of boring, graphically-challenged, and otherwise uninspiring presentations.  I certainly have sat through my share of them.  But maybe it’s not PowerPoint’s fault so much as it is our own.  We’ve fallen into a habit that inhibits the free flow of ideas.

Certainly PowerPoint and its ilk are fine tools for presenting ideas.  But if my Prezi experience awakened me to anything, it is that PowerPoint is very likely not the best tool for inspiring the ideas we want to present.

By the same token, Prezi breaks with presentation convention which makes it a more challenging tool (at least initially) with which to present straight-forward ideas.  As a thinking tool and brainstorming tool, however,  it breaks out of the mental rut carved by too many  Powerpoint presentations.  I’m not ready to ditch Powerpoint quiet yet; convention is hard to disregard.   But when I’m struggling to find insight, I quit likely will turn to Prezi to digitally  white board my ideas.