Guidewire Group

This morning, I kicked off my 24^th and last DEMO conference.  By the end of the day tomorrow, Venture Beat’s Matt Marshall will be the sole executive producer of the DEMO Conferences and I’ll be on to something new.

History shows that companies created in down economies are just as likely to be successful as those started when times are good.  According to research done by the Kauffman Foundation, 51% percent of companies on the Fortune 500 list between 1929 and the present were started during a recession, a bear market, or both. Nearly half the companies listed on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies in 2008 were founded during an economic downturn.

It’s true that funding is less available and some people are unwilling to leave a good job to start a company. It’s also true that recessions can put an emotional damper on startups.  Starting a business is hard work regardless of the economy and this economy doesn’t make it any easier.

Still, many entrepreneurs – and I suspect all of those who are launching products at DEMO today — see even greater opportunity during a recession. They figure that the larger established companies that might pose competition have just as many woes as a brand new startup, which needs less money, can be more nimble, and doesn’t have to answer to Wall Street.

When unemployment rates are high – as they are now – there are really good people available to work in a startup, people who might feel that a startup poses less risk than it might have at other times.

Perhaps most importantly, startups can have a broad impact on the economic recovery and growth by stimulating innovation, and creating new industries and new jobs.

Of the more than 600,000 entrepreneurs in the United States – and many more around the world – who have or will start a company this year, some small number of them will in fact make it to the Fortune 500 list in 10 or 20 years.  And a few hundred will be on the Inc. 500 just a few years from now.  They will have created jobs and economic value not just for themselves, but for their communities near and far.

Bottom line: Now is a great time to start a company.

In many ways, that’s what we are doing at Guidewire Group: we are re-starting our company with a clear, sharp focus on entrepreneurs.   We have always held to a couple of core principles.  We believe in the power of entrepreneurship to drive the economy and, as we move on from DEMO, we’re devoting all our time and energy to helping entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports them.  We believe that when entrepreneurs succeed, the entire ecosystem benefits from that success and so we align ourselves with startups to help ensure their success.

Today, Guidewire Group is taking advantage of this unique economic environment to launch new initiatives that will deliver on this promise:  the Guidewire Assessment Framework, Studio G, and Innovate!100.

The Guidewire Startup Assessment Framework assesses a young company’s business viability, business and product execution, team, and business model.  We developed this consistent, objective assessment framework based on interviews with more than 30,000 startups over the past 25 years.  It is the codification of the selection criteria and methodology I’ve used to select companies to launch at DEMO over the last 13 years.

The Innovate!100 is a ranked order list of the most promising early-stage technology, media and telecom startups in the world. The Innovate!100 will be selected from among hundreds of eligible startups by Guidewire Group analysts and a world class network of advisors using the Startup Assessment Framework during the course of the Innovate!2010 Program.

Mike Sigal, Guidewire Group’s co-founder and president, will be leading those initiatives and other soon-to-be announced products, as I turn my full energies to Studio G.

Studio G is a high-performance workspace for high-potential startups.  It is both a physical workspace and a private Web community, guided by the key principles that innovative technology needs business innovation to reach its full potential; that smart people working collaboratively in dynamic workspaces with experts, mentors and community can build business value more rapidly; and that collaborative creative process, coupled with performance-driven metrics, drives innovation and business success.

Studio G is a best-practices community of smart, talented entrepreneurs, mentors, service providers, and investors who work virtually and physically together to rapidly build value into emerging businesses. Engagement in Studio G moves companies from market validation to customer adoption, wrapping smart business strategy around innovative teams and technologies.   Studio G works with both early-stage companies and established-brand spinouts to help them get it right from the start when making the critical transition from developing a product to marketing, selling and creating other business opportunities.

I’m thrilled to usher in this new era for Guidewire Group and hope you’ll watch this space, as we share more about these initiatives in the coming days.