A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Arthur Bart-Williams recently shared the story of his startup on Entrepreneur Thursday. He’s back today to share insights he got while attending a major Valley conference on innovation—insights to both the industry and his own path, so listen up and if the shoe fits…

You Can’t Get  Where You’re Going if You Don’t Know Where You Are

by Arthur Bart-Williams

First a little background, I’m a serial technology entrepreneur working on my fourth company.  My first one, ViaNovus, was around for over 12 years and had two incarnations before being acquired, and I’ve been working on the most recent one, Canogle, for almost two years.

I’m passionate about startups, consider myself to be a student of the process, and am very familiar with the entrepreneurial roller coaster ride.  And although I’ve done all of this while living in the Bay Area, I’ve never delved into the Silicon Valley culture and consider myself an outsider.

Thanks to some prodding I’ve started carving out time to spend at events around the Valley and attended the AlwaysOn 10^th Annual Innovation Summit in Mountain View this week.

It was definitely worth the time, with great exposure to impressive people and relevant conversations, but I was surprised at how overwhelmed I felt.

At first I thought it must have been from the volume of information that was presented and discussed, but after some reflection I’m clear that it was from the realization that as hard as I’ve been working I’ve still got a steep hill to climb that seems taller than Mount Everest in order to achieve the success that I want.

It’s going to take a whole lot more than I thought to make the annual AlwaysOn Global 250 list.  While depressing at first, it helps to know where you are on whatever journey you’re on.

I’ve always done a decent job at getting out of the building for customer development; now I’m getting an appreciation of doing it for company development.

That said, here are a few takeaways from the conference:

• Surprise, the future of media for consumers is mobile (an over $50 Billion market), but it is also transforming the user experience of applications in large enterprises as they compete and cater to a younger workforce.
• Brands, businesses and organizations need to be educated on how to use mobile and social platforms effectively.   The shift from the web to mobile is as significant as from radio to TV, and the code is yet to be cracked.
• A next phase in mobile development is a consolidation of the hundreds of thousands of apps that compete for users’ attention along with an emphasis on hyper-localization, contextual relevance of marketing and facilitating instant actions.

I’ll be happy to respond to any thoughts or questions you have, so don’t hesitate to share them in the comments.

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When possible I prevail on someone I know to attend the major AlwaysOn conferences, usually it’s KG Charles-Harris, but more recently it’s been Chris Blackman.

Last week Chris attended this year’s AlwaysOn Venture Capital Summit at Sand Hill Road in the heart of VCland and got a glimpse into the future investment strategies of that storied world.

From Chris Blackman

A culture of innovation? Customer driven? Family oriented? Work hard play hard? Top down or bottom up?

Do companies still embrace and boast about these corporate attitudes anymore?

Judging from what I heard at the AlwaysOn Venture Capital Summit they have taken a back seat to burnishing a reputation of being a green in many companies—but not all.

Amiel Kornel, senior managing director of the Emerging Technology Group at venture firm Spencer Trask still cares about those values and behaviors.

In particular, he looks for “companies that will define new market categories of business while emphasizing a top down approach to a balanced lifestyle.”

Innocentive is Kornel’s poster child for such values.

It also created the business category known as crowd sourcing.

For example, last week, the US government announced an online challenge with the aim of discovering a process for how the Internet can help with rapid problem solving.  How was it won? A group of MIT students used incentive-based collaboration techniques to encourage individuals to share the winning information.

Innocentive is fast becoming the nexus of such competitions. They have the ability to bring together thousands of minds to solve intellectual challenges quickly.

Mr. Kornel reminds us why company culture is important: “Key individuals must be fun to spend time with because at the end of the day, this relationship is like a marriage.”

And to be productive it needs to be a good marriage.

For more from the Summit check out the buzz.

Image credit: AlwaysOn

There are many types of technology; Going Green brings together those active in what is called green tech and clean tech. Those fields are of critical interest for many reasons, to I prevailed on Chris Blackman to attend and share her impressions with you.

About Chris

Chris is a strategic consultant specializing in the positioning of clients for the acquisition of capital – private and public sources of funding – in the green and clean technology sector. Chris is a graduate of Columbia University having studied Political Science and International Relations. To date, Chris has written proposals in the green and clean tech space for a variety of water projects but is interested in a wide variety of topics. Her interest is piqued when there are projects at the intersection where green and clean tech meets the infrastructure.

Chris will be looking especially hard at these pressing questions:

• What is being done in the green and clean tech space?
• Who is financing the new startups and which kinds of startups are receiving funding?
• What will be the impact of funding clean tech companies in the United States?

About the conference

AlwaysOn’s Going Green, founded by Tony Perkins of RedHerring repute, is a three day conference in the San Francisco Bay area that explores who is in the green and clean tech space and who is funding what in its myriad sectors. The conference can be viewed daily for free; if you have a webcam and mic you can be seen, join in and ask questions.

This year’s keynote speaker for the opening ceremony was R. James Woolsey. The former cabinet member of the Clinton administration analyzed the need for green technologies that continue to use existing infrastructure and the importance of developing green and clean technologies, which encourage local self-sufficiency on the community level.

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Image credit: AlwaysOn

Each year AlwaysOn produces several high profile events. One is the premier technology event Stanford Summit that KG Charles-Harris covers for MAPping Company Success.

But there are many types of technology; Going Green brings together those active in what is called green tech and clean tech. Those fields are of critical interest for many reasons, to I prevailed on Chris Blackman to attend and share her impressions with you.

About Chris

Chris is a strategic consultant specializing in the positioning of clients for the acquisition of capital – private and public sources of funding – in the green and clean technology sector. Chris is a graduate of Columbia University having studied Political Science and International Relations. To date, Chris has written proposals in the green and clean tech space for a variety of water projects but is interested in a wide variety of topics. Her interest is piqued when there are projects at the intersection where green and clean tech meets the infrastructure.

Chris will be looking especially hard at these pressing questions:

• What is being done in the green and clean tech space?
• Who is financing the new startups and which kinds of start-ups are receiving funding?
• What will be the impact of funding clean tech companies in the United States?

About the conference

AlwaysOn’s Going Green, founded by Tony Perkins of RedHerring repute, is a three day conference in the San Francisco Bay area that explores who is in the green and clean tech space and who is funding what in its myriad sectors. The conference can be viewed daily for free; if you have a webcam and mic you can be seen, join in and ask questions.

This year’s keynote speaker for the opening ceremony was R. James Woolsey. The former cabinet member of the Clinton administration analyzed the need for green technologies that continue to use existing infrastructure and the importance of developing green and clean technologies, which encourage local self-sufficiency on the community level.

I thought you might be up for some fun today and one of the most fun things I do is read is Guy Kawasaki. This weekend I ran into two interesting bits, an interview and a column in Always On.

The interview brought something forward that I think is very important, especially given the current economic times.

When talking about his new book, Reality Check, and who makes the best venture capitalist, Guy downgrades MBAs and those who haven’t had operating roles, saying

“Consulting, investment banking and accounting do not provide you with “on the firing line” experience. You’re always the “outside expert” who zooms in, interviews a few people, creates a PowerPoint presentation and then tells people what they should do.

Unfortunately, analysis and ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. A consultant can tell you to reduce your work force by 10 percent, but figuring out who to lay off and looking people in the eyes when you do it is much harder.”

No kidding. A lot harder.

This is important advice for regular business folks in companies of all sizes, not just entrepreneurs, to keep in mind when looking for help in solving difficult situations. In fact, pretty much everything Guy says can be applied with minimum tweaking to any size company, so read the interview and reap the value.

Guy also says that entrepreneurs, like ‘leaders’, aren’t recognizable up front and that the real proof is in the results.

Now for the fun.

Guy considers it “irrational to base one’s mood on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). After all, (a) what does that have to do with the real world? And (b) it reflects the buying (and selling) decisions of the same investment bankers who got us into this mess.”

So he created a more rational way to measure the health of the economy. Here are three of the 11 measures that make up the GIA (Guy’s Index of Absurdity).

• Venture capitalists attend board meetings via WebEx rather than Gulfstream.
• Pierre Omidyar [eBay founder] starts selling stuff on eBay.
• Men can speak at Blogher as long as they pay for the time slot.

Enjoy; reading Guy is a great way to start the week.

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In attending the AO 250 cocktail party last night, I was struck by something that differed significantly from the first ones I attended after moving to the US and getting involved with Garage Technology Ventures. Guy Kawasaki was a powerful force (he still is), as were the exuberance of youth in driving new technology and investment dollars.

This time around the surroundings were less lavish, as could be expected since we have all learned that spending money is not the same thing as making money. However, a significant difference was also the graying of the participants at the party.

Other than many of the people working at AlwaysOn (the conference co-host), most of the participants were over 35 years of age. Gone were the 22 year old CEOs that were the mainstay of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Now, the CEOs and management teams seemed seasoned and focused on clear drivers of value creation.

Not that I have anything against young CEOs; today they are creating significant value for investors—Facebook is just one example. However, the management teams are different today in that they are very business savvy, rather than having lofty concepts, ideals or delusions about how to create value.

Now, perhaps it is my perspective that has changed.  I’m 10 years older than the last time I participated in events like this and during that time I have been active in the investment banking, entrepreneur and venture capital arena in Europe and the US and consequently have matured slightly. At present, I’m running my fourth startup; Emanio is actually a restart from a European company I co-founded and brought from Scandinavia to the US in 2000.

Along the way I’ve learned a few lessons, especially during the past 5 years during which I not only raised money, but also did acquisitions in a difficult market. Doing this while bootstrapping the company (building it up without any outside investors) has taught me these lessons through considerable pain. Bootstrapping is definitely not for the faint of heart—everything takes longer and is more difficult than when one is well funded—but it does force one to possess a certain discipline.

Having become one myself, it warmed my heart to interact with all these entrepreneurs, as well as with Tony Perkins, Marc Sternberg and the others at AlwaysOn, and sharing in their stories. It was truly inspirational.

Come back for more of KG’s impressions tomorrow.

KG Charles-Harris is CEO of Emanio and a special contributor to MAPping Company Success.