Dan Griffin's Blog

Comments on security, PKI, smart cards, cryptography, and entrepreneurship.

The best thing about yesterday’s Entrepreneur University (EU), put on by the Northwest Entrepreneur Network in downtown Seattle, was the professional networking opportunity.  The seminars were a little dull, but it’s also possible that I simply wasn’t in the mood to sit in uncomfortable chairs all day.

The keynotes were entertaining.  Jim Sinegal, CEO of Costco, has a great presentation about the history of the company.  Their focus on efficiency is inspiring.  Interesting comparison to, say, WalMart:  while Costco claims to pay its employees $17/hr avg + benefits, WalMart reportedly pays $10/hr avg with fewer or no benefits.  When re-stocking certain inventory items, Costco can simply drop the pallet in the warehouse floor and be done with it.  Customers just grab the items from there.  WalMart, on the other hand, has to incur the additional labor cost of un-wrapping the larger boxes and placing the smaller boxes on shelves.  Of course, if you don’t want to buy a two-month supply of Cheerios, you’ve got to be willing to pay the overhead :)

A comment about one of the seminars – the President of All-Star Directories gave a talk about Operations Planning.  That’s not the kind of topic that interests me, but what does interest me is that founder Mike Mathieu had just sold ASD to an Austin-based VC for an undisclosed sum.  Given that the start-up was self-funded, had been profitable for four straight years, and last year’s revenue was $15 million, speculation yesterday was that the sale was worth $50 million, with a healthy portion going to the founder.  Nice score.  More.

On the networking side – a couple of start-ups I learned about doing cool stuff.  First, shelfari lets users post info about books they own, wishlists, comments, etc.  It could turn into a cool book discussion site, and the overall design is slick, but I don’t see too many people moving their wishlists or book reviews efforts away from Amazon.  I hope I’m wrong.

Then there’s Leancode founded by Bernie Thompson, a former development manager and technical trainer who I knew back at Microsoft.  I was actually kind of shocked to hear that he left, but I’m glad to see he’s out doing cool stuff.

I also met Trent Dyrsmid of Dyrand Systems who gave me some advice about doing my homework as an entrepreneur.  In essence, if you’re going to spend 5 – 10 years building something, try to make sure it’s worth it.  Or, before you start the race, pick the fastest horse …

Finally, an interesting, albeit very brief, chat with a local VC.  What’s hot on their radar right now?  Computational Biology and anything involving the Media/Internet/Advertising intersection, particularly media on a cellphone and internet video.  YouTube 2.0, anyone?

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