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Need an opportunity to get out of the office a bit early? Want to grab a drink in historic and startup-mad Pioneer Square? If your answer is yes to both of these or really to either, then stop by the nPost Pub Crawl on Tuesday, February 9th.

It is free (to attend), fun, and free flowing (we only know where we will go when we get there). You have to follow us on Twitter to keep up…

This one is sponsored by Parker Technical. Thanks guys!

There have been lots of exciting changes around here as of late. My wife and I learned that we are expecting, we just got a puppy, she accepted a new job and as it turns out so have I. Blue Box Group, a local business that provides web hosting services and that focuses on tech startups and media companies was in need of a COO. It turned out to be an excellent opportunity for me to bring my experience and capabilities to the team.

I am very excited to be working with a great team, especially one that works so closely with the very startup community of which I am such a huge fan of.

As for nPost it will very much continue on very much as before. Look for regular blog posts, opportunities on the job board, and of course fun and engaging events every few months that showcase the Seattle tech startup community.

It is all about the money.

You may tell yourself and others that it is more than that. That it is about helping/saving/serving humanity, which it most certainly can be about. At the end of the day however, it is about the greenbacks.

Here is the surprising thing, that is a good thing!

A startup can be about a number of things, but at the core, it is about profitability. Whether that that profit delivers a lifestyle (shout out to Seattle) or to F*** You I Own My Own Plane (you know who you are) it is all the same and it is time to embrace it.

When did we stop celebrating the profit motive? When did it become A reason for building a business, versus THE reason? No one thinks that money can buy happiness, but it does help with everything else you want to do. Whether giving back to orphans or saving the environment, it all takes capital. As in dollars. And the only way to get that capital is to make money.

We have lost the idea that profit is about selling goods or services to someone who needs / wants them. That value is created when someone does that. Value is where wealth comes from; wealth to hire people to pay people and yourself. Wealth is good.

Let’s all say it together “I want to be rich and that is a good thing”.

That wasn’t so bad.

I would take this BusinessWeek article one step further and provide Visas for the entire team, not just founders. Not only do we need to encourage more startups from abroad coming to the US, but we need the larger ecosystem here as well; developers, marketers, creatives, analysts, the whole nine yards.

This is especially crucial as startups begin to tap into international markets more so than ever, they need the expertise to do so and to compete. The only way to do that is with a team that understands these markets and the products.

The US will continue to be a leader for the foreseeable future in technology and startups, though we have to ensure that we continue to expand on our capabilities and openness to others within the entrepreneurial space to come to the US to live, create, and build their businesses.

I put this together for a Entrepreneurship Class at the University of Washington that I was addressing:

That was a common stance within the investment community. The last 12 months have been tough on investors, to first time entrepreneurs to established startups; a lack of capital, no IPOs, limited M&A activity, and decreasing consumer expenditures. This difficulty has led many companies to focus on revenue and profitability. Sounds blasphemous I know…

But it is working. Entrepreneur after entrepreneur have told me of their success stories in generating revenue and even reaching profitability. Now with such achievements, it is that much easier to get calls returned from Angels and Venture Capitalists (with a better negotiating stance).

This begs the question. If they had been focused on revenue and profitability from the beginning what might have been different? Would they have reached both milestones that much earlier? There is no way to answer that definitively. However, I do believe it to be true (though I am biased).

The focus on revenue and profitability is a positive outcome of the last 12 months. Lets hope that it continues.

We just announced the five Seattle startups that will be pitching at the nPost Demo Event next Tuesday at the Columbia City Theater. Congrats! We can’t wait to see what you have to show!

Panopto
MyBuzz.us
TweepML
Bluyah
ValueAppeal

If you are an aspiring entrepreneur and want to build something with a chance of being purchased, who would have guessed that an Enterprise startup is the way to go? According to CrunchBase‘s data, it seems so. For instance, Enterprise startups are three times more likely than Mobile startups to be acquired and almost twice as likely as eCommerce, Web and Game startups…

Interested in learning more? Sign up for nPost Metrics!