Party people!  NWEN is excited about its new world headquarters in Belltown, and is combining a housewarming with an open-house to bring you a “House Party” on Thursday, August 27.

Location: 2333 3^rd Avenue (3^rd and Battery).

Enjoy a casual tour of our loft space in the SkB Architects offices, and take a stroll down memory lane with some vintage NWEN schwag…door prizes for the first 50 guests to arrive! Swap stories and sip beverages with friends. Connect and conversate, and throw your name in the hopper for drawings every half hour.  With four giveaways, it could be your lucky day.  Your business card could get you:

• A ticket to pub night (September 16)
• Admission to breakfast (September 11)
• Attendance at one of our two September workshops (9/18 VC Financing, 9/29 Legal Essentials)…or, the grand prize:
• A ticket to Entrepreneur University (November 5)

Join us in our three theme rooms:

• Bootstrapping (that’s right, it’s a kegger): With thanks to support from Alex Modelski.
• Angel Investing (where else? our loft upstairs, featuring cocktails and nosh): Supporting sponsor: Atlas Networks.
• Venture Capital (wine, cheese and salumi): Sponsored by Stanislaw Ashbaugh.

Space is limited to 150 so don’t miss out.  Attendance is free for NWEN members, $10 for non-members. Register today! http://tinyurl.com/NWENparty

Local Northwest firm Blue Box Group has acquired the Rails Boxcar service from Portland-based Planet Argon. Congrats to the Blue Box team! They have been a great supporter of nPost Events and we wish them well as they continue to grow their service.

Thanks to VentureBeat for putting these together:

1. Don’t hire sales people too early. In the early days, the founders should be able to sell (and should be selling).

2. You don’t need sales people, you need sales. Don’t think VP of Sales – think “Revenue Engineer”. (Not the greatest analogy, but just like you won’t hire a development “manager” as one of the first 5 people in a startup, you shouldn’t hire a sales “manager” either). Don’t get caught up in fancy titles – focus on dollars in the door.

3. Don’t hire several sales people at once. Your goal is to figure out the “pattern” of what kinds of people are best based on what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. You need some feedback from the system so you can continue to iterate on your hires.

4. If you’ve never hired or been around sales people before, be prepared for a bit of a shock to the system. They’re not bad people, they’re just different. If you’re an introverted geek like me, it’s helpful to remember that your startup needs to sell stuff.

5. Resist the temptation to create complicated compensation plans. If it requires a spreadsheet to figure out the commission, it’s too hard. You’ll have plenty of time to confuse sales people later – start simple.

For the full list, click here >>

It seems like there have been a number of blog posts focusing on the negativity of comments (or the recipient of lots of negative comments). Really? Is this what we should spend our time worrying about? Negative comments?

Of course they aren’t helpful, certainly not constructive, and some are downright mean. That being said, who cares? It is simple psychology that rewarding bad behaviour with any type of engagement only encourages more of it.

Ignore them and move on.

Startups need positive and negative feedback, whether it is constructive or not. One of the hardest jobs of any entrepreneur is to get as much feedback as possible and determine what to focus on and what to throw out. The same thing applies here.

We need more feedback, more criticism, more dialogue, not less. Obviously, in a perfect world it would all be constructive and congenial. However, we don’t live in that world, and if we start censoring what some people say, true nuggets will be lost.

That doesn’t foster a dialogue, it kills the discussion.

It would be interesting to see these data points:

1. The number of startups that have a goal of being “lifestyle” vs “go-big”
2. Percentage of “lifestyle” companies that are around five years after being started
3. Percentage of “go-big” companies that are around five years after being started
4. Number of average employees at a “go-big” startups (0-5 years) vs at a “lifestyle” startups (0-5 years), and (6-10 years)

Where am I going with this? My hypothesis is simple. That maybe, just maybe “lifestyle” startups, defined as those that don’t end up with more than 20 employees may bring in more revenue that “go-big” startups in the first five years.

A few assumptions:

1,000 startups: 20% are “go-big” and 80% are “lifestyle”
# of employees (average in the first 5 years: Go-big=20, Lifestyle=5
Assume Same Pay / Employee at $120,000k (w/ benefits)
Assume 75% of “lifestyle” and 50% of “go-big” startups are profitable at 2x employee costs

What does this mean: that lifestyle companies generate 50% more revenue per year for the local economy than “go-big” startups within the first 5 years.

These numbers would of course be affected by the following:

1. The percentage of “go-big” startups that end up as “lifestyle” startups
2. The percentage of “lifestyle” startups that end up as “go-big” startups

Agree / disagree?

Everyone seems to have an opinion of what exactly constitutes a startup. Everyone I have spoken with has a different criteria for what is a startup and what isn’t. Here are some of the criteria:

1. Less than five years old
2. Less than ten years old
3. Can’t be public
4. Can be public
5. Pre-profit
6. Pre-revenue
7. Post-profit
8. Post-revenue
9. Less than ten employees
10. Less than 100 employees
11. Less than 1,000 employees
12. Has a functional beta
13. Doesn’t have a beta (either pre or post)
14. Lifestyle companies
15. No Lifestyle companies

It goes on and on…

Who is to say which criteria are the best? Well, I will give it a go and since I am a huge fan of simplicity. I propose the following rules:

1. Any company that is less than five years old

Done!

What are the biggest distractions for your business? This is an issue that I have come up against a lot lately and have decided to focus on those things that best help me build up nPost. Whether that be the media site, job board, events or other areas that we are looking into.

With Twitter, Facebook, events, coffees, Hulu, more Twitter, and even a MySpace or two it is easier and easier to lose focus on your startup. I try to ask myself one simple question:

What value does this (insert activity) contribute to my business?

With all the great events, activities, and social networking that can be done, it has been hard to step back and determine what has the most value for my business.

A number of other entrepreneurs have said they have the same issue. There is simply too much going on…

Hopefully a balance can be found, if possible.

Nothing goes better with tech companies that tech rock-n-roll.  So I have heard.  Especially, when the rock-n-roll is by local bands representing some of the tytans in the tech industry.

Be sure to check out the Battle of the Tech Bands this Thursday by the WTIA and Xconomy.

About the bands:

Afraid of Figs is a band of talented musicians from previous bands. They share a serious work ethic, off the wall sense of humor, and love of performing. Influences include: Barenaked Ladies, Presidents of the USA, Cake, Ben Folds, and others.

Between These Lines started rocking in late 2005 as a trio jamming on some of the most popular pop-punk rock songs of recent. In September 2008, Between These Lines began recording their debut EP, Familiar Places, with Producer Brandon Bee in Tacoma, Washington. This highly regarded album has been compared to artists such as Paramore, Acceptance, Jimmy Eat World, and Taking Back Sunday.

Indigo Soul is the alter-ego of Seattle-based singer/songwriter Mark Protus. Music critics describe the Indigo Soul sound as “very melodic song-based rock that’s in no way enslaved to any current trends.” The band combines smart and thoughtful lyrics with “fresh sounds and catchy and soulful classic-rock styles.”

Juda’s Wake is a modern Seattle-based metal power trio. They pull together a penetrating mix of intricate guitar, heavy rhythmic hooks, and edged vocal melodies resulting in a convincing, hard hitting, and articulate noise. Juda’s Wake draws influence from such bands as Tool, Disturbed, Marilyn Manson, Rush, Mudvayne, and Static-X, but has brewed a new take on the aggressive sound.

Lions Ambition is a hip-hop/rock band based out of Seattle, WA. The band mixes together live instrumentation, soulful vocals, and conscious lyrics to blend together a truly unique sound. The band has played in parts of Canada, California, and Seattle at different venues, festivals, and college events.

Guest Post by Henry Albrecht of Limeade:

Mammoths are grazing, sabre-tooth cats are hunting.  But the ground they walk on is warm and kinda sticky.  Who will escape the tarpits of the 2009 economy?  Here are factors that matter:

• Sector. I like whatever is badly broken (healthcare, energy, education, healthcare again) or really numbing – I am talking beer, lottery tickets or anything released in the last ten years starring Nicolas Cage.
• Size. Go small.  Why?  It means you can be profitable without laying off half your staff and eviscerating morale.  You don’t need $50 million from VCs to launch a great business.  Perhaps most importantly, medium-sized sales matter measurably to small companies.  Whale hunting is fun, but small companies get to live like the good Norwegians – on a steady diet of herring and berries, with a salmon every now and then.
• Pace of Iteration. Fast.  The era of the one- to two-year planning horizon is over.  Products need to iterate quarterly, monthly, weekly.  Maybe even in an automated way hourly (see Amazon or Google).  Launch, learn, re-launch, re-learn, repeat.  Innovation = survival.
• IT involvement. Little to none.  We like IT.  They’re smart, thoughtful, irreverent (prickly at times) and perform feats of massive ingenuity.  We just don’t want to talk to them when selling our services.  No one selling to business buyers does.  IT has to understand and raise issues of our enemy, complexity.  Modern, standards-based SaaS (and in our business, emerging standards from the likes of Microsoft and Google) keep IT at bay.
• Relationships. Have them.  Nurture them.  Obsess over them.  When times are great, you might sell to strangers.  But when times are tough, the relationships you, your team and your brand already have matter more than anything else.

Better to be the bird flitting over the head of the sabre tooth cats than the cats themselves.

That’s my nickel.

This is a guest post by Henry Albrecht, CEO of Limeade an online wellness company.

We find ourselves approaching everything we do in similar ways.  This video is a great reminder of how we should simply surprise ourselves!

Hat tip to Outspoken Media