Seattle Startup Life

The brains over at Zaaz are putting together a very interesting and insightful event called Perspectives on Social Media. If you have even an inkling of interest in social media, communities, and web technologies, I’d invite you to attend this event. Unfortunately, I’ll be just coming back from Los Angeles during this time.

My good buddy, David Eraker, just released a new version of Mindsite. The visuals and flow have all been updated to look and feel super clean. Here’s a quick synopsis of what they do:

Mindsite offers free access to clinical resources to help you overcome the confusion surrounding mental health diagnoses and treatments.

• Get diagnosed online by taking our surveys developed by Harvard Medical School for the World Health Organization to test for symptoms of most mental health disorders.

• Research signs and symptoms with free access to the DSM-IV, the manual used by medical professionals to diagnose, describe, and categorize mental health disorders.

• Learn from our community by asking questions, or browse original articles and videos posted by people like you.

I highly recommend checking out the site if you’ve got the time.

Roughly a year ago, a few of my Lakeside friends and I decided it’d be fun to get together, get some beers and talk about living the startup life. We’d meet once a month at random bars around Pioneer Square and talk about business, technology, marketing and anything else that came into our heads. Over this period of time, I’ve moved on from Redfin to Conenza; Matt from Judy’s Book to Blist; Eric from Jobster to Real Self.

Over the year, we’ve had people join us that represent other companies, such as Fyreball, Shiftboard, Tamarac, and Mindsite. And, amazingly, most of them are connected by two degrees or less; it’s amazing how small the community really is - especially in Pioneer Square.

So if you are interested in joining the group, feel free to ping us using the Facebook group. Our first official gathering is next month (or later depending on the release schedules )

Goodness, it’s been a looooong time since I’ve updated my blog. Life has been pretty crazy on my end. Apologies to my 2 faithful readers. A few quick updates from around the Seattle world:

• It’s too bad I didn’t have more time, or else I would have tried to weasel my way into getting a free lunch with Judy’s Book’s (now out of business) CEO Andy Sack. From what I hear, he’s great with entrepreneur advice. But alas, his lunch card is now filled for the new few months…
• For some reason, Naveen Jain always entertains me. He’s like the anti-Jeff Bezos.
• comScore is sold to M:Metrics. They’re getting $44.3M in cash plus issue approximately 50,000 options. Not too bad for mobile internet usage.
• Does anyone have a good source as to what Ripl is doing? They seem to be still in beta. I’d love to see how they are differentiating themselves from the rest of the social networking sites.
• And last but not least, Jobster raises more money. For the love of everything good, what do you need more money for? I don’t get it. The site. Is. Horrible. Period. I’m usually a big fan of local startups, but this one oozes of wasted cash. If anyone from Jobster is interested in chatting, let me know.