So here are some of my startup workaholic jams.  I welcome your recommendations for more.

Eric
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They just don't make 'em like Ronnie James Dio any more.

I find that the The Sword helps me endure Quickbooks.

Detecting a theme? Aggressive music drives aggressive growth.

Sonny Rollins for late night sessions.

From his site:

Eat junk. Clean up the ocean.

The ocean is being trashed by polluters! Help Louie gobble up the trash to keep the water clean. If you miss too much, the water will become toxic. Avoid obstacles and collect power-ups to get special abilities. Coming soon for iPhone and iPod Touch. Mmmmm... junk food!

There is a video of the game on the site.  Fun!

HubSpot is going to buy an email marketing service provider 2010.  And I have a few pretty good ideas of who it could be.

Here's why it is going to happen:

It is blatantly obvious. 

The guys at HubSpot have built a fantastic B2B lead management machine with some nicely integrated SEO, blog, and other content tools.  (And probably more - I'm not an expert on their platform.)

Email is the obvious missing piece.  I think HubSpot already provides customers tools for simple nurturing campaigns...but my hunch is that there remains MUCH room for improvement. (What about mailings that are independent of a lead form or the HubSpot platform?)

I also suspect that many of HubSpot's low/mid-tier customers would gladly dump their existing email vendor for a reasonable, integrated offering from HubSpot.

(Yes - email marketing kinda goes against the inbound credo.  But if you do it right, email marketing makes inbound marketing MUCH stronger.)

Email marketing isn't easy...

...and it certainly can't be dumbed-down into a grader.  (Zing!)  Deliverability, workflow, reputation, best practices, etc. all have a steep learning curve - both for the customer and the vendor.  The best email marketing apps are highly specialized and get all of the little details just right.

Instead of trying to build it all in-house, HubSpot would be smart to buy a platform and all of the email marketing product/industry expertise that comes with it.

They've got to keep pace.

Eventually, HubSpot will to start bumping into up-market vendors like Marketo, Eloqua, and Salesforce.com - all of which have very strong email marketing components, either native or through amazingly tight integrations.  Thus, it would take them a long time to build out a feature-complete email platform that is strong enough to compel marketers to switch from their existing vendor.

So they'll buy a mid-tier vendor, integrate the platform with HubSpot, happily accept the top-line bump from the new contracts, and make up a lot of ground with their biggest competitors - all in one smart acquisiton.

They're flush with cash.

HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan recently said that the firm's next financing round would hopefully come from public markets, which means that their last round came at a great valuation and gives them a nice, long runway to grow...a runway presumably lengthened by the gobs of cash they're raking in every month.

A $8M - $15M acquisition is certainly in their sweet spot.  And the list of email marketing vendors that match that profile is fairly short.

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PS - Here's why it won't happen:

• They won't be able to get a good price from a good ESP.
• Despite everything I just said, HubSpot seems like a builder...not a buyer.
• I'm just taking a wild guess.

In summary, new products and new markets are funny things.  The first products to enter don't always win and neither do the products with the most whiz bangs.  Those that win usually do so because they nailed a target segment right from the beginning and/or because they zigged/zagged from their original thesis to follow the market and stay alive.  Financing certainly has some correlation to success, though I'm not going to do the homework necessary to figure out how it played out in the email market.

I took the time to think this through because I think that the social media marketing software market - the market we're trying to crack with Argyle Social - is following the same cycle:

The first market entrants are (correctly) targeting the top of the market.  That's where the money is and also the most obvious application of the core sentiment/monitoring technologies that hit the market first.  Not sure who the first entrants were, but my guess would be sentiment analysis vendors like Radian6, ScoutLabs, et al. and big, enterprise players like Vocus.

There are many apps in the market today and many of them are fairly similar.  The aforementioned sentiment analysis providers (basically) inhale the Internet and/or the Twitter firehose, search for your brand and/or keywords, and then apply some natural language filters to determine sentiment.  I have no idea what makes ScoutLabs different from Radian6 and I'm not entirely sure it matters.  (Interestingly, I've talked to quite a few people that use these apps...and no one has had a glowing review to share.  Pretty sure I know why.)

The first entrants are - for the most part - well funded and duking it out for the top of the market.  Radian6, ScoutLabs, VisibleTechnologies, et al all appear to be thriving, but they're all targeting the same set of customers.  Which is fine by me because it creates big, blue oceans in other parts of the market

Marketers don't know what they don't know.  For the bottom 2/3 of the market, email marketing apps solved problems by introducing a mechanism that created a workflow, presented important information, and - in general - made it a little easier for them to feel like they were doing a good job.  I think that social media marketers are in search of the same set of solutions.  They feel like they're on to something what with all of the blogging and Twittering and Facebooking and whatnot...but they can't accurately measure the impact of their efforts because don't have a decent set of tools to tie it all together.

...and all of that is a big part of the thesis behind the Argyle Social initiative.

Having said that, there are some BIG uncertainties in the market:

• Speed.  The Internet moves fast, but innovation around the social channel seems to be moving extra fast.  We've got to get our app in the market and pronto, lest we risk getting scooped and thus lose a chance at picking up some quick momentum.
• Dependencies.  It has taken me a while to get comfortable with the fact that we're building an app with critical dependencies on other web services.  It compounds our risk and makes it a bit harder for us to carve out a defensible nugget.  That said - all the cool kids are doing it.
• Value.  Many might disagree, but I think that the freemium craze is fine for consumer apps, but nets out as a negative for the business market.  Lots of free apps leaving money on the table drives down value for the entire market.  And there are LOTS of free apps in the low/mid tier of the emerging social media marketing software market.

Note that I didn't list competitors.  That's because competition is good. 

And that's a post for another time.

At the time, there were lots of players clamoring for position in an emerging market that we all expected would get big, fast.  (Turns out it did.)  Funny thing is that everyone's product looked the same and more or less did the same thing - especially from a "checking the box" perspective.  Every product could track clicks, de-dupe lists, dump data to .csv files, etc.  It wasn't rocket science, even though it seemed like it at the time.

The biggest differences between vendors - even though I would never admit it while on the phone with a prospect - were price and packaging.  The core technologies and product concepts were the same across the board.  Some vendors charged $25/month and targeted SMBs with ease-of-use and consumer-esque marketing messages.  Others charged $2500/month and targeted the top of the market with high-powered marketing speak and brand name customers.  Others tried to find their way in between. 

Fast forward to today.

Many of the names that mattered in 2003 are still around and thriving - ConstantContact (which IPO'ed in 2007), ExactTarget (which should IPO any day now), SilverPop, Responsys, Cheetah, and of course Bronto - which mattered to me at the time, but wasn't big enough to matter in the broader email marketing software conversation.

Several other names that mattered in 2003 are MIA - CoolerEmail, iMakeNews, Topica, and probably more if I really thought about it.  If I recall correctly, CoolerEmail was actually one of the first to productize email marketing software.  So much for a first-move advantage.

So why do some players win and some players lose early markets?  I can think of three reasons:

1.) Financing.  Some companies started out with enough capital to out-spend, out-market, and out-last the competition.  

Some hung around long enough to get it right. Others hung around long enough to pay themselves nice salaries while they spent their company out of business.

I'm too lazy to do the legwork necessary to confirm my hunch, but I'm certain that many of the leading vendors in the market today started off with a healthy slug of financing.  Though I think it has MUCH less to do with their success than #2:

2.) Focus.  Some companies focused on a particular market segment and pounded it into submission.

ConstantContact dominated the $20/month segment in 2003 and it still does today.  It never wavered from a stripped-down, simple, easy-to-use product marketed with a "You can do it!  It is so easy!" message.

Bronto didn't have product/market focus in the beginning - we were happy being "a step up from ConstantContact...and less expensive from ExactTarget".  A precarious place to be.  The company finally figured it out a few years ago, re-focused the offering/message around ecommerce, and has been killing it ever since.  Turns out the middle is a tough place to be when it comes to marketing products - customers are either trying to step up their game with a better app or cut costs with a cheaper app.

3.) Fudge Ups.  Some companies just had bad products and/or poor execution.

Stay tuned for Part II when I explain why I think all of this matters.

Find a partner.  This past summer/fall, I spent a lot of time navel gazing in search of the right first steps toward a software start-up.  I knew the market I wanted to enter and even had a general sense of the product I'd like to build.  But I couldn't really articulate what I was thinking, let alone develop the product.  (I'm a seller, not a coder.)

My then-prospective business partner Adam and I started getting together and stuff just started happening.  The collaboration and accountability was like a shot in the arm after a period of wandering alone in the wilderness.

So - if you're looking to start something, I suggest that you start looking for the right co-founder as soon as you start getting the idea itch.

Don't delay the equity conversation.  Adam and I had the equity/role/expectations conversation over a series of meetings a couple months ago.  Awkward, but necessary...and also done pending some signatures on a handful forthcoming legal documents.  

It would have been really easy to delay the conversation, but it also would have been a mistake. Ownership is a sticky issue that you need to get right at the start.  Plus - it is just the first of many difficult questions that start-up founders will face.  So you might as well just deal with it and move on to the next one.

Regarding roles, we used HubSpot as a model.  Two founders - sales guy CEO and product guy CTO. Hopefully we'll have a fraction of the success that they've engineered.

Don't waste time with a business plan.  Business school is all about business plans.  The real world isn't. People don't read them and you don't have time to waste writing one.  Instead of planning your business, I suggest that you just start building it.

That said, you should definitely start writing.  I recommend that you:

• Write an executive summary that can brief prospective advisors, etc. on your company. 
• Blog to articulate your market/problem/product thesis and to generate search engine juice.
• Set up a wiki to manage research, internal docs, etc.  Way better than doc files.

Put yourself out there.  Once you've refined your market/problem/solution thesis into an actionable nugget, start talking about it to anyone that will listen.  You'll be amazed by how:

• You start to really believe in what you're doing.
• You get better at articulating your thesis.
• People are willing to help. 

Appubator focuses on wireless app development, so at least it is a bit different.  Add it to the following list of old and new technology incubators in the Triangle:

• NC IDEA - which isn't really an incubator, but might as well (or should?) be.
• First Flight Venture Center
• Triangle Start-Up Factory - still raising funds
• Joystick Labs - still raising funds
• The rumored Relevance incubator
• Carolina LaunchPad
• UNC Kenan-Flagler's Launching the Venture
• Whatever equivalent "help students start companies" programs that exist at Duke and NC State.
• Whatever life sciences/materials incubators that probably exist, but I've never heard of.

Kelly and I went out to the Reservoir in Carrboro last night to celebrate my friend Chris' 30th birthday.  After we'd been there for a bit, 3/5 of my favorite rock band - Chapel Hill-based Valient Thorr - walked into the joint.  Of course - both Chris and I recognized them immediately and, of course, we both started giggling with excitement.

Lead singer Valient Himself walked by and I greeted him.  And he reminded me that I owe him an email.  I had previously contacted him to commission an ink portrait, which was admittedly just a mechanism to get to meet him and hang out.  Pretty cool that he remembered/recognized me.

We caught up at the bar shortly thereafter.  Talked about how being the lead singer of an upstart (for 7+ years) rock band is kinda like being the CEO of a start-up.  (Ha!)  And discussed the importance of being your own man...and openly telling critics, detractors, etc. to eat sh!t - both literally (in his case) and metaphorically (probably more appropriate in my case).  And we talked about their new record that should release later this year...and how it is less metal, more funk.

Best of all?  Completely nice guy - friendly, appreciative, funny, and absolutely rock & roll.  And it was his birthday, too.

Valient Thorr is touring with Mastodon, Between The Buried And Me, and Barroness.  You should see them.  I'm going to the Raleigh show on April 17.  And I'm wearing my Thorrior armor.

You should buy their record Immortalizer.  You'll be glad you did.  I've been obsessed since the day I bought it.

You better live your life.
This ain't no practice round.
Don't stumbe off the path.
Cause it's a long way down.

This scene got me thinking:

My partner Adam and I are in the very early stages of something that we think has a chance to be big.  (Ahem!  Argyle - social media marketing software.) 

Much like Bill & Ted, we're really excited and certain of our eventual success.  Unlike Bill & Ted, we're not letting ourselves succomb to two classic start-up temptations:

• Banking On Someone Else - Even though they seem to be pretty deadset on (and desperately need!) a new "hire" to elevate their performance, there's no way that Wyld Stallyns will get Eddie Van Halen to join the band.  Instead, they need to figure out how to start getting traction in their neighborhood, then on the San Dimas scene, and then on from there.  They're much more likely to recruit an "A" player like Eddie if they can show some momentum and a track record.
• Hoping For A Big Win - Everyone dreams of a triumphant video and a quick rise to the top.  The reality?  That just doesn't happen.  The vast majority of overnight successes are the culmination of many years of pounding away in anonymity.

For now - the Argyle team is focused on learning to play our instruments and putting together a good set.  Everything else will take care of itself.

Party on, dudes.

It isn't cool to like Kings of Leon in 2010.  Kelly and I paid $40/ticket to see them put on a short, boring, ambivalent performance in Cary this past Spring.  They're on pop radio.  They probably wear really expensive blue jeans.  Basically - they've become the antithesis of everything that made them fun.

So I broke up with them.  Actually - I broke up with them the day I heard "Sex On Fire" on the radio.  Kelly will confirm.  We were in her car and the song came on Kelly's favorite Top 40 station:

• "Is this Sex On Fire?"
• "Yes."
• "Well.  I guess that's that."

We'll always have the good times.  Their back catalog will remain in heavy rotation - "The Bucket" will remain one of my favorite songs and their 2nd and 3rd records will always mark fun times around 2005, 2006, 2007. 

They're still a great band and they'll still sell a gazillion records and gazillion concert tickets.  Just not to me.

(Note - I've had similar break-ups with Pearl Jam, Metallica, Modest Mouse, Son Volt, Ben Folds, Beck, and Weezer.  So pretty good company for KOL.)