Kelly Smith is a founding partner in Curious Office, a company that is both a seed stage investment firm and a software development company.  The Seattle-based company currently has equity holdings in:  Inkd, CafePress (which acquired ImageKind in 2009), SEOmoz, Shelfari (acquired by Amazon.com), Fanzter (a company that created the popular www.coolspotters.com), Wishpot and FeedDigest (sold and rebranded to Feed Informer by Informer Technologies).

For the Curious Office website, Kelly recently started interviewing CEOs at startup companies through a Q&A format.  We thought it might be fun to turn the tables on him and ask him our top five questions.  Here are his responses.

1) You call yourself a "web slave since 1994."  What was the defining moment that year that made you realize you'd found your passion?

I joined a company called SPRY in 1993.  SPRY sold the first commercial internet product called Internet in a Box.  What was unique about it was that we were the first company to license the Mosaic source code from the University of Illinois where a young Marc Andreessen was still a student and hadn't yet co-founded Netscape.  Sometime in mid 1994 we were all standing around our computers looking at the newly launched FedEx website.  You could enter a tracking number and it would show you where your package was.  That blew us all away.  I fell in love with the web at that moment.  Yahoo wasn't yet even a search engine.  Just a handmade directory of links.  Not long after SPRY sold to CompuServe I was referred to a company in Seattle called Progressive Networks.  They had this idea to deliver audio over the Internet.  I joined in 1994 and they subsequently called the company RealNetworks.  During my 5 years there, the smart engineers figured out not only how to deliver audio but also video.  I remember that our big tradeshow demo was showing live radio station feeds from a Stockholm radio station streaming over the web to our tradeshow floor!  The RealPlayer and the Rhapsody Music service became a household name.  I learned so much and feel very lucky to have worked with so many smart people.

2) Do any difficulties arise when you're in the business of both investing in companies and helping to develop them through incubation? For example, is keeping your eye on revenue growth (for a return to investors) ever at odds with a more management-oriented decision?

Nobody has ever asked me this question before but it's actually something that challenges me.  We start companies ourselves like Imagekind and our latest venture called Inkd: The largest marketplace to download newsletter templates, flyer templates, brochures, business cards and other types of print creative.  However, we also invest in companies such as SEOmoz where we don't have day to day responsibilities.  But we still feel it is important to be as supportive as we can so we need to back away from our computers and sometimes go to meetings and try to help tackle tough questions that our portfolio companies have for their own businesses.  As you can imagine, when we start our own companies we hold a larger stake but I still feel it is just as important to try to be as helpful as possible for our portfolio companies.  When I think about the challenges that Curious Office has, the answer is always the same - not enough time in the day.  

3) When it comes to seed-stage investments, who is the biggest gambler -- you or your partner, Adrian Hanauer?

This one is easy.  Adrian has an incredible risk tolerance.  He brought the Seattle Sounders to Seattle as a Major League Soccer team this year for example.  He is one of my oldest friends and I respect him so much because he thinks for rationally and calmly in every situation...even when very large amounts of money are at stake.  The Seattle Sounders was a far bigger bet than any technology investment.

4) This can be a difficult economic client for early-stage companies.  Any advice you can give to bootstrappers who might be contemplating a first round of funding?

In my experience, fundraising seems to be just as much about relationships as it does about your idea and your technology. If you are contemplating fundraising then get involved in the events and venues where investors and other successful entrepreneurs go.  Sometimes its easier to get close to other successful entrepreneurs than it is to get close to investors but that's a great way to start.  It is also important to remember that previous success is the best way to raise money.  Even if your first success is small, that's better than no previous track record.  It's sometimes smart to establish a first base hit for yourself.  That makes all investors feel more inclined to take a risk with you.

5) We're a little amazed at the sudden surge of Twitter usage.  What type of Web 2.0 or social media company do you think will be "the next big thing?"  Are there particular niche companies that you are looking to bring into the Curious Office family?

I'm interested in working with people who deeply understand the subtle nuances of driving lots of traffic through all available channels.  There are those who are learning and there are those who know.  I don't know what the next big thing is but the best bet is to bet on smart people.  Guys like Andy Liu of BuddyTV or Ben Huh of ICanHasCheezburger are great Seattle examples.  They understand how to come up with concepts that have a viral hook and they understand how to drive and build traffic to their destinations.  Someone who divulged all those secrets would sell a lot of e-books :)

-posted by Rachel

Tags: kellysmith, curiousoffice, inkd

Almost all VOXUS clients want to speak at important industry trade shows. Our success (or failure) in delivering results is dependent on our ability to offer fresh perspectives, interesting (and not always self-serving) topics and high-level executives. Communicating these needs to our clients, though, isn't always easy.

So here's what you need to know about crafting better abstracts for speaking engagements at industry trade shows, straight from someone who is in the best position to know. Kenton Williston is a freelance technology editor, writer and analyst based in New York. He's currently reviewing the speaking abstracts submitted for consideration for the Embedded Systems Conference Boston 2009, being held in late September. He gave us an exclusive, inside look at the decision process -- he says:

"Have a clear problem statement. Too often I see “solutions looking for a problem.” You need to tell me why I should care, and that means telling me how you’ll solve my problem.

Tell me what you’re going to say—and be specific. Too often I see abstracts that say “topic x is important” without explaining what the author plans to say about that topic. This is related to the need for a problem statement. You need to clearly identify the problem you are solving, and then clearly state the solutions you will cover.

Tie the abstract to a hot topic. The importance of the topic might be obvious to you, but editors have to keep track of a lot of topics. We can’t always connect your idea to a big-picture trend. If you can do that for us, we’re more likely to pay attention."

For more on Kenton, visit his profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/kentonwilliston.

-posted by Rachel

Tags: kentonwilliston, embeddedsystems

It’s no secret that we run Macs around here, and one of the popular (and controversial) retail programs is something called MacHeist – basically a collection of multiple software titles sold for one rock bottom price. I’ve avoided participating in this (as a customer) in past years due in no small part to that controversy, which circled around the question of whether the group that puts on MacHeist screws the participating vendors.

I’m an ardent proponent of independent software vendors, and I like to support the creation of good software, which I define as both useful and elegant. As such, I thought it best to steer clear of MacHeist on general principles.

On the other hand, it’s unarguably one hell of a deal. And with this latest go-round, it appears that they’ve largely addressed the equitability in regard to the participating vendors, at least according to a number of those vendors themselves. Moreover, MacHeist donates a percentage of proceeds to charity, which is of course a plus.

So, I jumped in with both feet. Now the interesting thing about how MacHeist works is that there is an initial group of applications, and if they sell enough bundles, then additional apps are “unlocked” for everyone that has purchased. Which obviously generates not only the mob mentality that fuels any auction, but also adds to the word-of-mouth marketing of the whole bundle.

And here’s where things get interesting, and either brilliant or diabolical, depending on your point of view. After making the initial purchase, I receive periodic status updates on how they are progressing toward unlocking additional applications. Then I receive a “special Twitter offer” for two bonus applications that have been thrown into the mix, “all you have to do is click this link.” Said link takes you to a MacHeist page where you have to verify that you have a Twitter account (so now they have my user name and account) and then takes you to MacHeist’s Twitter page, where you must follow them. Of course you can always un-follow at a later date, but my guess is that many customers won’t do that.

Thus far, MacHeist has gathered additional customer data for later marketing purposes, and gotten customers to follow the Twitter version of the company’s promotional newsletter. Not bad. But it gets better (or worse).

After you follow MacHeist on Twitter, but before you receive the additional software, you have to post a promotional tweet to your account:

I bought the @MacHeist 3 Bundle. 12 Top Mac apps worth $900+ for just $39 AND I just got Delicious Library 2 FREE!

Once you’ve gone this far in the process, it’s extremely likely that you’ll follow through regardless of whether you find this distasteful or not. I did. And I have to admit to being torn: is this a brilliant social marketing program, or an abuse of social media?

-posted by Paul

Tags: twitter, macheist