For years, one of the biggest challenges facing New York city based startup companies has been the competition for technical talent.   It was very difficult for a venture-backed startup to compete with the compensation packages offered by the big investment banks.  Stock options had a hard-time overcoming oversized cash bonuses.

While no one is happy with the turmoil we're seeing facing the financial services sector, and no one is happy to see mass layoffs, this does represent an opportunity for startup companies to attract seasoned, technical talent.  With Bear Stearns laying off over 7,000 employees, Lehman Brothers rumored to layoff over 20,000 employees, and Merrill Lynch expected to layoff thousands after their sale to Bank of America, we're on track to see over 150,000 people lose their jobs this year.

If you are one of those 150,000 employees, you might want to consider joining a startup.  These days, startups are more stable than Wall Street (seriously).  And while a startup probably won't offer the creature comforts of a job in the financial services industry, startups offer different benefits.  You get to participate in the creation of something new.  Your work makes a direct (and clear) impact on the success or failure of the company.  No more politics, endless meetings, or multi-layered organization structures.  Plus, you'll likely get stock options to share the upside.

That's why I launched LeaveWallStreetJoinAStartup.com -- a website highlighting great job opportunities at NY-area startup companies.  If you're looking for a job in NY city, check it out.  If you're a startup looking for talent, send me your job postings at [email protected] and I'll add it to the list...

About 10 years ago, I helped create a web service called Company Sleuth.  The basic premise was that as a company conducted its business activities, it would leave a "paper trail" online.  And Company Sleuth tried to find that trail by automatically searching a variety of public databases (such as the US patent database, trademark database, domain registrations, job listings, etc.) for "clues" about all US public companies activities.  Users would tell Company Sleuth the companies they cared about and receive a daily email containing a list of all new "clues" that were found.

The service found some interesting data.  For example, while in beta we saw that the domain name "daimlerchrysler.com" was registered by Skadden Arps (Daimler's law firm) days before the deal was announced.  And we also noticed that MCI Worldcom registered skytelworldcom.com just days before they announced their merger, causing their stock to jump 16% and  prompting an SEC investigation.   

Unfortunately, Company Sleuth is no longer around (although I found an old version of the site on archive.org).

Last month I blogged about the Reg D and stealth mode.  And after I wrote the post, I got to thinking:  Why not create a tool that checked the SEC database every night for changes on the companies I'm interested in?  While the SEC doesn't provide you the details on the financing (amount, investor, etc), at least I can know if financing activity took place.

So I went to Rentacoder.com, got connected with m4k3r (a developer in Australia).  A few days (and $200) later, I had a tool built that would check the SEC Database for me.  Rather than keep this to myself, I've decided to open up the site to anyone.  So today I'm announcing the launch of  FundingSleuth.com.

Read about an interesting new company on Techcrunch?  Want to see if your competitor raised money?  Add the company to your list at  FundingSleuth.com  and you'll receive an email whenever there is funding activity.

Let me know what you think...

First Round Capital portfolio company, VideoEgg, today unveiled several cool new features to make  video and rich-media advertising far more engaging.  Take a firsthand look at some examples in VideoEgg's Ad Labs:

LIVE: Use real-time RSS feeds to continually update the ad experience
LOCAL: Deliver zip code-specific messaging
RICH: Easily deploy and track a rich multi-video ad experience to increase user interactivity
SHOP: Brings the browsing experience to the user, updated real time
SHARE: Viral capabilities help spread the message through virtually any communication or social channel

I've spent some time the past few weeks researching the life of a little known Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Francis Bates.  Here's his story:

Francis Bates was born in 1847 in Rhode Island.  His mother, Amy Ann, passed away when he was just 11 days old.  During his childhood, young Francis needed to assume many of the household chores -- make his bed, take out the trash, and fetch the mail.  While making his bed and taking out the trash weren't that bad, Francis really hated fetching the mail.  You see, the Bates house was located off the beaten path -- and pretty far from the main road.  And since his Dad wanted to read the mail immediately after it was delivered, Francis was constantly checking to see if there was mail in his mailbox.  In fact, Francis spent most of his mornings walking back and forth to his mailbox.  Most of the time it was empty, but from time to time he would find something in it. 

During the Civil War, Francis joined the Army and was injured.  In pursuit of health, Mr. Bates came to California in 1896 and settled in San Jose.  Like his childhood home in Rhode Island, his house in California was also a great distance from the road.  Francis really disliked the wasted time (and effort) he spent checking for mail - especially due to his injuries.  And in 1899, he had an idea.  Why not invent a flag that can be put on the mailbox to indicate whether the mailbox was full or empty?  Thus, the birth of the mailbox flag.  As Francis wrote in his 1899 patent (USPTO #627,635):

If the carrier is obliged to inspect every box to know whether there is any mail-matter to be collected, or if the people for whom the box is placed are obliged to go to the box in order to find out whether any mail-matter has been deposited for them, there is considerable loss of time; but by arranging some signal which is displayed for the carrier when there is any matter to be collected from the box and another to be displayed for those using the box to show whether anything has been left for them it will not be necessary to go to the box except when there is something in it to be collected.

Thus the birth of the modern mailbox.  Francis Bates became one of the first Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and grew extremely wealthy off his novel mailboxes.  They couldn't manufacture enough of these mailboxes -- "For nine years this firm turned out some 10,000 boxes a month, and then the demand was greater than they could meet".

The Internet today, is a lot like mail delivery in the 1800's.  Surprisingly, web services don't have "flags".  Rather, applications are forced to "ping" Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, etc. every few minutes and ask "have any of our users done anything new?"  These applications are literally checking to see if each virtual mailbox is empty/full every couple of minutes.  Now that more and more services are aggregating more and more updates, the growing volume of pings has created real scaling challenges for services (such as Twitter) and consumes a rapidly growing amount of bandwidth and resources. 

That's why I'm so excited about our investment in Gnip.  Yesterday, Gnip unveiled it's plans to solve the "ping problem".  In layman's terms, Gnip hopes to be the mailbox flag for the 21st century.  Rather than having to check for updates from services like Flickr, Digg, and delicious, Gnip pushes all relevent updates to you.    Read more about it here and here.

I think that Eric Marcoulier and the team at Gnip are well on their way towards becoming the Francis Bates of the Internet...

(You can read more about Francis on page 1014 of the History of Santa Clara - pdf download)

While First Round Capital has investments located all over the United States, our portfolio (and dealflow) is heavily concentrated on the west coast.  That’s why we opened a West Coast office two years ago, with the addition of my partner Rob Hayes and later Mazen Araabi to our team.  It’s why I’m going to qualify for Chairman’s Preferred on US Airways after my three trips to California this month.  And it’s also why I’m super-excited to announce the addition of two Principals in our San Francisco office – Christine Herron and Kent Goldman. 

I first met Christine while she was part of the investment team at the Omidyar Network, where we had several overlapping deals.  And this past year, Christine began working with us part time as a Venture Advisor, helping us out with a number of our new investments.  Her prior experience includes a number of entrepreneurial ventures in various capacities (including CEO).  And she started her career in venture capital at Geocapital Partners where she discovered a little company called Netcom before most people knew how to spell “internet.”

Kent’s journey to First Round Capital is a unique one – we truly were brought together by the "news feed”.  While I’ve known Kent for some time, we got to know each other much better this year when he was (unintentionally) ensnared in my ill-fated experiment with Facebook’s Social Advertising.  And, in an ironic twist you couldn’t script if you wanted too, the news of Kent’s new role at First Round Capital was also unintentionally revealed by Facebook’s pesky news feeds, as Kent blogged about earlier today.  Kent joins us from Yahoo, where he was a member of their Corporate Development team focusing on M&A to support the company's user-facing properties.  He also led business strategy efforts for Yahoo’s Front Page, Communications and Community products which included Yahoo.com, My Yahoo and Yahoo Mail.  Before Yahoo, Kent spent some time in investment banking and early-stage venture investing.

My partners and I are thrilled to welcome Christine and Kent to the team

I've been going to the TED conference for almost 10 years now -- and I've seen hundreds of incredible speakers take the stage.  Last year, Benjamin Zander - the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, gave what I think is one of the best talks of all time.  Zander is the Steve Jobs of classical music. 

An online video of his talk was just released this week.  Ostensibly, his talk was about classical music.  But, in reality, Zander shows how in just twenty minutes one can expose people to new ideas, new possibilities and new passions.  He truly embodies his belief that "one of the characteristics of a leader is that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he's leading to realize whatever he's dreaming".  I especially liked his realization that since the conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound, he depends for his power on his ability to make other people powerful.  His job is to awaken possibility in other people.

Take 20 minutes out of your day today and watch this talk.   You'll see an moving example of leadership, evangelism and passion.  And see how a leader can make your "eyes shine".

A VideoEgg player sat here with Benjamin Zander’s 2008 TED talk. VideoEgg shut down in 2011, but the talk is still available: The transformative power of classical music.

So I was talking the a CEO of one of our portfolio companies today.  He runs an enterprise software company, and we were reviewing his pipeline.  During our conversation, he mentioned that he lost a $12,000 sale because of fuel prices.  Yes, that's right -- the price of gasoline is now impacting enterprise software sales.

Apparently, the customer was a large county school district.  And despite the fact that they had spent months going through a detailed RFP process (which our company won), the project was killed at the last minute.  The district has had to cut virtually all IT spending so they can pay for gasoline for their school buses and maintenance vehicles.  Apparently, they are not alone.  School districts across the country are facing similar issues.

What a tough month.  First, US Airways eliminates free pretzels due to fuel prices.  Now, school districts are slashing computer spending to keep the buses running.  Next thing we know, Google will start charging employees to ride the Google Bus to work.