Here is a small example of how entrepreneurs are organizing, leveraging social software and social networking to shift the previous power structures that venture capitalist have held over entrepreneurs.  It is a funny read, especially if you have ever been in a funded startup.  (Four of the seven startups in my career have been funded;  In two of them, I wish that we had had this type outlet for the general messiness that we dealt with.)  From Inc magazine, talking about the website TheFunded.com:

What effect will these sites have? Will they empower entrepreneurs at the expense of VCs? “I’m doubtful that the imbalance in power will ever disappear completely,” says Noam Wasserman, a Harvard Business School professor who studies the interactions between founders and investors. “But these kinds of efforts are shifting things.” The sites remind founders to investigate their potential investors thoroughly, he says.

Thank you to Jeff Sexton, copywriter extraordinaire, for sharing this link with me.  To all of you- please keep these links coming!  I greatly appreciate it!

Over the last few weeks of silence here at my blog I have been working on a book about how to apply social networks for organizing entrepreneurs- called Peer Production.  The world continues to see the flattening of most organizations- where knowledge and decision making happen at the edges of the organization.  This especially happens when you get a bunch of entrepreneurs together- no centralized decision making, but great disruptive innovation, not to mention strong companies can result from this set of interactions.  My favorite example of this to date comes from the Linux community– although peer production has now left the confines of the open source software industry, and is disrupting (and innovating) in many different industries. With social networking platforms, together we can rapidly build businesses together.
I will be using this book as a platform for both building entrepreneur support networks, both inside of and outside of existing organizations.  I have written the book in such a way that it will be applicable for both the economic development manager building a self-support entrepreneur network, as well as for a company that wants to leverage individual entrepreneurs (or small businesses) outside of their company.

If you are interested in either being a part of my review community, or in getting an early copy, let me know by clicking this link and sending me a message through the Enterprise Teaming website.  My intention is to use this first version of the book to drive the next round of projects that I do with this model. I will write some more about this on this blog in the coming days and weeks.

Oh… and thank you to my handful of friends that kicked me in the butt hard enough to take off and write it…  August 2007 was very productive on working on this, and has helped me strengthen my model for the next round of entrepreneurial networks that we build together.  Thank you!  And viva la revolucion!

Several people have asked about the article that BusinessWeek wrote about Bootstrap Austin– so I figured that instead of continuing to email it out to everyone, I would post it here.  The article starts with an example about how I leverage Bootstrap Austin, and expands into several other bootstrappers, with a feature on Bijoy.  Enjoy the article, and there will be more to come as the bootstrap revolution continues!  🙂

One of the things that we do a lot inside of Bootstrap Austin is sharing information between the members of the network- getting feedback perhaps before software or ideas or business process has been well developed… This is a powerful aspect of the network- given that all of us are “experts” in our own areas, the power of the network allows us to draw from whomever has the best ideas or feedback for our business. This, by the way, is what I mean when I say the words enterprise teaming ™ Unlike other models of economic development- where one centralized authority (whether the local government, or the chamber of commerce), this model is by far the most efficent, for expertise in the network (or community) is leveraged directly. I will write more about this later… (what I call “Enterprise 2.0).

Tonight, I am at a “DemoCamp” meeting- where a group of bootstrapping entrepreneurs are getting together, showing off some software that they have built, and sharing ideas and feedback on the software presented. What is great is this is usually business feedback… not technical feedback. The following entrepreneurs are presenting tonight:
1. Jason Howell – SelfBookIt
2. David James – CommunityGoals | Raise money and find solutions for community problems and goals.
3. Paul Walhus – SearchSlides
4. Ash Maurya – BoxCloud | Dead-simple file sharing
5. Mark Phillip – AreYouWatchingThis

Great job guys- this is all exciting work, and even better, great feedback for the entrepreneurs from other entrepreneurs!