Starting Up Again

This article was originally posted on my personal blog, Moonwatcher, on June 22, 2005.

I've left my position at NewsGator Technologies as Vice President of Enterprise Solutions to start a new company, Spanning Partners. I'm walking away from a lot, so you better believe I see a huge opportunity where I'm going.

Since joining NewsGator earlier this year to head their enterprise group, I've talked to companies all over the world about how they see RSS impacting their business. Much of what I've learned from those conversations will be reflected in NewsGator's upcoming enterprise product, codenamed 'Dino'. But I've also seen a growing demand for related products and services that fall outside of NewsGator's core competency in RSS aggregation.

Companies are looking for ways to surface and deliver information that currently lives in their enterprise applications but is hard to access and track--what Paul Kedrosky calls the dark matter in the information universe. They want to monitor sales leads, customer support incidents, supply chain metrics, and project status. They also want to be able to deliver product updates, technical support information, and promotions to their customers. They see RSS as an enabling technology for these applications. Nearly every one of the enterprise customers I've talked to wants to do these things but doesn't know where to start.

So after much consideration and many meetings with the senior executives at NewsGator, I decided to start a new company to pursue this opportunity. I didn't make this decision lightly; I'm walking away from stock options I believe would have eventually been worth several million dollars. But the size of the opportunity in front of me is much larger, and like I say in my blog profile, I'm a startup guy.

In his recent commencement address at Stanford, Steve Jobs described how he felt when he started NeXT: "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything." Spanning Partners is the fourth company I've started. I know the lightness Steve felt, and am thrilled to be starting up again.

I'll continue to work with NewsGator as a consultant, but as of last Friday I'm the first employee of Spanning Partners, LLC. I'll be posting much more about the services the company will be offering, with real-world examples of the benefits to be realized. In the mean time, if you want to get started figuring out how your company can use RSS to deliver its 'informational dark matter', drop me an email. I look forward to hearing from you.

Comments

[Lee LeFever]

Congrats on getting Spanning Partners rolling Charlie! I've subscribed and I think you're onto something, FWIW. :)

[Charlie Wood]

Thanks, Lee! I think so too. At least I hope so...

:-)

[Rex White]

Go Charlie Go....dont forget to mention your friends when you are on the cover of Business 2.0 in a year!!!