It was only six weeks ago when Joe Caruso, Advocate for Entrepreneurs for the past 20 years, called his friends with a great idea…let’s celebrate everything related to launching and nurturing companies in the Boston area. Silicon Valley does it; New Orleans does it, so why not Boston? The greater Boston area is full of seasoned resources and a history of success but we in New England seem to forget that we have a rich and fertile ground for innovation. We just don’t think about it in this way.

Just off the top of my head, here are a numbers of companies that were started in Greater Boston. Let’s see, back in the good old days Boston incubated tech hardware companies like DEC, Wang, and Wellfleet  and software companies like Lotus (Ok, I am dating myself!).  Early Internet companies such as Open Market, Lycos and TripAdvisor among others were also started here. More recently we have had RSA, EMC and Netezza (just acquired by IBM for a mere $1.7B). And there are a number of consumer companies such as Dunkin Donuts, Nantucket Nectars, Sam Adams Brewery, and Au Bon Pain that have all flourished in the Boston entrepreneurial ecosystem.

All of these companies have brought innovation and lots of jobs to our economy.

Joe’s vision started modestly with a weeklong series of entrepreneurial events hosted by the community that provides resources and support to entrepreneurs. Somewhere along the way, BREW took on a life of its own. With close to 50 events, it now runs the entire month of October!

Attendees at BREW events will have the opportunity to win items such as books on entrepreneurship; gift certificates for mobile-phone based gifting, free website design and coding, and free printing services… as well as benefit from free beer being supplied to a few events by local breweries.  

And who does not like handcrafted beer?!

So, check it out www.brewboston.org  and I hope to see you at least one of the 50 events!

We want to congratulate all those companies that have survived this year. These survival tactics, along with tenacity, perseverance, and the ability to stay flexible and creative should help us all in 2010. I believe smaller emerging-tech companies need to continue to do more with less. From a communications perspective, companies should look in 2010 to:
• Create more original, high quality content and leverage the heck out of it
• Consider visual ways of telling your story including online video
• Share this content socially through appropriate social networks
• Use marketing and PR resources to generate great ideas to create well told stories
• Get closer to your customers and try to get your biggest product champions to speak for you
• Leverage offline marketing activities in PR efforts
• Make sure you have an ongoing communications/PR program

B2B marketers can no longer ignore that buyers are more savvy, looking for digestible chunks of content when making decisions and need to be engaged over many months. We believe that companies that rise to leadership positions excel at targeting their key audiences, and are consistent at communicating industry vision, market and product validation. Consistency is the key word and marketing to prospects is not a stop/start activity.

Lastly, Red Javelin would like to send a word of thank you to all of our clients who fought the battle in 2009 with us. It has been a pleasure working with all of you, representing so many exciting sectors of the technology market and may 2010 take your company to a new level of growth and success.

Last night I attended my first Tech Tuesday event held at the Microsoft NERD building on Memorial Drive. Here is a shout out to Microsoft for providing the food and beverage at the event. For those of you not familiar with Tech Tuesday, it is an informal gathering held on the second Tuesday of every month for geeks, tech savvy professionals, DIY-ers, press, and other industry luminaries. Attendees bring their laptops, robots, new cell phones, gadgets, and other new-fangled devices for ad hoc show and tell. It is a great venue to show proof of concept, solicit ideas from peers, or refine your pitch.

It is hosted by the Mass Technology Leadership Council and tech luminary Dan Bricklin. At the beginning of the event, Dan gave each attendee an opportunity in two sentences to introduce themselves and promote what they are showing.

Last night there was a group of entrepreneurs from Ireland that are visiting Babson for a week-long boot camp of entrepreneurial studies. Several of them have already launched successful ventures in Ireland and are looking to scale beyond Emerald Isle while others are getting ready to launch iPhone apps in the near future. I had a lively discussion with Barry Lynch from Nifty Nosh, an online food ordering service for take-out on how they were using Twitter to promote special events for their client restaurants. What I found interesting about the conversation is that they were using what I would call “classic pull through channel marketing” using new social media tactics.

Blank Label is a newly launched online company that provides custom dress shirts for the trendy male. This is a very cool and interesting company that has the foundation of a successful venture. I particularly like their belief in Connected Individualism - I think this concept has great promotional potential.  Blank Label launched late October using social media as their primary vehicle to get the word out.  Good start but here is the challenge. I hear this all the time from young twenty-something entrepreneurs and also from VCs – social media and SEO are the only tools I need to get the word out. NOT! (I will pontificate more on this subject later in the week!)

There were a number of very experienced and seasoned professionals taking a look at this company. Within 15 minutes, we as a collective group came up with at least a half dozen of ideas on how this start-up could enhance their presence in their target market. The ideas ranged from innovative video to grass roots event marketing – fashion shows in nightclubs, partnering with universities and graduate programs, and the list goes on. All great ideas. And this is what Tech Tuesday is all about. Sharing ideas, mentoring innovative companies, and keeping it all in Massachusetts.

It’s 2:00 in the afternoon and I have received 35 newsletters today. That doesn’t include my feeds from various blogs and sites. All of this information came from companies, industry pundits, journalists, venture capitalists, and people that I have found to be interesting over the course of my career.

Depending how prolific people were this past week, I could have hundreds of items to read. And it has been a relatively slow week as people wind down for summer and holiday vacation. I suppose at one time or another I unwittingly checked a box that meant that I “opted in” or subscribed to all of these newsletters and blog feeds but frankly I don’t remember purposely signing up for all of this information.

As an information “power user” I am able to filter through these conversations fairly quickly. I call them conversations because they provide the opportunity to comment and engage the author. It took me several hours to comb through all the information but it would have taken a non-power user much longer. Most of these newsletters and blog entries have commented or aggregated content from other sites. After scanning several hundred items, hidden among the noise, there were only about a dozen that contained original, thought-provoking commentary. There were only about a dozen, about 3% of all the conversations out there on topics where I have “opted-in” that I would consider “expert” on a particular subject. The rest is just noise.

What I found even more interesting is that only one item out of the dozen originated from someone that was not an established journalist or industry/financial analyst. The one item was written by a different kind of market-watcher – a VC.

So consider this.

Even though everyone has the opportunity to publish, the people who have traditionally been the newsmakers and provide in-depth commentary continue to be the newsmakers but they are just expanding the tools they use to communicate. As you filter thorough all of the noise, focus in on what moves the needle for you business.

Lately I am asking venture funded or bootstrapped companies, “So, what’s your exit strategy?” Usually I get some type of answer but this year, my question is being answered with “I am not sure anymore.”

Isn’t the whole point of investing in a high tech start-up is to make money during an exit? I think many companies are taking a detour in 2009 before they drive to the exit.

We are working in interesting times. Many of the companies that I know hit their revenue targets this year or came very close. This represents high double digit or triple digit growth – success even in the best of times.

Many are forecasting very conservative numbers for 2009 which is prudent in this economy but what I am finding to be very inconsistent is the internal battle on how the marketing dollars should be allocated in the coming year.

For the most part, everyone agrees that tactical public relations and lead generation programs are absolutely necessary to help the sales team shorten sales cycles. But what I find interesting is that many companies have not come to agreement internally or with their board on what should be done about positioning the company for the longer term.

Basically, it comes down to how much of the marketing budget should be allocated to fund strategic programs versus the tactical programs. It is the age old question – which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Can you really do one without the other?

Ultimately customers want to buy from firms that they perceive as viable over the long haul. If you drop your thought leadership and content marketing programs, will that visibility remain? Will your lead generation programs work if you’re not visible in the market?

You need to do both. Strategic public relations can help you raise venture capital, and it also can help position your company for the exit.

Stay tuned for specific ideas on how to cut back but still keep your strategic visibility.