In his latest blog post, Steve Newcomb, COO of Powerset, talks about the openness displayed by his company at their recent Powerlabbers meet. At the risk of being boring - radically disagreeing with him would have been so much more interesting - I think that's a fair statement. All of the Powerset people who spoke to the assembled group, as well as those with whom I chatted afterwards, were genuine and open when talking about the technology and the company. There were several direct challenges, thinly disguised as questions, directed at the senior Powerset folks; I did not see Newcomb dodge a single question.
This type of open and direct conversation with bloggers and the tech media is refreshing. So far, Powerset has shown a mastery at managing the blogosphere - both to create buzz (see my earlier post for a comparison of search engine traffic vs buzz ) and to disarm the over-heated hype. Coupled with their Powerlabs community for product development (similar to those pioneered by Dell, Omniture et al), does this represent a new approach to building venture-funded startups in Silicon Valley: the "open kimono" approach compared to the "ultra stealth" approach?
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