If Seattle’s tech sector was borne of the deep recession in
the 1970s when engineers laid off by Boeing started their own companies, will
the sharp increase in unemployment among our region’s talented workers today
create a fertile new spawning ground for innovation?
Consider. When Alex Hillinger lost his marketing job at
Suncadia Resorts last summer, he took off on a long road trip the following
day, recording his travels in pictures that he shared online with friends and
relatives. In this compelling desire among people to connect, he concluded, was
the germ of a business idea. Even as advertising budgets shrink, Hillinger
thinks his new company, Good Chemistry, can help companies engage with people
of influence through the rapidly expanding landscape of social media networks.
When Andres Krogh, 25, lost his job at a security startup
last summer, he worked on projects, taught himself new programming skills and
developed an iPhone game. Sitting still, he says, “drives me nuts—to a
disabling degree.” In December, he and a friend came up with the idea of a
Santa’s secret helper website that would use an automated dialing service to
ask kids what they wanted for Christmas and deliver the information to
interested relatives. The idea, which went from concept to launch in five days,
was a modest success and has since morphed into Flaunt, a company that provides
gift ideas for all sorts of occasions. Krogh has had trouble raising money, but
he doesn’t mind. “It keeps me hyper-focused. I’m not going to blow my money on
some fancy business cards.”
Michael Kim, who left Microsoft when his position at the
company was eliminated, could have found another job in the Bay Area. He chose
to stay because his wife had a good career and his family liked the Bellevue
community where they lived. Instead, he started Grapevyn, launched this spring,
which builds on existing social networks to help trusted friends find referrals
on important issues like who to use for a doctor, a mechanic or a baby sitter.
Nathan Casey co-founded Jobvana, a social networking site
for job seekers, with two colleagues after the three of them lost their
positions at Washington Mutual last year. He told TechFlash that WaMu’s
collapse provided the “spark” he needed to pursue his long delayed dream of
launching a startup.
So, are we experiencing a surge in startups? Marcello
Calbucci, publisher of Seattle 2.0, says
that from early March to early April, he added a record 19 startups to his
“startup index,” far more than the typical five to six additions in previous
months. He thinks most of those startups were spawned before the current
downturn began. Even so, Calbucci believes the downturn may have intensified
startup activity. Where there might have been one networking opportunity for
startups every month, today there are five or six. And with so many people
facing career changes, he says, the networking sessions are packed with people.
“If it takes a recession to make people
realize they are entrepreneurs,” says Kim of Grapevyn, “maybe that is a good
thing.”