Recruiting at the Edge of the Web

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, then you probably know that my investments tend toward a theme that I think of as ‘the recombinant web.’  All my recent investments have something to do with structuring or mining information and services on the web in service of the idea of “web as platform.”

Two of the most interesting companies have not yet announced themselves to the world.  They remain quiet, not to escape attention, but to avoid getting wrapped up in a hype cycle.  You can call this stealth if you want.  I prefer to think of this purely as gestation.

Remaining quiet also makes it difficult to find the very best people.  The first few members of the team have the greatest influence on the success, culture, and direction of any company.  This is part of the attraction of a startup and a special kind of person is seeks this kind of empowerment.  Unfortunately the process tends to be haphazard, as great people aren’t usually actively looking for a new challenge and great opportunities are often not easily found.

Two such great “under the radar” companies in my portfolio are Abgenial and Radar Networks.    Neither has really described themselves to the outside world, but both are looking for a few great developers.  By sheer accident these two companies share some important parallels. 

• The founders of both companies have successfully founded prior companies that went IPO,
• The companies are attacking the “recombinant” web from complementary angles (data and applications),
• Both companies have been in development for 3-4 years by the core technologists prior to VC,
• Both companies are on at least the third version of the core technology development,
• Consequently both companies have very rich intellectual property portfolios

Radar Networks
Radar is what is described as a Semantic Web company.  Semantic Web generally refers to a set of technologies for organizing content/information to make it more re-usable and navigable. The founder/CEO is Nova Spivack, well-known thought leader in the Semantic Web community. 

Some Semantic Web companies are enablers, developing specific tools for ontology design and editing,  RDF triplestores, extraction tools and other things.  Radar has developed some of these technologies in-house and is using some 3rd party technologies, too.  The real focus of Radar is a consumer Semantic Web application, not tools.  Since the Series A funding in April, the core team has been heads-down building out the internal tools and prototypes.  Radar has been quietly generating some attention among some VCs and Internet execs who are privy to their plans.  Expect some news shortly.  If you are a software developer who fits this description, Radar is a terrific place to immerse yourself in using state-of-the-art technologies to change the way people find and use information on the web.

Abgenial Systems
Abgenial is solving a complementary problem.  If Radar is about how to make web content interoperable and consumable,  Abgenial is about how to make web applications interoperable and consumable.  The earliest form of this activity today is called mashups.  But mashups have some real technological limitations.

Abgenial has developed a very general and patented technology to allow everyone to create web applications out of components on the web (or behind the firewall).  It is too early to declare the market focus of Abgenial in a forum such as this.   However, suffice it to say that everyone can benefit from combining web servicesinto a more peronalized experience. it ranges from the consumer who wants to have a place where all her “digital me” data all come together (from Myspace, Flickr, Google Calendar,  Digg, etc.)  to enterprise IT who want to create composite applications from web services. If you fit this profile and are interested in seeing how concepts like web services, microformats, and user-created applications can turn the web into a true platform, you should consider joining us.  The Company is still very small, but the opportunity is very big. The CEO is a pretty marginal, but he will be replaced soon enough.

Comments

[EP]

Talk about full service VC...

[Zoli Erdos]

That was funny, for a minute I was shocked how you can publicly call your CEO "marginal"... until I realized you're referring to yourself:-)