I’ve said it every May since 2007 – judging the Investment Round of the UW Business Plan Competition is one of my favorite days of the year.  It’s exciting to absorb the energy and inspiration from all of these young entrepreneurs and idea generators.  Sure, most of the 38 “companies” on display won’t ever go past this day, but everyone who takes part surely takes something they learned, something they discovered, or an idea they came up with into future companies.

Enough hyperbole – Let’s talk about what I saw.

Now, the problem for me every year is that there are always these awesome engineering and medical companies that I just don’t get.  A UW med student will tell me something like, “When you combine this UW technology with this UW technology, you get a compound that completely eliminates both cancer and male pattern baldness, AND adds 4 inches to your vertical leap. We would just need 4 years and $50 million to make it work.” And since I don’t understand anything about biology, I would invest in them.  Or, they’ll show me a prototype of a jet pack or invisibility cloak.  The idea sounds cool and reasonable, and I say, “I want one of those.”  Only later do I learn why the technology is impossible.

So this year – and I apologize to the science guys – but I really only visited the companies that I thought I would really understand well enough to ask hard questions of.  And without commenting on who I through my investment “dollars” at, here are some of the ideas I liked and people I liked talking to.

1) Seattleite Magazine – I’ll mention them first, only because I met founder Jane Yuan a few months back and saw an early version of their business plan.  There could be a market for this kind of online pub in Seattle.  It’s a fun read, with lots of good pics of Seattle people and places.

2) Breadcrumb – The reverse of FourSquare, Breadcrumb notifies a person’s emergency contacts in the event that they DON’T check in when expected, dramatically improving search and rescue efforts for missing or injured people.  Perfect for hikers, campers, mountain climbers, fisherman, etc… whose parents worry about them.

3) Online Pay Station – I really root for these guys.  Think old school market meets unlimited product options. This is a company for African residents – enabling people without bank accounts or credit cards make online orders via companies like Amazon.com.  They pay Online Pay Station (OPS) cash at an OPS Internet Cafe, OPS makes a bulk buy to save on shipping, receives the order, then warehouses the merchandise until the buyer picks it up.  

4) PotaVida – Did you know that you can put dirty water in a plastic bottle, stick it in the sun, and then the sun will kill all the really nasty, dangerous organisms in the water in 6 hours or so?  I didn’t.  The problem is, you don’t *really* know when the water is clean.  PotaVida makes a little LED based contraption that tells you when the water is safe.  Go to a disaster relief location, put 100 bottles on a roof at once, but a PotaVida device on one of them, and suddenly you know when the water is safe to hand out.

5) Punchkeeper – Take all of the loyalty cards that you have to carry around, and put them in one app on your mobile phone.  Snap a pic of a QR code to get credit.  That simple.

6) Sky Fu – They call it “Self Defense for the Social Web.”  I summarize it as Radian6 for small businesses who need to monitor Yelp, Trip Advisor and the like.  

7) Pterofin – Designs and manufactures innovative wind energy devices for residential and commercial use.  I don’t get why it works better than regular turbine, but they say it does, so why not beleive them.

8) TripBox – Makes travel planning easier.  Cool demo.  Hard to describe. Maybe Widget based travel planning.

9) Digital Menu – Almost makes too much sense to work.  Rather than spending money printing out paper based menus every day, restaurants just go to this site, pick from the templates, update the menu, and Digital Menu turns it into a mobile or tablet based menu that can be shared online, across social channels, and that you can even view at the restaurant.

10) Soothie Suckers –  Kids don’t want to take herbal medicine.  So the solution – put it in a popsicle.  That’s the theory here.  For what it is worth, the popsicle tastes good.

There were a lot more great companies on display – 28 more in fact.  But that would make the blog 100 pages long.  Here’s the list of the companies that made the next round.  But congrats to everyone who made it from the initial 100+ down to this final 38.

For all the heat Seattle gets for – well the lack of heat – one thing that often goes overlooked is the amount of stuff to do here.  It’s really easy to fall into the trap of focusing on one activity.  We have tons of great venues for watching college and professional sports.  Too many music venues to count.  A vibrant arts and theater community.  And enough trails, likes and mountains for even the most adventurous explorer.  But we also have this educational environment that has a tendency to put amazingly inspirational people on stage.  Sometimes these events try to sneak by you, so you have to pay attention.

In fact, the other day I tried to run through a list of people I have either had the chance to listen to or actually talk with over the last few years.  I’ve been in a crowd listening to Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Colin Powell, Steve Wozniak and Carol Bartz, and actually have been able to chat with or work for Howard Schultz, Jeff Bezos, Rob Glaser, Richard Tait, Maria Cantwell, Geoffrey Moore, and a host of technology whiz kids like Rich Barton, Nick and Adrian Hanauer, and TA McCann.  I don’t know if you can do that everywhere in the country.

Last Friday, I added to my list, giving up my Marines tickets to spend a few hours listening to Paul Allen, who was being interviewed at Town Hall by Geekwire’s Todd Bishop.

I’m not going to lie.  Part of me was hoping that Allen would stand up and say, “You know what.  David Stern is a $%#&ing a$$.  I don’t care how much he fines me.  I could buy the whole league in cash if I wanted.”

Now of course that didn’t happen, and I didn’t expect it to.  The irony is, I don’t think I can remember a specific thing from any of those speakers, and I doubt there’s anything from Allen’s talk that I’ll take to my grave.  But there were some things about his attitude and ways he tackles problems that I’ll probably walk away with.  Examples…

In two seperate questions from the audience, he was subtly being criticized for not solving the world’s energy prolem or the country’s education issues.  He didn’t come out and say, “Oil Dependency and Teacher’s Unions” but he made it clear that there were external issues that made it impossible to solve these problems right now.  He basically said that throwing blind money at these problems was a waste – and why waste money if the problem can’t be solved without major changes.

Allen also had a subtle shot at all the people who stopped his Seattle Commons project.  Years ago I used this blog as a forum to blast everyone who brought the Seattle Commons to its knees because they didn’t want public funds to go to building a giant central park that might improve the real estate value of the land around it (which was owned by Allen.)  Now, since Allen owned all the land that he was going to donate for the park anyway, when the people voted down the park, he had no choice but to build on it.  So now we have the super cool South Lake Union business district that houses Amazon, MSFT and more.  And ironically, he made a boat load more money on it than had it just been a big greenspace.  It was interesting that he brought up that he was almost forced to make money on that real estate deal since Seattle wouldn’t accept his land for free.

There is some irony in the fact that so many people who attended Town Hall to see Allen, might be characterized as “anti-business.” Some were the kind of famous Seattleites who pay their mortgage from the money they made from Microsoft stock splitting 20 times, but also sent flame emails to politicians trying to stop the building of Qwest, Safeco or a new Key Arena. 

I guess the moral of this meandering blog post is that you really need to pay attention in Seattle.  There are Town Hall events like Paul Allen all the time, and the UW hosts a ton of similarly impressive luminaries.  They may not change your life, but we all should try to collect info from smart people that don’t always think like we do.  Different perspectives can be valuable, even if they dont change your mind.

So here’s a post that has nothing to do with social media, marketing, the Sounders, Mariners, or pretty much anything I’ve ever written about.

It’s been a pretty nutty year so far, and somewhere just under the “Super High” part of the Priority List, I had this nagging item that never seemed to get dealt with.  It simply said, “Get lip checked out.”

It had started a few months back, when I noticed a few splotches under my lower lip.  After noticing it a little more, I had gone into the dermatologist to get some cream to make it go away.  Now here we were in February or so, and the splotches weren’t any better.  And when I finally got it checked out again, this time the dermatologist said, “It’s probably nothing, but it worries me a little, so why don’t you go upstairs to the surgeon and have them take care of it.”

So the consult with the surgeon was interesting.  A seemingly nice, funny, likable guy told me that he wanted to carve into my face.  Well his words were that he wanted to do a biopsy on the tissue to make sure nothing bad was going on.  I really only heard, “Surgery” and “Biopsy.”  He said he could do a simple “punch” something, but would feel more comfortable just using a scalpel and taking out all of the discoloration in a simple procedure.

Now I may be a giant sissy, but this was the first time I ever had to make any kind of crazy decision like this for my own body and I was a little freaked.  Option 1: Do nothing, assume that the discoloration was a simple anomaly that wouldn’t spread, and just deal with it.  Option 2: Take a tiny little sample, get a reasonably sound prognosis that the discoloration wasn’t a malignant tumor, and just deal with the spreading cells later.  Option 3: Go under a knife, take out all the discoloration, and learn for sure that the discoloration was or wasn’t malignant.

I was a little grouchy and stressed for a few days last month while I weighed the pros and cons.  Then I finally decided to just have the thing removed and tested.  I made the appointment, and walked around with somewhat of an odd attitude for a few weeks.  I was 95-99% sure that this was going to come out all right.  But, I couldn’t help thinking that if there wasn’t a chance it was going to turn out poorly, no one would want me to go through the risk.  I hate to be cheesy, but it puts a few things in perspective for you.

I’ve lived a pretty healthy life, so when my surgery day arrived last Monday, and I found myself sitting in the chair waiting for the guy to carve a piece out of my lip, I have to admit it was quite a new experience for me.  It’s not a subject that comes up in conversation at the pub, so I had no idea what the proper amount of fear was supposed to be.  So I pretty much had them stick the Novocain needle in, then I closed my eyes and listened while they went to work on my face.

45 minutes later, the cutting and stitching was done, and I was on my way home with a bottle of vicodin, a bunch of gauze bandages, and the promise of test results in a week.

And so for a week I tried to go on like nothing was different, except I was eating soft foods, trying harder than normal not to get hit in the head with a softball or soccer ball, and wondering why it takes 7 days for them to test a few little cells.  For the record, the hardest part of spending a week with a scar on your face is trying not to alarm anyone when they ask you what happened.  

And so today my little saga finally came to an end.  The good news – tests all came back with “Malignancy result negative.” And of course in this case, negative is positive, because it means there is no tumor and any worry was for naught.  The stitches came out, and I should have a normal looking lip again soon. 

As my friend Ari said, “Yup, we’re starting to get to that age where weird shit happens.” He may not be Voltaire, but the philosophy is still sound.   Thanks to everyone who provided the kind words of encouragement over the last month or so.  My favorite lines – “Well as long as they are there, have them fix the rest of your face.” And, “See if they’ll throw in botox for free.”  

The shots below were taken to record “Before Surgery,” “After Surgery,” “7 days of Recovery” and after the stitches were taken out.

Ok, it’s been a while since I ranted a little on here.  And truthfully, there’s a calmer gentler me who decided this is not a forum for ranting.

So instead, let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was this guy, who was a partner in a small business.  Now, business is good, so the partners decide that they should start a health care plan for the team.  They do everything by the book, use a consultant to help them, and settle on a program administered by Group Health.  Now Group Health has to be reputable, because they sure do a lot of advertising that says they are.

Now when one of these team members was under their own insurance, they were diagnosed with an issue that would need some special testing that would require a small procedure.  All of this previous work was done under the watchful eye of another insurance company and accredited physicians.

This is where the fun begins.  Here’s a paraphrased transcript between Group Health and the patient.

Patient: Hi Group Health Insurance.  I got a weird call from the surgeon’s office.  Even though I was referred by a doctor, they said you aren’t sure you will cover it.

GH: Well was the referring physician In Network or Out of Network?

P: Well I don’t know. They were covered by my old insurance company.

GH: (Exasperated sigh) Well let’s see.  Well that physician is out of OUR network, so if you go to the surgeon, it counts as a self-referral.

P: How could it be a self-referral if another doctor did the referring?

GH: Maybe you didn;t hear me.  Because they are out of network.

P: So what does that mean? Do you cover it or not?

GH: Of course we do.  Don’t be silly.  We’re the greatest people on earth.  Even though you have clearly abused the system by going out of network, we – out of the goodness of our heart – are still going to cover 80% of the procedure, after the deductible of course.

P: Well what would you have covered if I was referred by an In-Network doctor?

GH: 80% after the deductible

P: So whats the difference?

GH: Nothing really.  If your surgeon has a contracted rate with us, he’ll charge the contracted rate and we’ll pay 80%

P: Wait, what’s this contracted rate thing?

GH: Oh it’s nothing really.  We work really really really really hard to get you the lowest rates from doctors, so that your 20% is nominal.

P: What if my suregeon isn’t on contract rate?

GH: Well then we pay 80% of what we WOULD HAVE PAID if the doctor was on contract with us.

P: So who pays the rest?

GH: Well I guess you would.

P: So…..you are going to pay the same amount either way, it’s just in some cases I have to pay more.

GH: But we negotiated these lower rates for you.

P: But…..you pay the lower rate.  I pay the difference.  Actually, the lower the rate, the more I pay.

GH: Well that’s ONE way to look at it I suppose.  Now, that’s only if you don’t see an IN NETWORK Specialist first.  It’s different if your surgeon is in network, under contract AND you get referred by an IN NETWORK specialist.

P: And has a dog named Blue?

GH: Huh?

P: Never mind.

P: Ok, so I guess I need do make an appointment with one of your in-network specialists so I can make sure my contracted, IN Network surgeon doesn’t charge me an arm and a leg.  No pun intended.  So, can I make an appointment?

GH: Of course.  Not a problem at all.  I will get you down for the next slot we have open for an IN NETWORK specialist.  Now that will be the 2nd week in June.  Should I put you down?

P: It’s March.

GH: So would you prefer morning or afternoon?

P: I’d prefer March.  

GH: Well June is the next time we have available for an IN NETWORK specialist who can refer you to an IN NETWORK contracted surgeon.

P: So even though a doctor suggests I get this tested, you want me to wait 3 months.

GH: No, you can just go ahead and do the procedure.  Like I said – and geez are you frustrating – we’ll still cover 80% of Necessary and Usual costs associated with the procedure.

P: Wait, what does that term mean?

GH: (SIGH) What term?

P: Necessary and Usual.

GH: Well like I said before, we cover what we think is fair.  We can’t be responsible for any extra fees the doctor tries to stick you with.

P: So let me get this straight.  You lowball the doctors into a “Necessary and Usual” rate in order to allow them in your sales pipeline.  Then you make the patients responsible for anything the doctors want to charge above that “Necessary and Usual” rate you’ve forced them into.  And the only way a patient can avoid those extra charges is if they are referred by an IN NETWORK specialist.  

GH: That’s right.  

P: BUT, AND A BIG BUT HERE, YOU DON”T HAVE ANY IN-NETWORK SPECIALISTS.

GH: Well we do have one in June.

P: Who’s on First?

GH: Huh?

P: Never Mind.

Now lucky for mortals like our Patient, there are people at the doctors offices who are fluent in the language of insurance phone reps.  Those people can actually explain how to avoid the traps that companies like Group Health try to put in your way.  Not that the doctor’s office is any saint in this matter when you think about it.  They’re playing the same twisted game, allowing the insurance companies to claim “80%” coverage when really just being responsible for 33-50%.  In fact, they are the ones who actually lose out if the patient is able to find an in network doctor to make the referral, though you have to imagine there’s a back door way it all gets settled later.

Anyway, here’s a toast to Health reform.  Thank goodness it’s taking such care to take care of the patients who need the care to begin with.

So the other day I was accused of bailing out of the 1/2 marathon since my training had seemed to come to a halt.  Not so.

Now I’ll admit, I’ve run into a few stumbling blocks.  I’ve had a few unexpected things pop up recently that have cut into my training time, but there’s no real reason to go into them here.  (I’m sure when I see you in person you won’t be able to get me to shut up about them.)  Plus, the every 2 year occurance of my back blowing out came about 15 months early this time.  So that has slowed me down a little as well.  But I managed to make it through the St. Paddy’s Day Dash thanks to an heavy dose of muscle relaxers.  God bless technology.

Anyway, the race is still a good 12-13 weeks out.  I’m at a solid 4-5 miles at around 9:30/mile.  The next big milestone is the Seahawks 12k in April.  Shoot me an email if you are up for some runs around Greenlake or Lake Union, or better yet up on Cougar Mountain where there are some hills.

It’s been nice recently – as we mix in a few sunny days – to catch Greenlake before the day gets going. Here, I’m playing with an iPhone app called “100 Cameras in One.”

One of the things I want to start doing in 2011 is travelling to more places that are off the beaten path and writing about them.  The first stop on the tour was Northern Arizona, including a town called Jerome, and a follow up hike in Sedona’s Boynton Canyon.

Jerome is an old mining town built on a hill.  It was a fairly populated place until the mine shut down, and then had as few as 50 residents in 1950.  Since all the houses were still in good shape, just abandoned, a bunch of artists moved up and took them over.  So now what you have is a kind of old ghost town with art galleries.

The notable feature of the town is that it’s built on a hill.  A few streets run back and forth through the town at different elevations.  So you don’t walk north, south, east, west as much as you walk up, down, left, right, navigating from street to street (which is actually the same street curving around) via a set of staircases.  For example, here are the directions you get when asking how to get from our hotel to a place to eat.  “Go down the hill there.  When you get to Haunted Hamburgers, walk down the staircase about 100 yards north.  At the bottom of that staircase, turn left.  There’s one place down on your left.  If that doesn’t look good, walk down the stairs to the next street and you’ll see another place.”  We spent a little time in one of the most bizarre and enjoyable watering holes I’ve ever had the pleasure to sit down in, “The Spirit Room.”  There a bartender – who made her way to Jerome via Kansas City, LA and Lima, Peru – managed a single open room with a jukebox and a pool table.  River guides, large flamboyant Native Americans, 75 year old locals, confused tourists and some funny but odd young locals all took turns telling stories, dancing, whooping it up, and asking questions.  It was an odd crowd, but one you could appreciate.

We stayed in the biggest hotel in town, which turned out to be the old mining hospital.  The hospital shut down with everything else in 1950, and it was another 25 years before someone bought it and turned it into a hotel.  They say it’s haunted, and I believe it, because I had some pretty nutty dreams.

The next day we hit Boynton Canyon in Sedona. Now Sedona isn’t really off the beaten path for people who live in Arizona, but for us Seattlietes, I think it’s a fair to lump in there.  Plus, we were on some different trails for 4 hours or so and only ran across about 20 people.  

If you’ve not been to Sedona, it really is about the most beautiful place on earth to go for a hike, bring a philosophy book, clear your head and just marvel at everything around you. You just can’t get away from brilliant red rocks, stunning vistas, and changing scenery.  One minute we’re walking nextto a canyon wall, the next we’re at a vista, and suddenly we’re in an ice trail and I have a mild concussion from slamming my head on the ground.  Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating the concussion part, but I spent some time on my keister in the depths of that canyon. 

So overall: Jerome – an awesome place to get away from everything.  Boynton Canyon – like all Sedona trails, just a marvelous spot for walking and reflecting.  Get down if you can.  You won’t be disappointed.

I pulled out a few pics from different trips to restaurants and grocery stores. Hopefully, I’ll add some background shortly.

A couple of early thoughts.

1) Merry Christmas everyone –  It’s a little funny that we’re well into Xmas morning and some of you guys are still getting a few last minute gifts in at 4pm Xmas eve.  

2) No WordPress access in China? – So I have an alternate spot set up for this blog, but am having trouble getting to the Wrodpress admin page.  Very odd.  Is WordPress blocked in China?  

3) Beijing is gigantic – My first impression of Beijing was totally wrong, in that I did not understand how humongous it was.  I’ll write volumes on this shortly.  But think of the biggest most spread out city you’ve ever seen, and add 30 story buildings everywhere.

We’re headed out the Great Wall now and I’m getting hurried out the door.  More later.  Merry Xmas.

 

16 people – including 7 kids, 7 adults and 2 Grandparents.

4 cities in mainland China, over 10 days (or 11 depending on how you count that whole first day International Date line issue.)

I’ll have a whole new blog set up shortly with details of the trip, so email me if you want the address.  But for now, we’re done with night one in Beijing.  I’ve never been to mainland China, so I won’t lie when I say I was disappointed, when the first thing I saw after customs, the first thing I saw in the hear of the capital of china, was a KFC and Starbucks…

But, the real show starts today.  More to come as we set up for 11 days in a foreign land.