one new product every day, with “short, homey, informally edited videos explaining what’s compelling about each day’s product,” as Wade described it in his profile, had already seen Greg’s story about Seattle entrepreneurs and posted her own thoughts on the subject on her site. As she wrote in response to my query: “I’m one step ahead of you on this….here is my blog post on the subject…But she sent along a few additional thoughts as well: “Every day, under enormous deadline pressure, we take personal and commercial responsibility for the Grommet choices. We back a lot of young and unknown companies. We test a lot of crazy products. And we stick our faces on video. How many company teams wake up to that reality every day? Adventurous covers it.”
Paragon Lake (Lexington, MA)
CEO: Deb Besemer
Culture: “Passionate”
Comment: Besemer came out of retirement (she sold her last startup, BrassRing, for $115 million) to head Paragon Lake, which is out to revolutionize the way jewelry is designed, bought, and sold, in part because of her love of jewelry and in part because of her passion about the company’s ambitions. Summarizing the reasons for her word choice, Besemer says: “Because we all feel we’re on a mission to change an industry and are working long and hard to invent new ways of shopping for and buying jewelry. We can make it fun. We can make it special. And we can build a great company in doing so. We are passionate about doing all of this.”
StyleFeeder (Cambridge, MA)
CEO: Phil Jacob
Culture: “Focused”
Comment: StyleFeeder, which offers a search and recommendation engine for online shopping, is in retail and e-commerce—just like several others on this list. And it’s profitable, which might not be like others on this list. Jacob says focus is key: no recurring meetings such as weekly staff confabs (“We use scheduled recurrent meetings as a tool to inflict pain on uncooperative service providers that are having trouble meeting deadlines, etc.,” Jacob says), no phones in the product development area, and a limited appetite for tackling new things. “We don’t bite off more than we can chew and strive for excellence in the products that we build,” says Jacob. “So in that sense, I think we focus our energy on the products that matter the most to us…rather than jumping on every bandwagon that comes along.”
WiTricity (Watertown, MA)
CEO: Eric Giler
Culture: “Cool”
Comment: WiTricity is all about wireless electricity. The cool technology apparently carries over to the corporate culture. But I would have thought Giler would describe the company as “charged.”
Zink Imaging (Bedford, MA)
CEO: Wendy Caswell
Culture: “Magical”
Comment: “Zink” is shorthand for “zero ink,” which is what Zink offers—digital printing without ink. The idea, based on technology conceived at Polaroid way back when, came to market in Zink’s first products early last year. Caswell says it’s been an “unbelievable 30+ year ride to go from a magical dream to a magical, amazing trip to bring the fruits of our labor to the world.” Having just scoured unsuccessfully around my house this weekend for an ink cartridge for one of our three out-of-ink printers, I’m D with her word.
