Big Boulder

Today’s guest post from Chris Moody , the COO of Gnip , follows on the heels of the amazing Big Boulder event that Gnip put on last Thursday and Friday. To get a feel for some of the speakers, take a look at the following blog posts summarizing talks from leaders of Tumblr, Disqus, Facebook, Klout, LinkedIn, StockTwits, GetGlue, Get Satisfaction, and Twitter. Transition at a Massive Scale with Ken Little of Tumblr From Monologue to Dialogue with Daniel Ha and Ro Gupta of Disqus Measuring Engagement on Facebook with Sean Bruich Measuring Influence Online with Joe Fernandez and Matt Thomson of Klout Data Science at LinkedIn with Yael Garten Industry-Focused Social Networks with Howard Lindzon of StockTwits Distributed vs. Centralized Conversations with Jesse Burros of GetGlue Engaging with Customers Online with Wendy Lea of Get Satisfaction Creating the Social Data Ecosystem with Ryan Sarver and Doug Williams of Twitter The event was fantastic, but Chris sent out a powerful email to everyone at Gnip on Saturday that basically said “awesome job on Big Boulder – our work is just beginning.” For a more detailed version, and some thoughts on why The Work Begins When The Milestone Ends, I now hand off the keyboard to Chris. ...

This week I’ll be kicking off the second day of Big Boulder with a talk about how the Boulder startup community has come to be what it is today. Big Boulder is a conference on social data held by our portfolio company Gnip . Last year Chris Moody wrote a blog post about how companies should pursue thought leadership. To me, Big Boulder is the embodiment of this. Gnip believes that social data will change the world. To that end, they’ve brought together some of the biggest players from social media publishers including Facebook, Twitter, Klout, LinkedIn, StockTwits, Disqus, Tumblr and WordPress. They’ve put together a killer agenda talking about the many uses of social data and how publishers are thinking about it and what is enabling people to do. ...

There is this magical moment that happens when a startup finally puts the key components together to build a successful business. After months or years of iterating and pivoting, they finally have the right product for the right market at the right price. At this point, the company has to shift gears and change their mindset a little. They need to stop looking for gold and start mining as fast as possible. My friend Chris Moody , President/COO at Gnip , refers to this as the execution phase of a business and there is no better example of execution in our current portfolio than the team at Gnip. ...