My partner Seth Levine has an outstanding post up today about the freemium model.  It’s titled Pricing models, the freemium myth and why you may not be charging enough for your product and is worth going and reading right now.

He covers a bunch of stuff, nicely divided into the following topics:

• Beware of too many pricing tiers.
• Have a clear delineation between product tiers.
• How about overlay features that you charge by the drink for?
• Be careful what you put a tariff on.
• The freemium myth.
• Don’t be afraid to charge for your product.
• Beware the long “trial period”.

Seth has become “the pricing model guy” at Foundry Group – we’ve been dragging him into every pricing conversation whenever they come up.

Where are all the green jobs? The government has been trying to quantify today’s emerging green economy, and while we’re glad that the figures appear to be on the rise, we can’t help but wonder how accurate the accounts really are. A study conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2007 showed green products and services made up between 1% and 2% of the U.S. economy — that translates into 1.8-2.4 million jobs in the private sector. While indisputably a sizable number in an ailing economy, it’s really that huge gap that’s got us wondering what’s going on. Why such a range? Not surprisingly, it turns out that deciding what qualifies as green in the economy isn’t a straightforward answer — because while nuclear power gets the grade for some, oddly enough, bicycles aren’t considered as eco-friendly for others. If you’re as confused as we are, read ahead for some additional insight!

The sun comes up and for most of us, it’s time for work. Or is it? How you start your work day can have a huge impact on the rest of it. Your morning routine is the lynchpin for either reducing or increasing creativity and productivity.

For example, on days I meet with clients, of course I get showered, dressed, and ready to head out as soon as possible. But on days when I need to get creative work done, I start right away. And I mean, as soon as I get up.

If the very first thing I do in my day is sit at my computer with a coffee, work seems easier. I can get many writing ideas and a short article together in an hour or so

. Yes, in my pajamas. Only later do I move on to getting dressed and so on.

When venture capital funding to Silicon Valley startups slowed in the first quarter of this year while the flow of dollars to other regions picked up, industry analysts said it was no cause for alarm -- just a little geographical fluctuation.

And how. The valley's lackluster first quarter, it turns out, set the stage for a rousing rebound. With cleantech and life sciences setting the pace, Bay Area startups received a remarkable 45 percent of $6.5 billion in venture capital invested nationwide during the quarter, compared with 32 percent of $4.9 billion in the previous three months. In recent years, the region has typically collected one-third to 40 percent of venture dollars.

The Bay Area's $2.9 billion in funding was up 91 percent from the previous quarter and more than 100 percent from a year ago, with big cleantech deals as the top investments. Nationwide, funding into cleantech -- a sector that crosses various tech sectors -- increased 107 percent over the previous quarter to $1.5 billion.

As a small business owner you are always looking for a cost effective way to make things easier. The 10 small business resources below will help you do just that.

10. Google Docs

Time to throw away Microsoft Office, Google Docs provides users with a free, web-based offering similar to Microsoft Office. Google Docs includes a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation program among others. You can save your documents online and allow others to edit them online without the hassle of e-mailing new versions back and forth to each other. www.docs.google.com/

9. Outright.com

If you are a small business owner that has trouble keeping up with your bookkeeping because you are too busy building your business, then check out the free semi-automated bookkeeping website at www.outright.com. Simply link your business credit cards to your account and the service will automatically post your expenses and categorize them for tax purposes. www.outright.com

The maker's motivations: It's cool, and it'll keep kids off drugs. I'm not sure about the mechanism on that last part, but whatever. Jet-powered school bus! (Via Tyghe Trimble)

Sharks are not the big, dumb, bullies of the sea that you might suspect. Over the last 20 years, research into shark behavior has gotten more sophisticated and it's turned up some surprising findings about what's going on in the brains of these "mindless death fish from hell". To wit:

"There's a clear line between the higher and lower vertebrates in terms of brain-to-body weight," Gruber [Samuel Gruber from the University of Miami] explains. "Birds and mammals have a higher ratio; fish, amphibians and reptiles are lower. But sharks land above the line associated with these lower vertebrates. They've been independently evolving for half a billion years, and they have brains that are comparable to [those of] mammals in some ways."

I recently wrote a post on how to ask for help or favors from people.  This is a related post that will not only help you get the results you want more effectively but will also help earn the respect of your senior people (whether management or your board).

I know you think you know this already.  Everybody says that.  It surprising how few people actually follow through this this advice.  So here goes …

As much as I like to occasionally make fun of having been a consultant early in my career (although I built computer systems rather than just PowerPoint slides), I realize upon reflection that I did learn a lot of great management practices from working in such a large and well-structured organization as Accenture.

Any number of things can go wrong in a venture capital fund and even more can go awry if the state is involved.

Politicians might raid the funds, pensioners might be pulled into a fruitless gamble, the highest-growth companies might be lured to the coasts, or even worse, the promising start-ups could all turn out to be duds.

Advocates for more Wisconsin-sponsored venture funds, however, say the biggest risk is failing to create them at all.

"We can't unilaterally disarm ourselves while other states are in this game," said Bill McCoshen, a former state commerce secretary and executive director of Competitive Wisconsin, one of the groups that funded the recently released "Be Bold Wisconsin" competitiveness study that recommended a revamp of the state Commerce Department.

There's no single, clear-cut answer within academic or business circles. Still, most experts agree that anyone can develop useful traits and hone key skills

My opinion is that one does not have to be a "born entrepreneur" to succeed, but it certainly helps. Innate tendencies seem to make certain people more likely to take risks, more able to identify and act on promising business opportunities, and more open to new experiences. We've all known extroverted people who revel in marketing and selling, activities that successful business owners must master. Individuals who do not share these traits can certainly develop them, but they will have to work harder than those for whom such traits come naturally.

My opinion aside, however, your "chicken and egg" question has recently been tackled scientifically in studies of twins (both identical, who share 100 percent of their genes, and fraternal, who share about 50 percent of their genes). Scott Shane, my fellow columnist and the A. Malachi Mixon III Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University, participated with several colleagues in the research. In academic articles and his book, Born Entrepreneurs, Born Leaders, (Oxford University Press, 2010), Shane says that the tendency toward entrepreneurship is about 48 percent "heritable," meaning influenced by genetic factors.

Biodiversity and ecosystem conservation offer an array of new opportunities for business, which can either develop green products and services or trade biodiversity 'credits', argues a new European Commission report on the economics of nature.

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) for business report was launched on Tuesday (13 July), setting out the business case for providing green services.

It notes that biodiversity and ecosystem services offer opportunities for all business sectors, mainly because integrating environmental concerns into company management can increase the cost-effectiveness of operations, ensure the sustainability of supply chains and attract new customers.

The entrepreneur community is more closely knit than you’d believe, and when someone picks up on a notable event or trend, the blogosphere literally lights up with posts.

As far as entrepreneur blogs go, the flavor of the month appears to be the debate about whether the seed funding phenomenon is a bubble waiting to burst, or whether it’s a viable means of funding pre-revenue/start-up businesses. This is my take on the landscape.

First Off – What Are Seed Funds?

There was a time when if you wanted to fund your company you had four options, approach:

1. A bank
2. An angel investor
3. A venture capitalist
4. OR ………… have an asinine risk tolerance and fund the project yourself with your own money.

As the U.S. economy emerges from recession, a new crop of start-ups is blooming. From microblogging to location-based services to green auto technology, social gaming, genetic testing, e-commerce and digital music, a new generation of start-ups is poised to lead the technology world into the next decade.

It's not surprising. Recessions breed innovation. The creative destruction wrought by economic downturns creates the conditions for new ideas to flourish and new firms to hatch. The slowdown of the early 1990s preceded the rapid growth of the first generation of iconic Internet companies -- AOL (AOL), which owns and operates DailyFinance, Netscape, Yahoo (YHOO), Amazon (AMZN), eBay (EBAY) and Google (GOOG) -- until the technology bubble laid waste to the industry, sparing only the hardiest firms.

Last month, Governor Crist called for a special session for the expressed purpose of putting an amendment on the November 2010 ballot to enshrine into our Constitution a ban on drilling in Florida waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Let’s be clear: there is already a ban of this kind in statute for Florida.

Given this call by the Governor, let’s take his idea and his rhetoric to a logical conclusion. What if we turned to green energy today to meet our personal and economic needs for energy consumption? Could we do it? With the help of Robert Bryce from the Washington Post, who authored a recent article on the subject, let’s chase down several popular maxims related to “green energy” and check out the veracity of each.

• Solar and wind are truly clean energies. Not true – as an example, both require large tracts of land including what the Nature Conservancy called “energy sprawl”…tens of thousands of high-voltage transmission lines required to carry electricity to far off places for the purposes of consumption.
• Wind energy substantially reduces the dreaded carbon footprint. Not true – the wind doesn’t always blow so guess what electric companies use to offset the unpredictability of wind – gas and coal-fired generators. Plus, when the wind does blow, how is it trapped, contained and transported as a power source?

It is too easy and wrong to think that innovators are egocentric, always admiring themselves and their accomplishments in the mirror. They are confident but not self absorbed and impervious to outside input. If anything innovators are vulnerable, self aware, and open to diverse and critical input to improve their ideas and concepts. The view they see while looking into a mirror is more like the wavy one in the circus fun house that reflects a distorted view. A view that always causes a gasp and accentuates flaws that need serious work and improvement. Innovators know they must improve in order to find better ways to deliver value and solve real world problems.

Innovators spend very little time looking in the rear view mirror. They tend to be forward thinking and looking. It is important to learn from the past but innovators are never bogged down in it or constrained by the way things have always worked. Innovators tend to be market makers rather than share takers. Understanding how a market has worked in the past is helpful but innovators like to tinker across markets to envision and create an entirely new market model or system.

The harsh fact of today’s economy is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics report (July 10, 2010):

• There are 14.6 million unemployed in the US according to the June report, The Employment Situation.
• The share of families with an unemployed member rose from 7.8 percent in 2008 to 12.0 percent in 2009, the highest proportion since the data series began in 1994.
• In June, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was unchanged at 6.8 million. These individuals made up 45.5 percent of unemployed persons.

I was the speaker at a Georgetown School of Continuing Studies event called “Build Your Brand — Build Your Career.” (You can find my presentation on Slideshare) on July 14, 2010 and had a great audience of students and faculty members. One of the audience members referred to the current long-term unemployment figures and asked if taking a lower-level job would hurt a person’s brand and how they should reflect that in their online profiles.

Third Rock Ventures, the life sciences venture capital firm based on Newbury Street, is planning to open a small San Francisco office next month. The new office, in the city's Mission Bay neighborhood, will house a principal and a partner who are moving out from Boston, and a new partner being hired on the west coast, according to chief financial officer Kevin Gillis. Third Rock, founded in 2007, launched with a $378 million investment fund, and is currently out raising a $400 million fund.

Third Rock principal Jake Bauer will move out to San Francisco, but Gillis wasn't ready to name the two partners who'll run the office, saying that a press release is planned for early September.

"Tunable" windows would let people adjust light and heat levels, but so far it's been hard to make them affordable.

Windows that absorb or reflect light and heat at the flick of a switch could help cut heating and cooling bills. A company called Soladigm has developed methods for making these "electrochromic" windows cheaply, making them more viable for homes and office buildings.

Existing electrochromic window designs cost around $100 per square foot. Soladigm has not disclosed how much its windows will cost, but some experts say the method could reduce the cost to around $20 per square foot.

The Milpitas, CA-based company uses a thin-film deposition process that creates conducting layers between two panes of glass for controlling the amount of sunlight and heat that can pass through. A homeowner or office dweller could control how much light or heat a window lets in or absorbs and reflects.

In an earlier post titled “From Communities to Communes” we said ” Finding relevancy to “thinking” is typically found in smaller groups of people who seek knowledge and wisdom that reflects their beliefs. Common beliefs are what creates relational bonds. Haven’t you noticed that your “real” network is actually becoming smaller regardless of how many “followers and friends” you think you have?”

Communities have become a common way for brands, organizations and institutions to accomplish old business models. Old business models applied to use of social technology aimed to attract people into transactional traps by appealing to and creating self interest. Lets admit it. Getting your blog, your content and profile highlighted in one of  major media communities strokes the ego and fulfills the intended self interest, you are important and admired.  The people and organizations that run large communities make money from our content and pay us using the oldest currency in the world, popularity and sense of importance.

The web is Big but becoming small. The first phase of BIG was creating cn-line communities. People and organizations have been forming “communities” and trying to pull everyone in. Brands are forming communities and there are communities for communities. It is becoming impossible to engage in so many communities.

The real attraction to a community is relevance to conversations that show the “thoughts” of the people and not the thoughts of the “brand or organization”. Relevancy to “thoughts” is a lot different from relevancy to mass messaging and media. Finding relevancy to “thinking” is typically found in smaller groups of people who seek knowledge and wisdom that reflects their beliefs. Common beliefs are what creates relational bonds. Haven’t you noticed that your relevant network is actually becoming smaller regardless of how many “followers and friends” you have?