Coke & Google

3:45 am MST

Can’t get over the news I read last night. Sure most people won’t even know (or care) what it means but to me it’s huge. Here’s the title:

“Measure Map sold to Google”

That says it all.

It was a beautiful summer day last July 13. Not too hot downtown San Francisco. Not so hot that you grimace upon entering a parked car but nice enough to roll up dress sleeves and be relaxed. Shortly after three in the afternoon I walk into a somewhat plain building—well, plain except the lime green paint job—to join someone for coffee. We walked outside, across the street, down the block and through the park to the coffee shop. He had coffee, I had a Coke.

Jeffrey Veen told me about this cool new product they were working on. It was statistics for bloggers. It was a very different venture for their company, Adaptive Path, as instead of consulting with clients, it was building a product for customers.

That product is Measure Map. Not out of the gates last July, currently not out of private beta, and no longer part of Adaptive Path’s fold.

Why is this so big? Well, a lot of acquisitions are happing in that area (both that area of the world, the Bay area, and that area of development, Web & Blogs). I can’t get over it because of how real it seems to me.

Maybe I need to explain. I have twenty good ideas in my head (some in my head, a few in an Outlook note, some in a Word file in My Documents, and a few started and living invarious states of un-done-ness). Of those twenty or so projects, maybe seven will see the light of day. Of those seven maybe two have the can be really, really, great products. Of those two, maybe 2/3 of one can be acquired…

I’m not dreaming up good ideas to have someone else buy. That’s not the point. The acquisition here is really more of a large “stamp of validation” on an idea. And someone that I had coffee with last year, told me about an idea that this past week got a big stamp of validation.

I need to get moving on my ideas, that’s really what is keeping me awake. Our current product is going well but still far short of being “done.” We need to further that, for sure, and get a little more traction, then start moving on something else in addition.

Links:
Jeffrey Veen’s Blog (where I first read it)
Adaptive Path news
Official Google Blog