Seattle 2.0 Blog

May 3, 2007

    The question is simple. We created the Seattle Startup Index, but companies that have been in the market for a while, or are publicly traded are not being listed. Is it fair that we are not really listing Amazon.com, Microsoft, Real Networks and other great companies from the Puget Sound?

    One side of the coin tells me this index is more interesting with Tech Startups only. The other side tells it is incomplete without all the companies.

    What do you think?

    We have basic 4 options:

1. Track only Tech Startups: the site is the service/product
2. Track only Startups: include companies that are brick-and-mortar and the site is just a marketing/sales channel, or service providers (consultants), etc.
3. Track only Tech companies: From startups to publicly traded companies, but only from the tech sector.
4. Track all Puget Sound companies.

    Number four would be quite a task since I don't even know where to get this list from. Not only that, but it would be a weird mix of Sampa compared to Amazon compared to Weyerhaeuser compared to Immunex compared to Boeing.

Comments (2) for "Should the Seattle (Alexa) I...

Number 3! By Josh Maher - 5/3/2007 6:59 AM

My two cents is that what makes the SSI interesting is precisely that it is focused on tech (pre-IPO?) startups that are Internet-centric. The big Seattle-area companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Real, etc won't move around much in the rankings so they will make the index less interesting. If you want to include, I would have a separate Total Seattle Tech index. I also would suggest that Alexa ranking is not an overly useful measurement for non-tech or companies such as traditional brick-and-mortar companies. I don't think Weyerhauser, Tullys or smaller non-tech companies are accurately represented by an Alexa ranking. Even some highly successful tech companies will find Alexa ranking irrelevant. Isilon Systems went IPO and has a 3 month average Alexa ranking of about 380,000. In short, keep as-is. By Steven - 5/5/2007 2:06 AM