I decided to take a step back and jot down the web applications we here at midventures use internally. After all, we should give productivity credit where credit is due.

• Freshbooks.com (invoicing, time tracking, and billing)
• BasecampHq.com (Project Management)
• CampfireNow.com (Group Chat, integrates with BasecampHq.com)
• Aard.vark.com (Visionary new IM client for routing peer-to-peer questions)
• Docs.google.com (for brainstorming and real-time collaboration)
• Gmail.com (everyone at midventures uses gmail; the gtalk client, and gtalk video)
• Skype.com (for international conference calls)
• Box.net (for large file storage)
• Getdropbox.com (for collaborative file storage and sharing)
• Acrobat.com (visual document collaboration)
• Mindomo.com (collaborative visual mind maps)
• Linkedin.com / Facebook.com / Twitter.com / vKontakte.ru / Jigsaw.com / Partnerup.com / Angelsoft.net
• Pandora.com for our midventures soundtrack

What web-based business tools do you use?

Frank Pinto with Defyned.com gave me a good piece of advice: technology is marketing. What that means is not that a good technology sells and markets itself. Rather; if you have a service or solution, the way it interacts with online technology is your marketing campaign.

What parts of technology directly contribute to the efficacy of your marketing?

- User Interface Design with latest Web 2.0 Standards

- Interoperability with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Mobile Devices, Amazon, etc

- Usability Architecture; use of ajax, jquery, single or multiple pages, data organization, sort / search

- Data Architecture defined by use scenarios; how your customer uses an app precedes building it

- The technology of your message; widgets, videos, viral invites, discounts, affiliates

- Open information standards using APIs and XML, allowing outside services to integrate with you

- Standard blog rss, SEO text and link strategies, comment and forum feedback looks

- User contribution modules in your architecture, such as reviews, comments, friends, connections

My point is that marketing is not a brute force dollar campaign across mediums, and technology does not stop where the programmer meets the salesman. Think about your technology, architecture, modules, information layout, interoperability, and accessibility from a marketing perspective. Products and services existed before the web. The innovation of the web is crafting technology not for technology’s sake and not merely to manage or organize data, but to craft the user experience around the sales process.

When developing a website start with the customer and the message first; and build the technology around that. Web developers and software engineers do not sell technology solutions, they sell the architecture of marketing.

I spent the morning meeting with Defyned.com and Sandboxindustries.com at the Sandbox office in the west loop. I am happy to see the stylish creative culture of the west coast has made its way into this chicago incubator space; where tech and retail businesses set up shop.

Defyned.com and midVentures.com are consulting on a new Morgan Street Documents venture, which I may not be at liberty to discuss directly. However I can say that the founders and partners in Sandbox were the type of investment firm- and type of portfolio companies- that other firms should learn from.

My only piece of advice- the office could include more Macs and 20′somethings.