Nate Westhiemer, Rose Tech Ventures, NYC - I’ve been following Nate on the web since right around the time when he shut down his company BricaBox. He built a product that helped people make there own mash-ups that was a great idea but in the end the customers weren’t quite there like he thought. Why I really would like to meet Nate, and what inspired me so much from his experience, is first, his ability to learn from mistakes and second, his ability to communicate those mistakes. I’d love to have lunch or beers with Nate and share with him some of the entrepreneurial ventures I’ve taken on and share whats working and what’s not. I’m sure he’d have some valuable advice. Nate now serves as the EIR (entrepreneur in residence) at Rose Tech Ventures, “the entrepreneurs dream job”. (The idea for the 12 people I’d like to meet post came from Nate, so he deserves to be listed first)

Loic Lemeur, Seesmic, SF – Since the earlier days of my social web craze when I tried to put everyone on video, I began using Seesmic. I became an avid member of the Seesmic community and created a lot of great relationships on there. Loic is the CEO and founder of Seesmic and an experienced entrepreneur and blogger. He is know as a/the leading tech entrepreneur in Europe and runs the LeWeb conference. I’d love the opportunity to meet Loic because I envy his ability to one, always stay happy through the entrepreneurial process (even when he had to lay-off a large portion of his team he remained positive). Secondly, I respect the respect that others have for him. He has an ability to coordinate and truly build, whether that’s a technology product or a community.

Jason Fried, 37signals, Chicago – Jason founded 37signals doing web design and development on a contractual basis. I started SocialDreamium doing community building on a contractual basis. Jason, although he is a self proclaimed, “non-techy”, like myself, has been able to create products that millions of customers love, and pay for. I hope to accomplish that as well. Jason has a sense of clarity to his business philosophies that other either don’t have or aren’t able to communicate. I’ve always thought that the “get a million eye balls” business model is flawed and Jason would share that belief. I’d like to meet Jason because of his ability to stick to what he and his team believe in regardless of the critics. His thoughts are clear and simple, just like his products, and I’d love to have some of that clarity rub off.

Walt Ribeiro, The Internet’s Music Teacher, Philly - If you want to find just a good guy with serious talent and great passion for what he does, you probably won’t find anyone better than Walt. He’s a stud on the web who helps people learn music. He’s the internets music teacher and does so by holding live streams of music lessons. I started watching, and we connected via Seesmic, then he sent me a necklace with a Ustream guitar pick on it. Awesome. I’d like to meet Walt mostly just because I know we’d have a blast together. I like nice people. Walk is a nice guy!

Daniel Debow, Rypple, Canada – Daniel is in one word, impressive. We’ve never met in person but I have spoken with him on the phone quite a bit.  Daniel is co-CEO of Rypple and a Huffington Post featured blogger. Daniel and and I first hooked up through my blog when I wrote about Gen Y. His company, Rypple, helps Gen Y folks (and others) in the work force improve communication with their bosses and get better feedback in the workplace…much needed.  Since that initial conversation I’ve helped beta test Rypple, and learned a ton about the software building and tweaking process. Daniel is a true entrepreneur, and will likely serve on the SocialDreamium Advisory Board. You may think that this is a cheat but my success here will be to actual spend time with Daniel in person.

Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot, Boston

I respect Darmesh because he’s a creator. There is a huge divide between people who use the web, those who create and those who consume, Darmesh is the former. One of my favorite stories is how Darmesh coded the ever popular Twitter Grader in one night and tweeted about it as if it was no big deal. It ended up being one of Hubspot’s core marketing tools. Darmesh is a developer to the core and a whiz at that. I have a lot to learn from Darmesh.

Mike Volpe, Hubspot, Boston

Mark is the VP of Marketing at Hubspot and is a true marketing guy. What I envy about Mark and what I try to emulate is his transparency online. He openly admits that he’s learning the do’s and do-not’s of social media. He recently lead a campaign to pay .50cents for each to twitter follower to a charity. Surprise, surprise, it worked. Hubspot is a true marketing company with some great developers to support them (see Darmesh Shah above). Mark is building a great team at Hubspot and I’d love to talk with Mark about recruiting and marketing stuff. No company can survive without any marketing…Mark understands how to do powerful marketing on the cheap.

Gary Vaynerchuk, WLTV, NYC

I started following Gary way back, on WineLibraryTV. I wasn’t one of the first or anything like that but I did realize this guy was going places well before he went “big” (Conan, Ellen, & MadMoney). After finding out that Gary was going to release a book on wine I emailed him asking if I could get a copy and I’d blog my thoughts… about a week later he responded saying, “books on the way, hope you enjoy!” @garyvee understands the power of using the web to connect with people better than most. He once said that he’d like to meet everyone in the world, yes everyone. So I’d like to help him out.

Fraser Kelton, AdaptiveBlue, NYC

A few months ago I contacted Fred Wilson asking him about one of his portfolio companies. He put me in touch with Fraser and I’m so glad he did. Fraser is the VP of BizDev at AdaptiveBlue in New York. He’s helping drive the GLUE product to become a huge success as a Firefox ad-on and he even co-founded AdOnCon, a conference for browser ad-on’s that was well attended by almost every browser company. Fraser seems to be about 2 years ahead of me in the startup game and although we’ve spoken on the phone, an in person conversation needs to happen. Fraser’s a stud.

Dan Patterson, ABC News & Creepy Sleepy, NYC

I don’t know Dan at all. We’ve spoken maybe once on Twitter and I’m apart of his #bkrev group on Facebook where he religiously holds conversations around books he’s reading and books others are reading. Dan is the Digital Audio Manager and reporter for ABC News, and produces the internet radio program Creepy Sleepy. He also understands web connections and has the official and unofficial experience to back it up. As you can see many of these folks are in NYC, I guess there’s a trip in my future!

A.J. Jacobs, Author ‘The Year of Living Biblically‘, NYC

The fact is that as I write this post I’m only half way through AJ’s second book “The Year of Living Biblically”. He writes about his life experiments where he fully submerges himself in something and writes about the experience. His first book, “The Know-It-All” was a huge success as he called it quest to become the smartest man in the world by reading the entire encyclopedia. I’d really like to meet AJ because, he first is nothing like me and I believe there are huge benefits to learning from people who are not similar to yourself. Second, he’s a phenomenally entertaining writer and I strive to improve my writing daily (it’s one of the core reasons I started this blog). And lastly, because he fully emerges himself in his work, even at the expense of his personal life. I envy that thoroughly.

YOU…

Seriously. I’ve found over the past 6 months that Twitter enables a lot of connections, but those are only connections. The real relationships begin when you can have a phone conversation or hopefully meet in person. Then you have something to base your connection off of. You have things in common and an experience to refer to.

If I learned anything in 2008, I learned that you can never know too many people and the connections you make may be more valuable than the skills you learn. Thanks to all of you for making my social web experiences over the last year so much fun. If you’re one of the folks that I’d like to meet…we’ll be in touch.

I couldn’t repost the live show (if the embed code is out there please let me know!), so I decided to post this interview with Jason. With all that I’ve talked about this company recently you might think that I idolize the guy but I really just think that he and his company have very simple philosophies that drive a startup in the right direction. I want to strive to drive SocialDreamium in the same direction. I also like how he’s not really a techy guy but runs a web software development business. That’s what it’s all about baby!

I truly believe in having examples that you follow and learn from 37Signals will be that example for SocialDreamium.

What is the optimal size of a business?

Jason makes the point here that the idea that businesses always need to grow is wrong. People see business like they see tumors, only eternal growth is acceptable. Jason claims this is a bad idea. He pushes that 37 Signals will focus on being a strong and healthy business, not just a large powerful business. The point he’s making here without ever actually using these words is, quality or quantity. He also says that “his team equates success with being happy with what we are building over just making more money”. This is a powerful statement.

During another talk, I heard Fried make the point that you don’t have to be Domino’s Pizza to be a successful pizza shop. He encourages people to go out and run a successful mom & pop pizza shop that customers are happy with.

Treat your software as though it was physical.

Jason uses the example of the water bottle he is holding during the talk. It’s the perfect size for what it is supposed to be, portable water. If the water bottle was 2 liters he wouldn’t be able to hold it or carry it. So why not design your software the same way? If you make it the right size for the problem you are trying to solve, then your customers will be happier with it and you will be happier because your effort will be proportionate  to the problem you are attempting to solve.