For a while I’ve been tinkering with an idea of publishing a Seattle Blog Rank like the Startup Index, except is just too hard to find a good measure of what a blog rank is. While I keep thinking on that problem I decided to put together a list of top entrepreneurs and bloggers from Seattle. All of these blogs are written by people that have their hands dirty building companies and are mostly about that.
Here are the top 12 blogs in Seattle (ordered readership):
#1 – Hillel Cooperman, Jackson Fish Market
Hillel left Microsoft in 2006 to start Jackson Fish Market with Jenny Lam and Walter Smith. He has been a very active blogger since the beginning of JFM, and blogs about user experience, software, technology, startup life, brands and branding, and a lot more. Hillel also writes a food blog.
#2 – Benjamin Curtis, Catch the Best
It seems like Ben has been blogging forever -- since 2004, which really means forever in blog-world. Ben is the founder & CEO of Catch the Best. Ben’s blog is heavy on the tech/developer side of things.
#3 – Buzz Bruggeman’s Buzznovation, ActiveWords
Buzz is the founder of ActiveWords, a product to automate your common computer tasks. Buzznovation, besides having a really cool name, has been around since 2003 making it the oldest blog on this list.
#4 – Christopher Johnson’s The Name Inspector, Phrasetrain
Christopher writes the fun and interesting The Name Inspector, a blog dedicated to dissecting company names, their origins and their meanings.
#5 – Andy Sack’s A Sack of Seattle, Judy’s Book
Andy is the kind of blogger that writes often and write short posts, which is perfect for an information-overloaded world. Andy has documented very transparently the ups and downs of Judy’s Book. He is also an investor, advisor and one of the few people in town that will give you honest feedback about your idea.
#6 – Kevin Merritt, blist
Blist is a very new startup that made big splash at DEMO, and Kevin has been blogging about it since last September. He writes well and you can always learn something new. Following the new trend between founders and startup CEOs, Kevin has also been quite transparent about building blist. Additionally, Kevin wrote this awesome guest post here at Seattle 2.0 about his DEMO experience.
#7 – Glenn Kelman, Redfin
Call him the PR master. Glenn gets more attention than any other startup CEO in town, and he, very effectively, uses his blog to promote Redfin, to lash out at the Real Estate industry and to promote his view on things.
#8 – Marcelo Calbucci, Seattle 2.0, Sampa
It’s weird to write about myself, but… Marcelo is the Founder & CTO of Sampa, a Family and Baby site creation service. Marcelo writes two blogs: Marcelo Calbucci, a personal blog on the challenges of building Sampa, and the Seattle 2.0 blog, about entrepreneurship and startup life. Like Hillel he also has a food blog.
#9 – Brent Lamphier, Athleon
Brent is the Founder & CEO of Athleon Sports, a private site solution for sports team. Brent writes a mix of personal and startup topics. Brent being fresh out of college sometimes also brings a very unique point of view to building a startup, contrary to most on this list that built multiple startups.
#10 – Jordan Mitchell’s MetaMuse, Others Online
Jordan is the Founder & CEO of Others Online, and he can be seen in pretty much every network event in town. He has a lot of expertise on web-based advertising revenue models, so any of us building an ad-based business model (and who isn’t?) should pay some attention.
#11 – Kelly Smith, Curious Office
Don’t be mistaken by Kelly’s company Curious Office Partners. Yes, he is an investor, but primarily he’s an entrepreneur. He founded ImageKind, and is working on several new projects. His blog will contain tips on startups and entrepreneurship as well as cool things from around the web.
#12 – Matt Hulett’s Startup Whisperer (mPire)
I’m very reluctant of including recently created blogs on this kind of list because you don’t know when the person will give up, and most bloggers give up blogging pretty quickly – lack of time being the primary excuse. But Matt’s first month has been so good that I’m sure it will take off and I’m including it on this list because of the awesome content for entrepreneurs.
I’m absolutely sure that I forgot some good entrepreneur blogger out of this list, but I’ll re-publish it every once in a while and make sure to include the people that are building the next Microsoft and next Amazon.