After the crash at the end of the last decade, web startups clamped down to focus on their core value proposition and were forced out of necessity for survival to hone their revenue models. However, for the past couple years, the metrics of “success” with early-stage digital media startups (especially consumer-facing ones) have clearly focused on distribution, as opposed to monetization. The stories of tremendous growth in adoption with the promise of revenue later on has been enough to excite both entrepreneurs alike. Yet, with the current economic climate driven by the looming recession, it’s been interesting to see the pendulum swing the other way in the past couple months.

If the notion has reached the popular business press, then it’s indeed a pervasive story. A few weeks ago Businessweek’s article Widget’s Worth talked about “cracking the monetization code,” wondering how social widget applications are going to make money.

The old playbook six years ago was that the web distribution could be bought for a price with Google Adwords. Now the new plan for distribution is facilitation through low-cost viral strategies via Facebook and other social media. In fact, Facebook literally published a playbook just over a week ago on marketing virally through their platform. I am not arguing that distribution has been commoditized, but it does point to the fact that the bar has certainly been raised for what meaningful traffic/distribution means without a business model behind it. Not all traffic is created equal, and that is certainly more the case than it was five years ago before the mass proliferation of social media pages (and a new floor for pricing of remnant inventory).

But it goes beyond just widgets and social networks. Of course, with the numerous notable acquisitions in the advertising network space has resulted in a proliferation of companies looking to help publishers monetize their content through new technologies and packagings. And even beyond the media front, there’s a renewed sense of optimism that the Enterprise2.0 could be the next big thing, especially given that there’s real potential customers willing to pay real dollars in that domain.

Of course, with any trend, there are notable exceptions. And there should be – the true high flyers command tremendous network effects which create value well beyond an immediate revenue base. But for the typical web startup, thinking about a business from the mindset not of “how do we get big fast?” to “how do we get big fast and monetize it?” is a progression in thinking.

I found it notable that just in the past week, I’ve seen a handful startups of startups seeking Series A financing – all with significant traction on the adoption front – with pitch decks touting phrases like “projects profitability”, “roadmap to profitability… [with] high margins [to] enable positive cash flow”, and “path to profitability.” Those terms were largely out of place in most plans a year ago.

Theoretically-speaking, entrepreneurs raise capital (whether it venture or otherwise) to accelerate growth ahead of cash flows because of the opportunity-cost of time involved in self-financing organically. So in reality profitability isn’t the first order step in creating real enterprise value. As it was put by Keith Richman on a panel at the EconSM conference on Tuesday, “profitability… is a choice.” Or at least the goal is to work towards having that choice. Starting without a revenue model in mind, even if it will change a few times along the way, leaves that choice to chance. It’s always possible to get lucky, of course, but less likely so in an economic climate which is less forgiving. So it isn’t surprising to me to see startups realizing these facts and incorporate this thinking into their pitch, and more importantly, their plans. The pendulum has begun to swing back the other way…

This is part of a series on Venture Voice where we ask a bunch of past show guests a simple question and post their answers.

How’d you raise your very first round of financing?

David Sacks: I asked Peter, Max and Elon to finance “Thank You For Smoking” with me. I didn’t have to do too much selling since I had worked with them at PayPal and was putting in my own money.

This is part of a series on Venture Voice where we ask a bunch of past show guests a simple question and post their answers.

How’d you raise your very first round of financing?

Kelly Perdew: I raised my first round of financing ($500K in equity) from friends and family while I was still in business school. Be very careful about taking money from friends and family… while it is easier to access, if things don’t go well, you tend to stay in the deal much longer than is good for you to try and save their money!

This is part of a series on Venture Voice where we ask a bunch of past show guests a simple question and post their answers.

How’d you raise your very first round of financing?

Ev Williams: I asked my mom for $10,000. She gave it to me.

This is part of a new series on Venture Voice where we ask a bunch of past show guests a simple question and post their answers.

How’d you raise your very first round of financing?

Jay Adelson: The first round of financing I ever raised was from angels. I was working with Al Avery, who co-founded Equinix with me in 1998. A good friend of mine, who had founded a company in Silicon Valley in the mid-nineties and sold it to Cisco, was mentoring me to avoid going initially to the VCs.

From his perspective, nothing could be worse; Showing up at VC with a business plan, with no executive team, no execution, amounted to no valuation, and the VC taking way too much of the company for a series A.

Instead, he felt, do everything you can to bootstrap or angel fund it, then go back (even a month, or six months later) to the VCs with something they can’t argue is as risky.

This friend of mine went to two friends of his, and we raised $100,000.00 to start. We followed his instructions to the letter; We hired some executives, we started the process of operating our business, got an office, etc. We made the business real. Most importantly, we found a great corporate law firm to start all the paperwork, who later would help us negotiate and deal with the VCs.

Three months later we gave away roughly 40% of the business for $12 million dollars. The $100k was set up to convert to essentially $200k worth of stock at the close of Series A. I think they did quite well, and we’re all still good friends.

This is part of a new series on Venture Voice where we ask a bunch of past show guests a simple question and post their answers.

How’d you raise your very first round of financing?

Joel Spolsky: I put in a very small amount of money (I think it was about $50,000) from my own savings. That carried us to profitability.

This is part of a new series on Venture Voice where we ask a bunch of past show guests a simple question and post their answers.

How’d you raise your very first round of financing?

Fabrice Grinda: The first time I had to raise money was for Aucland, a copy of eBay for Southern Europe which was my first Internet startup. I was lucky not to have to raise seed money. While in college at Princeton, I built a company exporting high end computer equipment to Europe (motherboards, memory, CPUs, hard drives, etc.). Given its profits, I left Princeton in June 1996 with $50,000 in cash.

When I joined the McKinsey New York office as a consultant in September 1996, I ran a sophisticated real estate rent versus buy model. The model and my rule of thumb analysis (see Rent … unless you want to buy) were screaming BUY! I bought a large 1 bedroom apartment on 54th and 2nd for $115,000, putting $25,000 down.

With the other $25,000, I bought 4 stocks: Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon and Intel. When I decided to create Aucland in July 1998, I sold the 1 bedroom apartment for $185,000. I sold all the stock I owned. After taxes, I was left with around $300,000 in cash. I invested 100% of it in Aucland.

This is the first of a new series on Venture Voice where we ask a bunch of past show guests a simple question and post their answers.

How’d you raise your very first round of financing?

Scott Rafer: The first money I raised was for Fotonation in 1996. We just had a cashflow issue, so borrowed $25k off a friend of mine in NY, paying him back the principal plus interest and warrants. It was the right thing for the situation. My mistakes were later.

When I first started talking to my now-partners about joining August Capital, I was stunned at the slow pace of the conversation. I couldn’t imagine how it could take months to make a decision about whether or not to invite me to join the partnership. Admittedly, I wasn’t coming from the most conventional background to enter the venture industry. But over the course of months, the August partners had more than enough time to talk with pretty much everyone I’d ever met in my professional life (plus a few choice grade school teachers while they were at it). In the end, after four months of grilling, I was invited to join August Capital.

At the time, I remember thinking to myself “how could it possibly take four months to decide?” It seemed like an absurdly long process. Yet, having now been in the venture business for some time, and having been on the other side of that process, it is amazing to me that it didn’t take longer. Why is that? Two things in particular strike me.

The first is that partnerships are small, delicate creatures. At August, there were only four partners when I joined. That’s not very many people. And partners spend a lot of time together. We make collective decisions about nearly all things in the partnership — from investment decisions, to personnel decisions, to culinary decisions. And we each serve as a reality check for the rest of our partners. So keeping a partnership functional, let alone collegial, is tricky business. Rest assured, adding a new partner can throw off that balance really easily.

The second challenge is that adding a partner is a much bigger economic decision than making an investment in a company. I don’t mean it is an economic decision in the sense of sharing the economics of the partnership. But rather, it is an economic decision because each new partner will be responsible for making a set of investments out of the partnership. If you make the right decision, your new partner will make investment choices that accrete large returns back to the partnership. But if you make the wrong decision, your new partner could easily invest tens of millions of dollars in companies that ultimately fail, hamstringing the overall fund returns. So adding a partner is a bit like making an indirect bet on a bunch of companies — getting it wrong will have a widespread impact on your fund performance.

Given all that, the decks are stacked against anyone joining a venture capital partnership. It is just too easy to find reasons to say “no.” Which is why it absolutely thrills me to welcome Howard Hartenbaum to the August Capital partnership. Howard has successfully run the gauntlet and come out the other side, and we are already enjoying the benefits of Howard’s perspective and approach. Howard is simply a fantastic guy, and we are lucky to have him join us.

For those of you who don’t know Howard, here are a few quick thoughts on why he’s such a great fit for us at August.

First and foremost, Howard is a geek. After graduating from MIT, Howard didn’t join an investment bank; he joined Honda Motor Company where he served as an ergonomics engineer. He got to build awesome products like the NSX. If there is one thing we like to do at partners meetings while eating lunch, it is talk about cars. Cars and email. Cars, email and digital photography. Cars, email, digital photography and high speed wireless. Cars, email, digital photography, high speed wireless and smart phones. Cars, email, digital photography . . . you get the point. Howard is a welcomed addition to the conversation.

Second, Howard firmly believes that the most important thing in a start-up are the founders. Howard has a great track record of working with entrepreneurs to help them bring their vision to fruition. As a result, entrepreneurs love Howard because he is helpful without being overbearing. What’s more, Howard was an entrepreneur before becoming an investor. So he’s been on both sides of the table and can bring that perspective not only to his portfolio companies, but also to our investment decisions.

And third, Howard is a great investor. Prior to joining us at August Capital, Howard was a General Partner with Draper Richards. He has invested in dozens of interesting technology companies. Notably, Howard was the very first investor in Skype and got involved in the business on the company building side (Howard was active in Skype’s global business development efforts and served as the GM of Skype’s US business). Howard was also an investor in Photobucket and Bebo, among many others. Howard’s track record is impressive and it hasn’t gone unnoticed — he was named to the Forbes Midas List in 2007.

Given all that, it only took us a few months to invite Howard to join us at August. After all, we had to find time to talk with Howard’s EE professors and his chess team coach We consider ourselves very lucky to have Howard as part of August Capital. He is a fantastic investor, a geek at heart, and a great guy to hang out with. What more could one ask for?

When I first started talking to my now-partners about joining August Capital, I was stunned at the slow pace of the conversation. I couldn’t imagine how it could take months to make a decision about whether or not to invite me to join the partnership. Admittedly, I wasn’t coming from the most conventional background to enter the venture industry. But over the course of months, the August partners had more than enough time to talk with pretty much everyone I’d ever met in my professional life (plus a few choice grade school teachers while they were at it). In the end, after four months of grilling, I was invited to join August Capital.

At the time, I remember thinking to myself “how could it possibly take four months to decide?” It seemed like an absurdly long process. Yet, having now been in the venture business for some time, and having been on the other side of that process, it is amazing to me that it didn’t take longer. Why is that? Two things in particular strike me.

The first is that partnerships are small, delicate creatures. At August, there were only four partners when I joined. That’s not very many people. And partners spend a lot of time together. We make collective decisions about nearly all things in the partnership — from investment decisions, to personnel decisions, to culinary decisions. And we each serve as a reality check for the rest of our partners. So keeping a partnership functional, let alone collegial, is tricky business. Rest assured, adding a new partner can throw off that balance really easily.

The second challenge is that adding a partner is a much bigger economic decision than making an investment in a company. I don’t mean it is an economic decision in the sense of sharing the economics of the partnership. But rather, it is an economic decision because each new partner will be responsible for making a set of investments out of the partnership. If you make the right decision, your new partner will make investment choices that accrete large returns back to the partnership. But if you make the wrong decision, your new partner could easily invest tens of millions of dollars in companies that ultimately fail, hamstringing the overall fund returns. So adding a partner is a bit like making an indirect bet on a bunch of companies — getting it wrong will have a widespread impact on your fund performance.

Given all that, the decks are stacked against anyone joining a venture capital partnership. It is just too easy to find reasons to say “no.” Which is why it absolutely thrills me to welcome Howard Hartenbaum to the August Capital partnership. Howard has successfully run the gauntlet and come out the other side, and we are already enjoying the benefits of Howard’s perspective and approach. Howard is simply a fantastic guy, and we are lucky to have him join us.

For those of you who don’t know Howard, here are a few quick thoughts on why he’s such a great fit for us at August.

First and foremost, Howard is a geek. After graduating from MIT, Howard didn’t join an investment bank; he joined Honda Motor Company where he served as an ergonomics engineer. He got to build awesome products like the NSX. If there is one thing we like to do at partners meetings while eating lunch, it is talk about cars. Cars and email. Cars, email and digital photography. Cars, email, digital photography and high speed wireless. Cars, email, digital photography, high speed wireless and smart phones. Cars, email, digital photography . . . you get the point. Howard is a welcomed addition to the conversation.

Second, Howard firmly believes that the most important thing in a start-up are the founders. Howard has a great track record of working with entrepreneurs to help them bring their vision to fruition. As a result, entrepreneurs love Howard because he is helpful without being overbearing. What’s more, Howard was an entrepreneur before becoming an investor. So he’s been on both sides of the table and can bring that perspective not only to his portfolio companies, but also to our investment decisions.

And third, Howard is a great investor. Prior to joining us at August Capital, Howard was a General Partner with Draper Richards. He has invested in dozens of interesting technology companies. Notably, Howard was the very first investor in Skype and got involved in the business on the company building side (Howard was active in Skype’s global business development efforts and served as the GM of Skype’s US business). Howard was also an investor in Photobucket and Bebo, among many others. Howard’s track record is impressive and it hasn’t gone unnoticed — he was named to the Forbes Midas List in 2007.

Given all that, it only took us a few months to invite Howard to join us at August. After all, we had to find time to talk with Howard’s EE professors and his chess team coach We consider ourselves very lucky to have Howard as part of August Capital. He is a fantastic investor, a geek at heart, and a great guy to hang out with. What more could one ask for?