A few weeks ago I was honored to accept recognition as a Top 40 Under 40 Entreprenuer by Silicon Valley Business Journal.  Although I’m not yet near my forties, it was great to receive the recognition and participate in a celebration of innovation with so many other CEOs from the valley.

It was truly a privilege to meet and greet with 2009’s class of innovators including Marissa Mayer of Google, Michael Madison of Cocoon Ventures and many others.  The honorees spanned across an array of industries and arenas including venture capital, social networking, finance and more in public, private and nonprofit sectors.

The celebration was a lot of fun.  Here is a video of the event and some of the honorees.

40 Under 40 Awards – Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal

I was asked by Forbes this week to offer up some experience around some actions companies can take during tough economic times like these to maintain or even increase employee happiness and wellbeing. We all know that without a happy and thriving team, there’s no growth, especially in a recession.

At DotNext we strive to employ a two pronged approach to increasing team happiness and wellbeing during recession times like these.

First Method :

First, we immediately roll out substantial, structured and predictable performance based compensation in the form of bonuses and spiffs. Nearly anyone, including managers and directors, can earn additional compensation if they are able to perform above general standards on a challenge by challenge basis. As a result, regardless of economic slow downs, team members are still able to maintain control over their financial destiny.

Second Method:

Second, we aggressively enhance the quality, frequency and quantity of spirited culture activities that play directly into happiness and wellbeing. For example, our team holds competitive monthly ping pong tournaments, gathers weekly at pubs and cafes, has weekly trivia contests and just recently joined a corporate softball league. Simply put, there is a direct correlation between increased positive cultural events and team happiness and production.

Each of these efforts enhances our level of happiness, strengthens our bonds and positions us for great production and growth even in recession times.

No Click Search Technology Delivers Instantaneous Results as You’re Typing

PLEASANTON, Calif., Jan. 15 /PRNewswire/ — LeapFish, a multi-dimensional search engine that combines the best of the web in a single search, today announced the release of its new click-free search interface that delivers search results as you type. The brand new search engine that captures not just relevancy but also the variety of the web, now offers one of the world’s fastest search services with instantaneous results as each character of a search term is entered.

LeapFish pushes search to 2.0 and states “out with the search button.” LeapFish’s revolutionary new click-free search interface gives life to a fast, fluid and dynamic search experience that extracts the variety of data from major online destinations such as Google, YouTube, Ebay and others in a single search query. Consolidating a knowledge base of relevancy and variety from major online authorities, LeapFish effectively renders more comprehensive results than those returned by its providers.

“This technology is truly evolutionary in the context of today’s Internet,” said Behnam Behrouzi, president and CEO of LeapFish. “Desirable data continues to be lost at an accelerating rate due to the information overload and filter failure of search engines. The LeapFish click-free search functionality and aggregation capability offers users a convenient solution for users to maintain control over this data.”

The inspiration behind LeapFish has been the opportunity to provide an answer to the information overload and the fragmentation of accessibility that is naturally occurring online today. “If relevancy, the currently defined search formula, continues to be limited by the virtual real estate allotted by page 1 of the major search engines, then the variety and accessibility of the breadth of the web is being lost in the information overload,” says Behrouzi. “LeapFish works to capture this variety in a new multidimensional, and now instantaneous, click-free search interface.”

For users who don’t have heavy Internet usage, LeapFish promises to conveniently surprise them with information they wouldn’t have normally been aware of if they used a traditional search engine.

The revolutionary new search service uses proprietary hyper-threading technology to communicate with a growing list of over 200 online authorities, currently under development, to deliver more than just relevancy to users. LeapFish launched its search platform in November 2008 and is currently seeking patents for its new offering.

To try the new click-free search engine for yourself, visit http://www.leapfish.com.

About LeapFish

LeapFish is a multi-dimensional search engine that captures the variety of the web in a single click free search interface. The search engine delivers instantaneous results from major Internet destinations while you type. LeapFish Inc. is a privately held corporation headquartered out of CARR America Corporate Center in Pleasanton California. For more information, visit http://www.leapfish.com.