Tech Workers Commiserate

Not everyone at the table was having trouble. John Aggrey, chief executive of the District-based Unicorn Group, a consulting firm that helps struggling companies fine-tune strategies and find partners, said he's taken on three times as many clients in the past three months as usual.

"CEOs tend to listen when they're in crisis mode," he said. They're looking for help in finding clients, reorganizing staff and securing investors.

Some have been forced to leave and now find that they're dealing with different circumstances. He said a lot of executives who've found themselves out of work in the past few months are starting to get bored.

"They're going to places like the Northern Virginia Technology Council and the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association to look for ideas" for new companies or business partners, Aggrey said. "They've got nothing else to do, especially now that it's too cold to play golf."

Advertising Woes

The decline in online advertising has hurt one local start-up.

Clearspring Technologies, the McLean widget syndication firm that has been a darling of the local venture capital community and a prominent member of the Web 2.0 crowd, laid off 20 percent of its workforce last week, sparking discussion around town about the future of advertising-dependent businesses and online business models.

In May, Clearspring raised $18 million in its third round of funding, led by New Enterprise Associates, but like many start-ups, it was forced to cut spending.

Founder and chief executive Hooman Radfar said the company isn't in financial trouble. The decision to lay off dozens of employees, including chief operating officer Jay Rappaport, was made to conserve money to weather the downturn, he said. Last year's cash injection will help the company continue to grow with its smaller staff, he said, adding that it "really improves our position going forward."

"Our focus now is really to make sure we double-down on our efforts and become profitable," Radfar said. Clearspring works with big-name media brands such as MTV, Time Warner and NBC, and has 400 million unique visitors a month, up from 332 million in October, he said.

"We have ample cash and grew like gangbusters this year," he said. "But we humbly had to adjust, which was really hard because we were so close to the people who left."

"CEOs have to switch gears and not go into new territory but defend their current turf," he said. "We still have a couple tricks up our sleeve."

Kim Hart writes about the Washington technology scene every Monday. Contact her at hartk@washpost.com.