[Editor’s Note: A hearty congratulations to SiliconANGLE contributor Jeff Nolan. Jeff has been and continues to be one of the pillar contributors to SiliconANGLE from the very early days, and we wish him well at his future endeavors with a true emerging Web 2.0 success story in GetSatisfaction. Jeff Nolan cross-posted this at his personal blog. Photo credit to Podtech.net. –mrh]

“The years teach much which the days never knew.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have been thinking about this quote a lot lately, maybe it’s because I have become more introspective about myself and the lessons that the years have brought but I think the real reason is that I am at a point in life where I am very comfortable being me, which means accepting the things I like and dislike along with acknowledging what I am good at and those things which I am not.

I started out my career as a geek, very good with edge technology,which at the time was desktop computers and a few years later the Internet. I moved through marketing and sales role, and then venture capital to general management but all along the way I missed the hands on aspect of product and connection of products to people.

Despite the seduction of media and consumer applications I also realize that my strengths are in enterprise technology, which is only really defined as selling something to a business customer. I understand these markets and how to optimize for them and with my acquired knowledge, which is constantly evolving, in non-traditional business models I have found that I can bring a unique perspective to enterprise focused technology companies.

Over the summer I started working with Get Satisfaction as a result of a conversation that I had with my good friend Wendy Lea, who is the CEO of the company. Wendy asked me to help define and refine market and competitive landscape, optimize pricing, and work with her to raise a round of fresh capital. As I started to get more involved in the day-to-day management at Get Satisfaction, and with the impending completion of the financing event, I was confronted with a choice to make about returning to the workplace in a full time capacity. This turned out to be an easy decision to make considering how strongly I felt about the team I had been working with, made even easier when Wendy offered me the VP Product Marketing role, which I gladly accepted because it brought me back to my roots and the connection between products and people that I had been missing.

It’s also a pleasure to announce that Get Satisfaction has closed a $6 million in Series A funding led by Azure Capital Partners with O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and First Round Capital participating. Cameron Lester, General Partner, from Azure joins Wendy Lea, CEO, Thor Muller, CTO and Co-founder and Bryce Roberts, Managing Director from OATV on Get Satisfaction’s board of directors. This is an amazing investor team that has seen Get Satisfaction through a phenomenal period of organic growth, the opportunity is now to take that and accelerate the pace and amplify the impact.

Over 40,000 communities are hosted on Get Satisfaction and we are adding new clients at a fast pace across CPG, consumer electronics, social gaming, education and government markets. With applications for service and support, social commerce, and social CRM, the ability for Get Satisfaction to span multiple application categories (think social onramps to CRM and ECM) puts the company right in the middle of some very exciting market trends.

Lastly, you really have to check out the results of an extensive rebranding effort that affects the website, communities, and widgets!