Nimble Technology, a developer of Web software for data integration, is also a recent Madrona bet.

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Using elastic cloud resources from Amazon Web Services, for example, a tiny software developer can scale its Internet presence as fast as it wants.

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Besides the 4, 000 companies, IBM says it is also registering 35, 000 software developers per month on its developer Web site.

FORBES: IBM's Software Gambit

Asking a developer to create a stellar piece of software that runs through the Web is somewhat like asking a composer to write a symphony on a smartphone.

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The software developer, in his 40s, is thought to have spent his workdays surfing the web, watching cat videos on YouTube and browsing Reddit and eBay.

BBC: US employee 'outsourced job to China'