San Francisco company Odeo is creating so many impressive technologies and features it seems more like a web fun-factory than an under-the-gun VC-funded start-up. They’ve done a stellar job side-stepping the spotlight that comes when successful people start something new and focused everything on their customers .While everyone was wondering how a podcast directory could make any headway, Odeo released a greate discovery and playback services and then a super nifty studio tools for anyone to create and distribute audio programs. Even better they’ve nurtured a these audio enthusiasts into a massive global community that share, recommend and listen to all that is good.

I’ve been to Odeo offices and it’s full of smart young web firebrands. There are no suits here, no ponytails, heck no one that used to be a suit. So I’m not surprised at all that they were not content at simply having a podcast niche carved out. It’s not that podcasting won’t be successful for them, it’s that they realized they had the talent and opportunity to do so much more. In just the last month they’ve launched new products Hellodeo (a super-easy video creating and sharing mechanism anyone can use) and http://twttr.com/, (a whole new way to message your friends via web or SMS with built-in archiving) as well as the ability to stream their audio programs to cellular devices, Odeo/Play a nifty alternative interface to their original Odeo podcast/playback site.

That last sentence may have meant qwejibo ridonc to you or it could sound like a bunch of Web2.0 marketing whoey, but I promise you, Odeo is conceiving, experimenting with and releasing functionality that will be common place 5 years from now. And since they are doing it with love, for and by the people who want it more they will assuredly be the ones who get some mini-revolutionary pieces of it right first and for all my hardcore capitalist readers out there, they’ll be the ones to sell it first.

What I’m trying to stress here is that I see too many start-ups take a big bunch of funding because they think they’ve got one thing figured out and they are going to bet the farm on that one thing. Then they spend so much on that one thing, they can’t even work on anything else they’ve discovered along the way. Odeo took the money, made a product in a matter of months, listened to their community to know how to make it even more what they wanted, all the while working with their team to explore related or unexplored variants and novelties just to see what they would bring.

Making this perspective comes from making Dogster and Catster, but it’s just so obvious that though road-map driven companies can be very successful, but productive idea-driven companies, (managed well ;) are absolutely where you want to be … at least that’s where I want to be ;>