The casual American greeting "What's new?" is apropos in a country known for invention and problem solving. It's no wonder so many tech companies have sprouted in this land, from California to the New York Island. Vermont, too, has hosted its share of future-focused, cutting-edge enterprises since IBM set up shop in Essex Junction in 1957. A dozen years later, three local guys started the healthcare software company IDX and ran it successfully for almost four decades. In 2006, they sold to GE HealthCare for $1.2 billion. A year later, Apple released the iPhone. I remember 2007 with some residual PTSD. By then the internet had changed the way people consumed news and information, and there was an online version of Seven Days — complete with web-only content including blogs and a video series — that at the time generated next-to-no additional revenue. Steve Jobs' new invention meant we'd have to figure out how to deliver our content to yet another platform. Soon thereafter came the iPad. Meanwhile, Craig Newmark was coming for our business model. Founded in San Francisco in 1995, the same year as Seven Days, his Craigslist grew from an email sent to friends into a for-profit free-for-all local bulletin board that expanded city by city across the country, summarily wiping out the classified advertising in newspapers that for centuries had relied on that revenue to fund their operations. By some small miracle, Craigslist took 12 years to get to Vermont. Wracked with worry about what it would do to the paper, I came down with a disabling case of shingles. I vividly remember balancing my computer on the edge of an oatmeal bath and, even though it was winter, walking around the office with my shirt off one shoulder because for months I couldn't tolerate the sensation of fabric on my skin. I was right to be anxious. Half right, anyway. Craigslist slowly decimated our sale-by-owner listings but, amazingly, spared the help-wanted section. Some employers tried the free online service but didn't stop using us. When seeking job applicants, I think business owners and HR professionals wanted to cast as wide a net as possible. Plus, our ads worked. Around the same time, we noticed in the employment pages a growing number of local entities that we had never heard of. They were Vermont tech companies looking for skilled employees — and not finding enough…