August 2009
28 posts
Cash For Bad Conference Wi-Fi →
The Cash for Clunkers program worked – at least according to our government.
“The CARS program ended sales on the Monday night with nearly 700,000 clunkers taken off the roads, replaced by…
Your Morning Dose of Inspiration →
Venrock – one of the oldest venture capital firms (40 years old and going strong) has released a magnificent book titled Shaping the Future: 40 Years of Innovation. While self promotional,…
Community Hours – Trying Something New for Random... →
I’ve been a long time practitioner of having “random meetings” where I meet with whomever wants to get together with me. Some amazing things have come out of this over the years, including my…
Basic Twitter Advice to Companies: Shorten Your... →
I retweet a lot of stuff – hopefully it’s useful to the folks that follow my twitter stream. I try to keep the retweets relevant – either useful business stuff, funny things my friends said, or…
Ancient MS-DOS Tricks →
I had a dream last night. In it, I was sitting in front of an old PC. I typed:
c: cd\ copy con config.sys files=255 buffers=32 <ctrl-z>
I can’t remember much more of the dream. But – I…
Thoughtful Analysis on the Dynamics of the VC... →
I tend to stay out of the “VC is dead, long live the VC Industry” discussion but I couldn’t avoid Bill Gurley’s fantastic post titled What Is Really Happening To The Venture Capital Industry? …
An Angel Investor Group Move That Makes Me Vomit →
I’ve personally made over 75 angel investments during two periods of time – 1994 – 1997 and 2006 – 2007. The first was the period of time after I had sold my first company but before I co-founded…
Security in the Cloud →
In January, I made a seed investment in a company called Standing Cloud. My premise was that as “cloud computing” proliferated, it’d be a total mess for the typical application developer and…
Three Entrepreneurial Books To Read Before You... →
I regularly get asked some variant of “what books would you recommend to an entrepreneur.” I typically send a quick email answer along with a link to the list of all the books I’ve read in the…
An Example of Failing At Marketing Using Twitter →
I don’t know who’s managing the District 9 twitter marketing campaign, but their abuse of twitter (via their creation of Twam – “twitter spam”) just caused me to decide not to go see the movie…
TechStars: Episode 12: The Beginning →
One of my favorite lines from TechStars is that “investor day is just the beginning”. In this great wrap up of the TechStars 2009 video series, David Cohen says it around 6:30.
Are You A Wall Street Analyst Who Hates His/Her... →
Or were you recently fired or laid off? Or are you an analyst (especially someone in the typical two year pre-business school programs) at a consulting firm that hates your job? One of my…
It’s Finally Time to Get Under 200 Pounds →
The DailyBurn Fitness Challenge started today. For those of you that don’t know DailyBurn, it’s one of the TechStars Boulder 2008 companies (it used to be called Gyminee). More on the fitness…
I’m Jealous of My Dogs →
They seem to be having a very nice day.
Good thing the coyote didn’t catch them.
A Patent Ban on Microsoft Word and a Haiku →
I haven’t written about software patents in a while. I still hate them and think they are an illogical construct. But first, a haiku from xkcd to warm you up (and make you smile).
I…
VC Behavior in Board Meetings →
There was plenty of chatter about my post The Best Board Meetings. One idea popped up a few times and was well articulated by John Boyd in his post What Makes a Good Board Meeting? In it…
Gearing Up For Defrag 2009 →
Long time readers of this blog know that we helped put together the Defrag Conference series and are enormous fans of Eric Norlin and everything he does. Well – we’re starting to gear up for…
TechStars: Episode 11: Practice Like You Play →
Even though investor day happened last week, this week’s TechStars’s video – Practice Like You Play – is the lead up to investor day. Watch the Everlater guys kick Seth’s ass on bikes (plus…
Doubling Down and TechStars for Life →
I’m heading out for the first run in 10 days since I hurt my back playing tennis. It’s a beautiful day here in Keystone and I’m looking forward to enjoying the mountains for a while.
I slept late,…
More Questions from the Rally Cafe Interview →
Last week I did an interview on Rally Cafe with Chris Spagnuolo. Some of the questions came from real time tweets to the show but we didn’t get to a handful. Chris just emailed them to me – I…
Best Companies To Work For In Colorado in 2009 →
Congrats to Rally Software and Return Path – two of my portfolio companies that made the Best Companies to Work for in Colorado ’09. Unlike many “happy lists” this is a pretty serious one…
How to Run a Great Board Meeting →
Today, the great post is by my partner Brad. He has a great post on how to run a great board meeting. Should be required reading in my opinion.
The Best Board Meetings →
Over the past 15 years I’ve been to thousands of board meetings. Last week I had four; this week I have two. I’ve spent a lot of time – often during board meetings – thinking about how to make…
TechStars Investor / Demo Day Boulder 2009 →
Today is an exciting day in Boulder as it’s TechStars Investor / Demo Day 2009. The unveiling of the 2009 class happens in a few hours to a large audience of mentors, angel investors, VCs, and…
Ruminations On Whether Seattle VC’s Suck →
Today’s post of the day is from Andy Sack titled Do Seattle VCs suck? In it, Andy states: “Moreover, I wanted to explore the question: Do Seattle venture capitalist suck as much as their…
Video Day – TechStars, Twiistup, and RallyCafe →
It’s Tuesday, so that means – well, I’m not sure what that means. But I do know that if you want to watch me on video, following are three choices.
First up is Episode 10 of TechStars: The…
Occipital Consults OBE-1 →
This is an exciting week for TechStars Boulder as Thursday is Investor / Demo Day. As I was getting reacquainted with the early morning view from my condo in Boulder and pondered the great town I…
Taking A Month Off From Air Travel →
I am so totally, utterly, and completely sick of air travel. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve had to put up with me whining for the past week on my Denver to Seattle to Los Angeles to San…
July 2009
32 posts
TechStars: Episode 9: It’s About Doing →
One of my favorite quotes is “Do, or do not. There is no try.” When you say it (or think it), you must use Yoda’s mix of a gravelly+whiney voice and pretend you are short and green. Variations of…
My Daily Atlas Shrugged Moment →
I’m having more and more Atlas Shrugged moments these days. Today’s was courtesy of an add on LinkedIn.
My first response to the ad was “I’m not sure I want to see my…
Holes In The Mainstream Media Wall →
I’ve always hated walled gardens. Before I started blogging in 2004, I had a point of view that was driven from my desire to share interesting information with my friends and colleagues. Since I’m…
The Illusion of Progress →
I’ve had a busy July – lots activity in my portfolio, travel, and interesting stuff to deal with. Most of the companies in my portfolio had solid Q2’s (recession? what recession?), I’ve watched…
Eric Ries Is Coming To Boulder →
I’ve been interested in different approaches to software development going back to 1987 when – in my first company Feld Technologies – my partner Dave Jilk and I started talking about “semi-custom…
TechStars: Episode 8: Your Best Friend →
I hope you are enjoying the TechStars video series as much as I am. This week’s video – Episode 8: Your Best Friend is a special one. Early on Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless has a great…
Sensobi – A Better Address Book For Your... →
I spent last Thursday at TechStars Boston meeting with all of the TechStars Boston 2009 teams. They’ve all made a ton of progress since I met with them a month ago and many of them are shaping up…
My First Office – 875 Main Street, Cambridge, MA... →
Everyone remembers their first “X”. Last Thursday, I spent the day in Cambridge at the TechStars Boston office. It’s in Central Square, just down the block from where I lived for four years…
Mastering A Genre – Book: The Accidental... →
Yesterday afternoon I read Ben Mezrich’s latest book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. I downloaded it on my Kindle…
Book: Computing in the Middle Ages →
The book I read tonight – Computing in the Middle Ages: A View From the Trenches 1955-1983 by Severo Ornstein – stood out in stark contrast to the book I read yesterday – The Accidental…
Inside Zynga →
My friends at Zynga just put up a short video on the YouTube Zynga channel titled Inside Zynga which is an intro to their company.
I’ve never been involved in anything…
Another Way VCs Outnegotiate Entrepreneurs →
Jeff Bussgang from Flybridge has today’s great VC post titled In VC deals, Price Doesn’t Matter - But The “Promote” Does. While I personally dislike the phrase “promote” to describe the concept…
RFID Makes Running Marathons More Fun →
When I ran my first marathon in 1983, I remember carefully filling out all the information on my race number so that when I crossed the finish line the race organizers could actually figure out my…
Disrupting the Conference Call Market – Again →
Yesterday, Gold Systems released their new Conference Server. This is a new conference call product built on top of Microsoft Office Communications Server.
I’ve been a user of conference…
Never Mind The Valley, Here’s Boulder →
I’m in LA today taking a break between a board meeting and a dinner meeting. I’ve got a few calls and am then going running somewhere, although I haven’t yet figured out where that’s going to be…
TechStars: Episode 7: Baby Steps →
Well – that run didn’t happen. Sometimes you just need a nap. Badly. Late night + very early morning = nap. Yummy. Ready for more. In the mean time, here is this week’s TechStars Boulder: The…
Urgent Need for Colorado-based Java Contractor →
If you are an independent contractor that is a Java stud, email me. I’m specifically looking for someone with familiarity with Vignette 7, Weblogic 9, Javascript, Ajax, and .NET web services.
Some Tech Articles for You on a Saturday Morning →
As many of my friends are cranking through the TripleByPass bike race and I prepare to go for a long run in the mountains near my house in Keystone, I thought I’d leave you with a few tech…
Dead Pixel in Google Earth →
I love the blog 3 Quarks Daily. The best part is that I don’t have to read it – Amy obsesses over it and sends me all the stuff she knows I’ll like (at least a half dozen a week – sometimes a…
Naming Colorado’s Tech Scene →
I suck at naming things. I named my first company “Feld Technologies” (yeah, that was super creative, but I bet it made my dad proud.) I learned an important lesson from that one – when things go…
TechStars: Episode 6: All Around The World →
I spent the afternoon today at TechStars Boulder in the Bunker meeting with about half of the teams. I’m delighted with the progress they are making – everyone is really cranking and a few…
VCs on Twitter →
Yesterday, I wrote about the new VC Blogger Network powered by Lijit. A handful of VCs emailed me asking to be added to the network (which has been done). There’s no time limit so if you are a…