This is a cross post from the VCIR blog. We recently put together an analysis of companies that have presented at VCIR over the last 10 years. And the numbers are pretty impressive – reinforcing why the conference is such a great opportunity to see great companies from around the rocky mountain region. For more information on the conference itself, including how to register, visit the VCIR Winter website.

VCIR By the Numbers:

Presenting companies: 212

Companies who raised additional funding after their VCIR appearance: 127

Total funding raised by these companies (only includes amounts raised after their VCIR presentations): $2.5 Billion

Presenting companies acquired: 29

Total acquisition value (includes announced values for 19 of the 29 transactions): $4.4 Billion

The clear take-away, of course, is that VCIR is an event that showcases outstanding companies from around the Rocky Mountain region. Hope to see you there.

As you may know from reading prior posts on the subject the two days that comprise the Glue Conference (May 23rd and 24th, 2012) are some of the most information packed and interesting days of my year. To me what sets Glue apart is that it stands almost alone in the conference circuit as a show that’s neither company specific (Google I/O, Dreamforce, Chirp) or startup celebrity focused (DEMO, TC50, etc.). There are only a sparse few events that are developer focused  – which makes Glue that much more important.

Glue is an incredibly well run conference and you can tell by looking at both the substance and structure of the agenda that Eric and Kim have put a lot of thought into how to enable conference attendees to get the most out of being there. From the simple things that you’ll appreciate long before you realize that you rarely see them at other conferences (power strips at each table, blazing fast wifi, killer soundtrack, etc) to the break-out sessions designed to dive deeply into a subject or technology, to the ample networking, to the ALU DemoPods (see below), Glue is an event designed to enable every attendee to get the most out of their being there (Eric and Kim don’t believe that their job stops when you walk in the door; a great sign of this is that you’ll often see them roaming the floor putting people together that they think should meet).

Last year and again this year, we’ve partnered with Alcatel Lucent to bring the Glue DemoPod to the conference, enabling 12 early stage companies to the show to show off what they’re up to. This was a huge hit last year, with the conference attendees voting for their favorite new company among the bunch (with the winner getting the chance to make a keynote address to the entire conference on the last day of the show). Thanks to ALU, we’re doing it all again for 2012 with another great batch of companies:

• Ducksboard
• CloudMine
• ownCloud
• Mortar Data
• Keen.io
• Tempo
• Kronovia
• RapidEngines
• Cloudability
• Emergent One
• Distil
• WhenAUser

New to this year’s Glue is a focus on the hackathon. We’ve done them each year of Glue, but never with the emphasis we’re placing on it in 2012. This year we’re bringing in a great group of hackathon sponsors to help us out (Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, Pearson, Cloudspokes (Appirio), Mashery, Loggly), we’re extending the hackathon into day two of the conference, and we’re seriously upping the ante on prizes. Glue is about developers and developers like to build stuff. Come hack away!

So whether you’re an enterprise developer (staying current on technologies, checking out what start-ups can help accelerate your own businesses and internal development initiatives), a start-up developer (all of the above plus looking for a chance to interface, recruit and push the envelope with the next generation of technologists) or a C-level exec (in particular looking to see what’s 3-6 months out on the horizon) Gluecon is for you.

You can register for the event here. Or email me if you have any questions.

For about the past 18 months I’ve been talking about the coming of programmatic technologies (machine to machine buying and selling) to the premiums side of the display ecosystem. It was one of my “2012 AdTech Predictions” published last year in AdExchanger and I expanded on that prediction in a piece earlier this year, also in AdExchanger.

The basic idea is simple. Programmatic technology has made a huge difference in online advertising – bringing down transaction costs, allowing for better audience and content targeting, enabling publishers to better manage their inventory while at the same time allowing advertisers to make better buying decisions (not to mention spot ad buys). It’s been a great addition to the ad stack and for Foundry a solid area for investment (our two companies that play directly into this trend are AdMeld, which was purchased by Google late last year, and Triggit, the leading onramp to the Facebook exchange and growing extremely rapidly). Both AdMeld and Triggit – as well as almost all of the other companies that play in programmatic – are focused on non direct sold or remnant inventory. This was a logical place for programmatic technologies to be first applied. Publishers were more focused on the direct sold side of their business since that was where the large dollars were. And the marginal cost for a single impression (and therefore the cost of getting something wrong) was relatively low. At the same time, there was a huge volume of remnant impressions that were available to this ecosystem and because of the way these impressions had traditionally been grouped together for buys by the ad networks, there were significant targeting efficiencies to be gained by adding a software layer to this buying process (allowing more impression and user level information to pass through the system as well as opening up those impressions to multiple bidders through real time bidding).

Fast forward to today and because of these efficiencies and better targeting capabilities programmatic in general and RTB in particular has taken off even faster than most industry observers (myself included, although we’ve been the happy recipient of this trend) ever expected. But how can these same marketplace rules apply to the other side of the inventory equation – those high value impressions that are sold directly by a publisher’s sales force? This buying process is still handled manually, by fax and email primarily, adding complexity and cost to the process that is almost hard to imagine (which is one of the reasons that other forms of brand advertising remain in much greater favor than online). Dealing with premium inventory is a different beast and requires different technology and different rules of transacting than remnant. But the benefits in terms of marketplace fluidity, reach, scope and efficiency have an even greater potential on this side of the market.

I first met John Ramey from isocket about a year ago. We started talking about 16 months ago – after I had started thinking about the coming of programmatic guaranteed but before I was making much noise talking about it. isocket was well on their way building products and the isocket marketplace to go after this market. Over the months we’ve spent time together trading ideas about how this side of the business was likely to evolve, updating me on the progress of isocket, letting me know which ex-AdMelders he was bringing on board, etc. I’ve come away from each of our conversations more and more impressed with the platform isocket is building and more and more convinced that we wanted to have a chip on the table in programmatic guaranteed. John has surrounded himself with an impressive group of advisors, including James Beriker of Efficient Frontier and Dapper who will be joining me on the isocket board.

I’m extremely excited to be working with John and the isocket team and look forward to building a great business together. You can read the full isocket release here (which also talks about the launch of the BuyAds Pro product, the addition of James Beriker formerly of Efficient Frontier and Dapper to the isocket board as well as the addition of Mark Liao from Yahoo as CFO). Exciting times!

You wouldn’t know if from the lack of activity on VC Adventure, but my one and only new year’s resolution for 2010 is to blog more. More consistently. More often. More reliably. So prepare for a flury (or at least a steady trickle) of blogging!

Back in the fall we announced that our Glue Conference had teamed up with Alcatel Lucent to sponsor 15 companies from across the country to attend Glue on ALU’s dime (selected companies not only get admission to the conference but also will be featured in ALU’s demo space at the show). Submissions are open – you can find out more information on applying here.

Our goal for Gluecon has always been to make it *the* gathering place for developers working on the connective technologies that hold the web and IT infrastructure together – from web services to SOA to APIs and cloud computing. So if your’e working on a project that fits the bill and want to have a chance to attend GlueCon for free, give it a shot.

Like a lot of people, I’m stuck on Zoom for most of the day, although I’ve tried to mix in some regular phone call meetings – even when Zoom would be available – just to give me a break from time to time. I’ve found that Zoom works reasonably well for functional meetings and for information sharing / webinar-style meetings. When I say “functional meetings”, I mean executive team meetings, check-ins, and board meetings – ones that are fairly informational and have a relatively set agenda, but likely the kind of meetings that you have on a regular basis (weekly or monthly).

However, when I’ve held meetings that were more strategic in nature – such as open-ended planning meetings and those to talk about general strategy – they haven’t translated to Zoom very well. These meetings tend to run longer and I’ve struggled with video conferencing as the medium because it feels like there’s something missing – the body language in the room is hard to read and it seems easy to lose people’s attention, even from the very start. I find it’s even easy for me to lose attention in this setting and stay fully engaged. It’s harder to follow the more open ended conversations that “strategy” meetings lend themselves to and it’s just harder to stay engaged. This isn’t “Zoom fatigue” – that’s real and I definitely feel it many days – but something else.

I’m wondering if other people have noticed this and if anyone has any ideas for ways to improve that dynamic. We’re all stuck on Zoom for the foreseeable future, which had been working great for more functional meetings. But as we at Foundry have moved from tactical meetings related to Covid/PPP/our weekly Monday meetings to planning meetings (portfolio reviews and in particular our quarterly off-sites that we’ve been doing since the start of Foundry), they’re just not translating as well to Zoom. Bring remote has had many advantages in terms of productivity (no travel, no driving to/from work, lots of focused time) but there are plenty of draw-backs and this is a big one in my world.

If you have ideas and suggestions for ways to counter these issues, please weigh in – I’d love to hear your thoughts.

With so many jobs being lost to the COVID-19 crisis a group of us thought it would be helpful to put together a talent network to help support those looking for work during this challenging time. We know there are companies out there hiring, and that includes tech companies. The Colorado #Covid19 Startup Talent Network provides job seekers access to upload their profile information and job skills. It also allows companies to search for talent and sort on various job criteria.

Please share this network so we can get the word out. You can use this bitl.ly shortlink for ease: bit.ly/COCovid19StartupTalent.

You can also quickly share through social media with this ClickToTweet link: https://ctt.ac/fbncf

A few thoughts as we launch this. We know it’s rough. Our goal was to get a basic set of capabilities launched as quickly as possible. We also know that the need beyond the startup/tech community is great. We started with tech because that’s what we know. We’re looking for help to stand up other versions of this database and create Talent Networks for other industries (Retail, Hospitality and Restaurant are urgent, but there are others). If you’re interested in helping make that happen you can reach out through the “contact the organizer” link on the Talent Network site or just email me directly (we need some people with some technical talent who can create the data fields and host the networks).

A number of people helped get the Talent Network ready to launch. First and foremost, Micah Mador from Foundry, who set up the database in Airtable, created the splash page and is maintaining the network itself.

Others provided valuable feedback to earlier versions of the Network. At Foundry this included Jason Lynch and Jaclyn Hester. Also, Kendra Haberkorn, Jennifer Goldman, Marc Nager, Jennifer Shedd, Jon Landau, and Natty Zola.

And thanks to all of you for getting the word out.

I’ll update this post as we get additional versions of this Network launched.

And while we’re calling this a Colorado network (mostly because it was created here), we recognize that most jobs at the moment are remote and many will remain that way. We’re not trying to put any artificial geographic boarders around this – but do want to recognize the limitations of what we’ve so quickly built.

A few notes before I jump into this. First, I realized in running through several drafts of this post that it can be hard to talk about networking without coming across as a bit cold or transactional in how one approaches relationships. I hope the note below doesn’t come off that way – my aim was to talk about something that I really care deeply about and offer some ideas for how to strengthen and deepen the working relationships in your life. Secondly, I’d like to thank Patrick (who I reference below) for his review and feedback of several drafts of this post – it was very much appreciated (and needed).

While we live in a hyper-connected world, how deep do those connections really run? And how do we better cultivate those relationships? It’s easy to pay lip service to our networks, but for me and for many of the readers of this blog our networks – the relationships we maintain with our peers and our contacts – are central to our lives (and here I’m purposely blurring the lines between business and personal, as many of the relationships we maintain do the same). I’m deliberate about how I maintain these relationships and wanted to share some thoughts/ideas on how to better maintain one’s network. I’d like to give credit here to Patrick from MindMaven, who helped me hone these skills and who has been a voice in my ear for the past year keeping me honest about making sure I care and tend to my network.

Make relationship building a priority. I’m often thinking about ways to be more connected to people in ways that are both authentic and meaningful. Relationship building is important to me and rather than let it happen by accident I regularly look for ways to deepen the relationships I have with friends and colleagues. The point I’m making is that being authentic and meaningful doesn’t always have to equate to a lot of work and effort. I actually believe that many people fear the effort they avoid it completely (I’d actually say that most people do). However there are ways in which you can deliver authentic and meaningful experiences to your network that do not cost you too much time and effort.

By making relationship building a priority you will develop habits around it. For example, one important habit I’ve developed is not letting things pass me by that are clear and obvious touch-points with someone I care about. I’ve found that a simple “saw this article about your company and it made me think of you” or “saw your quote here and I found it really insightful” or “saw this on Twitter and thought I’d share it with you” is extremely powerful. Plus it’s authentic. When I see someone I know has raised money, or been featured somewhere, it makes me happy. But instead of letting that thought pass, I take a minute to write a quick email to tell them that. The key here is to not let the moment pass or try to remember to do it later – when you are in the moment, the likelihood of actually doing it is much higher. At the time you see something that reminds you of someone, take 30 seconds and tell them that. It doesn’t take much time to send that message but it shows that you genuinely care about the relationship. The reason why this is so powerful is that it creates interactions that are relevant but where you are not asking for anything. It separates you from the transactional nature of asking for a favor from someone you haven’t talked to in a while. Investing in relationships on an ongoing basis create stronger bonds and if there does come a time when you’re asking something of someone in your network it feels more natural and less transactional.

Tools to help. At the end of the day, tools help but don’t take the place of actual work. In the tech industry we often try to rely on tools as the solution to our challenges when we identify a problem. That is rarely the right answer. Better is to figure out the habits we need to establish and use tools to reinforce or take friction out of those habits. With that as an important preamble to this section, I have found many tools that help me do that…Organizing this activity is important – there’s so much information flowing at each of us, it’s easy to miss stuff. Developing a tool-set to support your networking and engagement work doesn’t have to be particularly complicated  – for me it’s Tweetdeck to manage various groups on twitter; Feedly to manage the blogs I read; Accompany to help track news mentions of people in my network; and Contactually, which I describe in more detail below, to organize my network and keep track of who I’m connecting with. They all help me stay on top of what’s going on and allow me to gather data on my network to I don’t have to search out news and updates – those updates come to me.

A personal touch matters. I have terrible handwriting so this doesn’t come easy to me, but I have nice card stock that has my name on it with envelopes with a printed return address and I regularly use this to send notes out to people I’ve met with or who have helped me out in some way. A trick I’ve found is to use a sharpie – it slows me down and forces me to write more clearly (not my strong suit, as I said). The note doesn’t have to be a long one – the point is that I’m taking the time to write something personal, address and stamp it. Emails are great, but I don’t like to miss the chance to send someone a personal note of thanks.

Know your network. Being proactive about your network doesn’t happen by accident but it also doesn’t happen if you’re not deliberate about who is in your network in the first place. Most of us manage this in our heads, which is a mistake. I’ve played around with a few different tools for this and the one I rely the most on is Contactually. This platform integrates with my email and allows me to track how often I’m interacting with my network (over email and twitter at least) and, most importantly, set reminders and goals for how often I want to connect with people in different parts of my network. I’m not a slave to Contactually – I don’t reach out to people for no reason just because Contactually tells me it’s been too long, for example – but I do use it to make sure that I know how frequently I’m interacting with people in my network and to set reminders for myself to stay on top of my contacts.

Ultimately all of this comes down to care and feeding. Your network is in some ways a living, breathing organism. Yet most of us treat it like it’s static and exists when and as we need it. But networks need work and you’ll find you get out of them what you put into them.

Brad has a nice series running on patents which I’ve enjoyed a lot (I think the existing patent system is completely hosed, totally ineffective and open to blatant abuses of power – see this post from Jason for the perfect example).

Well today, there’s a glimmer of hope that change may be on the way as the administration and it’s head patent policeman Jon Dudas announced the intent (note the gap between intent and action, but at least it’s a first step) to reform the patent system. While I generally like the idea of requiring patent filers to include more information on why their invention is ‘novel’ the gem for me in today’s announcement is the idea of opening up patents to more of a peer review. What a novel idea – have people who are actually in a particular field help determine whether an idea is truly novel and therefore patentable. In a system where the average patent is looked at by an examiner for about 7 hours before being approved (and where the default behavior seems to be “assume this is novel until proven definitively otherwise) far too many patents which are both obvious and not particularly original are being issued.

While I don’t think software patents will ever be outlawed, perhaps the PTO will someday go the next logical steps and more significantly tighten up the requirements for issuing a patent (and issue far fewer patents) and completely abolish method patents all together (ok – I’m deluding myself on that last one). I’m hoping today’s announcement is a step in that direction.

If you have a minute and are looking for a laugh, check out this list of patents actually issued by the PTO – I particularly like the electrified table cloth (to keep bugs off your table, of course). Why didn’t I think of that one?!?

Thanks to Brad for pointing me to the article – I’m sure he’ll have his own post up about this move in the right direction when he gets back from a few days unplugged.

I’m really excited about an upcoming event that my partners at Foundry have put together that will build upon the discussion we’ve been having around New Builders in some critically important ways. Senator John Hickenlooper and Congressman Joe Neguse will join Denver entrepreneurs Makisha Boothe, Founder of Sistahbiz Global Network and Lorena Cantarovici, Founder and CEO of Maria Empanada Restuarant. We plan to dig deeper into why politicians like to talk about small businesses but rarely enact meaningful policies to help them (and increasingly seem to be favoring policies that support larger businesses at the expense of smaller enterprises). 

The event is free and will be held on Tuesday, May 18 at 1pm MTN / 3pm EDT / 12pm PDT. You can register here. And, of course, if you haven’t read the book, it will be a great primer for the event. You can find information on how to pick up a copy here.

I hope you can join us!

You already know a lot about you. But I don’t. I sit at this end of the internets and type our posts on topics that I hope you’ll find interesting. And some portion of you tweet out links to posts that you like. And a smaller portion of you either comment on a post I’ve written or send me an email with your thoughts (all of these things – from just reading to any level of engagement – I appreciate!). But I don’t know a whole lot about you in aggregate. I use Google Analytics on the site which lets me see a little bit about where you come from to get to my site (and where you go after you’re done) but the information available is pretty basic.

That is until now.

Today Lijit announced the release of their enhanced audience analytics tool which gives publishers some pretty interesting insights into who is visiting their site. It’s free and you don’t have to sign up for either the Lijit search widget or the Lijit ad network to run Lijit analytics on your site (as an aside, I love that Lijit has structured its suite of services to be completely independent, but additive to each other – you get more out of using Lijit the more of their services you adopt, but if all you want is one, that’s ok too).

Lijit’s publisher network has grown significantly over the past year and now numbers 17,000. These publishers generate over 1.5 Billion monthly pageviews and the Lijit network sees over 100M unique users each month. At peak times the Lijit backend is adding over 1M reader and advertiser transactions per second. That’s a lot of data that helps Lijit better monitize traffic for their publishers and is now powering their enhanced analytics product.

Now back to you. So it turns out that your’e likely caucasian. And male. And don’t have kids. You’ve probably been to college and you’re reasonably affluent. Sound like you? Sounds to me like it’s time to diversify a bit (not just my readers, but entrepreneurs in general – where are the female, minority founders?!?).