Brad, Jason and I are going to try something new in Boulder starting this fall – Community Hours at the TechStars bunker. We’re all fans of "random meetings" – taking meetings from people that have been referred to us or have taken the time to write to ask to get together – but sometimes struggle to fit them into our schedules (I’m particularly poor at this – scheduling them generally at random and breaking up many days with too many meetings and not enough time at my desk). 

With this in mind the three of us are going to try to set aside some concentrated random meeting time. We’ve set up a self-service wiki for people to sign up. The rules are pretty simple – set up an account and then pick a date and time slot. Fill in your name, email address and a description of what you want to talk about. These are intended to be introductory meetings, so don’t let the short time be a deterrent – there’s plenty of opportunity to follow up (and I imagine the days will be pretty flexible as well to allow for more time as necessary).

Let me know what you think.  See you at the bunker!

I wrote a post a few years ago poking fun at how people (myself included) sign off on their email correspondence. Ben recently pointed me to a Post article on the same subject (written a little more seriously than mine).  I continue to find amusing the myriad of ways people use to sign their emails – especially now that social media “coolness” has invaded the tech circles that I run around in (i.e., where there’s more pressure than ever to be seen as cool and with it in the tech world). This has only served to increase the craziness of email sign-offs. Here are a few of my favorites along with my interpretation of their meaning (updated with a few new ones). I’m curious to hear any outlandish or amusing sign-offs that readers have received. Let me know.

• Cheers! – I’m cool!
• Best – I don’t want to be locked into a specific sign-off – please interpret as you wish (best wishes, best regards, best cheers, etc.)
• All the best – When “Best” simply isn’t good enough
• Ciao! – I’m cool! and trying to act foreign
• See Ya! – I’m trying to act 15; don’t all the kids say this still?
• Sincerely – I took this really great business writing class in high school
• Thanks – I really do mean thanks (when used correctly) / I can’t think of anything else to say (when used incorrectly, for example at the bottom of a flame e-mail)
• Hope all is well – Please DO NOT write back with details of whether you are well or not – I’m just trying to be polite
• Warm regards – I’ve just returned from my latest analyst session and am feeling pretty centered
• See you on [insert social media site here] – I’m very plugged in to the social web
• [nothing but your name] – Sometimes less is more
• — [first initial] – we’re really good friends (or I’m trying to pretend we are)
• [not even your name – just your full signature] – I’m so efficient/important/etc. that I don’t have time to even type in my name

One of our portfolio companies (a heretofore stealthy one at that) is looking for Pay Per Click stars (Google AdWords Qualified or SEMPO Institute training preferred) to join their crowdsourced PPC marketplace. If you’re a PPC marketing expert click here to find out more and sign up.

Lots more on Trada (which we haven’t yet been talking about broadly) in the coming months as they really start to open up.

One of the companies I work with recently sent the following email to the CEO’s of a number of similar companies (I’ve redacted the email a bit to preserve the privacy of the company):

I’m the CEO of [really cool portfolio company]. We’re a [insert company attribute/industry here] company as well I have been talking to a number of other [attribute/industry] players and I think we all are facing some similar issues as we try and both mature our businesses and the [attribute/industry] industry at the same time. I’m pulling together a private discussion group for a select set of these businesses where we can have open conversations with each other about issues we face and how we are dealing with them. I feel like we’re all treading a lot of the same ground right now. For example, how do you [list of things that we’re dealing with].. I feel like CS industry is a bit where the Open Source industry was 5 years ago. Lots of standards to learn still.

I’m focusing on high level members of these companies (CEO, a CTO, your community manager, or some combination that makes sense) to participate in this group. It will be informal but have basic no-blog rules as a backdrop to it.

The result has been amazing. There are over 30 participants now in this email discussion group (that has only been up and running now for about 10 days) and the pace and depth of the discussion has been remarkable. My favorite email started with "I’ve never taken longer to reply to an email" – this group is extremely engaged and is tackling topics that are similar across all of their companies and sharing the results of their respective efforts. We’ve taken some of the topics off-line at our portfolio company and had in depth discussions about how what we’re learning from the group is changing our thinking about certain product features and informing how we’re tackling a handful of sticky problems, etc.

There’s no magic to doing this. It just took the initiative of one company to start to pull together a core group (which has now expanded as the initial participants have brought additional people into the fold).

In case you were wondering what goods Google has on you check out http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ from the browser you typically use for web browsing and search. If you scroll down you’ll see what interests Google has you pegged for and get to see the data they have collected on you in your cookie.

For me the most interesting part wasn’t the data they had on me, but looking through the Google interests taxonomy at the bottom of the page.  There are specific tags for individual car brands, for your love of Bollywood movies, pest control, screensavers, etc. It’s an interesting glimpse into how Google thinks about the world (and more importantly into what categories Google thinks it can make money by trafficking).

Damon Darlin argues in an article earlier this week in the Times that serendipity has become "lost in the digital deluge". His premise is essentially that through services like Twitter, Facebook and others we’ve essentially crow-sourced content discovery and lost is the beauty of discovering "something we never knew we wanted to find" (he uses the example of browsing a friend’s CD or video collection as something that the digital age has killed).  Even services like StumbleUpon or UrbanSpoon, which are designed to surface information that users typically wouldn’t find themselves – Darlin argues – really just gravitate to the mean.

What?!?

The Internet that gives us almost unlimited access to almost unlimited information, which allows us to browse for hours on any subject imaginable, that enables us to follow links from site to site on random topics that pique our interest, that shows us what our friends are up to at any given moment, enables us to see what music the people we know are listening to, to discover new and as yet unheard of content that is related to the things you already like (music, movies, books, blogs, etc) – this same Internet is somehow killing serendipitous content discovery?!? Is he talking about the Internet that the rest of us are on?

Even the specific examples Darlin gives don’t stand up. Finding content through Twitter group think is quite serendipitous. Discovering a new band through a The Hype Machine or a news article through StumbleUpon is not only the Internet acting to surface new content, but it increases the frequency of serendipitous events. The more time we spend online the more we’re likely to find things that we wouldn’t otherwise have discovered ("ser-en-dip-i-tous – to come upon or found by accident" according to dictionary.com). In fact for me, one of the greatest things about the social web (as opposed to the information web of the late 90’s and early 00’s) is it’s ability to bring new ideas and content directly to me. I’m constantly amazed at the variety of new and interesting content that I run across all brought to me from different sources and friends across the web. It’s all quite . . . serendipitous . . .

Over the last 6 months I’ve noticed a large number of business plans that are incorporating some form of “crowdsourcing” into their business models. Crowdsourcing, popularized by James Surowiecki excellent book The Wisdom of Crowds, seeks to harness the power of the masses with the idea that the “crowd” can often produce a better result than any given individual (in the classic crowdsouring example a large group tries to guess the number of gumballs in a jar; typically the average guess is closer to the right number than any individual guess – the crowd as a whole is better than even it’s smartest individual member). 

There are some great business ideas around this – particularly ones that truly take advantage of the wisdom of crowds (as opposed to those that just take advantage of the brute force of having large numbers of people at your disposal to push through a repetitive task – these can be interesting businesses as well but aren’t exactly what I’m talking about). I’ve been working on a business that uses these principals in some unique ways which I’ll write about soon (although for now the company is keeping the specifics of its business close). I’m curious what other crowdsourced ideas people have seen and liked out there.

Trada (one of our Boulder based portfolio companies) is looking to hire. They’re looking for a tech-skilled individual who thinks they can do just about everything, because they might be asked to.  Primary role is testing their online advertising app but there’s a huge opportunity to contribute much more.  There’s dev work; cloud systems admin; operations tasks; end-user support; and even customer facing account management tasks that can be added to the mix for the properly skilled (and properly motivated) individual.  While still in stealth these guys are already rocking. Interested? contact Michael Lawless at mlawless@trada.com

In case you don’t have 12 hours to actually do the Colorado Hajj yourself, Walker has conveniently condensed the trip into a ~3 minute video. Enjoy!

Dan Primack sited a study on PE Hub today that found that over 50% of VC professionals believe that the VC industry is “broken”.  My response:

WHO CARES?

Seriously. It seems like the venture industry these days spends more time lamenting its future than actually working towards a future that’s different.  And they couldn’t be more short term in their perspective.  VC sentiment has started to become like consumer sentiment – something that moves on a monthly basis. Are we forgetting that our business is about spotting long term trends and funding business cycles that are measured in years, not months?!? 

It’s possible I’m simply in the wrong demographic (almost 85% of the respondents were east- or west-coast VCs), the wrong fund stage (we raised capital in late 2007 and as a result are still in our active investment phase), have the wrong fears (in the “very worried” category “Exit Markets” was a 2x favorite over all other choices – but good companies continue to find liquidity), or am simply in the wrong mindset (I think now is a great time to start a business and an equally great time to be an early stage investor). 

My partner Jason has a thoughtful response to the study (as you might imagine he shares my optimistic view) in which he points out a few key reasons why now is a great time to be an investor (you can read the full article here):

• Its never been cheaper to start a business
• There are a ton of entrepreneurs around working on interesting projects
• Many of these entrepreneurs have been around the block a few times
• The venture markets aren’t dependent on the credit markets, etc.
• What we thought/hoped would happen 10 years ago has – the world of technology is larger and more lucrative than we even imagined

I’m done talking/listening about how the venture model is broken. If that’s how you feel and you’re in venture, perhaps you should find a new job.