Subtle signs of change
The initial signs of hope in a market are often just the sense that things are swinging in the right direction. This is why measures such as “consumer sentiment” are so important to the outlook of an economy – when people think things are going well, they often do (and because consumers power over 70% of our economy how people are thinking about spending has a pretty material impact on how the economy actually does). …
May 4, 2009· 3 min read
Glue is coming together nicely!
I can’t promise that this will be my last pre-conference post on Glue, but I can promise that if you’re not planning on attending the conference you’re going to be missing out on a great event. To give you a sense of who is coming (other than our great group of speakers), below is a list of some of the companies and organizations that have people already registered for the event: …
April 23, 2009· 1 min read
Sam Zell at CU!
Reposting from my partner Jason Mendelson’s blog about an upcoming event at CU Boulder featuring Sam Zell. This will be a great event. In the continuing Entrepreneurs Unplugged series, next week Sam Zell will be visiting the university. April 22nd, at noon in the large (Boulder NewTech Meetup) courtroom at the law school. More info here. It is free, but you must register, so keep that in mind. Sam is always an interesting interviewee and speaker and even more so this year with his recent sale of Equity Office Property and sell of the Chicago Cubs.
April 15, 2009· 1 min read
Hit me with your best pitch (@ glue)
Brad, Eric and I came up with the idea yesterday we’re calling Pitch Brad and Seth at Glue. The concept is pretty simple: if you’re an entrepreneur who is attending Glue (and you should be attending Glue) and you have a great business idea you’re working on and you’d like to get feedback from a few VCs (that would be Brad and me), we’d love to see you. Here’s what you have to do: …
April 2, 2009· 2 min read
How I keep track of information
I get this question all the time from friends and colleagues. Between portfolio companies, prospective investments, our investment themes, my partners, family and other topics that interest me, there’s a lot of information in my universe that I need to track. And this information ranges from blog posts, to tweets to mainstream press articles. It’s a lot to pay attention to (not to mention all of the individual blogs I follow ….). For a while I was using Google Alerts but 1) there wasn’t a great way to organize them (they just showed up when they showed up – as individual “hits”); 2) they seemed to be missing a ton of information; 3) at least 2/3rds of what came through was old news (i.e., someone had made a minor change to a page which caused the Google crawler to mark it as ‘new’); 4) there was no history, tracking, etc; and 5) they were clogging up my inbox. I could go on, but if you’re a heavy user of Google Alerts, I’m sure you’re already shaking your head up and down in sympathy. …
April 2, 2009· 4 min read
Don’t be caught on the sidelines
On my drive in this morning I was trying to think of reasons for you to NOT come to Glue…and came up completely blank. Glue is a unique chance to engage about some of the most current topics surrounding web technology with a national audience. Come talk with George Reese about securing cloud infrastructure (he has an upcoming O’Rielly book on the subject); hear about OAuth, OpenID and how they play into web architectures and services from Andrew Nash (PayPal) and Danny Kolke (etelos); debate the role of XMPP with Peter Stain-Andre, Jack Moffitt and Seth Fitsimmons (3 XMPP heavyweights); rub shoulders with Mitch Kapor (uber-angel/advisor, founder of Lotus Development Corp); geek out about cloud databases with Alex Iskold (AdaptiveBlue/ReadWriteWeb) and Stu Charleton (Elastra); and much much more (see the full agenda). …
April 1, 2009· 2 min read
dotting i’s and crossing t’s
Will Herman’s post yesterday on the challenges of co-CEO’s reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest. Many businesses run loose and fast in their early days. And lets face it, the kind of people who are drawn to starting companies often aren’t process people – they are creative thinkers. While that’s part of the fun of early stage companies, don’t forget that there’s a side to what you are doing that needs to be properly documented and orderly. It’s not just Mark Zuckerberg who has founder problems – I’ve seen many business partnerships with the best intentions disintegrate, where their founders who were no longer seeing eye to eye, had to work out (or not work out as the case may be) the details of their split. And while I’m certainly not your lawyer, I’d strongly recommend that even if you are starting your company with your childhood best friend who you just got out of the army with that you put together at least a basic set of documents that will cover not only the formation of the company itself (which most people don’t tend to forget…) but also clarifies who owns what, what – if any – vesting there might be on your founders stock, what IP is owned by the company (and that the work you are doing together is company property, not individual property), etc, etc. …
March 20, 2009· 2 min read
dotting i’s and crossing t’s
Will Herman’s post yesterday on the challenges of co-CEO’s reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest. Many businesses run loose and fast in their early days. And lets face it, the kind of people who are drawn to starting companies often aren’t process people – they are creative thinkers. While that’s part of the fun of early stage companies, don’t forget that there’s a side to what you are doing that needs to be properly documented and orderly. It’s not just Mark Zuckerberg who has founder problems – I’ve seen many business partnerships with the best intentions disintegrate, where their founders who were no longer seeing eye to eye, had to work out (or not work out as the case may be) the details of their split. And while I’m certainly not your lawyer, I’d strongly recommend that even if you are starting your company with your childhood best friend who you just got out of the army with that you put together at least a basic set of documents that will cover not only the formation of the company itself (which most people don’t tend to forget…) but also clarifies who owns what, what – if any – vesting there might be on your founders stock, what IP is owned by the company (and that the work you are doing together is company property, not individual property), etc, etc. …
March 19, 2009· 2 min read
Last chance to submit to TechStars
I’ve blogged plenty about TechStars (see how much I love TechStars here) so I won’t drone on again about what a great experience the program is . . . but it totally rocks and if you’re an entrepreneur with a great idea I’d strongly encourage you to apply. The application deadline is this Saturday (for both Boston and Boulder).
March 18, 2009· 1 min read
VCIR Winter 2009 is up and running
Cross posting from the VCIR Blog. We’re liveblogging VCIR today – I won’t post everything here, but you can follow the action over at the VCIR Blog. We’ll be posting live from VCIR today. You can follow the action here at the VCIR blog (David Cohen already has a post up about the media panel that kicked off the morning session). You can also follow the action via the VCIR Winter Twitter feed. …
March 4, 2009· 1 min read