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.

And hopefully things will go great and none of this will really matter. But if they don’t, you’ll be happy you have all this in place.

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).

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.

A few stats on this year’s conference. We have just under 300 attendees at this year’s conference. They are roughly split 1/3 venture capitalists, 1/3 company executives and 1/3 service providers. This is generally comparable to last year’s attendance which was approximately 320. We’ve added two company presentation slots to this year’s conference, brining the total number of presenting companies to 24. Additionally this year all of the presenting companies are first time VCIR presenters (in prior year’s one or more of the companies had presented at a prior conference).

The main sessions have now kicked off. Track 1 covers next generation web technologies (Alliance Health, Fuser, Buzzwire, 7 Degrees, SocialEyes and iggli).  Track 2 is the clean-tech track (Ampulse, OPX, ION, SkyFuel, Porous Power and Infotility).

Check back here throughout the day for further updates.

Todd Vernon approached me last week to tell me that his perception – and that of a number of people in the Denver/Boulder community – was that the VCIR company selection process was a complete black box. This was eye opening to me (being involved in the process for years, I thought we had done an ok job letting people know how things work) and as I thought about it I realized that we really haven’t talked a lot about how we find companies for the conference and what the vetting process looks like.

The reality is that the process is pretty well thought out and (I hope) very fair. We have a large number of people on the selection committee who help rate the over 100 plans that we receive every year and we’re very active in trying to encourage entrepreneurs from around the region to submit their ideas. Tim Connor has written a post that’s now up on the VCIR Blog that describes the process in more detail. You can check it out here.

I wrote a post a few weeks ago listing out the reasons that right now is a great time to start a business. A few days ago TechCrunch came out with their TechCrunch 2008 Year in Review (their first paid report). The post that summarized the report had a preview of some of the data they write about and included the following graph that does a great job of showing why the current market can work in your favor.  Have at it!

The distinction of "what" a company does vs. "how" it does it has come up recently in a bunch of different contexts and it got me thinking about this idea as a useful distinction for companies to consider as they talk with customers, partners, media, etc.

The idea stems from a tendency that companies have to focus not on what they do, but on how they’re doing it.  In my experience this tendency is particularly true of technology companies and very prevalent in early stage companies – who in both cases are often heavily weighted towards technologists in their staffing (and therefore thinking).  It’s easy to understand how companies fall into this trap. They’ve developed a new bright shiny object (their product, web service, widget, whatever) and are enamored with how they were able to make it work. Rather than simplifying their description of what their BSO does, they talk a lot about how they were able to make it so bright and shiny (after all they’re proud of the fact that they figured out a new way of doing something).  That’s great if you’re showing off to other technologists (at least ones you don’t mind sharing your secret sauce with) but can be confusing (and counter-productive) when talking with customers and partners. 

My advice (and the theme of the conversations of the past week where this distinction has come up) is to keep things simple. Focus on what you do for your customer; what you bring to your partner. When you start running down the path of "how", stop yourself and get back to the more basic message of  "what".

In case you still haven’t signed up for Glue (see my compelling post on why you should be coming here) let me give you two more reasons: Josh Elman and Bob Frankston. Josh is the "platform guy" at Facebook (and is helping push a greater degree of openness at FB) and Bob is the co-creator of VisiCalc (and will be talking about how he’s thinking about the web as a platform). Both have signed up to give keynotes at the conference (along with David Heinemeier Hanson and Mitch Kapor both of whom I wrote about in my previous post about the conference).

You can see the latest agenda here. Note that we’ve also added a handful of new workshops and sessions to the program, which is really coming together nicely.

Glue is shaping up to be the conference for people who care about the web as a platform. Hope to see you there…

I’ve been enjoying Scott Austin’s Venture Capital Dispatch. It’s a great source of information, easy to read and is a great summary of information for those of us who don’t have time to read the Journal every day. Thought it was worth a pointer.

I’ve been a *huge* fan of Techstars since first meeting David Cohen just over two years ago and have not been bashful about my love of the concept in previous blog posts.  For those of you not familiar with the program, Techstars brings together teams of entrepreneurs from across the country to participate in an intensive 3 month summer program to jumpstart their businesses. It’s heavily mentor and experiential driven – the teams work extremely closely with the program’s mentors to advance their businesses and the summer program is filled with guest speakers that cover an array of topics of specific interest to building young businesses.

Since launching in 2007 we’ve had 20 companies through the program (of which 12 have been angel or venture financed – two of whom have already been acquired – and two more are cash flow positive).  Personally, I’ve had an amazing time working with the Techstars companies. For me the program – and more specifically the program participants – symbolize everything that is great about the drive, energy, passion and commitment of entrepreneurship. I’m lucky to have been a part of a great group of mentors to the Boulder program.

Today is a big day for Techstars – they’ve announced the launch of Techstars Boston.  My friend Shawn Broderick will be running the program and already an unbelievably strong group of mentors has signed up to participate (see the 2nd paragraph here).  Having grown up in the Boston area and still having close connections there, I’m incredibly excited about expanding the Techstars footprint there.  With a strong program leader in Shawn and fantastic local support, I have no doubt that Techstars Boston will be every bit as successful as its Boulder-based cousin.

Applications for the Boston program are open (and remember that you don’t have to be located in Boston to apply).  Apply now!

[updated the stats on the 20 companies – 2 are cash flow positive]

My partner Chris Wand and I will be in Seattle tomorrow and are hosting a meetup about Techstars (in case anyone missed the event a few weeks ago that Brad held there).  Info can be found at www.techstars.org/meetups.