My partner Ryan related amusing story about leaving his brand new MacBook Air on a recent flight. I had a similar experience myself last week, which unfortunately didn’t end up quite as happily (although fortunately didn’t involve a $3,000 piece of technology).

I left the office for a meeting on Friday afternoon with my hands full: I had my computer bag in one hand and was carrying my jacket and a garment bag in the other. In addition I was on my phone as I dragged all of this down to the parking garage. I managed to get everything in the car without disrupting (or dropping) my call and drove off. After a few blocks, I noticed that my phone wasn’t in the spot I usually keep it in the car.  I was still on the phone (on a bluetooth headset) and figured it had fallen down between the seats.  After about 10 minutes I finished my call and at the subsequent two stop lights frantically looked for my phone under the passenger seat, in my bag, etc.  About 5 minutes later I heard a thump from the top of my car (and thought relatively little of it).  About 3 minutes after that, I realized that the thump was actually my phone falling off the top of my car where I had inadvertently left it while trying to load everything into the trunk. Oops…

While it’s amazing to me that I managed to leave my phone on the car in the first place (although less of a mystery to those who know me very well), it’s even more amazing that it managed to stay on for the duration of my phone call and then some. Of course by the time I circled back, I wasn’t able to find the phone – despite multiple passes. 

Moral of the story: don’t drive with your phone on top of the car!

We’ve just put up another in a series of posts the active investment "themes" that we’re pursuing on the Foundry Group blog (see earlier theme posts here and here).  Today’s post introduces a theme that we’re calling "glue". 

Glue is our term for the web infrastructure layer that facilitates the connections between web services and content companies. As this ecosystem becomes increasingly complex and as web sites and web based applications rely on more underlying services, this “glue” layer of the Internet is becoming more and more core to overall web infrastructure.

You can view the full post here.  And don’t forget to subscribe to the Foundry blog so you can keep up to date on what we’re thinking about.

I came across a great quote from Charlie Munger that I thought was right on:

"if something’s not worth doing at all, its not worth doing well"

Nicely put.

Board communication has been the topic of a handful of conversations over the past few weeks as several of the companies I work with have grappled with both the right level of communication as well as the correct forum for certain board level discussions and decisions. 

Although there are a handful venues in which boards communicate, fundamentally they fall into one of two categories: conversations between a subset of the board (often just the CEO and an individual board member) and those that involve the full board.  While there are some decisions that must clearly be made by the full board at properly noticed board meetings (and documented as such) there are many more day-to-day decisions that either do not, or fall into a gray area where gaining board ‘consensus’ might be accomplished in different ways (or may not even be required at all).

Before I go on, let me pause to say that not only am I not a lawyer – I’m definitely not YOUR lawyer.  Decisions around proper company governance should be made in consultation with company counsel who can provide you with specific guidance around what decisions need to be made by the full board and the proper ways to obtain board consent on those matters. 

My view on board communication is actually pretty straight forward in that I believe that a mix of serial (one-on-one) and collective communication styles is appropriate (although I recognize that some of my venture colleagues skew significantly to one side or another).  Certainly CEO’s and management teams should feel free (and be encouraged) to reach out to specific board members to get operational and day-to-day tactical advice.  Topics for these conversations can range from prep for an important customer meeting, advice on a strategic alliance or partnership, thoughts on a marketing initiative, etc.  They should also regularly ‘check-in’ with their board members to make sure that they are communicating regularly (and getting feedback as necessary about both the business and their board management).  These conversations are natural places for soliciting tactical business feedback as well as preping for group decisions that are upcoming.

I draw the line on these conversations when they start to enter the realm of board decisions rather than board input (and even in the case of board input, there are some topics that really should be discussed openly with the board as a whole).  I’m generally NOT in favor of CEO’s serially calling all board members either for the purpose of gaining buy-off in the absence of a group communication or for the purpose of "pre-wiring" a board call (essentially lobbying the board before the have a chance to talk together). There’s incredible value in the actual board discussion and in many cases someone comes up with an idea that either influences the group decision or triggers a thought by another board member that wouldn’t have otherwise come up.  There’s definitely risk in this – a CEO needs to be comfortable with more far ranging conversations and open to real disagreement.  Of course, most good CEO’s embrace these sorts of conversations and have a good governor based on run-time with their board what decisions really require some kind of parallel discussion vs. those that don’t. 

One thing that significantly helps reduce the potential for problems is making sure that you are regularly communicating to your board collectively between meetings.  Regular business updates will ensure that even if you couldn’t connect with several of your board members everyone is fully up to date.  Its also a place to gain basic group feedback on topics that for one reason or another came up with only some board members and which deserve some amount of group consideration ("I spoke with George this week about XYX; he suggested ABC; I’d appreciate your thoughts on this subject as well.").

With a little thought and planning as well as at least a short, regular (at least bi-weekly) check-in will go a long way towards avoiding the problems that arise when your board feels that important decisions are being made without their full input or counsel.

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you already know that I’m crazy about my Sonos system. Time has only increased my love of the product, which is on in our house pretty much non-stop when someone is home.

Today I was pointed to a TeardownTV video of Sonos.  It’s definitely geeky, but if you’re into taking a look at what’s under the hood of electronics devices (but like me wouldn’t even consider taking your very own Sonos apart for fear of never getting it back together again) you’ll love it.   For me the video underscores just how well thought out the Sonos system is – there’s an unbelievable amount going on inside the sleek Sonos boxes but it’s internal design and lay-out is, as you’d expect from them, extremely elegant.  Enjoy!

This is a shameless request for help from anyone out there who has a good Apple connection.  I’m trying to make the switch over to the iPhone.  So far I love it – the interface is great (intuitive in a way that only Apple seems to be able to perfect) and the touch screen typing isn’t nearly the challenge that friends suggested it would be.  There are a few things that I’d love to see improved (dial by name, full inbox delete, longer battery life . . . etc.) but they are minor compared to my major problem – lack of exchange sync.

Fortunately this problem is scheduled to be fixed in a release due out this summer.  There’s a beta program up now for a select group to test the new functionality.  I’ve got no juice at Apple (and consequently have had no luck getting into this program).  Any readers out there who can help an Apple convert out?!?  I’m afraid I’m going to have to go back to the my WinME device for a while if I can’t get sync up and running soon.  HELP!

China has effectively closed off Mt. Everest peak attempts this year by baring teams from being on the mountain between March and June (which effectively closes off the window for an attempt from the Tibet side this year).  All of this is apparently in reaction to protests in recent years over Tibeten independence and the plan to have the olympic torch scale the mountain during that time period on its approach to China for the games (apparently the Chinese would prefer not to have the torch run into protesters this year).  Yikes!

See stories here and here.

comScore and behavioral ad network Tacoda  released a study last month that caught my eye.  It at least partially answers the question that I’m sure most regular internet users have asked themselves at one time or another: "who the heck actually clicks on these banner ads anyway?!?". 

Turns out that about 6% of users are "heavy clickers" in the study’s parlance.  These users generate about 50% of the total banner clicks.  The study points out that these users are heavily skewing banner click-through data.  They are also not representative of the overall internet population (heavy clickers according to the study are between the ages of 25 and 44 with household incomes less than $40k; they spend a lot of time on-line, but they don’t tend to spend a whole lot more than other users online – their clicking behavior isn’t indicative of spending behavior).Its worth taking a read of the press release which summarized the findings from their work – fascinating.

I think there’s a coming adjustment in the online advertising industry from a shift in the way that advertisers will be looking at their online spend (which overall, I – and pretty much everyone else – believe is increasing in the aggregate).  This shift will ultimately result in much better targeting and matching of users (and specific user demographics) to advertisers.  However overall, it will also result in the lowering of mean eCPM as "average" traffic proves to be less attractive to advertisers.  CPC traffic won’t go away, but clearly we’ll see more specific measurement of those clicks (and their resulting buying actions) that will try to separate the bad traffic from the good.

Hat tip: AdLab

Yahoo launched a private version of what they are calling FireEagle – a service that allows you to track your location to be shared with applications that build to the FireEagle API – its basically a location “broker” (for self reported location).  I’m a big fan of location based services (we’re investors of IP geo-information company Quova and geo-spatial platform company deCarta), so the idea of a common platform upon which to build location aware applications.  Through Quova, we’re small investors in Navizon who has a similar dev platform to FireEagle.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I clicked over to the “application gallery” tab only to find nothing there.  Nothing.  Not a single “this is cool stuff, we’ve thrown a few things up to get you going” application.  Where is the Facebook “I’m here; my friends are there” integration?  Or better yet, the Twitter “friend location tracker”?  Or even a simple widget for my blog that reports my current location Nadda.  Just a note that says essentially “there’s no there there yet”.  I don’t get the point of launching a service – even just to the developer community, which is clearly their intent from the email I received – without at least a few demo apps.  I have to imagine that there are scores of companies out there with the time, talent and inclination to have done the work to be included with this launch.  Hopefully Yahoo/FireEagle will quickly get its act together and have a full application library before they take this service much further.

I have a few more invite codes if you’re looking to check it out.  Send me a note directly and if they are not all taken, I’ll hook you up.

I’m excited about what Yahoo is doing – just want to see more meat on the bones of the bird. . .

Update: My invite codes have all been given out.

I hear a version of this question a lot (like the one below today from Dawn):

I talked to a firm that really likes my business plan but thinks I should have a technical co-founder. SIGH Any ideas how I could find a really good tech guy, preferably with some cache???

While not every business needs a technical co-founder, many (most) benefit from some early technical vision that is unlikely to be provided by the business founder.  So where do you find these people that can code, help refine your technical vision and check the technical cache box?  Here are a couple of ideas.

Surf your sandbox.  You know people.  They know people.  If you can’t think of someone who fits the bill from your own network, start asking around to other people you trust.  Particularly other technologists who will have a good sense for whether someone they might recommend has the technical chops to really help you out.  Many a great business/technical founder marriage has been made by a well intentioned third party.

Pay attention to the local scene.  Technical talent hangs out at various places in your town.  You need to find them (since they are less likely to find you).  If you are lucky enough to have a New Tech Meetup in your area or Bar Camp, StartupWeekend or Open Coffee Club or some similar semi-organized event that attracts technologists and entrepreneurs alike make sure you frequent them and talk up your ideas.  You’re looking for someone who not only can add to your project, but who also shares your enthusiasm.  If your town doesn’t have any of these – start one.  You’d be amaze at how quickly people will come out of the ether to share ideas at events like the ones listed above.

Be vocal.  My recent "stealth or not" post aside, if you’re looking to find someone to share in the passion of your idea you need to be talking it up. On your blog. In comments to other peoples’ posts. In web forums.  Maybe even on Craig’s List.  Don’t be shy about sharing your idea and asking for help.  I know a bunch of co-founders who found each other on message boards or in similar forums.

Check your mentors.  This is really an extension of surfing your sandbox, but you shouldn’t be shy about asking around for help.  Bother the local VC bloggers, ask the people that are helping you get off the ground if they know anyone.  Be aggressive about asking people who might have good ideas for help.

Good luck! I’d love to hear from teams that met in the ways described above (or in any other way for that matter) – founder stories are always entertaining.