Brad Feld

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Live as if you would die tomorrow, learn as if you would live forever

Dec 29, 2008
Category Books

Yup – that’s a Gandhi quote that came from Om Malik’s great post What I Learned This YearI encourage you to read it slowly and ponder it.  With it, I begin my suggested Daily Reading for you, as Om has kicked it off with a “what”.

Holiday’s and Communication: Jud Valeski, Gnip’s CTO, gives us a framework for “why” people twitter and blog.

What does the BoulderTwits graph mean: Pete Warden helps with a “who” as he does a neat visualization on Boulder Twitters based on data he’s putting together.  Boulder is aggressively pulling Pete toward it – I predict he’ll be here full time soon.

Making an IRS Section 83B election: If you are an entrepreneur, Dave Naffzinger explains the importance and process of filing an 83b election.  I was involved in an acquisition in 2008 where the founders did not file their 83b’s (even though the lawyers provided them to file – they just blew it off) and I expect they will never start anything else again, including a lemonade stand, without filing an 83b.

Florida, the Next Hotbed of Venture Capital: Ah those professional writers at the WSJ have such clever titles.  This is an article about the Florida Opportunity Fund, a $29.5m “fund of funds” that will invest in VC funds that commit to investing in Florado-based business.  I’ve learned a lot of this through my relationship with the Utah Fund of Funds (one of Foundry’s LPs) which has done the state-based fund of funds correctly (compared to a lot of other states which has done this incorrectly.)  I’ve been working, as part of my role as co-chairman on the Colorado Governor’s Innovation Council on putting together a plan for a Colorado Fund of Funds (similar to the Utah one).  It’ll be interesting to see if they get it right in Florida.

The Editor Dilemma: Fred Wilson has a good post up explaining two things.  First, he talks about why he doesn’t spend time working on spellin, grammer, and verbige on his blog.  He then goes on to describe a product (or maybe just a feature (limited wiki editing on blog posts) that he’d like to see.  In doing this, he explains (by demonstrating) how he uses his blog as flypaper to attract interesting entrepreneurs and discuss new ideas.  Gracefully done Fred.  I’ll take that feature to also.