Amy and I are huge fans and collectors of Rick Dula. We’ve got a number of pieces of his art of the construction of the new Denver Art Museum hanging in my office at Foundry Group that we bought from the William Havu Gallery in Denver.
Our anniversary was June 21st and neither of us managed to get the other one a gift. So – on June 21st we went trolling around the web for a piece of art to buy. We each bought one and then decided to buy two more for our life dinner gifts on July 1st. The two that we bought on our anniversary were Rick Dula’s – the first is R.I.P. Rocky Mountain News Building.
My world is all about innovation. In the mid 1990’s, as the commercial Internet started to emerge and the World Wide Web became something that people both knew about and used, it seemed like the traditional newspaper (and traditional newspaper business) wasn’t long for the world. While it took fifteen or so years for the real end game to emerge, I’ll definitely hang this one in my office as a reminder of how creative destruction works.
This one is a big one – 41.5” x 55” – so we aren’t yet sure where it’s going to go. Since we love to support local living artists, we’ll definitely try to find a spot for this other than “storage.”
One of the most satisfying parts of what I do is getting to work with people over a long period of time, starting early in their careers. It’s one of the things I love about TechStars, but it’s not limited to that as I have many other relationships with young and first time entrepreneurs.
Last night, at Ignite Boulder 5, I had a permagrin on my face as I thought about the amazing job Andrew Hyde was doing. I first met Andrew a few years ago when we started TechStars – he basically volunteered to hang out with a video camera for free all summer to film stuff and learn. He was so hugely helpful that it was easy to bring him on board the TechStars team in year two as the community manager.
I attended Ignite Boulder 2 and had a great time. But last night – #5 – just blew me away. 700-ish people in the Boulder Theater, enormous energy, endless laughter and brain stimulation, and just a very good time. Andrew organized a phenomenal show and really shined as the organizer / MC.
But wait, there’s more. Andrew is everywhere in the Boulder startup community while managing to travel all over the world sharing his brand of entrepreneurial passion. I don’t ever think I’ve seen Andrew without a smile on his face, and he’s even gracious when he kicks my butt in ping poing.
It’s been awesome to see Andrew come of age as a key driver of our local entrepreneurial community. Good job man!
Trada, one of our portfolio companies in Boulder, 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 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.
If I told you that I had just filed a patent for “a system to sell equity in domain names”, I’d expect you to laugh at me. I haven’t ranted and raved against software (and business method) patents for a while because I got bored of doing it. The PTO has gotten so far behind on responding to patent applications that the whole notion of a four year cycle to get a software patent approved just underscores how ridiculous the whole thing is given the pace of innovation in software.
I’ve been a delighted iPhone user since they upgraded the software to have mail / contact / calendar sync with Exchange. With the 3.0 version of the software, I’m even more delighted. I’ve had an iPhone 3GS since the day they came out (thanks Ross for standing in the non-line at the AT&T store for me) and – with the exception of the crappy AT&T 3G network – I find new little magic happy things every single day.
As my app portfolio continues to radically expand and I endlessly fiddle with placement, I thought it might be useful to reflect (and memorialize) the apps that are currently on my first screen. Here’s goes – left to right, from top row to bottom row.
Calendar
Messages
Maps
IMExchange: Finally, someone got Outlook Task syncing with an iPhone app. Worth the money.
Camera: Much improved – actually good pictures!
Photo
Weather
Kindle: Yes, I can actually read books on this.
Brightkite: I use this to post pictures to Twitter. And occasionally log where I’m at.
Clock
100 Pushups: Damnit – I will get stronger.
FlightTrack: Indispensible when used with TripIt.
Vlingo: Apple Voice Control is good, but Vlingo is great.
iPod
App Store
Settings
Phone
Mail
Safari
Tweetie: I’ve tried them all and this one is the best.
Page Two are my “less regularly used, but at least once a week” apps (like Fandango). Page Three are apps from our portfolio companies (have you played Mafia Wars on the iPhone yet? or Vampires? or used your Pogoplug?) Page Four is a bunch of random other junk, although I’m pretty aggressive about deleting apps I never use.
I wonder what Page One is going to look like a year from now? Any gotta-have-em apps that I’m missing that you guys out there in blogland would recommend?
As my endless effort to become skinnier continues, I carefully read Ian Rogers post “…look at me I’m skinny…” Diet, exercise, nature, and nurture. I’ve enjoyed getting to know Ian through our investment in Topspin and have had several significant substantial meals with him. Little did I know that I was actually doing all the eating (well, I did, I was just in denial.)
Ian’s post is dynamite. If you struggle to keep the pounds off, run (don’t walk) over to FistFulaYen, toss your Coca-Cola down the drain, and read “…look at me I’m skinny…”
As I whittle away a little bit of weight each week, I just keep telling myself “eat less, exercise more.” As my weekly running mileage continues to creep up (I’m now steadily adding 10%+ / week to my base) it gets a little easier, but all it takes is one double large dinner and an extra big bowl of ice cream to completely wipe out the progress.
Ah, that tuna burger and truffle fries at Larkburger sure was nice today. I guess that’s it for the week. Thanks Ian for sharing what works for you.
I was pondering what a tiny part of the universe we are on my ride this morning into Boulder from Keystone. The first hour of my drive was extraordinary as the sun came up over the Rocky Mountains and I cruised down I-70 at a high rate of speed in the bat mobile.
I had another reminder of this as I cruised through my Daily folder. The Astronomy Picture of the Day has been delighting me every day since I started looking at it a few weeks ago. Today’s is a movie of Japan’s Kaguya spacecraft’s last moments.
Kaguya crashed into the Moon last week as planned. Amazing. We are small.
I say “no” all the time. I could start keeping track of the number of times I do it a day, but I’d guess it’s a minimum of 10 and occasionally over 50 times a day. When I type that, my first reaction is “no way, there’s no possible way I say no more than 50 times a day”, but when I think a little more, it definitely happens sometimes.
One of my goals is to be accessible to anyone that reaches out to me. Another goal is to minimize the amount of time I spend on things that I either (a) don’t have an investment in, (b) won’t have an investment in, or (c) don’t have an interest in. Basically, I want to “optimize my accessibility”. This ebbs and flows – when I’m in balance I’m very happy; when I’m out of balance I’m still very happy, but notice that I’m out of balance.
One of the keys to this is to “say no in less than 60 seconds.” Given that my email address is easily discernable, I get a lot of random inbound “we are looking for money” and “do you want to have coffee” emails. These are easy to say no to, but I also get a lot of not-random “we are looking for money” (e.g. sent from someone I know) and “do you want to have coffee” (e.g. sent from someone I know or recommended by someone I know) emails. And it escalates in relevance from there (and morphs into all forms, including breakfast, lunch, dinner, meeting, run, …)
Somewhere between 1% and 10% of these fit my a/b/c criteria above. I can figure this out from the first interaction at least 50% of the time and my first email response is (hopefully a polite) version of “no” that usually consumes a total of less than 30 seconds from beginning to end. Another 25% of the time I need a little more information and request it via mail. This has the side effect of eliminating another chunk of interactions since the person on the receiving end never bothers to respond. For those that do respond, I can usually figure out from the response whether or not I want to spend more time or not; if not, I’m still probably under 60 seconds for saying “no”.
The rest usually end up in more email interactions, a phone call, or a meeting. I try to limit all first meetings to 30 minutes so I don’t waste either of our time if it’s not going to go anywhere, although I’m not always successful at this (the wasting time part).
Now, lest you think this is “overstructured”, remember my goal: minimize the amount of time I spend on things I don’t care about which allows me to maximize the amount of time I spend on things I care about, while still being very accessible. While I don’t always get this right, I’ve gotten a lot better at it over the past 20 years.
The web (and the universe) is an amazing place. My sister-in-law Laura turned me on NASA’s “Astronomy Picture of the Day” website. I bookmarked it and put it in my Daily folder so I get a cool new picture from NASA every day. While the web site has that late 1990’s look and feel, the pictures are stunning.
This is the June 12th eruption of the Sarychev Peak Volcano as photographed from the International Space Station (400 km above Earth). Lest we forget, we are a very small species on a very small planet in a very large universe. Try not to take yourself too seriously today – if you start, just ponder this photo.
Episode 4 of The Founders: TechStars Boulder is up on the web. This week’s episode includes a special guest appearance from Greg Cohn at Yahoo, a poker party with KKO, thoughts on why startups play poker while big companies play chess, and a bunch of other good stuff.
I’m sitting in the early dawn light in a cabin in Tabernash, Colorado drinking a cup of coffee and getting ready to go for a run in the mountains.
I’ve just spent the last 18 hours with my Foundry Group partners at our quarterly retreat. This is an approximately 24 hour affair that includes staying overnight somewhere in Colorado within driving distance of Boulder. We’ve been doing this quarterly since we conceived of the idea for Foundry Group.
Our retreats aren’t “portfolio review sessions” nor are they complex travel boondoggles. They are a simple, focused, 24 hours away together to discuss our business, reflect on how we are working together, and explore ways to improve things.
In Feld Technologies (my first company) I used to do this monthly with my partner Dave Jilk. We lived in Boston at the time so we had our retreats within driving distance of Boston. Same drill – leave in the morning of day 1; return in the afternoon of day 2. Spend the time talking aboutour business and how we were working together. Deal with any hard issues head on and try to figure out what we were going to do about them. Dave and I managed to do this 10 out of 12 months a year (we’d occasionally miss) but when I think back on Feld Technologies, these were some of the most important and satisfying times we spent together.
While my life is frenetic, the world around us is chaotic, and as I like to say “something in my world somewhere is totally fucked up every single day”, I generally achieve a very deep calm. On the surface I appear to be extremely busy, but at my essence I hear the birds chirping and think of fields of golden retriever puppies.
I woke up thinking about this and realizing how incredibly powerful it can be. The lights on one’s existence go out suddenly and often unexpectedly. There are endless (and daily) twists and turns in the path to happy, whatever you define happy as. I’ve often said anxiety and fear are useless emotions in most contexts; a deep calm helps counteract them when they arise.
I encourage you to ponder this as you go about your day. Time for a run.
Last night I sent the Puttermans (the co-founders of Cloud Engines – the makers of Pogoplug) a note with a few ideas about features I’d like to see in the product. Included were requests for drop-dead simple integration with a few other products that I use including Sonos, Boxee, and AppleTV. As investors in Pogoplug, I’m an aggressive lead user and unapologetic fan boy – it’s just an incredible product with insane potential (how about them adjectives, eh?)
Dan Putterman sent me back a response that included words like UPnP and Rendezvous along with a link to OpenPogo – a new website aimed at “getting the most out of your Pogoplug.” The super cool thing is that Cloud Engines has nothing to do with this site – it was created by a user / fan / hacker that is building a series of guides for getting the most out of your Pogoplug. For example:
I have three major hobbies – reading, running, and collecting art. On my run today, I realized that I occasionally blog about reading and running, but I rarely blog about art. I’m pretty sure this idea got lodged in my head yesterday while Amy and I were looking around the web for a new piece to “buy each other” as our anniversary gift. While looking, we stumbled upon this incredible painting from Don Coen titled Prairie Rattler.
We are huge fans of Don’s and have a number of pieces of his work. If you’ve ever been in the small conference room at Foundry Group, you’ve seen a version of Chairman of the Board that I commissioned for us after missing buying the original. We’ve named the cow who looks over at Kelly during the day “Bessie”.
An important thing to realize about Don’s work is that his paintings are large. Prairie Rattler is 6’ x 7’. We talked about buying it for a few minutes but then decided that it didn’t feel right for a joint anniversary gift. But we still both thought it was amazing and it inspired me to start periodically posting about some of the artist we love (in addition to my mom) and collect.
