Jason and I are planning to finish strong with some serious stuff in our term sheet series, but we figured we’d put one more term in that has us sniggling whenever we see it (a “sniggle” is a combination “sneer-giggle” – sort of like how I reacted to Kidman / Ferrell in Bewitched last night). The last sniggle term is as follows:

“Initial Public Offering Shares Purchase:  In the event that the Company shall consummate a Qualified IPO, the Company shall use its best efforts to cause the managing underwriter or underwriters of such IPO to offer to [investors] the right to purchase at least (5%) of any shares issued under a “friends and family” or “directed shares” program in connection with such Qualified IPO. Notwithstanding the foregoing, all action… Read more

Greg Reinacker has a tease up about NewsGator Enterprise Server, which is currently in beta and marching quickly toward release.  Pretty (and satisfying) graph)

We’ve gotten a lot of help from Microsoft in their test labs – thanks guys.… Read more

Anyone that knows me knows I love to talk (I also love to sit quietly and ponder things – ah – the duality of being me.)  Another duality – I hate to sit and listen at conferences (I learn by reading, not by listening) but I love to speak at them.

I end up doing random speaking things when it’s convenient for my travel schedule (rather than deliberate ones that I have to travel specifically for.)  I just got the invitation for a panel I’m going to be titled Putting it All Together: Business Structures and Financing New Media Ventures at the Law Seminars International Regulatory and Business Issues for New Broadband Services conference on September 26 / 27 in San Francisco (man – that’s a lot of words to describe… Read more

A few days ago, I wrote some thoughts on the war on spam.  Today Matt Blumberg has an insightful post up on what’s going on in several state legislatures concerning so called “Child Protection Acts” which are actually just children to the mess that almost occurred at the state level at the end of 2003 which resulted in the federal CAN-SPAM law.… Read more

I hate the notion of “spin” when applied to articulating what’s going on.  I especially hate spin when it gets in the way (in the middle of, in front of) a decision.  (Picture of me calmly, but forcefully, saying “just tell me what the fuck is going on and we’ll deal with it.”)

Tom Evslin has an awesome post up today titled Decide First, Spin Second.  He recounts the story of a small nuclear crisis that was occurring in Vermont when Richard Snelling was governor and Tom was Secretary of Transportation.  Snelling started the cabinet meeting off with the following statement:

“First we have to decide what the right thing to do is; then we’ll think about the politics.  Otherwise we’ll just confuse ourselves.”

Absolutely correct.… Read more

I was on a board call for a company today where we talked about “acceptable downtime” for their web-based service.  This company has commercial customers that depend on its software to run their businesses and the software in question is delivered “as a service.”  I’ve got a number of companies using this approach (vs. a straight software license approach) and I have a lot of experience with this issue dating back to investments in the 1990’s in Critical Path, Raindance, and Service Metrics.

While it’s easy to talk about “5 nines” (99.999% uptime), there are plenty of people who think this metric doesn’t make sense, especially when you are building an emerging company and have a difficult time predicting user adoption (if you are growing > 20% per month you understand… Read more

Hysterical – John Travolta looks damn good as a bunny.  Uma Thurman – not so good.  Hat tip to David Beisel.… Read more

Killing Rain by Barry Eisler was dynamite.  I continue to make one step forward and two steps backward through my shelves of unread books (Amazon delivers more than I consume.)  After every few books I resort to pure mental floss – Eisler’s series on assassin John Rain is spectacular summer reading. 

When Killing Rain showed up via Dan the UPS Man, Amy grabbed it and wouldn’t give it up until she finished it.  It’s the fourth book in the series – if you haven’t read the others, you must start with Rain Fall, the first in the series.  The flyleaf review from Entertainment Weekly – usually shoddy stuff – is very accurate this time:

“If Quentin Tarantino ever got to take a crack at the James Bond franchise

Spam is one of the flagship members of the Internet Axis of Evil – it sucks worse than War of the Worlds.  I’ve been supporting the war against spam through my investments in Postini and Return Path and I plan to continue to do whatever I can to help eradicate this scourge from Planet Internet.

While it would be nice if spam just disappeared, it’s not going to anytime soon.  So – in addition to attacking spam, it’s time to really address the “legitimate email issue.”  Return Path has been after this for a while and just released a new version of their email delivery monitoring tools.  Today – TRUSTe (a non-profit dedicated to online privacy issues) launched an “Email Privacy Seal Program” – members of… Read more

So, earlier tonight, I turned to Amy with a twinkle in my eye and watched as she stared intently at something that looked suspiciously like Typepad on her monitor.  The following conversation ensued:

Brad: “Hey, Atom 1.0 is out.”Amy: “Adam Who?”Brad: “Atom 1.0 – the new feed format.”Amy: “I thought that was RSS.”Brad: “Yeah, yeah, there’s this other format called Atom that … (long unnecessary technical explanation followed).”Amy: “Uh huhnnnhh”Brad: “Stop playing with your blog – this is important.”Amy: “So – what does it mean – what do I have to do differently?”Brad: “Heheh – nothing – because you use FeedBurner and they automagically will format your feed for Atom 1.0 if it makes sense.”Amy: “Brad – you are such a nerd.” (As she continued typing on her computer).

I… Read more

BMC Software – a company that has been around for 25 years and has a major software footprint – announced today that they are using Rally Software’s lifecycle management software and Agile consulting services.  This follows Rally’s announcements last week around Release 5 of their Agile software lifecycle management product. 

While BMC and Rally just announced this deal, BMC has been using Rally since the end of last year and the rollout and implementation has been superb.  The BMC announcement is a big deal – it’s the first of several major software companies to have adopted Rally’s software tools.  … Read more

About 20 days after the end of each quarter, Ernst & Young/VentureOne releases a survey on venture capital funding.  At about the same time, PWC releases their similar survey (MoneyTree).  A rash of articles are written over the weekend and usually hit first thing Monday in the business section of newspapers around the country (and – shockingly – in blogs) covering funding nationally, by city, and by market segment.

On Friday, I got a call from Ross Wehner, a Denver Post staff writer who I like.  He was calling to get my thoughts on the “numbers for the quarter.”  After ascertaining which numbers Ross was talking about (it was a beautiful Friday afternoon in Homer, Alaska – I was not thinking about the E&Y / VentureOne survey), the conversation went something like:

Brad

I’m going to keep tonight’s term sheet post short and sweet, especially since I’m still reeling from the horrifyingly bad War of the World movie I just saw.  Jason and I are almost done with the term sheet series (yeah, we know we keep promising that) but – like the Spielberg tragicomedy I just watched, it’s not over until it’s over (sorry – that cliche just snuck its way in – I was helpless against it – the aliens made me do it.)

Occasionally a term sheet will have – buried near the back – a short clause concerning “founders activities.”  It usually looks something like:

“Founders Activities:  Each of the Founders shall devote 100% of his professional time to the Company.  Any other professional activities will require the approval of the… Read more

I just wasted two hours of my life.  At least I got to sit next to Amy and eat popcorn. 

As I’ve said in the past, we get two movies a week in Homer.  Friday morning comes with great anticipation as we drive past the theater marque (on the corner of Main Street and Pioneer – how fitting) to see what we get to enjoy next.  This week is War of the Worlds and Bewitched and I had low hopes for both of them.  Since we don’t have a TV here, this is all we are going to get this week (no – I haven’t broken down to watching movies on my laptop yet.) 

We gave War of the Worlds a shot tonight.  It was tragically awful.  Yeah – the… Read more

For some reason, I get a copy of TechComm: The National Journal of Technology Commercialization.  I was thumbing through it where I read all my physical magazines these days (the bathroom) and came upon an excellent article titled Q: How Smart Was Einstein? A. Really Smart.  As everyone spends the next few days praising Lance Armstrong’s Tour de Force, let’s not forget Einstein’s amazing year – 1905 (er – 100 years ago in case your math is rusty.)

• March 1905: Creates the quantum theory of light
• April 1905: Invents new method of counting and determining the size of the atoms or molecules in a given space
• May 1905: Explains the phenomenon of Brownian motion
• June 1905: Completes theory of special relativity
• H2 1905: Extension of special relativity –> E=mc2

All this when he… Read more