Dan Rua sent me a link to his new Florida Venture Blog, subtitled No-BS Venture Thoughts for No-BS Entrepreneurs.  There’s plenty of good stuff there if you are interested in what’s going on in the Florida VC / entrepreneur scene (or if you just want to read another VC related blog.)… Read more

Amy and I had a delicious lunch with Pierre-Denis Autric at Ristorante Gallo Romano near Notre Dame. Pierre-Denis met me through my blog, dropped me an email inviting me out to lunch, and – well – there you have it.  At lunch, I discovered that Capgemini just started a CTO blog which has an excellent entry on 24 that evolves into an explanation of user interfaces.  It’s delightful to see 24 continuing to be used as a thematic launching point as well as make a new friend over a great lunch.… Read more

Senator Barack Obama spoke at the National Center for Women & Information Technology Town Hall last week.  If you are an Obama fan, or just want to hear about what he has to say, NCWIT’s friends at Microsoft Research have put both Obama’s speech as well as much of the town hall conference on “IT Innovation and the Role of Diversity” up on the Research Channel web site… Read more

Will Price at Hummer Winblad has a really nice blog post up on a speech he attended by Verne Harnish the other day. 

Verne is a long time friend, extremely captivating and insightful speaker, and a guy who has been around entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship forever.  I first met Verne in 1990 at the first Inc. Magazine / MIT Entrepreneur Forum / YEO Birthing of Giants Conference. This was a conference that Verne created for founders of companies under the age of 40 with at least $1 million of annual revenue.  My company was four years old, we’d just broken the $1m mark, had 12 employees, and I was struggling with all of the normal startup issues.  In four days, I met 59 other people, many of whom… Read more

Fortunately, as Jack Bauer tries to find his way around China next season, he’ll have Telcontar’s maps to help him.  And no – I really don’t think they are going to kill him – “he’s much too valuable.&rdquo… Read more

Today Salesforce.com had a set of major announcements around their AppExchange platform, including the release of the AppExchange OEM Edition.  One of my portfolio companies – Rally Software – participated in this with the launch of their Rally Agile Product Manager product as one of the first four AppExchange OEM partners.  Rally Agile Product Manager helps enable Agile Software Development via Salesforce.com’s AppExchange.  If you are a Salesforce.com customer, it’s live on the Salesforce.com site.

The is the second time this year that a company that I’ve been involved in has worked closely with Salesforce.com.  In April, Salesforce.com acquired Sendia, a company I was on the board of, and simultaneously announced their AppExchange Mobile service.  While the Sendia deal was only a modest positive… Read more

The motto for my first company was “We Suck Less.”  Many years later, with the price of oil at some silly high price, it seems all the more appropriate as a slogan.

Thanks Chris for catching this ad, remembering the story of my first company motto, and for forwarding it on.  I wonder if Gebhardt will send me a check for the free advertising – I can tell them how many clickthroughs they get.… Read more

Today’s Paris Art Tour is brought to you by “Rodin’s Very Own Personal Van Gogh.”

I woke up this morning, had an expresso (my very bad French for “really tiny, really strong coffee”), and started the day off with a meeting at Sofinnova Partners.  I then walked back through Place de la Concorde, across the Seine, and connected with Amy and our friend Ed Roberto on Saint Germain near Richart Chocolates (possibly the greatest chocolates in the world.)  Everything felt very familiar, which scared me a little bit.

We then walked over to the Musee Rodin and had a sculpturiforous time wandering around both the museum and the sculpture gardens.  I’m a big Rodin fan (I always wanted to say that – make sure you say it out loud… Read more

I did a quick podcast interview with Outside In Innovation a few weeks ago when I was at MIT at Eric von Hippel’s Innovation Lab seminar.  There are two segments – How VCs View Users and Usability and Innovation Through Acquisition.  I’m not sure it’s appropriate to generalize my comments for all VCs (in fact, I’m sure it’s not), but I thought Jim and Jonathan did a nice job of rapping on these topics.  If you are into the 53,651 meme (or the idea that the first 25,000 users are irrelevant) or you just like to listen to me talk (hi Mom), there is some good stuff in here that pre-dates those posts… Read more

I just read Picasso’s War, the story of his creation of the painting by the same name, the history of Spain that inspired the painting, and the subsequent activity around the painting from 1937 to 2002 when the book was published.

Picasso is one of my favorite artists.  Guernica is one of his signature paintings.  I remember the discussion in my first modern art course about it (modern art – at least in that course at MIT – was defined as post-impressionist art forward, Picasso was the anchor of all modern art, and Guernica was one of the most – if not the most – important piece of his work.)

I was vaguely familiar with the actual story of Guernica (the destruction of the Spanish town as well as the creation… Read more

Carolyn Curiel wrote an editorial yesterday in the NY Times titled “Let’s I.M. as You Read This.”  A friend sent it to me with the suggestion that Carolyn might have been thinking of my treadputer when she said “Still, something feels missing. I think of the executive who positioned his office computer above a treadmill, so he could walk constantly, keeping fit as he ran a business.”  If only she knew how much more I actually concentrate on my three hour conference calls when I’m on the contraption… Read more

NCWIT had a “town hall” event at the National Academy of Sciences Auditorium last Wednesday.

Along with the NCWIT participants were a number of special guests, including Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), Rick Rashid (SVP Microsoft Research), and Senator Mark Udall (D-CO).  The agenda included a keynote address from Padmasree Warrior (EVP and CTO of Motorola), an Executive Branch Panel, and a Congressional Panel.  I wasn’t able to attend because of my trip to Paris, but Lucy Sanders (NCWIT’s CEO) told me the event went extremely well.  Thanks to everyone who participated.… Read more

A reader asked me the other day if – in the words of Charlie Munger – I have a “mental model” for investing in early stage companies.  I do, but I’d rather give examples of the two best approaches I’ve heard of from other people.

This first approach is David Cowan’s Road Map investing at Bessemer.  He recently wrote a short “road map post” on Television 2.0.  While it’s really just a pithy overview of what David is starting to think about, it gives a good feeling for what the executive summary of a new road map might look like.

The other approach is Jerry Colonna’s “Analog Analog.”  When Jerry was actively investing in stage one of the commercial Internet (1995 – 2000), his premise was that every technological innovation (or… Read more

Jason and I occasionally get asked “why are the majority of companies incorporated in Delaware, regardless of their actual physical location?“  Besides being difficult to spell (c’mon – you thought there was an “e” instead of an “a”, didn’t you), Delaware offers some tangible advantages over incorporating in other states.  While we aren’t experts on state laws outside of California, Colorado, and Delaware (e.g. feel free to offer “my state is better than Delaware to incorporate in” comments), we thought we’d summarize a few of the reasons below.

First, Delaware’s large body of business laws helps a company plan carefully to avoid a lawsuit.  Certainty is “power” and one can generally be “more certain” about a particular legal outcome in Delaware compared to other states.  While we might not agree… Read more

Al Gore on SNL. 

I have no idea if this is legal or not, but it’s hilarious.  Thanks Don and Rick, my liberal friends.… Read more