A few weeks ago, Ben Casnocha showed up in Boulder to spend three months with us.  I’ve gotten to know Ben over the past four years after having been introduced to him by Greg Prow as “hey Brad – you’ve got to meet this guy Ben – I bet he’ll remind you of you when you were his age.”  Having known Ben for four years, all I can say is that I fantasize about having been as together at 18 as Ben is today. 

Ben’s working on a number of projects for us in Boulder during Q1 including TechStars and NCWIT.  He’s also spending lots of time getting to know the entrepreneurs in many of our Boulder-based companies, plug into the entrepreneurial scene, spend time finishing up getting his book out the door, learning how to really live alone in and apartment, enjoying snow for the first time in his life (ok – that was a stretch), and generally continuing to have amazingly unique experiences for an 18 year old as he gets ready to head off to college in the fall.

If you are in Boulder and don’t know Ben, but are part of the entrepreneurial scene and want to get connected with him, just drop me a note and I’ll make an introduction.

One of the really cool things about entrepreneurship (and life in general) is being open to new people and new ideas.  I’ve written about my random days policy in the past.  Today I got the following note from Ed Sullivan, CEO of Aria.

Hello Brad, According to your blog you’re on the East Coast.  If by chance you’re in Philly, I’d love to buy you lunch, dinner or coffee.  I’ve gotten amazing value from your blog:  YEO, tools to negotiate my financing, corporate mission statement, life review etc. and I’d love to meet you face to face and shake your hand.  I promise not bore you with my business plan (I’m funded).

It turns out that I am in Philly for the night.  I arranged to meet with Ed before dinner and then decided to blow off my traveling companions (I was tired of them anyway) to go have a random dinner with Ed.  We grabbed a quick meal around the corner of the hotel and talked for ninety minutes like old friends.  As a faithful blog reader, he knew a spooky amount about me but I still managed to dig up a few new pieces of information for him.  We covered a lot of ground, especially since we both have had way too much experience with ISP billing systems in the 1990’s (Portal and RODAPI anyone?)

Among other things, we covered the entrepreneurial scene in Philly (and respective challenges post Internet bubble and the struggles of Safeguard Scientific and Internet Capital Group), my friend George Jankovic from NutriSystem, the ubiquitous Josh Kopelman, Lasik’s (I’m still a chicken), and Ed’s three companies (yes – we did end up talking about Aria – and it wasn’t boring.)  We also covered plenty of life stuff and each said nice things about our respective wives (hi Ed’s wife – yes – he met with me – just a normal guy – definitely not someone named Gloria the voluptuous.)

While I have no idea if anything ever comes of a dinner like this, I very much enjoyed spending time with my new friend Ed.  The randomness of the universe has nice karmic twists.  Plus – it’s way more fun than sitting in a hotel eating room service.  Ed – thanks for reaching out!

Another day, another city.  At least I saw a really cool sculpture today.

Ryan just posted Reason #73 He Hates Airports.  Hint – “Caution, the moving walkway is nearing its end, please watch your step. Thank you.”

Yet another Hackathon at FeedBurner (#4).  Guys – you really need to cut back on the sugar and caffeine.  Eh – never mind – keep consuming!  Eric (one of FeedBurner’s founders and CTO) dissects the hack he did (an “Event Feed” service.)  It’s kind of like “Being Eric Lunt” in the spirit of “Being John Malkovich.”  Plus we get a cool new FeedBurner service (on the Optimize Tab under Event Feed for those of you following along at home.)

Jack Bauer was very busy last night.  I didn’t realize his family was so large, or so evil.  I expect his reunion with his dad won’t be as enjoyable as mine was.  I’m on the east coast somewhere today enjoying real cold but little snow (unlike Ben who is merely enjoying the unreality of snow in Boulder) plowing through my email and feeds before my day starts.  My friends at NewsGator have given me yet another way to read RSS feeds with their new NewsGator Enterprise On-Demand (NGEOD – or NGOD for those of you that are atheists) product.  If you want to try out enterprise RSS for free for 30 days and like Software as a Service (or On-Demand, or – if you are old school – ASP), now is your chance.

Air travel generally sucks these days.  It starts when TSA tells you that you cannot have your toothbrush in the same ziplock bag as your toothpaste (liquids only in the quart bag Mr. Traveler), continues on the filthy plane (thanks for the nice smelling oder killer thing in the bathroom, but did you notice that the sink doesn’t look like it has been washed in a year), and finishes as you sit in the airport during yet another weather or mechanical delay.

Really – I’m just trying to get to Harrisburg (originally from Las Vegas this morning.)  There’s nothing quiet like a four hour weather delay.  Thankfully, I found an amazing spot at O’Hare to hang out at.  The Terminal C Red Carpet Club has a “Quiet Room.”  It’s a huge comfortable room with a cell phone ban.  I’m the only person here – since I have several more hours before my flight, I just counted the seats (about 80 of them) – and I’m the only dude here.  Delightful – better than a library.

I’ve written plenty about patents in the past, including a provocative post titled Abolish Software Patents.  I was having a conversation with John Funk, a partner in Evergreen Innovation Partners, at the end of last year after a catch up lunch.  We got into a serious conversation about the fact that so much of the software patent good vs. bad rhetoric seems like it’s more about opinions, anecdotal experience, and agendas – rather than a comprehensive review of the facts.  So – we decided to take it up a level and see where the conversation went.

Now – John and I have some interesting history around this.  We have been colleagues (I was an investor in Exactis (fka Mercury Mail / Infobeat – his first company), adversaries (Infobeat sued a company I co-founded – Email Publishing – for patent infringement – which was eventually settled for $1 and a cross-licensing agreement between Exactis and MessageMedia (the company that acquired Email Publishing)), and once again friends and colleagues (I’m an investor in John’s latest company, Evergreen IP.)  While we’ve both struggled personally with an emotionally charged issue, we’ve ended up friends. 

Interestingly, given the wide range of experiences we’ve each had around software patents, we have pretty similar views.  So – John fired off a long email to me which I’ve edited and broken up into several posts with the following premise: What if we attempted to craft a social policy hypothesis that would defend the existence of software patents, and then we went about creating an experiment that would attempt to disprove that hypothesis?  Hmm – social science – disproving a null hypothesis – how academic!

Let’s begin with this: Patents in general, and software patents in particular, are a government conferred monopoly that rewards the public disclosure of a software method or program. The rationale for patents is anchored in (1) public disclosure accelerates innovation because future invention rests on prior patent disclosures (e.g., innovation is a chain that builds on prior building blocks), and (2) conferring a patent monopoly will encourage innovation that otherwise would not occur due to perceived risk/return (e.g., in absence of patents, competitors will trounce new entrants by rapidly copying; therefore monopoly is needed to be able to raise capital and take the risks).

More coming in part 2 – same bat time, same bat blog.

Following is an exchange I had with a friend and someone I like to co-invest with.

Me: You’ve been awfully quiet lately.  Is everything ok?  Just checking in and saying hi.

Friend: Thanks for checking in. Yes, all is well. Just busy with an office move, some projects at home and work with my companies. I am expanding beyond web 2.0 as an investment strategy so spending time with peeps outside of our traditional network. Will tell all about it during our next dinner.

Me: Sounds cool.  Glad you are starting to fish in a new pond now that this one is starting to feel like a river at peak salmon season with everyone wall to wall doing some combat fishing,

Friend: I have been up river for almost 3 months, fishing with a shell launcher shotgun and an ice barbed spear.

When the river that you have been fishing in for a while becomes the popular place for everyone to hang out and fish, it’s often time to go find a new river (or at least a new spot on the river) that doesn’t have anyone around.

Amy and I are huge fans and supporters of the new Denver Art Museum.  Part of our gift to the museum in 2005 was used to fund the Bubbloo exhibit.  In addition to being cool and clearly the family safe equivalent of “drugs for little kids”, it reminds me of the product from our portfolio company Reactrix which is especially neat.

Once a year, I go away somewhere with my dad for the weekend.  I’ll go anywhere he wants – last year was downtown San Francisco, this year he suggested Las Vegas.  I flew here from Dallas (where I was on Thursday) and he came in from Houston (where he was on Thursday.)  We met at The Wynn yesterday afternoon and have been having a blast together.

If you know us, the first question that probably comes to your mind is “Las Vegas – what’s up with that?”  Neither of us gamble or drink, are both afraid of naked women (that aren’t our wives), and are afraid of what our wives would do to us if we were caught with naked women that aren’t our wives. 

We just love to be together – no purpose required.  We spent all day walking up and down The Strip, talking about whatever came to mind, had a few great meals (Red 8 (Wynn), Daniel Boulud’s (Wynn), Stage Deli (Caeser’s Palace), and Ben & Jerry’s (New York, NY)).  We are about to get ready to go see The Beatles: Love at The Mirage.

The Wynn has been great – the only annoying thing is the endless feeling of being nickeled, dimed, and $20 billed.  The health club costs $25 / day / person, the Ferrari show costs $10, Internet costs $12 / computer / day, a bag of nuts costs $8.  I guess that’s Las Vegas.

We started doing this five years ago – I wish we’d be doing it for the last 20 years.  Better late than never.