As I was turning the pages in the April 23, 2007 Forbes in the bathroom today, I came across The South Rises Again and a great map of the top metro areas in the US according to Forbes.  One of the rankings was based on college degrees (percentage of adult population with bachelor’s degree or higher.)  Boulder ranked at the top and the list of the top five was interesting.

1. Boulder, CO: 52.3%
2. Bethesda, MD: 50.2%
3. Ann Arbor, MI: 48.1%
4. San Francisco, CA: 43.5%
5. Cambridge, MA: 43.4%

Having lived in Cambridge and having spent a lot of time in San Francisco, it intrigues me how much I’m attracted to these three places.  I guess I should go spend some time in Ann Arbor and see what I think.  Since I don’t work for the CIA, I think I’ll pass on Bethesda.

By the way, the national average is 23.1%.

I hate almost all automated phone systems (except of course the ones created by Gold Systems.)  Most suck and even though a little bit of effort could radically improve them, companies (and their customer service groups) don’t seem to understand (or care) about how their customers interact with them.

While I try to avoid picking up the phone and asking for help, it happens sometimes.  I try to get a special magic phone number that reaches a human immediately (e.g. I fly United a lot and can get a person on one ring), but this is the rare exception not the norm.

Jason pointed me to the Dial A Human web site.  This is a great site that lists the real phone numbers for customer support for a bunch of companies along with instructions to hack the phone system to bypass the menu prompts and get to a human right away.

I tried it on a few – it worked pretty well (I found one error and corrected it.)  Obviously a wiki format would be great for this, but at least there is this.

I had a long phone call with a CEO of a company on Friday.  He’s had an intense few weeks and was clearly stressed out.  His summary was “my stomach hurts.”  My objective view of his business is that it’s fine – lots of things are going well – but there are plenty of issues he needs to address and they don’t necessarily have a short term time horizon for resolution.

This reminded me of a question I received from another friend a few months ago:

I thought of you yesterday as I was speaking with a new business acquaintance.  She was telling me about all her new business ventures, including a talk show concept. She has already made a connection with an industry source who is helping her fine tune and sell it. As I congratulated her on the progress she’s made, she said, “This is so new to me. I try to listen to my gut instincts, but the fear gets in the way.”  Assuming that your entrepreneurs (particularly first-time entrepreneurs) are aware of at least some of the risks involved with starting any company, do you ever have to advise them how to manage their fear so it doesn’t get in the way of their potential success?

I have long believed that fear, anxiety, and guilt are useless emotions in an entrepreneurial context.  When I get into an existential discussion with some people about this, they argue that there are contexts where these are useful emotions, but I still haven’t found them.  So – my first advice is “let go of the fear and anxiety (and guilt) – immediately.” 

In my first company I was an anxious entrepreneur.  I felt the full burden of the business and even though I had a great business partner, I internalized all the ups and downs of the business.  I pushed through the anxiety regularly, which I imagine impacted my current style (which I like to think of as intense/playful) – much of which was forged from my experience with my first company and some of my big successes and failures from the 1998 – 2002 time frame.

“Letting go of fear and anxiety” isn’t trivial – nor is it automatic – but it can be done.  During my Friday afternoon CEO conversation, my friend acknowledged that he wasn’t panicked, but he felt close.  It was clear he was physically and mentally exhausted from the effort he was putting into his company.

When I’m tired, things go to hell.  My first indicator is that when something good happens I feel happy and when something bad happens I feel unhappy.  I used to just accept this as part of my reality – now I know this means I need a break.  Sometimes it’s just a weekend; other times it’s a week.

“Fear is the mindkiller” is my favorite quote from Dune (one of the all time greatest sci-fi books.)  Fear – at least for me in an entrepreneurial context – almost always comes from fatigue.  It’s really difficult to rationally address the issues that cause you fear when you are tired – which just makes the cycle more difficult.

I told my friend to take the weekend off.  He should turn off his computer, don’t try to “catch up on email”, don’t try to “fix anything, let the thoughts about his business roll through his head, but spend time with himself and his wife.  And sleep.  As much as he wanted to (I got up at 10:24am this morning.)  On Monday, he should come back refreshed, not anxious, and ready to address the issues that he’s facing.

Remember that fear is the mindkiller.

Boulder OpenCoffee Club (part of the network of OpenCoffee Club’s popping up around the world) now has its own website.  The next meeting is at Vic’s Coffee at 1800 Broadway in One Boulder Plaza on Tuesday, April 24th from 8am – 9:30am.  Come join us and hang out.

Andy Sack just had a successful OpenCoffee Club meeting in Seattle and is having another one next week at 8:30 AM at Louisa’s on Eastlake in Seattle.  I’m not 100% sure of the date, but I’m guessing it was a week from yesterday (e.g. Tuesday.)

I love Wallstrip – it’s one of the funnest angel investments I’ve ever made.  I wake up several times to a week to a five minute video of Lindsay being hysterically amusing about some public company stock that is at an all-time high.  Today she takes on the Defense Industry and demonstrates why she is now comfortable with the military industrial complex (not really.) It’s a good contrast to my recent West Wing visit. 

If you are new to Wallstrip and looking for a place to start, try Jack in the Box.

Jason and I have written extensively about 409A – a new tax regulation for pricing stock options in private companies that both of us think is fundamentally absurd.  For the past 24 months we’ve been dealing with draft regulations which have made the problem of figuring out how to deal with pricing stock options in private companies both ambiguous, time consuming, and unnecessarily expensive (at least if you want to conform to the draft rules.)

The final regs have been released and Jason has sacrificed his brain by reading through him.  His comments are over at AsktheVC.

I saw Paul Kedrosky deliver his Top Ten VC Lies.  Priceless (and accurate.)  I also met him face to face for the first time – we both commented on how weird that was since we’ve become good blog / email friends over the past two years.

I got the following email from a smart entrepreneur friend I respect a lot.

I subscribe to your blog’s rss feed and read it regularly. I have a suggestion to make – it would be great if you could put a simple explanation of the many different products/technologies you plug, when you plug them.

I have to admit that I have NO idea what you are talking about or why I would be interested about 80% of the time you mention something. For example, Me.dium (which based on the stupid name, I would have no interest in exploring on my own based on your mention

Not sure if I’m your target audience or not, but I thought you should know that most of your references are opaque to at least one reader. So, while I am aware of many companies you are involved in, and the fact that you like them, I couldn’t tell you or (more importantly) anyone else, what they do.

While I don’t really have “a target audience” (I’m regularly fascinated by the spectrum of folks that read this blog), the fact that my company references are opaque to a smart, tech entrepreneur means that there’s probably some subset of you who are saying “thanks for the company pimping, but so what.”

I’ll try to do a better job of explaining why I (and you) should (or might) care.

Let’s play another quick game of “Where is Brad.”

I got a private tour of the West Wing on Sunday.  I can’t remember ever going on a tour of the White House, although deep in the crevasses of my mind I vaguely remember possibly doing something with my parents once.

I had plenty of expectations about what it would look and feel like – none of them were accurate.  The most inaccurate was the Situation Room which was much smaller than I expected it to be.  The Oval Office was closer to what I thought it would be like, but felt a lot different when I was standing there staring into it.

I recommend every American – regardless of party affiliation – try to visit the White House at least once in their lifetime.  It’s a powerful experience.

Me.dium had a release over the weekend – if you are a Me.dium user make sure you get the latest Firefox plugin.  If you aren’t a Me.dium user, feel free to bypass the private beta by using my magic invite code.

Phil Butler at Mashable has a nice blog post on the update.  There are plenty of under-the-hood changes – especially around performance and scalability (the really hard mysterious stuff), but there are a bunch of neat UI enhancements on the Firefox plugin (including one that I really wanted – moving my logged in friends to the top of the friends list.)