David Cohen – the creator and ringleader of TechStars – has started a blog series of his Top 12 Startup Tips from TechStars.  His latest tip (#2) is titled Find and engage great mentors.  I think this series is going to end up being required reading for any first time (and many multi-time) entrepreneurs.  Tip #1 was Be the Best in the World at Something.  Great stuff David.… Read more

If you do a search via any of the rapidly expanding Lijit search wijits, you’ll discover that it is now recommending me as an expert on the search term “wife.” 

I haven’t decided which is more disconcerting – that Lijit thinks I’m an expert on “wife” (I’ll leave that up to Amy to weigh in on) or that I’m slightly ahead of someone named “bitemycookie.” (Thanks David.)… Read more

Each day, consumers conduct more than two million online searches for user manuals and self-support information on products ranging from consumer electronics to kitchen appliances. Many of these searches end in frustration, because this information can be difficult to find. In our house, we have a “manual drawer” which quickly turns into a “crap drawer” that – not surprisingly – never has the actual manual that I’m looking for (picture gnomes stealing underwear.)

A new company, OwnerIQ, solves this common and frustrating problem by collecting and organizing user manuals and other self-support information online, making it easy to find.  Jay Habegger, from Colorado now living in Boston, started OwnerIQ (he sold his last company, Bitpipe, to TechTarget in 2004).  Earlier this summer, OwnerIQ closed a $2 million Series A… Read more

Today’s guest blogger is my partner, Jason Mendelson.  I’m immensely proud of Jason, my partner Chris Wand, Stratify’s CEO Ramana Venkata, his excellent management team, and all the great folks at Stratify for their fantastic work in creating the market leading eDiscovery company.

Today, Stratify and Iron Mountain announced they have entered into an agreement for Stratify to be acquired by Iron Mountain for approximately $158m in cash.  Stratify is a Mobius Venture Capital portfolio company that Chris Wand and I have had the pleasure of serving on the board for the past several years.  We’ve really enjoyed the journey that we’ve shared with Ramana Venkata, the CEO and the rest of his capable management team. 

Stratify has revolutionized the… Read more

For the guy (or gal) that has an extensive collection of black t-shirts with all kinds of logos and band pictures on them comes – the Wi-Fi Detector Shirt.  In addition to taking your wardrobe to a new nerdy level, you can perform a public service by helping everyone near you know whether or not Wi-Fi is available  (Thanks Mark.)… Read more

Jack and Suzy Welch have a great article in this week’s BusinessWeek titled Directors Who Don’t Deliver.  I’ve served on many boards and written plenty of board of directors, including my personal favorite board of director post titled Boards That Are Not Bored.

The Welch’s describe five types of dysfunctional board members: the do-nothing, the white flag, the cabalist, the meddler, and the pontificator.  If you’ve ever served on a board, you probably know at least one of these dudes.  Hopefully, you (and me) haven’t been one of them.… Read more

I spent part of my Friday night installing Leopard (also known as Mac OS X 10.5) on my Mac at home.  The install went perfectly and I was generally pleased with the new apps (like Time Machine and Spaces) and kept suggesting to my Vista machine sitting nearby that it already needed some new eye candy.

As I was reading my daily RSS feeds on my Vista machine (aha!) I came across a 2,174 page long blog post on Ars Technica titled Max OS X 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica review.  This is a spectacular review – in exhilarating detail – of Leopard.  The first few pages are a great rant about the new UI stuff, followed by a very thorough and deep analysis (both non-technical and technical) of all the… Read more

Following is a guest post by my partner Jason Mendelson.  All of the thoughts and grammar errors are his.  All of the formatting errors are mine.

Every year I go back to the University of Michigan and spend a day teaching undergrads in the economics department.   I’ve been doing it for a few years now and it’s a way to give back to the program.  Specifically, one of my former professors, Jan Gerson had a huge impact on me and I promised that I’d come back every year (if I ever got “smart”) and impart some knowledge.  I’m not sure that I ever got smart, but I do like to visit Ann Arbor. 

This year, I did something a bit differently.  Instead of me pontificating the whole time… Read more

My partner Seth Levine has a good post up titled 1980’s all over again with a link to a very interesting Merrill Lynch report titled 1980’s Redux.  I was in high school in Dallas, Texas for the first third of the 1980’s and then college in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the rest of it.  I started my first company in 1987 – on the heals of the Massachusetts Miracle and the beginning of the late 1980’s recession which was painful for Massachusetts, but I was too young and naive to notice.

In college in 1984, I remember arguing with my future business partner Dave Jilk about Texas real estate.  At the time people were minting money buying up land in Texas (especially Dallas – where I had come from) and… Read more

I got an email today from Ryan Roth, a long time reader of this blog.  He is giving away four tickets to Saturday’s World Series game.  The only catch is that you have to be a disabled Iraq / Afghanistan war veteran to be part of the drawing.  Following is the story:

So, we have four tickets! One upper deck, three lower deck. All for Game 3 of the World Series. We want to give them away to disabled Iraq/Afghanistan War Veterans. We don’t know you, but we are thankful for your service and your sacrifice.

We will draw four names from a Rockies hat at 2:00 pm. You don’t have to be present to win. We will contact the winners directly and also post the names on this

BusinessWeek has a web slideshow running called Big Tech Buyouts.  It profiles the founders of 10 Internet companies that have been acquired this year.  Three of them – FeedBurner, Sling Media, and Postini – are companies we were investors in.  Everyone appears to be smiling.

Notice the abundance of gray hair (or in Dick Costolo’s case, no hair.)  I realize this is shameless brogging, but it’s fun sometimes.  And I’m really proud of these guys and the companies they helped create.… Read more

I just caught a post my dad wrote today titled Birth Of An Entrepreneur: Brad Feld.  Totally unexpected – it made me smile a big smile.  My dad knows me well, remembers my antics from when I was a kid better than anyone (except maybe my mom and my brother), and tells great stories.  Love ya dad.  Thanks for making me.  And thanks for investing that extra $1800 in an Apple II in 1978 – it has paid off well for both of us!… Read more

Eric Norlin – the organizer and host of the upcoming Defrag Conference (Denver – Nov 5 and 6 – hottest ticket in town since the World Series will be over) has a great rant up titled Cycles, Juxtapositions, and Predictions.  Midway through the rant, he says:

“Putting it all together, here’s what I’m thinking: Bottom line — Tech innovation is about to get very focused on selling to the enterprise.”

He goes on to say:

“And here’s how it all relates to Defrag: I see a lot of the companies in the “defrag space” (including a lot of our sponsors) starting on the consumer-side of things. I also see nearly all of them making the shift toward the enterprise.”

My regular conversations with my CIO friends, including The Architect, confirms this point… Read more

Well – that was predictable.  Rockies Blow Ticket-Sales Tech; World Series Next?  About 30 minutes after Rockies world series tickets went on sale online (the only place you could buy them) their systems crashed.  According to the Rockies Press Release, under 500 tickets were actually sold.  The MLB ticket vendor – Paciolan – claims that the traffic (8.5m hits in some unspecified period of time) took down all their North American customers.  Oops.  Glad I was wearing my Red Sox jacket around town today.  Maybe the Rockies should consider outsourcing the whole shebang to StubHub!… Read more

I just wandered down to Seth’s office to see if he managed to get tickets to the World Series.  He asked everyone in the office to fire up the Rockies website and keep hitting refresh until someone got on to the ticket buying site.  No luck – and Seth has a big frown on this face – but he’s still cuddling his Red Sox jacket.

The Boulder Daily Camera has a great wrap up story on the TechStars experience this summer.  Of course you have to have a stupid login to be able to read it – but at least it’s free.  Oh – and yet another TechStars company got funded – this time it’s SocialThing.  Congrats guys!

Finally, I’d be doing all the people in the world that… Read more