Dave Drach from Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team has a nice post up titled Wow, Venture Capital in the Rockies, it gets better every year.  I agree – I think year 25 was the best one yet.… Read more

I know there are plenty of readers out there that are Warren Buffett fans based on the requests for the "Annual Letters of Buffett Partnership, Limited, 1957 – 1970."

The new Berkshire Hathaway 2007 Annual Report is out and available on line.  It’s dynamite.  Paragraph #4 follows:

You may recall a 2003 Silicon Valley bumper sticker that implored, “Please, God, Just One More Bubble.” Unfortunately, this wish was promptly granted, as just about all Americans came to believe that house prices would forever rise. That conviction made a borrower’s income and cash equity seem unimportant to lenders, who shoveled out money, confident that HPA – house price appreciation – would cure all problems. Today, our country is experiencing widespread pain because of that erroneous belief. As house

Xconomy has a post up titled Who Knew? Xconomy Uncovers the Strange-But-True Details of Boston’s Innovation Leaders.  My bathroom at CU Boulder enabled me to make the list, even though I’ve never really been part of the Boston VC community.  The list includes some entrepreneurs (it is a list of the strange proclivities of Boston’s Innovation Leaders after all.)

In other VC hobby news, Fred Wilson is digging the new Soul Patch album Sooner or Later.  That would be a hobby of my partners Jason and Ryan.… Read more

Every day I tell at least one entrepreneur that I am passing on investment in their company.  Some times I tell 10.  I don’t know what the most in one day is, but it’s probably more than 25.  I try to respond to all emails so a lot of these are in the "never were appropriate to pursue" category, but at least one each day is someone that I’ve actually engaged with beyond a cold email that was randomly sent to me.

While I try to give a short explanation – which often is that the company is not in an area that I’m interested in – it gets harder when I’ve actually spent some time looking at the company, like the idea and the people, and find it relevant… Read more

I can’t decide what the most disturbing part of this is.  Robin Williams singing man-crush is reasonably close to the top.  Hollywood sure knows how to get its game on – writers strike or not.  I’m not even sure I’ve ever seen Jimmy Kimmel before.  I definitely don’t need to see him without a shirt on.

This is a two part NSFW edition of "things that amuse me, but I’m not sure why."  Only spend time on this if you are willing to give up 10 minutes of your life to some of your favorite movie stars.

Part 1: Watch this first or you won’t have the back story.

Part 2: I’m having trouble deciding between Jimmy Kimmel and Ben Affleck.  Actually, I’m not.  Neither – is neither good… Read more

If you are a long time reader of this blog, you know I’m a huge Warren Buffett fan.  So are many of you – when I offered to send out the "Annual Letters of Buffett Partnership, Limited, 1957 – 1970" I got over 1000 requests and every week I get a new one. (FYI – if you want them, just email me a request and I’ll send them to you, but you have to promise not to post the letters per a request from Buffett.)

This morning I read through a post titled Notes From Buffett Meeting 2/15/2008.  This was from a Q&A session with Buffett hosted for students from Emory’s Goizueta Business School and McCombs School of Business at UT Austin.  Outstanding stuff.  Thanks Scott

The annual Venture Capital in the Rockies conference has been going on all day.  I’m taking a short 30 minute break to recharge my "extrovert battery" which is basically used up and about to flip into introvert mode (kind of like a hybrid car.)

The conference this year has been a blast and the Colorado weather gods have blessed us with two amazingly beautiful days.  Several folks, including David Cohen (TechStars CEO), Todd Vernon (Lijit CEO), and Dan Primack (PE Hub) are liveblogging the events.  Great stuff – including Dan’s analysis of the Best Conference Giftbag … Ever (and I’m sure he’s received a few.)

Congrats to Chris Onan (this year’s head organizer), all the folks involved in putting on VCIR, and all of… Read more

Go to http://mbeta.newsgator.com/d on your cell phone via the browser.

Download the appropriate client for your phone (if it’s missing or doesn’t autodetect, please leave a comment here and my friends at NewsGator will work on tuning it.)

Run the app.  If you have a NewsGator account, you will log in and automagically see your feeds.  If you don’t have a NewsGator account you will be prompted to create one and then you are off to the races.

I just tried it on my Dash (Windows Mobile) and it worked flawlessly.

Once all the kinks are worked out, this will move to http://m.newsgator.com/d

God these guys are good.… Read more

Terry Gold has a nice long rant up on his blog titled The Auditors are here!  Now, some of my best friends are auditors, but the state, dynamics, and incentives of the accounting industry have gone from bizarre to complete utter madness.

As an investor in many private companies, I ask all of my portfolio companies to have an end of year financial audit.  Acquirers require them, you need them if you are ever planning on going public, and it’s just good overall corporate governance.

In 14 years of being an investor in private companies, I’ve never had a material accounting, fraud, or legal issue show up in an audit.  Yeah – there are occasionally minor accounting changes around the margin, but they are usually for generally irrelevant issues… Read more

Interviews with some of last years TechStars founders are up.  It’s a short video but gives you a great feel for the experience.

We are hosting "TechStars for a day" in Boulder next Wednesday March 5th.  Apply to TechStars by Monday March 3rd to be invited to come.

For those of you who read my blog, you know that I hate software patents. My partner, Jason Mendelson, began fighting me on this back in 2000 when we began working together, but a scant eight years later, he’s joined me in the crusade.  In fact, he’ll be arguing this position on March 4th at the Silicon Flatirons event.  Lawyers (oops, sorry Jason, ex-lawyers) are so quick to change their thinking.

Anyway, from the news of the absurd, Jason pointed out the EU court has determined that the word “Parmesan” is a protected name for cheese made solely in the Italian city of Parma.  Never mind that the past 800 years of cheese production from this city hasn’t cause a stir, but evidently now, it’s big… Read more

[]<-‘Foundry Group Raises $225 Million Early Stage VC Fund’

If you recognize the syntax above, you’ll recognize the first programming language I ever used.

10 PRINT “Foundry Group Raises $225 Million Early Stage VC Fund”

That would be the second language I coded in.

program FoundryLaunches(output);    begin     WriteLn(‘Foundry Group Raises $225 Million Early Stage VC Fund’);   end.

And that would be the third. These three examples are minor derivations of everyone’s first program – also known as “Hello World” – written in APL, Basic, and Pascal for the non-nerds among you.

Last year I co-founded Foundry Group with four partners – Seth Levine, Jason Mendelson, Ryan McIntyre, and Chris Wand. In the fall we closed our first fund – a $225 million fund aimed… Read more

Eric Olson – who I got to know through FeedBurner – is bringing his TECH Cocktail event to Boulder on March 6th.  If you are part of the Boulder tech / entrepreneurial community and around on 3/6, register and come to The Foundry (not our office – but the bar across the street) from 6:30pm to 9:00pm for a good time with a bunch of your local friends and colleagues.… Read more

Alan Shimel has a fantastic post up titled Do they have to grow up?  As I read it, I thought of some of the great lessons my dad taught me when I was a little kid and how hard they must have been for him to carry out.

Amy and I have a regular discussion about whether or not it is helpful to tell a child "you can do or be anything you want."  Amy’s reply is that she could never be an NBA center and neither could I.  While the metaphor is a good one (e.g. "don’t let anyone limit your aspirations or dreams"), accomplishing things – especially amazing ones – requires a huge amount of hard work, perseverance, drive, skill, genetics, timing, and luck.  Alan… Read more

My friends at Lijit are looking for a  Database Architect/Administrator, Java Developer, Web Developer, and a UI Web Developer.  If you are interested, send a resume to jobs at lijit dot com.  In addition to being at a super cool high growth place to work, you get to be one floor above me in downtown Boulder.  If you end up getting a job at Lijit via this blog post, tell me and make me take you to Amante for a gelato.  … Read more