I just read Howard Lindzon’s book The Wallstrip Edge: Using Trends to Make Money — Find Them, Ride Them, and Get Off.  It’s a really fun book – 200 pages of the inside of Howard’s brain.  There are so many things about Howard that I love including:

• He is totally hilarious
• He created Wallstrip, which was a successful investment for me (and him)
• He understands how and when to use the word fuck
• He twitters endlessly about his twittering (and stocks – especially Stocktwits, which he helped create)
• Whenever I spend any time with Howard, I laugh at least once ever five minutes
• He has this funny Canadian accent that is crossed with a weird Arizona semi-drawl spoken at a New Yorkers pace
• He’s been a hugely helpful TechStars Mentor
• He’s a self-proclaimed putz – and proud of it
• He wrote about me in his book and was very flattering
• He has a giant party in the spring called LindzonPalooza and schedules it on a weekend that I can never come
• His blog is dynamite

I could keep going but you get the point.  If your path hasn’t intersected with Howard, you are missing out.  Howard will engage in a conversation with pretty much anyone, including my dad, so go for it.  And grab his book – it’ll give you a fresh perspective on public (and private) market investing.

Don’t take my word for it – take Fred Wilson’s.  On the back cover he says “When I first came across Howard, he had a blog called PutzOrYutz.com.  But he is anything but a putz.  He’s among the smartest investors, both in the public and private markets, that I know.”  Howard also wrote nice things about Fred in his book, but Fred (and I) both gave the publisher our back cover quotes before we read the book.

Yup – Fred and I are card carrying members of the Howard Lindzon Fan Club.  Lindzonville is a terrific and endlessly hilarious place.

I spent last Sunday at CU Boulder at the Silicon Flatirons Digital Broadband Migration: Imagining the Internet’s Future conference.  Not surprisingly it was an interesting day where early on, surrounded by lawyers, public policy people, academics, and telco executives, I realized I existed in a parallel universe to them.  For example, when I asked who used twitter, less than five hands went up in a room of 250+ people.

Phil Weiser, the major domo of Silicon Flatirons, has a great post up summarizing the conference.  If you are curious, go take a look at From Imagining The Internet’s Future To Examining The Internet Ecosystem.  

My big insight from the conference was how badly all the telco / broadband providers want everyone – especially the mainstream consumer – to think that they are the Internet.  At some point, I realized that Comcast, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon spend a zillion dollars a year on TV, print, and web ads that have the word “Internet” somewhere near their name.  Maybe we should have all just stuck with “the web”.

Dick Green, the brilliant CEO of CableLabs, came up to me at a break and insightfully said “you may think there are two parallel universes, but they are deeply intertwined.”  I responded “yup, that’s the beauty of parallel universes.”  In my lifetime I expect we’ll actually be able to travel between them.

Gnip has completed the latest version of their schema and is now about to embark on a campaign to integrate at least 100 services by mid year.  They’ve decided that rather than simply choosing them by themselves, they’d crowd source the process. 

There are currently over 350 web services in consideration with more being added every day.  You can vote on which ones you’d like to see integrated by going to http://gnip.uservoice.com.  This will be a dynamic process with Gnip tagging the web services that are either in process or completed.

If you build web apps for a living, consume data, or just like to vote on things, come help Gnip prioritize the next services to integrate.

Among other things, my wife Amy is a writer and a poet.  I love it when she writes, especially when she chooses some sort of structural framework for what she writes.

This year she decided to write a series of posts using the alphabet as a guide.  She started off with the first post titled The Year of Living Alphabetically where she describes what she is doing.

“I had a new idea this past week about structure that I’m hereby officially announcing I’m going to implement this year. I’ve done lots of reading about goals (rather than work toward actually achieving mine?) and one of the consistent tips is to make public announcements and create accountability to others and enlist their support in your efforts.  So, my new idea is this: I’m going to use the 26 letters of the alphabet to create a weekly theme based on each letter, cycling through the alphabet twice in a 52 week year.“

She’s now up to F.

• B is for Being
• C is for Common Courtesy, Civil Discourse, and Consequences
• D is for Democracy
• E is for Effort
• F is for February (I had another word in mind for F – oh well)

I can foreshadow a little – Amy has told me that “G is for Geography”, something I’m particularly lousy at.

For all of you out there that know Amy and want to get a taste for her writing, now is a good time to start following her blog.

I love everything about french fries.  And – much to my delight – Spud Bros. at 2010 10th Street in Boulder is the purveyor of possibly the best french fries on the planet.  They are even poets, having written a poem titled Ode to Spuds.

When I get my first no from Brad
I can count on French fries to take away the sad
When I can’t get tickets to Boulder Ignite
I go to Spud Bros. to get a bite.

Built up an appetite going up Sanitas for a hike
Coming down for some Chili Fries I like
When I’m in need of some WiFi
I know where to go for the Internet and a Fry

After a night out on the town
I head to Spud Bros.
Where everybody knows your name
and they’re always glad you came.

Thankfully the fries are better than the poetry.  And yes – the Brad they refer to c’est moi.

If you are in Seattle and interested in startups, entrepreneurship, venture capital, or TechStars, I’ll be in Seattle having a party with up to around 150 people to talk about these topics.  T.A. McCann of Gist and Dave Schappell of TeachStreet have pulled this together – we’ll be doing it on Wednesday February 25th from 6pm to 8:30pm at the Palace Ballroom at 2100 5th Avenue in Seattle.  

I’m going to spend the evening talking about my views on entrepreneurship, especially around early stage companies in today’s environment.  I’ll provide a detailed view of TechStars and how/why it’s been working, along with an explanation about how I think about early stage VC investing.  The evening with be heavily Q&A oriented – I’m open to any questions about anything.

We’ll have beer (and food) at the event.  There’s a $5.99 fee (admission plus one drink) which will be donated to Seattle-based Vittana, an early-stage non-profit lead by a small group of ex-Amazonians who are building an education microfinance company.  The event cost is being kept to a minimum thanks to the generous support of:

• Beacon Law Advisors: Beacon works with startups — end of story.  We’re a Seattle-based boutique firm of seasoned corporate, transactional, and technology attorneys who also have significant operating, in-house and entrepreneurial experience.  Current clients include: MindBloom, TeachStreet, Vittana, and many more.
• The Microsoft Strategic & Emerging Business Team (SEBT) supports early stage and established software startups developing on the Microsoft platform.  SEBT helps develop and grow local software economies worldwide through programs like Microsoft BizSpark, a global program for startups that provides fast, easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools and production licenses with no upfront costs and minimal requirements.
• Square 1 Bank specializes in providing financial services to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. We help growing companies and their investors navigate financial obstacles by providing access to funds and expertise. Our customized product offerings and unrivaled team of venture banking specialists provide a banking experience designed exclusively for you. We are entrepreneurs serving entrepreneurs.

I’ve been a long time investor in companies in Seattle and have many friends there especially given all of my interactions with Microsoft dating back to 1990 when my first company – Feld Technologies – was a member of the inaugural Microsoft Solution Provider program.  I’m currently on the board of Impinj and a personal investor in AdReady and Foundry Group is an investor in Smith & Tinker so we love to hang out in Seattle, especially when it’s sunny. 

As a reader of this blog, if you are around, I’d love to see you so register and come have a beer with me and 150 of my new friends.

My partner Jason Mendelson – who is also my co-conspirator in writing the blog AsktheVC – is having an open session called Crash Course – Raising Venture Capital.  It’s part of the Silicon Flatirons program and is happening on February 24th from 5:15pm to 6:45pm in Room 204 at the Wolf Law Building.  Jason says he’s going to cover:

Everything from what makes VCs tick, who are our bosses, what are things that you can do to improve your chances of receiving funding and things that many VCs don’t want to talk about.  No question is off limits and I hope that it will be a very interactive forum.  Consider this to be a live version of Ask The VC.

Of course, beer goes really well with stuff like this.  So BioBeers is hosting a Startup Drinks event at The Foundry starting at 6:30.  This isn’t at our office, although we are always amused when “The Foundry” gets confused with “Foundry Group”.  Rather, it’s across the street at The Foundry, 1109 Walnut Street.  Hoist a few for me as I’ll be in Seattle (more on that in a minute.)

On Monday, StillSecure announced that it has acquired ProtectPoint.  ProtectPoint is a managed security service provider (MSSP) and immediately adds a portfolio of managed security products to StillSecure’s award-winning product arsenal.  Alan Shimel, the Chief Strategy Officer of StillSecure, does an excellent job of explaining the reasons for the acquisition in his post titled StillSecure acquires ProtectPoint, entering the MSSP market – Why?

This is the second time in less than a month that a company I’m on the board of has made an acquisition.  At the end of January, in my post titled Rally Software is a Buyer I wrote:

“[With regard to an acquisition strategy] I’m seeing this pattern with a number of the established companies I’m an investor in.  Having gone through this cycle several times and had success and failure with acquisition driven strategies, I’ve got a clear view on when and how it can work successfully.  I’m not interested in garbage truck mergers (two crappy companies that get jammed together to hope something good comes out of it) – all of my energy is focused on having a market leader pick up a complementary technology or market “asset” that helps accelerate the product or market roadmap.”

As with Rally’s acquisition of 6th Sense Analytics, StillSecure has been working on building out a set of managed security offerings around their product set.  The demand for managed security services (or security as a service, or whatever you want to call it) has been steadily increasing and StillSecure decided to explore a buy vs. build approach to accelerate their entry into the market.  StillSecure went searching for a company to acquire and found a great fit (functionally and culturally) with ProtectPoint and now has a fully built out and well regarded MSSP offering as part of its product mix.

Having spent some time with Steve Harris, the CEO of ProtectPoint, I’m really excited about what he and his team bring to StillSecure.  I also have another person to hang out besides Alan when I head to Florida for a break from winter.  Steve and team – welcome aboard!

Ever since David Cohen started TechStars, I’ve encouraged him to “open source” everything.  We regularly get approached by people all over the world to talk about the program.  We do – we tell them everything about what we do, how we do it, and why we do it.  We share our documents with them.  We try to help and support them.

We regularly get asked for the documents we use for doing early stage financings.  I personally believe these documents should be able to be done on a single piece of paper and sealed with a handshake (or more preferably, a fist bump), but I’m generally alone in that view.  So, we’ve worked closely with Cooley Godward Kronish, LLP (and specifically Mike Platt, who has been my go to lawyer and a close friend since I moved to Boulder in 1995) to put together a set of “Model Seed Funding Documents” that anyone can use.

There are five primary documents in the set:

• Term Sheet
• Articles of Incorporation
• Bylaws
• Subscription Agreement
• Election Consent

Of course, these are just example documents so all legal disclaimers about usage apply (e.g. “do with them what you want, but we take no responsibility for your actions.”)  That said, I think these are a great starting point for anyone doing an early stage financing.

I’ve been spending more talking in public recently.  I always try to be accessible to entrepreneurs and spend time in interesting venues where I learn something, but I hate conferences.  So it’s always a balancing act for me to participate, be “content”, but not use up 100% of my extrovert energy and end up hiding under a table somewhere trying to recover.

Last week, I did the first of my podcast series with Phil Weiser.  If you don’t know Phil, he’s a one of the most significant assets that CU Boulder has and has become a very close friend.  He runs the Silicon Flatirons program, is a professor at the CU Law School, is driving a lot of entrepreneurial activity at CU, and is co-chairman with me of the Colorado Governor’s Innovation Council.  Phil asked if I’d endure a long series of questions over a handful of interviews with him and I said yes, so he is publicly interviewing me on a variety of topics of his choosing, with questions he makes up and doesn’t tell me in advance.  The first interview was titled “Feld on Finance” (I’m sure someone will enjoy the alliteration) – you can read the summary or listen to the podcast if you are interested.

Immediately after the interview I attended and participated in last week’s Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup.  This has turned into an incredible phenomenon – over 400 people attended.  Hats off to Robert Reich for starting this up and stewarding it through its growth into something remarkable that should be on the must participate list for anyone in the Boulder / Denver area interested in software / Internet entrepreneurship.  At the end of the night, I took questions from the crowd for about thirty minutes.

I then headed to Los Angeles to spend a few days supporting Amy in some of her activities at Wellesley, including some very exciting stuff we are involved in with Wellesley and Madeleine Albright (Wellesley ‘59).  We’ll talk more about that soon.

I decided it was pointless to have a weekend so I spent Sunday causing trouble at the Silicon Flatirons’ Conference: Imagine the Internet’s Future.  Rocky Radar has an excellent summary of Day 1 (Sunday) and Day 2 (Monday – which I didn’t attend).  I just saw a draft of Phil Weiser’s post conference summary – it’s very provocative and captures the issues extremely well so I’ll link to it separately when it’s up.

Monday morning I went to a top secret meeting in downtown Denver that I can’t talk about because I was told a bunch of times that it was confidential.  I do think I can say that it involved a cross section of the business community, but titled strongly toward “big companies” / “traditional businesses” vs. tech / entrepreneurship.  I found it fascinating in direct contrast to the events of the previous week, especially the entrepreneurial ones that I had been at. While the room was filled with very smart and experienced people, I was amazed at the negative, oppressed, and almost helpless tone.  It stood out in stark contrast to the entrepreneurs I hang out with, who recognize the challenges of the macro environment, but are optimistic and determined to make stuff happen, regardless of what’s going on.

To cap it off, on Monday afternoon I heard some remarkably great news out of NewsGator.  The company just continues to land huge customers at a crazy fast pace.

The sun is starting to come up – I am so pleased to be alive.