My amazing day at the Supreme Court continued to bounce around in the back of my mind all day yesterday.  I was at a board meeting for a company that I’ve been on the board of for almost a decade – it was the best (as in most productive) board meeting we’ve had in a long time. 

I’ve written about The Best Board Meetings in the past.  One element of the best board meetings is a prepared mind. This is the powerful lesson from the Supreme Court. On Monday (at the Supreme Court), I saw eleven very smart people participate in a very complex discussion that they were extremely prepared for.  In one hour they covered an amazing amount of ground.  I attribute this to the work they did in advance of the meeting.

In many board meetings, the material shows up at the meeting, or the board members haven’t read the material in advance, or the board material is not very detailed, or the board material is too detailed.  Basically, either the board members don’t have the material to have a prepared mind in advance of the meeting, or they don’t take the time to do the work to be prepared.

Then, unlike the Supreme Court session where you can dive into substance immediately, the board members and management spend a long portion of the meeting “getting up to speed”.  That’s a total waste of time for everyone in the room.

In my strong board meeting yesterday, everyone was prepared.  The board material was comprehensive, but not overly so.  It came in advance of the meeting (only 24 hours, but still enough time for everyone to read it).  And, rather than go through the material page by page, we picked a handful of key themes and discussed them.  For several hours.  In detail, but at a level that resulted in clarity for the board members and management.

The other key lesson from the Supreme Court is paying attention.  I’ve written about this also in VC Behavior in Board Meetings.  I continue to fall victim to the blackberry checking syndrome.  In the Supreme Court, phones, computers, and PDA’s weren’t allow.  So I paid attention.  And as a result I really followed what was going on and processed almost all of the information.  Even in yesterday’s board meeting I found myself drifting a little and pulling out my iPhone – bad Brad.  It detracted a little from the meeting (my fault), but most importantly it caused me to likely miss a few things I shouldn’t have missed.

I’m at Defrag all day today and am going to try to pay attention.

The Boulder Camera highlighted a few CU Boulder students and their newest project in the article CU-Boulder students create Pac-Man Roomba game.  For anyone that played Pac-Man as a kid (as I did) or anyone that loves robots, it’s sheer brilliance.

Information about the entire project is up on the web at Roomba Pac-Man.  Now they need to do a Ms. Roomba Pac-Man – that would be a nice marriage of technologies.

Sorry – I couldn’t help myself.  I doubt this will be repeated anytime soon.

I know it’s a little self-referential for me to put this on my blog, but it is my blog after all.

I had an incredible experience yesterday.  My friend Phil Weiser, who is now the Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the US Department of Justice, Antitrust Division (I prefer to call him America’s Top Cop on Agriculture) invited me, my partner Jason Mendelson, and my wife Amy Batchelor to attend the Supreme Court Oral Arguments for re Bilski.  A rare tie sighting ensued as a jacket and tie is required to attend.

For those that know about my fervent anti-patent bias with regards to software, Bilski is an important case.  Depending on how the Supreme Court rules, it could open the door for both the invalidation of business method patents as well as begin a serious discussion about the validity of software patents.  One can hope.  So, this wasn’t a random Supreme Court visit, but rather one that is highly relevant to something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, talking, and writing about.

As you walk up the steps to the Supreme Court, you can’t help but stop and stare.  It was a beautiful day and we just soaked up the sunshine for a few minutes.  We then walked to the side entrance, went through security, and proceeded to the Supreme Court Cafeteria where we met Phil for lunch.  We were all a little nervous which was evident as we struggled to get salads from the salad bar (how hard is it to get lunch?) before sitting down in the relatively small cafeteria.

The Oral Arguments were from 1pm to 2pm so at 12:30 we mobilized.  The process of getting into the Courtroom is tedious, but surprisingly chaotic as they check IDs and accompany people in waves.  But once in, it’s powerful.

We sat down and waited quietly.  The courtroom was full.  At exactly 1pm, the Justices entered.  They sat, and immediately called the Petitioner (J. Michael Jakes).  Jakes got about thirty seconds into his oral argument when Justice Scalia jumped in with a question.  A short attempt at an answer by Jakes followed by a question by Breyer.  Another short answer and then a question by Ginsburg.  Then Breyer. Then Sotomayor.  Within five minutes I was stunned at the high level of understanding the Justices had in this particular case, the insightfulness of their questions, and their level of participation.

Breyer, Roberts, Scalia, and Sotomayor continued to question the petitioner for the next five minutes.  Their tone was aggressive – bordering on hostile – but never quite crossing the line.  Jakes kept his cool although he didn’t have strong responses to much of anything (at least from my perspective).  While I was biased against the Petitioner and could have heard what I wanted to hear, it sounded to me like the Justices were leaning strongly against business method patents and trying to understand how they could possibly be valid.

The Petitioner abruptly finished (reserving the balance of his time) and the Respondent (Malcolm L. Stewart) began.  It was a similar drill – the Petitioner got started and Justice Alito jumped in with a question.  A short answer followed by Sotomayor.  This continued for about 30 minutes.  Several times the idea of software came up.  Stewart steered the conversation away from this each time or – in some cases – refused to address the question.  This was frustrating to me as I thought the Justices were throwing him fat pitches to link software in with business methods as things that shouldn’t be patent eligible.  At some point it became clear that Stewart had a clear charge to keep software out of it as he went so far as to say that the government had argued against having the Supreme Court hear this case as there were difficult problems in software innovation that hadn’t yet been worked through.  Near the end, the State Street Bank case came up (not surprisingly) although in my opinion Stewart really fumbled his response.

At the end, the Petitioner got a four minute rebuttal.  At 1:55 Chief Justice Roberts promptly stated “Thank you, Counsel.  The case is submitted.”  The justices then rose and left the courtroom.  A minute later everyone else left.

We quickly said our goodbyes to Phil (he had to get back to work), wandered around for a few minutes looking for our car, and then headed to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to head back to Colorado.

When we landed, the transcript of the Oral Argument was up. And John Schwartz, the NY Times reporter who we stood behind in the security line (he’s got a cool black skull wallet), had his article up titled Justices Hear Patent Case on Protecting the Abstract. The web is an amazing thing.

In short, the experience was awesome.  I’m rarely speechless but as I walked out of the Supreme Court afterwards I realized I had nothing to say.

I continue to love the Astronomy Picture of the Day. 

As a result of looking at it first thing in the morning, I insure that I’ll learn at least one thing each day.

Simeon Simeonov, the Founder & CEO of FastIgnite, has put together a nice Stock Option Vesting Calculator.  It works just fine for stock vesting as well. 

Sim is a dynamite entrepreneur who has also done a tour of duty as a VC so he knows the drill well.  In the email he sent me about it he said it was inspired to put it together after reading several of the posts in the Term Sheet Series that Jason Mendelson and I wrote several years ago.

Sim – next up – how about a simple liquidation preference and exit analysis calculator?

I’ve felt unsettled since we landed in DC on Saturday.  During my run this afternoon on the Washington Mall, I decided to attribute some of it to the redeye I took from Seattle mid-week and some of it to Washington DC itself.

Let’s start with the redeye.  I’m 43.  When I was in my 20’s and early 30’s, I regularly took redeye’s (often as frequently as once a week).  Five hours of sleep on the plane due to my superpower of being able to sleep from wheels up to wheels down, a quick shower, an extra long toothbrushing session, and I was good for a full day.  Wednesday night I took JetBlue from Seattle to Boston.  Five solid hours of sleep followed by a ride to my hotel.  I brushed my teeth and then crawled into bed at 8am for a little more sleep.  I woke up at 1pm, had a meeting, and then went back to sleep until 5pm.  After dinner I went to sleep around 10 and slept until 7.  I felt like shit when I woke up, had a full day, and crashed again at 10pm Friday night.  It’s Sunday and I finally don’t feel tired.  Yesterday, I sent my assistant Kelly a note that said “Don’t ever let me fly on a redeye again.”

Yesterday was a pretty day in DC – a little cold, but sunny.  Today has been beautiful – in the 60s and sunny.  Amy and I are here mostly to go to the Supreme Court tomorrow and hear the oral arguments on re Bilski.  Yesterday was a mellow walk around day with dinner with college friends at Vidalia (mildly ironic since I’m allergic to onions).  Today, we went to the National Gallery and the National Museum of Natural History – if you are in DC and you are an art lover you should absolutely make time to see the Meyerhoff Collection – it is amazing.  We also got lucky and saw Leo Villareal’s Multiverse light sculpture before it was removed.  All I remember from the National Museum of Natural History is the passel of children and the dinosaurs.

Now for the other half of what is making me unsettled.  As I ran on the Washington Mall I had chunks of time with the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.  Both invoke deep American pride – I find that the best description of the emotion I felt while taking a short break from my run and staring up at Abe Lincoln.  However, something just felt wrong.  DC feels too busy, the restaurants are too full, there is too much traffic, and just too much stuff. I remembered thinking about the office buildings between Dulles Airport and DC – virtually all of them were filled with companies that generate massive amounts of money from the federal government.  Several of the buildings undergoing renovation (such as the Hoover Building) had big pictures of Barak Obama on the signs talking about the scope of the renovations.  I started comparing DC to several of the other capital cities, such as London and Paris, and realized that DC is all about the business of government, whereas the other capitals that I’m familiar with are much broader in scope.

Between the damage I did to myself with the redeye and my sense of being overwhelmed by “the business of government”, I think I need to go hide in the mountains for a few days.

My friends at OneRiot and Adaptive Blue are organizing the second annual Add-on-Con.  It is being held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA on Dec 11.  If you are involved in a company that makes browser add-ons of any sort, this conference is for you. 

The conference is a full day of discussions about the browser and browser add-on market.  The closing keynote is on the future of the web browser and is moderated by Douglas Crockford and features representatives from Microsoft, Mozilla and Google.

In addition, if you are a new company and want to get exposure to the community and the browser vendors, Add-on-Con09 has a Sandbox program.  Companies that are accepted into the Sandbox receive promotion on the Add-on-Con website, $75 off the event cost of the event (50% discount), and the ability to demo their product in front of Browser representatives and conference attendees the morning of the conference.

If you aren’t a Sandbox company, you can still get a discount by using the discount code Bfeldaddoncon09 which takes $50 off of the $150 registration fee.

Every day I get emails from entrepreneurs that make me think.  In this case, it’s from a friend who is on the fundraising trail.  He started off the email with “I felt compelled to share this with you as someone who would appreciate it.”  I thought it was dynamite and asked him if I could share it since – in its unedited form – it captured so nicely what I expect many entrepreneurs feel. And, just as importantly, it’s something I hope VC’s realize that entrepreneurs – even very experienced ones – feel.

I am fortunate to have successfully raised venture capital from top tier investors before. 

I have been a failed and successful CEO and know the difference.

I have earned my CEO stripes by being a successful operator in startups and big organizations.

I can lead, problem solve and think strategically.  I am technically adept, I can sell.  I work hard.

Yet, as I set out to raise money, I still have a great feeling of unease of the result.  I guess I have humility as well.

I’ve noticed, or maybe more accurately, I’ve become aware of the ether that is between a venture investor and entrepreneur.  In the ether, all things that can make or break a deal exist: idea, market risk, technical risk, team competence, economy, deal flow, competition, VC mood that day, entrepreneur pitch that day, first impression, gut feel, blog post for or against the idea read that morning, breakfast/no-breakfast, bias for or against, smarts or not-so-smarts of the VC and entrepreneur.

In my pitch experience, VCs I have been convinced hated me and my company after my pitch have invested.  VCs I am sure as shit loved me and my company after my pitch blew me off.  I have also been right that VCs I thought hated me and my company told me they in fact did; and, those who loved me and my company did in fact invest.  It’s been a crap shoot at best. 

Assuming there is something of merit in the idea, market, team and company, somewhere in the ether is a term sheet and a kick to the curb.  Coalescing just the right combination of elements in the ether at the right time has proven to be more art than science.  Anti-portfolios highlight how successful companies didn’t get it coalesced with one investor but did with another.

If I get it right and a financing comes together for my new company, I hope to have learned something that tips the scales of randomness in the scrum.

At dinner tonight we started telling miserable airplane travel stories.  Everyone has a least one (or 7,321) so it’s fun to hear some of the really abysmal ones, especially the night before I head to the airport to catch an early morning flight.

We were also talking about various philosophies of life and how to deal with difficult stuff.  After a while the conversation circled back to air travel.  And then I heard the best line of the night.

“When I travel I pretend I’m luggage.  From the moment I set foot in the airport, my expectation is that I’ll be treated no better than my luggage gets treated.  As a result, my expectations are so low that any little bit of happiness and politeness brings me great pleasure.”

I laughed out loud.  It was said with a sardonic grin, so the backdrop was framed appropriately.  There was a quiet pause after my laughter.  And then I pondered it – and thought how incredibly right this approach was.

Rather than bitch endlessly about the misery of our air travel experiences, let’s all spend November pretending we are luggage.  The only goal of the plane is to get us from point A to point B.  I guess there are circumstances where this won’t happen, but in most cases we’ll eventually get there.  Time doesn’t really matter to a piece of luggage, nor does comfort.  Politeness?  I’ve shoved many a piece of luggage into a space that it didn’t fit without even saying “excuse me.”  Oh – and I’ve put my smelly feet on my luggage many, many times.

In addition to pretending I’m luggage, I’m also going to make sure I use my super power on every plane flight this month. Luggage is very good at sleeping on planes, as am I.  Luggage sleepers unite.

See you at the airport.