I was going to write a different post this morning, but I came across this post by Matt Haughey titled Ev’s assholishness is greatly exaggerated and, after reading it, sat for a few minutes and thought about it. Go read it now and come back.

Welcome back. I’m not an investor in Twitter directly (I am indirectly in a tiny amount through several of the VC funds I’m an investor in) but I’m an enormous Twitter fan and user. I also wasn’t an investor in Odeo so, as the cliche goes, I don’t have a dog in the hunt. But I have a few friends who were so I have second hand knowledge about the dynamics around the Odeo to Twitter evolution.

When I read (well – skimmed) the latest round of noise about “how founders behave”, possibly stoked by Paul Allen’s new book on the origins of Microsoft along with his 60 Minutes appearance, I was annoyed, but I couldn’t figure out exactly why. I had a long conversation with a friend about this when I was Seattle on Tuesday and still couldn’t figure out why I was annoyed.

Matt, who I don’t know, nailed it. As he says in the last sentence of his post, [it's] just melodramatic bullshit.

Creating companies is extremely hard. I’ve been involved in hundreds of them (I don’t know the number any more – 300, 400?) at this point and there is founder drama in many of them. And non-founder drama. And customer drama. And partner drama. And drama about the type of soda the company gives or doesn’t give away. The early days of any company – successful or not – are complex, messy, often bizarre, complicated, and unpredictable. Some things work out. Many don’t.

We’re in another strong up cycle of technology entrepreneurship. It’s awesome to see (and participate) in the next wave of the creation of some amazing companies. When I look back over the last 25 years and look at the companies that are less than 25 years old that impact my life every day, it’s a long list. I expect in 15 more years when I look back there will be plenty of new names on that list that are getting their start right now.

So, when the press grabs onto to the meme of “founders are assholes” or ex-founders who didn’t stay with the companies over time whine about their co-founders or when people who didn’t really have any involvement with the creation of a company sue for material ownership in the company because of absurd legal claims, it annoys me. It cheapens the incredibly hard and lonely work of a founder, creates tons of noise and distraction, but more importantly becomes a distraction for first time entrepreneurs who end up getting tangled up in the noise rather than focusing on their hard problems of starting and building their own company.

When I talk to TechStars founders about this stuff, I try to focus them on what matters (their business), especially when they are having issues with their co-founders (e.g. focus on addressing the issues head on; don’t worry about what the press is going to write about you.) When I hear the questions about “did that really happen” or “what do you think about that’ or “isn’t it amazing that X did that” or “do you think Y really deserves something” it reminds me how much all the noise creeps in.

I like to read People Magazine also, but I read it in the bathroom, where it belongs, as does much of this. It’s just melodramatic bullshit. Don’t get distracted by it.

Ah – the joy of a meme.  Today’s meme is “The Web Is Dead.”  Whatever.  My favorite article about this in the past 24 hours is The Tragic Death of Practically Everything – this is basically what I would have written if I’d had time today.

This latest round apparently started with the new Wired cover story “The Web is Dead.”  Yeah, I read it.  My reaction to it was “whatever.” Are books dead?  Is email dead?   Are memes dead?

Whatever.

Today’s first Tech Star video has nothing to do with TechStars.  Instead, it will go down in history as another nerd period piece by Terry Kawaja from GCA Savvian.  I first met Terry when we hired him to be CFO of Raindance Communications to help take it public.  We had a twisted sister streak then which he maintains to this day.  Enjoy the video – it’s a great one.  And – I’ll see you later this morning with the real TechStars Founders 2010 Episode 4 video.

In the last few days there have been a large number of posts about two platform companies – Apple and Twitter.  These posts covered a wide range of perspectives (a few of the better ones are linked to below) but fundamentally came down to the tension between a platform (e.g. the iPhone OS or Twitter) vs. third party developers that build applications on top of the platforms.

Several of the Twitter related posts include The Twitter Platform’s Inflection Point, Twitter and third-party Twitter developers, and Developers In Denial: The Seesmic Case Study. Several of the Apple related posts ones include  and Adobe Vs. Apple War Generates Rage, Facebook Group, Why Apple Changed Section 3.3.1, Steve Jobs response on section 3.3.1.  If you missed the leads to the story, Apple made a major change in their TOS and Twitter launched an official Blackberry client and acquired the Tweetie iPhone client, rattling their developer community.  And Twitter Officially Responds To Developers and Tries To Calm Fears.

While there has been an amazing outburst of reaction – including much surprise and criticism – to both of these situations, they should come as no surprise to anyone that has been in the computer business for a long time.  What we are experiencing is the natural evolutionary struggle that exists between a platform and its developers.  In the past few years, both Twitter and Apple have created amazing platforms and build incredible network effects on top of their platforms.  One way they have done this is to embrace developers, who have flocked to these platforms in droves, building a huge variety of awesome, great, good, mediocre, and crummy products on top of the platforms. Some of these products have created meaningful revenue for the developers, others have generated fame, and many have generated a giant time sink of work that hasn’t resulted in much.  This is the nature of being a developer on top of a platform.

True platforms are special things that are rare.  Fortunately, developers have a lot of choices and that is a powerful dynamic that keeps both the platforms and developers evolving.  I think the next few months are going to be pretty exciting ones as the current phase we are in sorts itself out.

While Fred Wilson has his review of his Google Phone up already, I’m more intrigued with all the pre-CES announcements.  I’ll be walking the floor on Thursday soaking it all in and I’m pretty excited this year based on all the chatter.  One thing that has me particularly stoked is what I’m going to call “universal videoconferencing.”

I saw my first “videophone” around 30 years ago.  It sucked but the idea was magical (and still is).  Like my personal jetpack, I’ve been waiting patiently for it.  Very patiently.  For 30 years.

I think 2010 is the year it finally happens.  Engadget has a review of Skype HD (720p) and videocalling from PCs or Internet connected LG & Panasonic HDTVs (damnit – I knew I shouldn’t have bought that new Samsung.)  720p is plenty for me on my 30” computer monitor or my 50” TV.  With Skype (I’m bradfeld btw) the video / audio layer is free and broadly compatible (no more fighting with specialized hardware). 

I’ve been doing low-res Skype videoconferencing for a while and now chat with my dad a few times a week.  I finally got Amy using it and while she’s in Keystone and I’m in Boulder it’s almost like we are together (without the smell-a-vision).  But the video quality is mediocre and it still feels limited to being in front of a computer to use.

Now, put it on a TV in your living room.  In HD.  On a 50” screen.  The picture in the NY Times article A Venture Integrating Skype Into the Family Room is perfect. 

The only thing wrong here is the remote control.  There is no good reason why the 50” screen with the video camera built in can’t do simple gesture recognition to “answer”, “volume up”, “volume down”, and “hang up.”  That’s next.

One of my goals in 2010 is to get HD videoconferencing set up across all of the places I live and work.  My 30” screens are a good start.  And – with some of the announcements coming (and stuff I expect to see at CES) I’m optimistic that I might be able to get this working with standard equipment and Skype this year.

I’m still really cold this morning and I’m dreaming of a time when I can put my meat puppet into hibernation for a while and just romp around in the metaverse.  Then I lost 30 minutes of my life to “restarting my connection to the metaverse” and it reminded me that if I went into hibernation, there’s a pretty good chance the metaverse would crash and I’d be in suspended animation forever.

It started while I responding to a Facebook message from a friend who is a senior executive at AT&T.  I twhined (whine on twitter) last night that “I think AT&T might have lost me today.”  He saw this message and this morning I woke up to a Facebook message from him asking “I see you had a bad experiece with AT&T, something I can help you with?”.  I give my friend (and – by reference AT&T) – huge props for reaching out.

As I was responding about the tragic AT&T iPhone coverage in Boulder along with the noise yesterday that AT&T was exploring trying to give high-bandwidth users incentives to reduce or modify their usage (which the pundits immediately turned into “AT&T is going to charge high-bandwidth users more”) Firefox crashed.  This was the second Firefox crash I’d had this morning so I decided to reboot.  Rebooting hung so I forced reboot.  Ten minutes later W7 and all my apps were running again (of course, in this process, W7 installed an upgrade) but I had no network.  I messed around on my computer for a little while but quickly checked my iPhone which also had no network (via my home WiFi).  I stumbled around in the dark, found my Comcast modem, and reset it by unplugging it from the wall and plugging it back in.  I sat and meditated for about five minutes – eventually I had Internet connectivity again.  However, the message to my AT&T friend that was half completed was gone when I brought up Facebook again (no surprise there, just more reinforcement of how fragile it all is.)

I’m feeling mentally bipolar about all of this.  It’s absolutely incredible to me that this stuff even works.  The range and pace of innovation is awesome.  And when I project out 20 years my brain explodes with joy and anticipation.  Yet, as I watch the little cylinder shaped LED on my laptop computer light up as the hard drive is pinned, I shudder a little.

Did I say that I’m cold?

Sorry – I just could not help myself when crafting that title.  I wonder if it’ll get good SEO juice.  And yes – it was a really sunny day today in Boulder.

By now everyone in the tech universe knows that Oracle has signed an agreement to acquire Sun.  I – for one – did not see that coming.  There has already been plenty of analysis on the good and the bad of it from a tech industry perspective.  However, I haven’t seen much commentary on what it means for the Colorado tech community.

If you live outside Colorado, your first reaction is probably “who cares.”  However, did you know that both companies have their second largest US operations in Colorado?  Nope, that hadn’t occurred to me either until I met with senior execs at both companies two weeks ago with Colorado Governor Bill Ritter.  Think about it – two native Silicon Valley companies have their largest US operation in Colorado. 

During my two day trip to Silicon Valley with Governor Ritter, Don Elliman (head of the Colorado office of economic development), and Mike Locatis (Colorado CIO), we had about a dozen meetings.  The Sun and Oracle meetings were uniquely interesting because of the large presence each company has in Colorado.  Sun’s comes from a combination of organic growth and their acquisition of StorageTek; Oracle’s comes from organic growth and their acquisitions of PeopleSoft (which had previously acquired JD Edwards), BEA (which had a good sized operation in Boulder that resulted from two other acquisitions), and Hyperion (which had previously acquired Decisioneering).  I don’t have the exact number of total employees of both companies in Colorado but I’m guessing it’s around 10,000 with a heavy concentration of them near Boulder, Denver, and Colorado Springs.

In both the Oracle and Sun meetings, the executives that we met with were extremely enthusiastic about their teams in Colorado.  Even if you discount their enthusiasm based on the fact they were talking to the governor of Colorado, it was sincere and substantiated by their perspectives on the capability, quality, and loyalty of their Colorado-based workforces.  It was clear that regardless of future acquisition activity, both companies had plans to continue to grow their bases in Colorado.

Now, acquisitions are always complex and this one isn’t expected to close until sometime this summer.  However, given the existing presence of both companies in Colorado, I expect there will be additional focus on the appropriate integration dynamics.  While they will likely include some rationalization of people and facilities, I expect it will be healthy for the long term growth of Colorado as a technology center, especially given the positive experiences each company has had with large workforces in Colorado.

One of the neat things about business is that it runs in cycles.  I’ve been involved in the software business since 1985 when I started my first company.  Since then, I’ve seen numerous cycles with a wide range of amplitudes.  I don’t try to time any of the cycles, the peaks, or the troughs; rather I just invest and work hard all the way through each of the cycles.

Given the negative sentiment across many parts of the business universe (e.g. the NY Times headline this morning Jobless Rate Hits 8.5%; 663,000 Jobs Lost), I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the Q1 performance of many of the companies I’m an investor in.  Several had record quarters, most made or beat their Q1 plan (obviously the easiest plan of the year to make since it’s usually baked near the beginning of the quarter), and a couple had extraordinary growth that surprised everyone.  Some struggled, but when I look at the overall distribution of behavior across our entire portfolio, it was kind of what you’d expect from a typical economic environment versus one that is either distressed or bubbly.

This morning during my daily information consumption routine, I noticed four things that stuck out.

• RIM announces strong earnings.
• Changyou has a strong IPO.
• IBM is rumored to have reached a deal to acquire Sun.
• Google is rumored to be in discussions to acquire Twitter (or not).

All of these are nice leading indicators that the exit environment for tech companies, which has been frozen for the past few quarters, is starting to thaw out.  It’ll be interesting to see if this is just a warm day mid-winter or actually the beginning of spring.

As co-chairman of the Colorado Governor’s Innovation Council, I’ve been regularly exposed to the acronym ICT.  It’s not a familiar or comfortably one to me and I chronically call it “CIT” or expand it incorrectly.

I am looking for a phrase that covers IT + Communications + Software + Internet.  These are the four components of ICT that drive a huge chunk of business activity and innovation in Colorado.  In my world as a VC, I call this software + Internet, but that doesn’t cover the full landscape.

My friends at Silicon Flatirons have put together a Wiki titled Innovation in Colorado and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) where we are compiling the history of the ICT ecosystem in Colorado.  If you have participated in this in any way, feel free to jump on and add your thoughts and facts.

What’s your favorite phrase or acronym for this?

If you’d like to do something political that has nothing to do with the upcoming elections, read through Tom Evslin’s post Act Now for Better Internet Access.   Then go sign the online petition at freetheairwaves.com.

It kind of blows my mind that the National Association of Broadcasters is still fighting this stuff, especially with the impending federally mandated cutover to digital TV in February.  But hey, lots of things seem illogical – this is nothing new.

Thanks Tom for alerting everyone to this.  The deadline for comments is Tuesday 10/28 so click and comment now.