While the rest of the US is watching football, I thought I’d sit quietly at my house and catch up on some writing, most notably what David Cohen, Entrepreneur Magazine, and a few other special people are waiting for from me. However, before I dig into that, I thought I’d procrastinate by catching up on some reading from the week and, motivated by a few interesting things I came across, stall a little more by writing this blog post summarizing the interesting things I came across today.
More (Steve) Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: Let’s start out with an absolute must read Op-Ed by Thomas Friedman. Read it to find out why we should start calling 2010 the year of innovation, or more cleverly – the year to “Start-Up America.”
My Dad and the Story of the Stolen Stamp Collection: My dad and I are writing a series of letters to each other on our blogs. His second one is up and it’s the story of what happened to my stamp collection in sixth grade and how we addressed it together. I remember this like it was yesterday – it was a very formative experience for me that heavily influenced my view on directly confronting bad actors as well as the importance of honesty.
Bill Gates is blogging: When he first launched his blog, there was no RSS feed. There is now.
5 Minutes With OpenView Venture Partners: Mark Solon at Highway 12 Ventures has a nice Q&A up on his blog with Scott Maxwell and George Roberts at OpenView Partners. I’m good friends with Mark and Scott; Highway 12 and OpenView are co-investors in Balihoo, and I’m a small investor in OpenView Partners. Good stuff.
We Believe in Magic: Last week Memeo (we are investors) released Memeo Connect for Google Apps. You can now access your Google Apps docs from the desktop as well as sync them to the cloud. Automagically. Like Magic. Memeo explains why and how. If you are a Google Apps (Docs) user, this is for you!
Open Angel Forum Colorado – Feb 3 FAQs: OAFCO is heating up – all five sponsorships are sold out, the list of angels coming is great, and we are sorting through a nice list of companies that we are inviting. If you are interested in attending as an angel or presenting as a company, just wander over to the FAQ.
What I really feel like doing is laying on the coach, eating a mango popsicle, and reading some mental floss. Fortunately I downloaded Stuart Woods latest book Kisser yesterday.
I’m at CES all day wandering the floor looking for additional devices to wear on my body to monitor all aspects of my life. In the mean time, there’s a bunch of great stuff in my world that has happened so far this week. Here are links with a little commentary.
Rally Software Raised $16m in a Round Led by Greylock: My friends at Rally Software are creating an important long term company in the Boulder ecosystem. 2009 was a great year for Rally – they grew a ton and dominated their market segment. They didn’t need any additional financing but were approached by several firms in Q409. Greylock put forth an attractive offer and their involvement, including the addition of our new board member Tom Bogan (Chairman of Citrix among other things), is a huge addition.
Jive Software Acquires Social Media Monitoring Startup Filtrbox: I’m extremely proud of Ari Newman, Tom Chikoore, and the rest of the team at Filtrbox. They were part of the TechStars Boulder 2007 class and are now the fourth company from that class to have a positive exit (the others are SocialThing, Intense Debate, and Brightkite). The team will become the Jive Boulder office and I expect they’ll grow nicely over the next year.
Kidrobot Moves to Boulder: While I’m not an investor in Kidrobot, I’m a huge fan. Paul Budnitz is moving with about half of the 45 person company from New York and plans to hire another 20 people in Boulder in pretty short order. Look for life sized Kidrobot thingies on the Pearl Street Mall this summer.
You may be thinking “what do these things have to do with one another?” Well – they are all in my browser this morning after I returned from my run with Reece Pacheco of Overtime Media. And in case you are wondering, Reece is an ex-lacrosse star who is now running Overtime – which makes HomeField. They are a young company, but are working with about 200 sports teams at colleges across the country to get the video of their games online. Reece met me at the NY Entrepreneurs Roundtable Event that I spoke at on Monday, sent me an email about running, and off we went this morning. Reece – thanks for making sure I got out of the hotel to get my run in.
Back to my browser. Here are some thoughts for the day.
Techstars Boston plans spring startup program: The TechStars Boston program is happening in the spring of 2010 – March, April, May. Applications are now open – the deadline for Boston is January 11th at 11:59:59pm, but don’t wait because there are some special bonus happy things if you apply early. We decided to offset the timing of the Boston and Boulder programs (Boulder will happen June, July, and August) to address of a couple of things, including the ability of me and David Cohen to spend more time in Boston during the program if it doesn’t overlap with Boulder as well as the migration of many Bostonians to the Cape for parts of August.
PI Window on Business – Live Webcast with Me Talking about the Startup Visa: The title of the program is more provocative – “Diminishing Prospects: How U.S. Policy is Undermining Entrepreneurial Vision” – we’ll see what I can add to the program on BlogTalkRadio. It’s tomorrow (11/20) at 12:30pm Eastern.
iRobot Looj on Daily Grommet: Periodically my friends at Daily Grommet ask me for nerd toy suggestions. This time I gave them a very practical one – the iRobot Looj. iRobot will always have a warm spot in my heart because the CEO and co-founder, Colin Angle, is a fraternity brother (I was his pledge trainer – bwahahahahaha). Need your gutters cleaned? The Looj is for you.
eCornell Entrepreneur Video Conference: For the next few weeks (deadline is 11/30/09) eCornell will be accepting video submissions from entrepreneurs to showcase their creative approaches to meeting customer needs. Registration is free and easy, and the first-place winner will receive a full scholarship to A Systems Approach to Product and Service Design certification program ($3,500 value).
Wow – I guess Web 2.0 is happening somewhere (fortunately I have a delegate there – my partner Ryan McIntyre). That not withstanding, the tempo of stuff going on today is staggering. I’m having a blast sitting here in Boulder just trying to stay mildly ahead of all the stuff flying around. I thought I’d share some of it with you in case you need a fifteen minute break like I do.
Angels Weigh In on Net Neutrality: The WSJ has an article talking about the letter a bunch of VCs (including me and my partner Jason Mendelson) sent Julius Genachowski in support of Net Neutrality. I’m seriously bummed out that my good friend and Representative Jared Polis is opposed to Net Neutrality – if you are in Jared’s district (or any district) fill out the FreePress Save the Internet petition and have it sent to your congresspeople. (update: it looks like according to the OpEd that Jared wrote yesterday that he supports Net Neutrality.)
Gowalla + Foundry Group: I like to play with Gowalla. I like it so much, that they created a special icon for the Foundry Group spot. That’s one (very effective) way to get my attention.
Music Hack Day Boston: Ian Rogers, the CEO of Topspin Media point this out to me. It’s happening on 11/21 and 11/22 in Boston at Microsoft NERD and includes plenty of friends (such as Harmonix, Sonos, and Boxee). If you are into music + tech don’t miss it.
I just punked my partner Seth (I expect he’ll figure it out before he reads this) and had my first good run in about 30 days. Now if the sun would come out I’d be uber-happy. Back to work.
Periodically I get way behind on my “daily routine” and skip my RSS feeds for a while (up to a week). This week was one of them – I had two 4am wakeups that led me to the airport followed by a 7am wakeup (due to me being glued to my bed) followed by a 8am board meeting. So – no RSS feeds. This morning, after sleeping 12 hours, I spent an hour and read through what I missed this week. There’s some great stuff that came out of it (most from the last few days) – here you go.
GigaOM Special Event: What Comes Next for the Web? October 19, 2009: 9.30 AM: Om has a great live discussion of what comes next for the web that includes Caterina Fake (co-founder, Flickr & Hunch), Tom Coates (Yahoo), Bret Taylor (Facebook & co-founder, Friendfeed), Jeff Veen (TypeKit), Doug Bowman (Twitter) and Dave Winer. It’s a three hour detour from the discussion of the “real-time web” that explores the implication of (a) super-speed broadband and (b) the growing pervasiveness of super phones (e.g. the iPhone).
The History of SharePoint: SharePoint 2010 is going to be disclosed at the SharePoint Conference starting Monday. Because of my investment in NewsGator and our huge success with NewsGator Social Sites (Enterprise Social Computing built on top of SharePoint), I’m deep in the SharePoint mix (and use it daily at Foundry Group.) This post walks through the SharePoint history starting in the last 1990’s.
The End is Not Fixed: Short and sweet advice referenced by Ben Casnocha. Remember, the lights will go out at some point and you never know the exact moment.
Boston startup events, resources, people you need to know: I spent plenty of time in the past year in Boston in and around the entrepreneurial community while I helped get TechStars Boston up and running. I lived in Boston from 1983 to 1995, started my first company there in 1987 (sold it in 1993), and made my first angel investments there including NetGenesis (IPO), Thinkfish (acquired by CA), and Harmonix (acquired by MTV). In the past year a bunch of people have worked hard to re-energize the Boston/Cambridge software / Internet scene with great results. Don Dodge from Microsoft (who has been an important part of all of this) has a great summary post up about this.
Small c: The penis post: I’m a huge Jeff Jarvis fanboy. We’ve only met a few times and haven’t ever worked together, but I’ve always found his writings at BuzzMachine to be interesting, informative, and insightful. His recent post about his penis is extremely personal, but shows the power of how you can “let it all hang out” when you blog.
My life as a one-armed man: Jeffrey Kalmikoff showed up in Boulder a few years ago and immediately became deeply involved in the startup scene here. He left a few months ago to go to San Francisco (I hear there’s a girl involved) and is now at Digg (Jeffrey – we miss you – a LOT). He posts a very personal story that describes the “almost loss of his arm” around 2003 along with some other health issues. If you’ve got alphabetical order figured out, you’ll realize that I read about Jeff’s penis and then Jeffrey’s arm close to each other. Wait, that’s not what I meant. As a special bonus, take a look at this amazing video on Jeffrey that I found via Andrew Hyde’s blog post titled Brilliant Short Film on Jeffrey Kalmikoff.
Making of an Entrepreneur: While we are doing some multi-media stuff, my Dad (Stan Feld) interviews Larry Nelson of w3w3.com on his (Larry’s) story. Hey Larry – turnabout is fair play!
Nowhere: I told Amy that there is nowhere I’d rather be today than in Eldorado Springs with her. I hope she doesn’t read xkcd.
Founders Visas: A Good Idea: As far as I know, Chris Douvos is the only “LP blogger” out there. He recently wrote a blog post coming out in support of the StartupVisa effort. Thanks Chris!
The ‘We Need to Own’ Baloney: Fred Wilson aggressively (and appropriately) calls bullshit on the VC’s nonsense on insisting they own a certain percent of a company. Josh Kopelman follows up with a great post titled “Company Math vs. VC Math.” If VC’s said “I want to own” they’d be expressing a rational and honest perspective. By saying “I need to own”, the entrepreneur should respond with “why are you starting this relationship out with a lie?”
The VC Gender Gap – Are VCs Sexist? More provocative and appropriate VC fodder from a VC. This time Jeff Bussgang asks why there are so few female VCs. His conclusion – “Otherwise, our industry is tragically losing out on 50% of the world’s best talent!” is the same we reach at NCWIT for why there are such a lower percentage of female software engineers. This isn’t about feminism, it’s about getting a whole bunch more smart people involved in what we do!
Well – that should keep you busy for a while. Time to go for a run – my first in a couple of weeks since I’ve been apparently struggling with a bacterial infection.
Tired of the health care debate? There’s a ton of other great stuff out there today. Here’s some of the things I came across on my Sunday morning pre-run scan of all things web.
Financial Times Feels Vindicated by Web Strategy: Does anyone actually believe any of this? Does anyone find it ironic that this article is in the New York Times. I wonder when a black hole is going to emerge and swallow the newspaper industry because of all its self-referential articles.
Scanning Headlines: Now this is more like it. Maybe the Financial Times will learn something from Fred Wilson. Oh – and when I page around on the Financial Times site, they appear to give me access to everything (I’m 20 clicks in and still haven’t been asked to sign up to pay.)
Editorial: X Could Learn a Lot from Vista, Windows 7: Articles like this entertain me. Every time I’ve ended up using a computer that runs Gnome on top of Ubuntu, I think of things like this. Well – not really.
How To Fly Without ID: Awesome description of the real truth behind “has your bag been unattended; have you accepted gifts from a stranger; can I see your identification please?” I’m not flying on an airplane again until September, but I’m definitely going to try some of this when I do and see if I can increase the level of harassment I receive from the airlines.
Caution: Disruption Happening: Very smart post by Micah Baldwin about disruption, some of the TechStars Boulder 2009 companies, and comic books.
I’ve always wanted to use the word hodgepodge in a title of a blog post. I wonder if I’ll make the first page on Google – there’s not much competition other than some definitions and a few stores.
As manyofmyfriends are cranking through the TripleByPass bike race and I prepare to go for a long run in the mountains near my house in Keystone, I thought I’d leave you with a few tech blog posts and articles I read this morning.
CrunchUp Live: Real Time Search Panel: More of “too much and not enough”. Kimbal Musk’s (OneRiot) has the money quote of the panel: “Drinking from the firehose is a ticking timebomb.”
Has enterprise software has always been terrible? Gnip’s Eric Marcoullier says yes: Always one for a pithy quote, Eric Marcouiller (Gnip) got one in during his 30 minute panel (with 7 panelist – eek – just about enough time for one question for each panelist) at TechCrunch’s Real-Time CrunchUp. The real idea is that Consumer Internet is now setting the expectation for how enterprise software should work (e.g. the UI / UX is so much better).
Ok – enough of that real time shit, time for some other stuff.
Technology Going Downhill: Great story about a mountain bike crash, some dislocated fingers, an iPhone, and presence of mind.
Welcoming Andreessen Horowitz: The gang at True Ventures has a great essay on early stage entrepreneurship that ends with “If you are an entrepreneur today, this is an historic time to chase your dreams. With over $1 billion in fresh seed capital in the very early stage market, what are you waiting for?”
Playful New Ways to Waste Your Time: It’s fun to see how the mainstream media perceives the dynamic of social gaming. I assure you that my endless time spent in front of FarmVille and Mafia Wars is research, since I’m an investor in Zynga.
I usually sleep in on Sunday’s but I’ve got a 16 mile run and want to meet Amy at the end of it at 10:30 for brunch. So – good morning 5am and my normal daily reading routine. I ran across a lot of intriguing stuff this morning that I thought I’d share with you. I encourage you to trade your TV watching time for a handful of clicks.
Will Google’s Purity Pay Off? If you have engaged in the “yes Twitter is cool, but how will it make money” conversation I encourage you to read this BusinessWeek article from Pearl Harbor Day in 2000. And I quote: “LIMITED BUSINESS. But how will Google ever make money? There’s the rub. The company’s adamant refusal to use banner or other graphical ads eliminates what is the most lucrative income stream for rival search engines. “
Are We Home Alone?Sometimes Thomas Friedman nails it and sometimes he doesn’t. Today, he nails it. I completely agree that Obama (who I voted for) completely blew it on the AIG bonus thing. Per Friedman:
“President Obama missed a huge teaching opportunity with A.I.G. Those bonuses were an outrage. The public’s anger was justified. But rather than fanning those flames and letting Congress run riot, the president should have said: “I’ll handle this.” He should have gone on national TV and had the fireside chat with the country that is long overdue. That’s a talk where he lays out exactly how deep the crisis we are in is, exactly how much sacrifice we’re all going to have to make to get out of it, and then calls on those A.I.G. brokers — and everyone else who, in our rush to heal our banking system, may have gotten bonuses they did not deserve — and tells them that their president is asking them to return their bonuses “for the sake of the country.” Had Mr. Obama given A.I.G.’s American brokers a reputation to live up to, a great national mission to join, I’d bet anything we’d have gotten most of our money back voluntarily. Inspiring conduct has so much more of an impact than coercing it. And it would have elevated the president to where he belongs — above the angry gaggle in Congress.”
Dov Seidman, the CEO of LRN (I’m an investor) summarizes it well: “Laws tell you what you can do. Values inspire in you what you should do. It’s a leader’s job to inspire in us those values.”
Tit for tat: TomTom sues Microsoft for patent infringement: The Microsoft / TomTom patent suit battle is heating up. This is an important one to watch for a variety of reasons including it’s one of the few offense patent litigations from Microsoft to date.
SpringStage goes live: A year ago, David Cohen (TechStars co-founder and author of the ColoradoStartups blog) told me about the idea he had with Alex Muse for creating a national network of startup blogs. SpringStage now has over 30 startup blogs in its network. Pretty cool – take a look.
Concur’s stock sinks after CEO admits he didn’t earn degree: I have never, ever understood why people lie about graduating from college. The reputational effect (and general ease) of getting caught – especially today – far outweighs any benefits. For the record, I have an S.B. (bachelors degree) and S.M. (masters degree) in management science from MIT and was in the Ph.D. program for three years before I got kicked out. I do not have a Ph.D. My dad is Dr. Feld, but I am not.
Investing in open source hardware: Eric von Hippel – my MIT advisor and professor that I worked with (before getting kicked out of the Ph.D. program) has been researching user driven innovation since the 1970’s. He invited me to come talk at his annual MIT Innovation Lab seminar last week about open source hardware from a VC perspective. I wasn’t able to make it to Boston, but suggested Bijan Sabet from Spark Capital talk, as Bijan is an investor in BugLabs and Boxee and has a point of view about this stuff.
What Is A Good Venture Return: Fred Wilson digs a little deeper into what makes a good venture return on the heals of the PE Hub article asserting that the $590m acquisition of Pure Digital by Cisco was a decent return for a middle-of-the road VC firm, but “for big name backers Benchmark Capital and Sequoia Capital that’s pretty much a dud.” Fred decomposes this more and concludes “It’s an investment that worked out well for the investors and I am sure they are quite happy they made the investment and with the returns.”
Try, Try Again, or Maybe Not: I guess I have to go read this paper by Harvard professor Paul Gompers, Anna Kovner, Josh Lerner, and David Sharfstein. In it, they claim to have determined that the answer to the question “Does failure breed new knowledge or experience that can be leveraged into performance the second time around?” is “In some cases, yes, but over all, he says, “We found there is no benefit in terms of performance.” Mark Pincus and Zynga (I’m an investor) are highlighted in the article. I’ve been an investor in two of Mark’s successes and missed one of his failures; my experience is that the lessons he learned from his failure have been extremely well integrated into his brain. My own anecdotal experience runs counter to the study – I love working with entrepreneurs that have both success and failure.
I view it as a good thing when people start writing about solutions rather than problems. Here are several good ones for you today.
Remain Aggressive: Will Herman is a long time friend (we’ve known each other since 1984), a fantastic CEO, and a dynamite board member. He’s also a huge Patriots fan so his Belichick quote: “If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse” is expected. He also reminds us of the old Warren Buffet standard: “Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.” If you are a CEO, read carefully.
Focusing the Organization: I got to know Bill Flagg pretty well through the sale of RegOnline to Active. I wish I’d gotten to know him earlier – he’s got a great brain for business. He also makes a very strong case for “short, sweet, focused, and achievable” quarterly goals.
What is school for? I’m a daily reader of Seth Godin’s blog and a huge Seth fan, even since I met him at Yoyodyne in 1996. #15 is especially charming (“defang the proletariat”) as is #27 (“make sure the sports teams have enough players”). It’s vintage Seth in the path in which it takes your brain.
And – to end with some humor, here’s mega-endurance-man Dean Karnazes with When All Else Fails…
Amy is in Mexico on vacation with her sisters and I’ve been spending most of the weekend in bed. Sleeping. I twisted my ankle running on Tuesday and had an intense week so I think I’ve come down with a strange sleeping sickness that I’ll call “the ankle twist.”
I did manage to read through my RSS feeds this morning and found some good stuff for you.
Forecasting Sales in 2009: Will Herman is a semi-retired spectacular entrepreneur and CEO. He’s also an old friend who has put up with me since 1984. Whenever he writes something on sales (or selling) I read it carefully. So should you.
Some Company Rules: Walter Knapp, the COO of Lijit, espouses some rules for managers and non-managers. I particularly like #589: No one is ever too busy to return an email.
Don’t hide behind your board: David Cohen talks why a CEO should never start any sentence with “The board said …” or “The board decided …”
What makes a great salesman? Pete Warden is most of his way on his migration from LA to Boulder. While he’s quick to state that he “really suck(s) at selling”, I think he’s protesting a little too much. He has a great expose on why Ron Popeil (the “I can sell you anything infomercial guy”) is so good at selling.
It Doesnt Take Much: Micah Baldwin explores whether or not the Boulder tech scene is like high school and – if it is – what you can do to break into the clique of your choice. One option – just email me. Remember Walter’s rule #589.
Now I’m heading back upstairs to try to finish reading Daemon before I fall asleep again.
It’s 2009, people are getting ready to get back in gear, and there’s a lot of good stuff floating around the blogosphere this morning. Here’s some of it.
Economic Recovery Plan: Philip Greenspun has some prescriptive ideas about what the US needs to do to dig itself out of the ditch. I agree with some of it and disagree with some of it, but it’s all stimulating.
Another Resume Tip: Whenever there is a downturn, the number of resumes that flow through my inbox increases dramatically. Many of the companies we’ve invested in, including most of the Foundry Group investments, are growing so I’m happy to get these. If you are a software developer, Joel Spolsky has a superb suggestion about how to shape your resume so I’ll pay attention.
Putting The Band Back Together: Fred Wilson has a nice post where he hypothesizes that when times are tougher, serial entrepreneurs tend to swarm together around the best opportunities. The music metaphor of “putting the band back together” applies nicely. Fred’s got some good hints about how to think about equity in these situations. We are seeing this regularly also – one of our recent seed investments and another that we are closing early in January are cases of “getting the band back together.”
Google, why are you tracking links in my Gmail message?I’m not sure I care about this, but Dave Taylor does and I know that a bunch of other people, especially those of you that haven’t given up on your privacy, probably do. It’s an interesting issue.
Why Government Investment in Broadband Is Justified Now: I hope one of the legacies of Obama is a real national broadband infrastructure in the US that is better than anywhere else in the world. So does Tom Evslin; he has some good suggestions around it.
The $100 Fund:The crazy cats at VC Wear are giving away $100 in t-shirts for the stupid Twitter apps you can come up with.
Burnout: Jon Fox of Automattic / Intense Debate realizes he was burned out and does something about it. Are you burned out? I hope you aren’t anymore and did something like what Jon did over the holiday break to recharge.
Yup – that’s a Gandhi quote that came from Om Malik’s great post What I Learned This Year. I encourage you to read it slowly and ponder it. With it, I begin my suggested Daily Reading for you, as Om has kicked it off with a “what”.
What does the BoulderTwits graph mean: Pete Warden helps with a “who” as he does a neat visualization on Boulder Twitters based on data he’s putting together. Boulder is aggressively pulling Pete toward it – I predict he’ll be here full time soon.
Making an IRS Section 83B election: If you are an entrepreneur, Dave Naffzinger explains the importance and process of filing an 83b election. I was involved in an acquisition in 2008 where the founders did not file their 83b’s (even though the lawyers provided them to file – they just blew it off) and I expect they will never start anything else again, including a lemonade stand, without filing an 83b.
Florida, the Next Hotbed of Venture Capital: Ah those professional writers at the WSJ have such clever titles. This is an article about the Florida Opportunity Fund, a $29.5m “fund of funds” that will invest in VC funds that commit to investing in Florado-based business. I’ve learned a lot of this through my relationship with the Utah Fund of Funds (one of Foundry’s LPs) which has done the state-based fund of funds correctly (compared to a lot of other states which has done this incorrectly.) I’ve been working, as part of my role as co-chairman on the Colorado Governor’s Innovation Council on putting together a plan for a Colorado Fund of Funds (similar to the Utah one). It’ll be interesting to see if they get it right in Florida.
The Editor Dilemma: Fred Wilson has a good post up explaining two things. First, he talks about why he doesn’t spend time working on spellin, grammer, and verbige on his blog. He then goes on to describe a product (or maybe just a feature (limited wiki editing on blog posts) that he’d like to see. In doing this, he explains (by demonstrating) how he uses his blog as flypaper to attract interesting entrepreneurs and discuss new ideas. Gracefully done Fred. I’ll take that feature to also.
I’m always amused at how many “lists” appear at the end of the year. I’m anti-list – I never read them and I no longer am willing to contribute to them. So – for some non-list reading for today, I present to you the best of what I read this morning on the web.
Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley: Michael Malone nailed it in this article. “If Mr. Obama is serious about getting the country out of this recession using something more than public make-work projects, he should restore the integrity of the new company creation cycle: rewrite full disclosure, throw out options expensing, make compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley rules voluntary, and if he won’t cut it, then at least leave the capital gains tax rate alone.”
Day 2 Giveaway 6 – iMenorah: It’s Hanukkah (how do you spell that again) and all good jews with iPhones need the iMenorah app. Dad – I knew there was a reason you should have gotten an iPhone instead of a Blackberry.
Keystroker V2: Drive your co-workers insane in 2009 (if they aren’t already insane). Thanks Ryan.
Windows Live Writer 2009: Release Candidate: I love Windows Live Writer – I’ve been using it as my blog editor for a while. The new RC is up on the web with fancy new UI and some fun features.
More Companies Are Cutting Labor Costs Without Layoffs: Would you rather have layoffs or try some creative things like salary cuts, furloughs, four-day workweeks, elimination of 401k matches, and unpaid vacations? While large companies are aggressively pursuing these options, it’s worth pondering for smaller companies that are flirting with trying to be cash flow positive.
As I stall before I head out the door for an hour run in the cold, dark mountains outside my house, I thought I’d share some of the interesting stuff I read this morning with you.
Forrester Chief on What Not to Cut in a Downturn: I mostly include this since it’s so entertainingly short and substance-free. It links to a post of George Colony’s blog titled Why this tech recession will be differentwhich is still short, has a little more substance, but seems painfully obvious. Maybe people will cut their Forrester spending in the downtown (oh, cynical me.) I hope no one at Forrester is using social media or any keyword alerts that catch this blog or else I’ll be in trouble with my friends at Forrester.
Where is Dubai?Jeff Jarvis has an awesome essay on his trip to Dubai. He’s also got some pretty pictures in the post.
Harvard: ‘Nothing Is Fucked, Dude’: Drew Faust, Harvard’s president, writes a long email on the state of Harvard given the economic downturn titled "Harvard and the economy". In it she acknowledges the forecast that many college endowments will be down as much as 30% this year due to investment losses. Eek. Now’s a good time for my MIT friends to do some extra hacks on Harvard’s campus since there will be fewer security guards running around.
And now for some news from the world of companies that I’ve invested in.
How and Why We Made Glue: Alex Iskold has a long post up explaining the design choices behind the recent release of Adaptive Blue’s product. The product – Glue – is dynamite and the explanation of the design choices is really interesting.
To celebrate today’s New York Marathon, I went for a hard and fast run in the mountains near my house. There’s nothing quite like grinding your way up a hill for three miles and then turning around and running down it as fast as you can. As I reflected on my run, I am kind of amazed at the range of thoughts that went through my head over the course of an hour.
Since I finished my run, I’ve been sitting on my couch, catching up on email and blogs, and getting ready to lose myself in Defrag for the next two days. Following are some of the great things I came across.
Fire Congress: I was with Art Marks from Valhalla at a super top secret meeting on Monday night and all day Tuesday. We were in a corner talking about the systemic failure of Congress and he suggested a bold new approach that starts with firing the entire Congress and starting over. I told him he should blog the idea – and he did.
The Systemic Anomaly: Speaking of Systemic Anomalies, Eric Norlin takes a break from Defrag to watch The Matrix Reloaded and has an epiphany. If you recall from the movie, "the systemic anomaly’s job, then, is to essentially “reboot” the whole system by choosing 23 humans to live and start over." Eric explains how it applies to capitalism and the free markets.
How to be an Effective Contrarian: Fred Wilson explains that you should "Listen to everyone. Read everything you can. And then come to your own conclusions". Yes!
I’m hopeful that on Wednesday everyone in the United States wakes up, eats a big breakfast, and gets on with life.
Hi, I'm Brad Feld, a managing director at Foundry Group who lives in Boulder, Colorado. I invest in software and Internet companies around the US, run marathons and read a lot.
before I fall asleep again.
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