Who said March Madness was only for college basketball fans? I’m a proud nerd, am pretty good at basketball, but my college team (MIT) never ahem did much in March so I missed out on the whole March Madness thing in college. So, I’m psyched that I get to play TechStars 2011 Startup Madness this march.

We are picking 64 companies to participate. To qualify, you must enter by March 9th and meet the following requirements.

• Haven’t raised funding of $250,000 or more and haven’t generated revenue of more than $250,000 in a single year.
• Have a live, usable public site or an accessible demo on their home page
• Have not already been in the TechStars program – this is not for TechStars companies or alumni companies
• Must be an internet, software, or hi-tech company

You can nominate a startup on the Startup Madness page or just tweet out the following (replace @ENTRANT with the twitter handle for the company.)

Hey @TechStars, I nominate @ENTRANT for the @StartupMadness Tournament http://tsta.rs/sumadness

And yes, there are awards – a lot of them. Over $25,000 worth. Again, go to the Startup Madness page to see them.

Bring March Madness – of a different kind – to nerdville.

There are tons of startup events in Boulder.  I get asked almost daily by folks what they should attend to get involved in the local Boulder startup scene.  Fortunately, Tom Markiewicz (founder / CEO of StatsMix, a TechStars Boulder 2010 company) is now curating the Boulder Edition of StartupDigest.  It’s a great resource for anyone that wants to know what is going on in the Boulder startup scene.  Thanks Tom!

On a daily basis, I get an email from someone at a seed-stage startup where their email address does not include their website URL.  For example, I just got an email from joesmith@gmail.com for his company CoolThing. 

I wouldn’t have thought of this except for I’m deep in the proofreading of a book that David Cohen and I are editing called “The Tao of TechStars.”  One of the essays in the “Working Efficiently” section is written by David, titled “Don’t Suck at Email”, and talks about this.

Specifically, David says:

“Another way that founders suck at email is by sending email from a Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or other generic account.  Every time you send an email like this you’re missing a branding opportunity for your company.  Send and receive email from your company domain so you don’t suck at email.”

Joe’s email to me should have been from joe@coolthing.com.  There are so many reasons this is better than joesmith@gmail.com, including the simple reason that the chance of me associating “Joe” with “CoolThing” in two weeks is much greater than the chance of me associating “Joe” with “Smith” and then with “Coolthing.”

Now, I know some of you out there will say, “but Feld, you use brad@feld.com instead of brad@foundrygroup.com for your email – what gives?”  Ah, the irony of some things in life (although brad@foundrygroup.com works just fine.)