Yesterday was an exciting first day back from vacation for me. I spent the morning at the Microsoft Campus doing our TechStars Demo and Investor Day for Silicon Valley. It was well attended and showcased a number of the 2007 and 2008 TechStars companies. Dan Kaplan at VentureBeat had a detailed write up on it titled At TechStars, twelve teams show that Boulder, CO can produce some fantastic tech and Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch weighed in with his views in the post titled TechStars Demo Day: Acquisitions Galore As Twelve Companies Strut Their Stuff.
One of the 2007 TechStars companis, IntenseDebate, announced during the presentation that they had just been acquired by Automattic, the makers of WordPress. There was a ton of positive buzz yesterday in the blogosphere about this – huge congrats to the IntenseDebate gang as well as everyone involved in Automattic. Vator.tv captured Toni Schneider (the CEO of Automattic) up on stage with Tom Keller (the CEO of Intense Debate) talking about the deal.
This is the second acquisition of a TechStars 2007 company following AOL’s acquisition of SocialThing last month. As part of this one, I’ve agreed to become a "raving WordPress fanboy" so look for me to finally migrate my various blogs over to WordPress. I’m also very much enjoying writing in my new WordPress moleskin notebook and putting little WordPress stickers on things wherever I go, including up and down University Avenue today on my morning run.