Best Haiku of the Day (thanks Dave)

terabyte disk drives
software a mature market
and Brad is forty

Best Photo of the Day (thanks Chris)

Best Introspective Thought of the Day (thanks Scott)

I was watching Alaskan animals play around on Discovery channel while sitting in pizza place a few hours ago. Animals really know how to have fun. In spite of the fact that they always have to be on the lookout for predators, they run and wrestle with each other like it’s nobody’s business. I think, in that respect, our superior brain power is a liability.  I hope you’ll have a really fun 2006.

I’ve strongly encouraged my portfolio companies to incorporate “philanthropic activities” into their businesses early in their life.  I don’t advocate any particular focus – I simply encourage founders and leadership teams to think about what they can do to make a difference. 

Historically, most large public companies have some amount of philanthropic focus, but this is often missing early in the life a company.  I’m proud of a number of my portfolio companies that have incorporate philanthropic programs into their businesses early, including Rally Software’s 1% Fund, StillSecure’s 1% of Revenues to Lance Armstrong Foundation, and NewsGator’s 3% of Revenues to Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts.

Last week Return Path announced that they have developed a broad philanthropic partnership with the Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis.  The relationship originated when a former Return Path employee was diagnosed with MS.  I knew that Art Mellor – a long time colleague from Boston who is a successful entrepreneur – also had MS and had started the Accelerated Cure Project with a goal of curing MS by determining its causes.  I connected the various folks up, including Matt Blumberg, the CEO of Return Path.

I watched from the sidelines as the relationship between the two organizations developed.  This is one of my greatest pleasures in business – making the initial connection and watching capable, motivated, and competent people figure out how to work together.  In this case, it has worked splendidly for all parties as Return Path is demonstrating that it can do good by doing well.

Some day MS will be cured – there’s no doubt in my mind that the work Art and his crew are doing will contribute significantly to this.  The folks at Return Path should be proud today about their contribution to this cause.

One of the challenges with early stage companies is determining whether the thing you are creating is a “feature”, a “product”, or a “company”.  Of course everyone aspires to create “a company” and most business plans eloquently describe the $50 million company that is going to be created in five years.  Since that rarely occurs, early stage VCs are constantly asking “is that a feature, product, or a company?”

When Raj Bhargava and his co-founders came up with the original idea for Quova, it was unclear whether IP geolocation was the basis for a feature, product, or company.  In the first few years of Quova’s life, we spent most of our time inventing the IP geolocation technology, getting some early customers, and evangelizing why IP geolocation mattered.  After a couple of years, it was clear that IP geolocation (and Quova) was “a product”, but it wasn’t clear whether or not we had created something that had big enough reach to be classified as “a company.”

Last week, Quova announced their “next-generation suite of geolocation solutions.”  In my book, Quova has graduated into “company” territory – based on the breadth of their product line, the rapid increase in relevance of their products / technologies, their revenue ramp, their dominance of their market segment, and the growth of their customer base.  The Quova product suite consists of four primary products – Quova Secure, Quova Compliance, Quova Marketing, and Quova Media.  These products are all based on the core Quova IP geolocation technology, but are packaged in different ways to address specific customer needs and include additional data, software, and professional services to address the specific customer need. 

The evolution from feature to product to company is hard (and often not achieved) – it’s especially rewarding to see it happen with a company like Quova that was funded in 1999 by a patient set of investors that held steady through the Internet crash with the belief that Quova was onto something meaningful.  2005 has been a strong growth year for Quova and with this product suite release the company is extremely well positioned and focused for additional rapid growth and an exciting time in 2006. 

Are you a company with between 50 and 250 employees, located in a major city (e.g. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Dallas), in any industry, that wants to participate in a compensation benchmarking project?  Matt Blumberg – CEO of Return Path – is spearheading this and looking for up to 20 companies to participate.  You’ll get excellent comp data for a fraction of a price of a normal comp survey.  If you fit the parameters and are interested in finding out more, email a note to comp.benchmark@gmail.com. 

I turned 40 last week.  Amy took me to Cabo to the incredible One&Only Pamilla Resort with family and some close friends for an amazing week off hedonistic fun, no blogging, minimal phone, and minor email (I had a few deals that I was keeping an eye on – I only got in trouble a couple of times as we also called this Q4 vacation.)

I read less than normal for a week off (since I spent a bunch of it playing with my friends), but still managed to enjoy three books.

1. Tuva or Bust! Richard Feynman’s Last Journey: I idolize Richard Feynman – in my next life, I’d like to be more like him.  The story of his obsession with traveling to Tuva is magnificent, a great bit of history, and super perspective on communication with Russia during the cold war (pre a bunch of technologies that we currently take for granted).
2. 722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York: I picked this one up at the Strand Book Store on a recent trip to New York.  It’s a fascinating history of the creation of the New York subway system.  Lots of politics, industrialists, complex financial issues, occasional mob stuff, and some heroic figures that dramatically impacted New York.
3. God on the Starting Line: The Triumph of a Catholic School Running Team and Its Jewish Coach: This was recommended to me as a running book, not a religious book.  There was a little too much religion in it for my tastes in the first half, but this fell by the wayside after the author made his point and really got into the running story.  It’s an exciting one and fits in the “inspiration running book category”, especially if you are catholic or jewish.

 I’m back in Boulder where the temperature is lower than my age and the wind is higher than my age.