Eric Lunt, FeedBurner’s CTO – has a review up of the book Java Concurrency in Practice. Eric is an absolute star developer – I’ve known him since the early days of FeedBurner and marvel what he and his team have been able to create. If you are a Java developer and involved in creating highly scalable web apps, I recommend you take Eric’s advice and grab this book.
I’m getting a lot of questions these days about early round valuations – specifically for angel rounds. While these vary over time, and by segment, most of them tend to settle into a pretty tight range for early stage angel investments. I’ve talked about the different approaches – either a “convertible debt” or a “light preferred” – in the past. I’ve also stated that I prefer the light preferred approach.
So – assuming you are doing a light preferred – what is a fair price? I’ve been doing these types of investments for the past 12 years and I’ve investment in companies where the pre-money valuation has ranged from $250k to $5m and the amount raised has ranged from $50k to $2m. While there are obviously some outliers, the normal range seems to be $1m to $2.5m pre for up to a $1m investment. I’ve seen this reinforced recently with a number of deals done in this range.
I’ve always traveled a lot. Recently, the travel friction that I experience in airports around the country has felt like it’s at an all time high. Lines are long, people are angry and impatient, flights are delayed or overbooked, and there’s never a power outlet anywhere to plug my laptop into.
Yesterday was a miserable travel day as I made my way from Washington DC to East Lansing, MI via Chicago. An hour in the security line at Dulles plus 15 minutes in a people mover guaranteed that I missed my flight, resulting in a reshuffling of the entire afternoon of meetings in Chicago. I eventually ended up at a Marriott Hotel in East Lansing late last night.
I’m heading home today (yippee) and got to the Lansing Capital City Airport 90 minutes early. It’s empty, clean, calm, and relaxed. I had a nice meal at the restaurant upstairs and went wandering around looking for a power outlet. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I found a real business center outside of Gate 6 (there are only 9 gates at this airport – kind of like the number of highways in Alaska.)
I’m sitting alone in a 2,000 square foot room that’s equipped with pretty much everything you’d ever want – comfy furniture, copying machine, fax machine, printer, lots of internet connections, plenty of telephones, and power outlets everywhere. After marveling at this for a few minutes, I’ve almost forgotten that I’m actually in an airport. Oh – and it’s quiet and free. This definitely tops any Red Carpet Club I’ve been at in the past year.
Rick Klau – the VP of Business Development at FeedBurner – has a great endorsement up for Hotwire.com. Rick travels constantly (as all all busdev guys should) and Dick Costolo (FeedBurner’s CEO) is cheap (as all startup CEO’s should be.) Mix chocolate and peanut butter and according to Rick, get a tasty treat at Hotwire.com
Amy and I love art – especially contemporary art. We were long term patrons of an art gallery in Boulder on 1011 Pearl Street called Maclaren Markowitz Gallery. The gallery – after having a successful run for 15 years – started to have tough times as the economy started to tank in 2001. To try to be helpful, we became investors in the gallery and were able to help give it a few more years of life. While it could have continued to limp along, at some point everyone was tired and the primary owners decided to close the business and move on with their lives.
We’ve continued to be tangentially involved in the local Boulder art scene, mostly through our relationships with several artists that we love, as well as the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and The Dairy Center for the Arts. When a few folks – including one of the old managers at Maclaren Markowitz – started talking about opening a new gallery – we were enthusiastically supportive.
Blink Gallery started to come together and – at some point – we decided to join the small investor base and be directly supportive of the creation of this new gallery. With a stroke of luck, they were able to get the “old Maclaren location” at 1011 Pearl Street and have done a great job of updating the gallery space to a contemporary, edgy feel on almost no budget. The two founders of Blink – Susan Knickle and Pam Gonacha – have worked tirelessly to get Blink up and running. If you are in Boulder on Pearl Street, stop by and take a look at the new gallery in town. Their formal opening is on Friday, June 23rd from 6pm – 10pm – I’m sure they’d love to see you (and don’t forget to bring your checkbook.)
Often there’s a perception that to be a successful CEO, you need to be an extrovert. Media and pop culture reinforces this – we regularly see people that are comfortable in the spotlight and equate them with the model of success.
I’ve always had a number of CEOs and entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with that are introverts. While they are comfortable being in a public forum, they prefer to be either alone, with their family, or in small settings. My wife Amy has often told me that I’m a closet introvert (nope – this doesn’t mean that I like to hang out in closets) – while I spent a lot of time in group settings (and am comfortable in this environment), I much prefer to either be alone, be with Amy, or have dinner with one person or a couple.
One of my introverted CEOs sent me a great article from USA Today titled “Not all successful CEOs are extroverts.” It has some good nuggets and real data in it. The punch line – in one of the studies, it was concluded that “the study found that the charismatic CEOs make more money, but make no difference to corporate performance.”
I’ve been to a zillion board meetings (ok – let’s guess between 1,000 and 2,000 assuming 10+ / month for the past 12 years.) While the food is usually lousy (but not always, as I’ve seen a marked improvement since I wrote my Board Meeting Food Is Usually Shit post), I’ve found a more troubling pattern than just bad food. The official business of a typical board meeting is back end loaded. Specifically, items such as the ones that follow will come at the end of the meeting.
There will always be some things in the voting category that might require an extended discussion. While a CEO’s tendency will always be to use the bulk of the board meeting to set these issues up, if you have an engaged and informed board, it’s much more productive to carve out specific time without the setup to discuss the specific issues that require a vote.
The problem with these items coming at the end of the meeting is that there is never enough time allocated to them. Even the most anally retentive CEOs can’t keep a board on a tight schedule and invariable someone needs to leave early to catch a plane, drops off the phone for another call (or meeting), or people just get impatient and rush through these items. While they usually don’t require a lot of discussion, they occasionally do and there seems to be a high correlation between “important voting items” and “no time left to talk.”
So – if you are a CEO, do your board (and your company, and yourself) a favor. Do the formal stuff first and give it the right amount of time and attention. That way, as the rest of the meeting goes off in an unexpected but highly interesting and relevant tangent, you won’t keep looking at your watch thinking “this is good stuff, but we are going to run out of time.”
Ross – my “IT guy” – stole my HP z545 Media Center PC a while ago. I wasn’t really using it because there was too much “marital resistance” to this particular change in our AV infrastructure (plus, I never really got it working the way I wanted.) Imagine my surprise when Ross suggested that it was the core of the best digital media solution he could envision (after he put it all together, of course.) Ross has an extensive post on his blog up about his Media Center configuration and why he thinks it is the best solution – following is a teaser.
The race for your digital living room is on, and you won’t believe who’s winning
Microsoft. Ok, so I didn’t want to keep you in suspense for too long, I guess that proves I’m not a great writer. But the fact is that right now in the race to win your digital living room Microsoft is smoking everyone else. That’s right, Microsoft. Ok, now let me tell you why and a little bit about my setup. First the goals for my system.
– Ability to access all my digital media (TV Shows, Movies, Pictures, Music).
– Ability to record and watch live TV (ala TiVo)
– Ability to playback virtually any codec type (from DivX, WMV, Quicktime, etc).
– Ability to output a HD signal and playback HD content
– Ability to program my existing remote controls to operate the system
– Easy to use, rich and attractive interface
– Must pass the WAF (wife acceptance factor) test (remember my wife works in IT too so this isn’t too hard for me)
– Common interface on ALL my televisions (Plasma in bedroom, Projector in Home Theatre, 32″ CRT in living room)
Click through to the full article
If you have a Windows Mobile device and want to try out NewsGator’s new Windows Mobile feed reader, the beta is now available. NewsGator has had a mobile edition for phones that support HTML available for a long time (since I invested in NewsGator two years ago), however, in our desire to help people consume feeds anywhere, we’ve been working on a more robust approach to mobile clients.
As you’d expect, the Windows Mobile feed reader synchronizes your data with the NewsGator Online service (and subsequently with all the NewsGator products) so anything that you read on your phone shows up as read in NewsGator Online (and the phone can be configured to display only your unread feeds.)
Early beta feedback has been great – hats off to Kevin Cawley and the NewsGator team for quickly integrating Kevin’s previous company and products, Smartfeed.org.