I’ve gotten to know David Cohen and David Brown through our work together at TechStars.  DavidC and I have talked a little about Pinpoint (the company that the David’s co-founded) and I’ve had one meeting at ZOLL Data Systems (the company that DavidB runs that is a subsidiary of the company that acquired Pinpoint.)  But I didn’t really know their story.

DavidB took some time off (left ZOLL but then went back.)  During this time he wrote No Vision, All Drive.  I love self-told, first person, authentic entrepreneurial stories (one of my favorites was The MouseDriver Chronicles.)  DavidB did a great job of telling the Pinpoint story – starting at the very beginning – and sticking to the story rather than veering into the prognostication zone that so many authors of business stories feel compelled to go to.

Pinpoint (and subsequently ZOLL Data Systems) is one of the great sleeper stories in the Boulder software scene.  They grew steadily from founding, survived the bubble gracefully, never raised any capital, and had a very nice exit when ZOLL acquired the company.  DavidB’s tale will be familiar to any startup entrepreneur and is inspiring to anyone that aspires to start a company.  The anecdotes about DavidC were hysterical and help me better understand one of my co-conspirator at TechStars.

I’m on a “read each Kurt Vonnegut book in order that he wrote them” (I’m on number two – The Sirens of Titan.)  I’m putting a non-fiction book in between each Vonnegut book – No Vision, All Drive was a good choice.

Finally, Amy just wrote about our morning visitor if you want more “bear in the driveway pictures.”  I still haven’t gone running and can’t figure out how to get my butt out of the house.

I was walking upstairs at 6am to go put my running clothes on and head out the door for an hour when Kenai started barking like crazy.  I inferred that we had a visitor and looked out the window.

That’s our driveway.  It’s 6:30am and I still haven’t left the house.  There’s nothing quite like living in the mountains.

If you ever have the chance to see Alan Greenspan do an hour of improptu Q&A in front of any audience (in this case 500 business people in Denver), do it.  I went to the AMG National Trust Bank sponsored event today at the Denver Art Museum titled “Art, Alan and AMG.”  It was awesome.

AMG and the Denver Art Museum were superb hosts.  Greenspan was amazing.  He stood up for most of an hour and took random Q&A from the audience.  His answers were cogent, direct, and powerful.  It was fascinating to watch him think for a few seconds and then spit out a comprehensive, well articulated answer to question after question after question.

After fielding a few questions on energy policy and oil, someone asked him a random question about the middle east.  Greenspan thought about it for about ten seconds and then succinctly stated “I don’t think I know enough about that particular issue to have a qualified answer.”  That was – without a doubt – the most impressive moment of the day. 

There are very few people that have enough confidence to respond to a question in front of 500 people that way.  I expect Charlie Munger does, but the list gets short quickly.  Greenspan won my heart and mind with that one.

Update: The Denver Post has a summary of some of Greenspan’s answers.

Sotheby’s is having a huge Contemporary Art auction tonight – you can watch it live online.  The Rothko (White Center 1950) is unbelievable.  Sotheby’s minimum price guarantee to David Rockefeller (owner of White Center) is $46m (Rockefeller paid less than $10,000 for it in 1960.)  Now that’s “art investing.”

My favorite picture in the auction is Christopher Wool’s FUCKEM.

Way out of my league, but fun to fantasize.  I used to call these things “paintings”, but it seems to be in vogue to call them “pictures”, so I’ll give it a try.

We had an NCWIT (National Center for Women & Information Technology) board meeting yesterday in advance of two days of NCWIT alliance meetings.  I’m delighted with the progress this organization has made in the past three years.  We held the meeting for the first time at the new CU Boulder ATLAS building.  Bobby Schnabel – a co-founder of NCWIT, the Director of ATLAS (“Alliance for Technology Learning and Society) and Vice Provost for Academic and Campus Technology – has a good podcast up describing ATLAS titled ATLAS – Is It Technology, Art or a Coffee Shop.  If you haven’t been there, it’s a cool, cool building.

Tonight’s reception is from 6pm to 8pm at the Folsom Stadium North Club Level.  We’ve got over 300 people attending – if you are part of the front range tech community and want to learn more about NCWIT – come join us.

I had lunch with Bijan Sabet at Spark Capital today on my way to the airport in Boston.  We met at his office at 137 Newbury Street.  I recognized the address and had a feeling it was the same building that one of my very first Feld Technologies clients – IHRDC – used to be located in. 

Not only was it the same building, but I’m pretty sure the floor Spark is on (8th) is the same floor that IHRDC was on (I remember them being on 7 and 8.)  Since that was 20 years ago, I’m not 100% sure, but I got goosebumps when I walked into the front door of the building and remembered the elevator placement. 

It’s funny what gets lodged in the brain.  The view from Spark’s conference room was strangely familiar – I remember looking out Joe Shandling, Dave Donohue, Jim Marchiori, and Jerry Whatwashislastname’s windows at the same view.  We spent a lot of time with IHRDC and I hope if anyone is still around they remember us as good guys who worked hard for them.  Queue Twilight Zone music.

Bijan fed me my typical lunch salad (something a rabbit could appreciate) while we talked through a bunch of things that we have both been thinking about.  I strongly believe that you can be an effective early stage investor without being located physically next to your companies (I’ve always been a national investor) and Spark’s portfolio distribution (mostly outside of Massachusetts) is consistent with this.  We are both fascinated with Twitter (that’s how we connected for this lunch – he saw last night that I had Twittered that I was in Boston) although in a “here’s what we’d really benefit from” sort of way.  APIs and semantic information came up.  We wondered where Lotus had gone (and if Google is going to be the new Lotus for Cambridge).  We whined a little that the MyBlogLog guys sold to Yahoo instead of doing a deal with us and Fred.  We talked about where Lijit is going and why his “Sophia problem” will be solved soon.  And – a couple of other top secret private no-bloggable things. 

Bijan – thanks for lunch and the hospitality – the Diet A&P was great and it was a trip to hang out on the 8th floor of 137 Newbury Street after 20 years.

I spent 12.1 years of my life living in Boston (and Cambridge) – from age 17.7 to 29.8.  This morning I spent an hour having a picture perfect run around the Charles River, listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers on my iTurd (my podcasts are still not syncing correctly, but whatever), and reminiscing on my time here.

I’ll always be defined by the seven years I spent at MIT (two degrees, one ABD ejection.)  I lived in Cambridge for four of them and Boston for the other eight (Devonshire Place, Fort Point Channel, and Bay State Road.)  I got married, got divorced, and met my soulmate. 

I started my first company (Feld Technologies), sold my first company, did my first angel investments (successful: NetGenesis, Thinkfish, Harmonix, Abuzz; unsuccessful: Virtuflex, Trellix, NetCentric), and learned an enormous amount about starting and running entrepreneurial businesses.

I met three of my best friends (Warren, Dave, Raj) who I think of as step-brothers.  I met two father figures (Eric, Len) who have had almost as much influence on me as my dad and my uncle Charlie.  I had some amazing highs, a very deep two year depression, and eventually realized that I only got one shot at this life thing.

I often say that I spent 11 years and 364 days too many in Boston.  But – that’s not really true.  On a morning like this, as the sun shines down up me and I put one foot in front of the other, Boston feels like a special place.

I love my iPod Nano.  I hate iTunes.  It’s like the two things exist in this parallel universe of good and bad.  I suppose one explanation is that one is hardware and the other is software, but that’s not really valid as the second best part of the Nano is software.  It could also be that I use Vista instead of OSX.  But then that would be a conspiracy theory.

This is the second day in a row that I thought I had the podcasts on my Nano that I’d downloaded into iTunes.  I even thought I’d tested things this morning.  Voila – they were there – but they didn’t work.  And I’d like to think I’m good at this stuff.

I really wanted the Zune to be good.  As a runner there is no comparison – you almost need a backpack to carry the Zune around while the Nano fits – well – pretty much anywhere.

On Saturday, I called a director at a company I’m on the board of to get a reality check on something that is going on.  Ten minutes on the phone solved three things: (1) I was able to road test my idea with someone I respect and (2) I incorporated his feedback into my idea, and (3) we were calibrated.

While this may seem obvious, I’ve never hesitated to call another director on any issue concerning a company I am involved in.  While board meetings are logical check in points, they are not the only ones and, in many cases, are not the most important ones.

I know some directors (and CEOs) who are uncomfortable talking with other directors outside the context of board meetings.  I’ve never understood this.  Pascal Levensohn has a nice post up about this titled Don’t Assume That You Have Consensus on Your Board– Make Sure You Do.  His simple message is “communicate.”

Reflecting on it, my hierarchy of daily communication is Amy, my partners, CEOs of companies I’m an investor in, and then directors / co-investors of companies I’m an investor in.  Ok – I suppose my mom is in there somewhere also.