Square 1 Bank has officially opened their office in Boulder with Ken Fugate moving to town full time.  Bob Van Nortwick – one of Square 1’s founders – had done an awesome job of pioneering the Colorado market for Square, providing solid and constructive competition for the other main early stage banker in the area – Silicon Valley Bank.  We work with (and love) both banks – and I’m delighted that there is a healthy enough entrepreneurial ecosystem in my backyard to support both of them.

My next marathon is in a couple of weeks so I’ve been logging plenty of miles lately.  I had a 10 mile run scheduled yesterday but it was -5, pitch black, and very windy at my house when I needed to get started so I decided to change things up and do a shorter, more intense run.  So – I drove to the office and ran Mount Sanitas – a mainstay 5 mile loop with serious elevation.

The top 25% was ice (doh).  Since I was wearing regular running shoes, that was entertaining enough, but then I got lost coming down the back side (apparently a common occurrence.)  At some point I realized I was climbing down the side of the mountain.

Oops.  Check the drop at 2.5m.  I descended over 500 ft without making an inch of forward progress.  Yes – it was all ice.

I only fell twice.  My left ankle is sore today, but nothing that’s going to slow me down.  And – I ended up getting in an almost 2 hour run anyway (at the expense of my first meeting of the day – Bijan: thanks for understanding.)

I almost managed to not to write my annual “please update the copyright on your website” post.  Matt Blumberg even called me out for being off my game this year.  But this morning, after seeing the 5,323rd Copyright 2007 message of the year, I decided I could no longer resist the urge to shout at the top of my lungs: “It’s 2008 – update your copyright.”  Oh – by the way – you are a software or web company – there’s a way to do this so it gets automatically updated – it’s called “using a variable for the year.”

This has now been a pet peeve of mine since 1980.  Did you know that the use of the copyright notice has been optional since 1989 as a result of the 1988 Berne Convention Implementation Act?  Think of what you could use all of those pixels for.

Oracle buys BEA Systems for $8.5 billion.

Sun Microsoft Systems buys MySQL for about $1.0 billion.

Gregory Reyes – Brocade’s ex-CEO – gets 21 months in jail for backdating stock options.

What was it that Apple announced again yesterday?

Another big software company – BEA – is being consumed by Oracle today.  While some people will say this goes back three months to the first offer Oracle made for BEA, the idea has been floating around for a long time.  I quickly found a priceless article about it online in Linux World from 3/16/04 (republished on Java.net).

Facing almost certain defeat in its pursuit of PeopleSoft, Oracle is eyeing other candidates and possibly BEA. "Faced with a tough, if not losing, battle for PeopleSoft, Oracle executives said Thursday that they were considering other acquisitions… Henley (CFO, Chairman) said Oracle had been ‘looking at a variety of areas’ but didn’t identify any potential takeover targets. It has expressed interest in BEA as well as reserve over the price.

"Facing almost certain defeat" eh?  Oracle apparently does not subscribe to the thesis that failure is an option. 

My friend Dave sent me a hysterical Onion article titled Failure Now An Option.  I hate the phrase "failure is not an option" – of course it is.  Some choice quotes:

• "As failure continues to dominate the American landscape, this mantra must be overruled"
• "We have no choice but to revoke failure’s non-optional status, effective immediately,"
• "Now all citizens … will [be able to say] Fuck that – this isn’t worth it."
• "The only difference is that now Americans can choose, without fear of being ostracized by society, to quit long before getting ahead."

And some data.

"Other data seem to confirm the Interior Department’s findings. A recent CBS News/New York Times poll revealed that 64 percent of Americans are "perfectly comfortable" with coming up just short, 43 percent are content to try only once rather than try, try again, and an overwhelming 95 percent admitted that after falling down, they now prefer to stay down.  Only 4 percent indicated having "some interest" in applying their balls to the wall."

While this is typical Onion satire, the brilliance of it is its underlying relevance.

We recently made another Foundry Group investment in the Zynga Game Network.  Brad Stone wrote a great article about Zynga in the NYTimes about it titled More Than Games, a Net to Snare Social Networkers.

One of my co-investors – Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures – wrote a nice overview of how he came to make this investment.  I vividly remember seeing my long time friend Mark Pincus’ name pop up as the author of Texas Hold’em on Facebook one day over the summer and thinking "hmmm – what’s Mark up to?" 

In six months Mark has put together a remarkable company.  In our first conversation about Zynga, Mark explained his vision of social gaming to me.  I’ve been a long time on and off gamer – I like puzzle and interactive games, but not first person shooters or MMOGs – so the idea of the intersection of casual games and Facebook immediately appealed to me. 

I’ve become a complete Scramble addict (remember Boggle?), although my partner Ryan’s wife Katherine continues to cream me regularly.  The Zynga games are coming fast and furiously – the current catalog includes Poker, Attack, Blackjack, Battleship, Scramble, Diveman, Triumph, Social Chat, Stickerz, Dopewars, and a bunch of others you’ll be seeing soon.

Zynga isn’t limited to Facebook – the games have now launched on Bebo and Friendster and are coming to other social networks near you in the next few weeks.

Mark is an 100% on the go, non-stop, take no prisoners entrepreneur.  In six months, he’s created a game network of over 10 million users and over 700,000 unique players each day.  I love working with guys like Mark.  And I love that he’s named his company after his dog.

I know – blasphemy in Boulder to say anything negative about CROX.  However, I’m just channeling Howard Lindzon, the founder of WallStrip and stock trader extraordinarre.  I don’t know jack about trading in public markets so I just ignore them and let other people do it for me, but it’s fun to watch what guys like Howard write.

In Crocs (CROX) – Case Study … Supply Trumps Demand Howard offers free advice to the management team of Crocs for how to get out of the ditch.

1. Split 8 for 1. That will confuse and frighten short-sellers.
2. Give away Crocs at airports all over the world. $20 million worth of Crocs in a weekend bonanza. Just hand them out as people approach the X-Ray machines. Instant customers. Instant.
3. Announce a share buyback.
4. Fire their Bankers for no reason. Just say the whores wanted us to dilute you, our wonderful common shareholders in a big public display. Use a Pinata that looks like the Goldman Sachs logo as you ring the opening Bell.

Howard made these suggestions last May.  He then predicted that the stock would roundtrip, which it did.  Wheeee!

It’s always useful to put failure in perspective.  While Citigroup is likely to announce a $20 billion writedown tomorrow, that’s difficult for most of us to relate to.

However, I bet most people that have traveled in the US have had the privilege of having their bags misplaced on a trip through Denver International Airport. 

The original amazing DIA baggage system cost $300m.  It never worked.  The city eventually turned it over to United Airlines (the dominant carrier at DIA.)  United Airlines stopped using it in 2005.  It’ll now cost $9m to dismantle it and get rid of the scrap metal.

Oops.