The Feld Job board is about to kick into high gear.  Look for a handful of posts in January. 

The Silicon Flatirons program at CU Law School is looking for two research fellows.  The first one is described on their web site.  They are looking for an aspiring entrepreneur or VC who would work with the New Technology Meetup, the new Entrepreneurs Unplugged series, co-teach a class with Jason Mendelson, work with the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic, and get to know who is who in the front range entrepreneurial community. 

The second is a position that I’m planning on underwriting to do real research on software patents in part of my quest to abolish software patents.  Over the past two months I’ve been reading the academic research on software patents and it is remarkably lame.  I’ve decided to fund a Silicon Flatiron Fellow to coordinate a real research program – headquartered at CU but involving anyone in the world that is doing research on software patents. 

In both cases, the fellow will be an employee of CU and the pay will be around 60K.  For the first position, please follow the directions on the CU web site.  For the second (patent) position, please email me your resume and an overview of your interest in and historical work around this area.

When I was a doctoral student at MIT, my advisor was Eric von Hippel.  I’ve had my fair share of mentors in my 42 years – Eric has been one of the best.  I still remember during the first lecture of 15.351: Managing the Innovation Process – the first class I took from Eric – hearing Eric rant about how "users are the real source of innovation." 

When Eric first started talking about the notion of user-driven innovation in the late 1970’s, it was a completely novel idea.  Over the past 40 years Eric has build an incredible body of research as well as a large network of academics and practitioners who follow and extend his battle cry.  Of course, a great instantiation of this concept that we work with every day is open source software.

When Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures first introduced me to Peter Semmelhack – the CEO and founder of Bug Labs – during one of my trips to NY several years ago, I was immediately intrigued.  Fred and his partner Brad Burnham had the courage and the vision to take fund Peter’s idea to create an open computer electronics platform.  I remember walking in the rain with Peter and saying "aha – today’s Heathkit."  I got excited and tossed a little of my own money into the financing.  Among others I introduced Peter to Eric who hit it off immediately. 

Fred has an extensive post up on Bug Pricing and Availability and Engaget has some pretty pictures.  One of the modules being released is the von Hippel Module – a module named after Eric that adds interfaces and I/O ports for further hacking of the base Bug module. 

I’m really pleased that Peter has chosen to honor and memorialize Eric’s work by naming one of the Bug modules after him.  Peter and gang – keep it up – I can’t wait to get my new toys.

Lijit released another version of their blog stats.  With each release, the chocolaty goodness of Lijit gets tastier.  I’ve now got a fancy summary page, real time geolocation from Quova (and fun Google Map and Earth integration), a top posts report from integration with AideRSS, and lots more data on my readers and the searches they do.

Oh yeah – stats are the bonus part of the equation.  Lijit’s blog search (and re-search) continues to improve with every monthly release as they tune their proprietary algorithms and eliminate their usage of Google Custom Search (which is nifty, but doesn’t generate publisher focused relevance very well because of its dependence on pagerank.)

2006 was FeedBurner’s year to be the bloggers best friend.  It was an awesomely rewarding experience (and investment.)  I know my friends at Lijit are going to do everything they know how to do in 2008 to make it their year to be the bloggers best friend.

If you are a blogger and aren’t using Lijit for search and stats, give it a shot.

Eh – shitty metaphor.  But Bill nails it in his Dear Microsoft: Please Buy Plaxo post.  I don’t have a nickel in Plaxo, but this has been an obvious fit for a lot of years.  Hopefully someone at Microsoft is listening.  While they are at it, maybe they can build a file format autoconverter into Office 2003 SP4.

For all you 24 fans out there, my now excruciatingly long time friend and third Feld Technologies employee Shawn Broderick (aka Mr. Doody) has a brilliant photo comparison up on his blog.  In fact, it’s so brilliant I’ll just steal it and post it here.

I’ll try to limit my overwhelmingly cynical political points of view to my Twitter stream, but I doubt I’ll be successful.  Maybe Jack Bauer will be out of jail in time help us all.

Today the news started emerging that Office 2003 SP3 no longer supports older Microsoft Office file formats.  When I first read this, I figured it only referred to really obscure formats.  But I was wrong – it’s step 7 in trying to get everyone to use Microsoft’s OpenXML format.  WTF?  Has someone lost their mind?

As SaaS companies start to mature and go public (there were several in 2007 and a flood expected in 2008 and 2009) there is starting to be some interesting discussion about the real economics of a SaaS business.

A new debt financing firm named SaaS Capital recently released a white paper titled Understanding the Financial Implications of the Software-as-a-Service Business Model.

My experiences don’t agree with everything they say, but I find it fascinating that there is now a dedicated SaaS debt financing company.

Following on the "sales" theme I received the following question yesterday from a regular reader.

Are you aware of any blogs that regularly deal with issues that arise when startups sell technology to customers? I am thinking of issues like:

• choosing strategic partners/ resellers/integrators/selling directly
• how to get to customers
• using a PR firm; spending on a website
• what a presentation should look like
• the sales cycle process
• deal structures
• key provisions – exclusivity, pricing, ownership of IP, liability

If you are a VP Sales blogger (or sales guy (or gal – Amy made me say that) blogger) that is writing about this stuff, please leave a comment with your link.  Wendy Lea – time to start blogging!

You are an experienced software sales person.  You just drained your 2007 sales pipeline and are frustrated with the lack of growth of your existing company.  You want to join a well funded company with great products, loads of referenceable customers, in a market that is exploding.  Plus – you want to hang with people that know how to have fun.

If you fit any of the following parameters, NewsGator is looking for you.

• Experienced field sales candidates
  • NYC/NJ with Wall Street experience
  • NYC/NJ with Pharma experience
  • Bay Area with IT
  • Chicago or Dallas
• Inside sales candidates in Denver
• Pre-Sales candidates in NYC
• Demand Generation specialist – Denver

You can email me or jobs@newsgator.com.