I’m still really cold this morning and I’m dreaming of a time when I can put my meat puppet into hibernation for a while and just romp around in the metaverse.  Then I lost 30 minutes of my life to “restarting my connection to the metaverse” and it reminded me that if I went into hibernation, there’s a pretty good chance the metaverse would crash and I’d be in suspended animation forever.

It started while I responding to a Facebook message from a friend who is a senior executive at AT&T.  I twhined (whine on twitter) last night that “I think AT&T might have lost me today.”  He saw this message and this morning I woke up to a Facebook message from him asking “I see you had a bad experiece with AT&T, something I can help you with?”.  I give my friend (and – by reference AT&T) – huge props for reaching out.

As I was responding about the tragic AT&T iPhone coverage in Boulder along with the noise yesterday that AT&T was exploring trying to give high-bandwidth users incentives to reduce or modify their usage (which the pundits immediately turned into “AT&T is going to charge high-bandwidth users more”) Firefox crashed.  This was the second Firefox crash I’d had this morning so I decided to reboot.  Rebooting hung so I forced reboot.  Ten minutes later W7 and all my apps were running again (of course, in this process, W7 installed an upgrade) but I had no network.  I messed around on my computer for a little while but quickly checked my iPhone which also had no network (via my home WiFi).  I stumbled around in the dark, found my Comcast modem, and reset it by unplugging it from the wall and plugging it back in.  I sat and meditated for about five minutes – eventually I had Internet connectivity again.  However, the message to my AT&T friend that was half completed was gone when I brought up Facebook again (no surprise there, just more reinforcement of how fragile it all is.)

I’m feeling mentally bipolar about all of this.  It’s absolutely incredible to me that this stuff even works.  The range and pace of innovation is awesome.  And when I project out 20 years my brain explodes with joy and anticipation.  Yet, as I watch the little cylinder shaped LED on my laptop computer light up as the hard drive is pinned, I shudder a little.

Did I say that I’m cold?

For the last three years I’ve been laboring to help propagate the myth that it doesn’t snow much in Boulder and when it does it’s 55 degrees the next day and the snow all goes away.  After getting back from a week of vacation on the beach in Mexico on Friday and now being on day five of the thermometer hovering around zero, tons of very frozen snow on the ground, and no chance that I’m going to contemplate heading outside for a run, I’ve decided to call bullshit on myself.

It snows here. Plenty.  It’s a really fun snow.  Beautiful, overwhelming storms that roll in, dump a foot, or two, or even three. (the record at my house – 48 inches). 

Sometimes it’s really cold, but it’s a “dry cold”, it’s not windy, and it you wear the right number of layers, a hat, and gloves it’s actually kind of fun.  Some crazy people (ahem – moi) even like to go for a trail run while it’s snowing, as long as it’s not zero degrees outside.  For example, the view from my house yesterday morning after I left my car running for a while to warm up.

It does eventually warm up and get very, very sunny.  Then all the snow and ice goes away, unless you live near Mapleton, in which case you are screwed for a while, or in Eldorado Canyon, where you actually prefer the snow and ice doesn’t go away so people have a harder time coming to visit you. 

The snow usually starts in December, although a mid-October snowstorm of a foot or more isn’t unusual.  But that early one is just a tease since it goes away in 24 hours when it’s 55 degrees.  The December one sticks around for a while because of the temperature.  And the angle of the sun.  And the next storm that comes before it all melts.  On the bright side, it usually means the ski slopes are getting hammered also.

It’s only really cold in December and January.  Well, sometimes February.  And occasionally March.  And then it really snows just to make sure spring skiing is awesome.  But by now it is actually getting warm on a regular basis so the snow comes and goes.  And it’s no big deal, unless you live near Mapleton.

From 1997 to 2005 there really was very little snow here in the winter.  The people that have been living here for 30+ years tell me that’s because there was a major drought going on.  When I moved her in the winter of 1995, I experienced two years like the past three.  But 1997 to 2005 dimmed my memory, along with all the talk about global warming.  Well – apparently the drought is over.

I’m really fucking cold this morning (-8) although my weather app tells me it’ll get up to 20 degrees today.  Oh goody.

Yesterday was Return Path’s 10th Birthday.  Matt Blumberg, Return Path’s CEO and founder, wrote a great reflective post on his blog titled A Perfect Ten. Among other things he covers what he is proudest of from Return Path’s first decade as well as what he regrets or would have done differently.

Matt and his team have created a significant company that is profitable, a market leader in its segment, and is growing nicely.  It has a strong balance sheet and an excellent leadership team. While the business has evolved significantly from its creation a decade ago, it has always has a clear sense of purpose and vision which has stayed pretty steady, in large part due to Matt and his executive teams’ leadership and stability.

Since I’ve been involved in Return Path since 2000, I thought I’d tell my story of how I recall my initial involvement.  Some time in early 2000, we (Mobius) met with three entrepreneurs (Eric Kirby, George Bilbrey, and Kevin O’Connell) about an idea for a company they had created to provide “Internet Email Change of Address” services.  This was a process similar to what the US Post Office does when you physically move – where you fill out a change of address form – but for email when you change your email address.  The business was originally called IECOA but fortunately was changed to Veripost about the time we invested in it in 2000.

Veripost was physically based in the Mobius Colorado Incubator that we ran from 2000 to 2004.  Since it was one of the first companies in the incubator I got to know the founders and the early team well.  Veripost quickly grew to about 20 people, built a neat service, and started signing up partners.  They had one competitor – Return Path.  At first, Return Path was demonized, as in “those guys are giving away the service for free and are going to ruin the market” or “their technology sucks – they are just spending a lot more money than us to get visibility”.  While there were elements of this, it was more a function of a deep seated early rivalry than anything else.  Matt and Eric had met each other a few times and it turned out that Matt and George both knew each other from working together earlier in their careers at Mercer Management Consulting.  So, even though there was healthy competition, there was open contact and mutual respect.

When Veripost went out to raise their Series B financing, they met with a few investors that had recently met with Return Path, who was also out raising a round. I recall at least one of them giving feedback to the Veripost team that the two companies were identical in this very early market and rather than bludgeoning each other over the head, should consider joining forces.

Eric knew that I was good friends with Fred Wilson, one of Return Path’s investors through his fund Flatiron Partners (I was also a small investor in Flatiron Partners so indirectly a tiny investor in Return Path.)  Matt and Eric encouraged us to talk in the context of a merger and financing.  I can’t remember who initiated the call, but Fred and I had a typically frank conversation where we quickly cut to the chase and agreed that it was worth exploring merging the companies and doing a financing behind one company.

If I remember correctly, the call took less than 15 minutes.  It went something like this:

Brad: “This feels like a 50/50 deal – let’s just keep it simple.”

Fred: “I want a little more for my side because we’ve invested a lot more money than you have. How about 55/45.”

Brad: “Done.”

Matt and Eric had similarly effective conversations and agreed early on that there would be tough cuts on both sides with the goal of ending up with one company rather than two companies pretending to be one.  As part of that, they got comfortable with the idea of having two locations (NY for headquarters / sales; Colorado for engineering and ops).  Matt would be the CEO, the Veripost executives would transition out of the company with the Colorado engineering leadership becoming part of the management team.  The combined company would end up at 20 people which was the right size for the business.  Given that the Return Path brand was better known than the Veripost brand (and frankly was a better name) the combined company would be called Return Path.

Matt and Eric quickly built a joint plan and presented it to several of the VCs they had each been talking to.  Greg Sands at Sutter Hill totally got it, agreed with the thesis behind the merger, and put down a term sheet to lead a round of the merged company.  After some legal mechanics, the new Return Path was born to go after the ECOA market.  Eric, George, and Kevin transitioned out of Return Path as expected and the company began gaining ground quickly.

Simultaneously, George started a new company (with support from Eric) called Assurance Systems.  With it he tackled a new email related problem that he’d come up that he was calling “the email deliverability problem” – specifically that desired email was increasingly getting caught in spam filters, especially as more focus came on the “spam problem.”  Even though we (Mobius) hadn’t invested in Assurance Systems we gave George space in our incubator and stayed close to what he was doing, including plenty of “hey – how’s it going” moments in the bathroom.

Return Path helped out with the early sales and marketing and Assurance Systems was pretty quickly generating more revenue per month than the Return Path ECOA product.  It quickly became obvious that Assurance Systems should be part of Return Path and Matt and George worked out a deal for Return Path to acquire Assurance Systems.  Today, Assurance Systems is the core of Return Path (we sold off the ECOA business several years ago) and George and his co-founder Tom Bartel are still key members of the Return Path team.

I’ve got many other Return Path stories – many good, some bad – but most are instructive.  But I’ll let this one stand as a tribute to Return Path on its 10th anniversary.

Finally, in Matt’s post he thanks his investors and board members for our “unwavering support” over the years.  Matt – right back at you – thanks to you and everyone at Return Path for the incredible effort you have put in to building this great company.

Special Bonus Feature: Matt knows I Hate Powerpoint and I encourage you to read his post Powerpointless and Fred Wilson’s post Presentations vs Discussions.  Matt took a hint from my post The Best Board Meetings and ran the entire eight hour meeting without a single powerpoint slide.  It was awesome.

On Monday, I’ll be interviewing Tim Enwall, the founder, president, and COO of Tendril Networks as part of the Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurs Unplugged series.  The event will be from 6:15pm to 7:15pm at the ATLAS Building at CU Boulder.  As a special bonus, you can use my bathroom on the second floor (if you are a guy). 

I’ve known Tim for many years and he’s another fantastic Boulder entrepreneur.  I met him shortly after he had sold one of his previous companies – Solista – to Gartner Group.  We’ve become good friends since and have done a handful of things together, including getting completely creamed at a monthly poker game we were regulars at (ok – I got creamed, Tim usually held his own and often came out on top.)

Tim and the Tendril team have created a a fast growing Boulder company that crosses over nicely between software and cleantech.  In addition to their Colorado-based investors (Vista Ventures and Appian Ventures), Tendril has raised a substantial amount of capital from VC investors outside of Colorado, including RRE Ventures (NY-based) and VantagePoint (CA-based) as well as strategic partners such as GE Energy and Good Energies.  So, we’ll have a wide range of topics to cover, including bootstrapping a business and then selling it as well as systematically building a business using VC and strategic financing that has the potential to be the undisputed market leader with regard to the smart grid.

Come join us for the last Entrepreneurs Unplugged event of 2009.

Amy and I just had an awesome week (mostly) off the grid at the Rosewood Mayakoba for my 44th birthday.  Lots of sleeping, running, massages, eating, consensual activities between two adults, and reading.  Lots of reading.

Hothouse Orchid: I started the trip off with some light mental floss to get in the swing of things.  Some of my favorite Stuart Woods characters, including Holly Barker and Teddy Fay kept me entertained for a few hours.

Saturn’s Children: I’ve been fascinated by robots since I read Asimov’s I, Robot as a small child.  In fact, I just realized I haven’t read it in 20+ years so it’s now magically on my reading robot (my Kindle) after two clicks of the mouse.  Charles Stross consistently blows my mind and Saturn’s Children delivers.  One shouldn’t underestimate how difficult it is to write the first person account of a sexbot in a world where humans (who the sexbots were created for) are extinct.  Oh, and it turns out that this particular sexbot is also an assassin, but doesn’t yet realize it.  As the book unfolds, the hierarchy of society that has been created by the robots is fascinating and Stross’ projections of the future are eerily believable.  It’s a long, steady romp through a bunch of classical science fiction ideas portrayed on a different backdrop.  Yummy.

Beginning Ruby on Rails (Wrox Beginning Guides): I have some strange fantasy about learning to program in Ruby on Rails.  I can’t quite figure it out, but I keep buying books about it.  In this case I read the first third and then skimmed the rest as this was a pretty crummy intro book.  My programming repertoire ends around 1989 as I’m proficient in BASIC, Pascal, Scheme, and DataFlex with some proficiency with CLU, Clarion, FoxPro, Paradox, and Access / VBA.  And then I stopped programming as I had too many other things to do in my first company.  I missed object oriented programming completely and find the level of complexity to do simple things in today’s languages completely baffling.  At some point Amy turned to me, asked me what I was reading, and then mocked me by referring to me as “Nerd Boy” for the rest of the day.  That was the point at which I started skimming.

Chasing the Bear: A Young Spenser Novel: I felt like some mental floss after being called Nerd Boy so I read the latest Robert Parker book about Spenser as a child.  It’s a kids book – aimed at diversifying Parker’s audience – and I thought he nailed it.  Even though I just turned 44, I easily slip back into my 14 year old boy persona and it was easy to love this book.

The Numerati: I can’t remember who recommended The Numerati but several people did.  I was disappointed.  I knew a few of the stories in depth already and Baker’s description of them exaggerated reality.  He made his points reasonably effectively, but since I knew the backstory it was tough to swallow the way he described a few of them. 

Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played: Wertheim writes almost as brilliantly as Federer and Nadal play tennis.  This was the story of the 2008 Wimbledon final and if you are a tennis fan, you must read this book.  ‘Nuff said.

The Scorpion’s Gate: When I read Breakpoint I decided that Richard A. Clark had a long and successful career as a cyberthriller writer in front of him.  After reading The Scorpion’s Gate, I realized I should have read it first since he does a great job of growing his characters (making him a broader writer than I’d expected).  While I don’t have a strong opinion on his government service track record, he’s certainly been around the block and has great depth in his storytelling.  Oh – and he makes his point beautifully with his story that we just have no clue how deep the rabbit hole in the middle east actually goes.  Great book and especially timely given our re-invasion of Afghanistan. 

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law for Unity in Physical Law: I can’t remember who recommended this one to me, but I really enjoyed it even though I only understood about 50% of it.  Peter Woit is a physicist at Columbia University who is highly critical of String Theory, writes a superb blog titled Not Even Wrong, and has a gift for explaining the very complex in a way that humans (albeit smart humans) can understand.  Physics was the only science that really captivated me in high school (although I loved my Biology teacher – I just didn’t love Biology) and I had Physics on my brain when I went to MIT.  This lasted about three weeks – my bubble burst when I got a 20 on my first 8.01 (freshman physics) test.  I don’t remember what class average was, but it was much higher than 20, so I’d solidly failed the test.  I went in my room and cried for about thirty minutes, decided physics wasn’t it for me, but got it together and did ok in the class.  Every now and then I read about physics history and am entranced (same with the history of mathematics).  While the vast majority of the string theory went over my head, the book was a joy to read as I like to fantasize about being a theoretical physicist (or mathematician) in a parallel universe.

As we flew home, I started reading a book about Zombies which Niel Robertson recommended to me – I’m halfway through and it’s incredible and deserves it’s own blog post which you’ll get separately.  Oh – and it’s not really about Zombies – it’s about humanity.  And zombies.