A few weeks ago Fast Company published an interview between me and Laura Rich titled Why You Should Start a Company in… Boulder.  This morning I woke up to Fred Wilson’s discussion of his article Why You Should Start a Company in… New York. 

Fred and I did our interviews separately – there was no coordination between us.  I was struck by a common theme – startup hubs take a while to develop.  Fred says:

“we’re into the second decade now, and what the second decade is really turning out to be is serial entrepreneurs who’ve done it one, two, three, sometimes four times now, who can bring teams together very quickly, often teams that have worked together very quickly, can get on opportunities fast, can get money raised fast, can build companies pretty fast.”

Compare that to what I said:

“You have a lot of those entrepreneurs that had a success. Wasn’t necessarily their first company, but they had a success. And then, they had a failure between the 1998 and 2003 timeframe. So they started another thing or made some investments that got caught up in the bubble. So they had both a success and a failure in that time. So some set of those people started companies from 2004 forward. They were very mature entrepreneurs. They’re entrepreneurs that had success AND failure and understand what was required to both win and also were humble enough to recognize that you could lose.

Then, we both talk about mentors and the engaged cycle of old and new entrepreneurs in building and sustaining the entrepreneur ecosystem.  This – as I’m sure you know if you’ve been reading this blog – is a core thesis behind the TechStars program now running in Boulder, Boston, and Seattle.  Again – first Fred:

“And now you have role models. So the first time entrepreneurs can find angel investors. It’s exactly what has been going on in Silicon Valley for three, four decades now. Marc Andreessen becomes hugely successful, makes a bunch of money, becomes an angel investor, backs a bunch of people, mentors them, becomes a VC. That migration path is now playing out here in New York, and so most of the investments we do at the first angel-round stage is ourselves and a bunch of serial entrepreneurs in New York who are now making twenty-five- to fifty-thousand dollar investments as angels in these companies, sometimes acting as informal advisers and mentors to the first-time entrepreneurs.”

Now me:

So you had that against a backdrop of, everybody here is at most two degrees of separation away from any other entrepreneur, because there’s only 100,000 of us, right? And that then is great because what you have is this easy access to everybody. And even though there’s competitive dynamics and occasionally friction, and there’s plenty of personalities. More generally, you tend to see that people try to help each other here, especially around the thing that I think is the generator of new entrepreneurial activity, which is young, first-time entrepreneurs.”

Finally, even though both Boulder and New York are actively in the midst of an entrepreneurial renaissance, it requires continual effort to sustain this.  I’ve committed the balance of my professional life to this (hopefully at least 20 years) – not just in Boulder, but in other entrepreneurial communities around the United States, including New York (which I love to both spend time in and work in.)  See my parting comment:

“I think there’s been a ton of energy by entrepreneurs in energizing Boulder in the last four or five years. And that has to continue. There’s no such thing as resting on your laurels. There’s no such thing as being complacent. The entrepreneurial beast is hungry. And if you want to have a great entrepreneurial ecosystem you have to keep feeding the entrepreneurial beast. And it has to be fed all up and down the chain, from some entrepreneurs who are young to experienced entrepreneurs, and they have to keep caring about the place they live in, their community, and the dynamics amongst them, the people in the community.”

I’m curious to see if Laura picks up similar themes in her other interviews.  Knowing some of the people and cities involved, I expect she will.

I’ve really enjoyed my time on this planet so far and look forward to many other years here.  If Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, and Robert Heinlein are to be believed, I should be able to travel to other planets by now.  Since I can’t, I’m limited to looking at really cool photos.

Guess the planet.  No clicking through to the APOD site until after you’ve made a guess.  I’m 44 – wouldn’t it be cool if in my lifetime I could go to this planet?  Oh – and where’s my jetpack – NASA promised me that when I was a kid.

I hate the telephone.  I hate voice mail.  I’ve tried hard to simplify how this works in my world.  I only have two phone numbers (my cell phone and my work phone, which is an IP phone that rings in all the different houses / offices that I have), schedule all phone calls, and use PhoneTag as my voicemail transcription service (both my cell phone and my desk phone forward to it when I don’t answer.)  I never listen to voice mails (everything is an email), rarely get phone calls during the day, and have done a pretty good job of getting rid of phone interruptions in my life given how busy I am.

Even though I’m in a reasonable stable state, I have one thing that bothers me.  I still have two phone numbers – one for my cell phone and one for my desk phone.  When my assistant Kelly schedules a call, she does a pretty good job of using my cell phone when I’m on the road and my desk phone when I’m in my office or at home (my cell phone doesn’t work in my house in Eldorado Springs at all and barely works in Keystone – thanks AT&T).  However, she still has to do the manual translation of my location to phone number (blech) and I occasionally (well – regularly) end up somewhere other than expected.

I thought Google Voice might be the solution.  However, I don’t want to have to tell the world a new phone number.  Plus, a lot of people call me back via caller ID so when I call on various phones they just call me back on that phone.  So I came up with a hack to try.  I’d forward my desk phone (call it 4) to my Google Voice number.  Then I’d give out my desk phone to everyone going forward.  Google Voice would then ring all of my other phone numbers, including my cell number.  On no answer, Google Voice would transcribe my message and email it to me.

Problem #1 happened when Amy emailed me from Keystone (when I was in my office in Boulder) and said “your phone is ringing off the hook today – make it stop.”)  I have an extension 4 phone in Keystone.  Easy fix – I changed my IP phones so Keystone was 1, Eldo was 2, my office was 3, and the 4 just forwarded to Google Voice.  I then set up groups in Google voice to easily forward only to the phones where I was (e.g. when I wasn’t in Keystone, 1 didn’t ring).  Problem #1 solved.

Problem #2 happened the next day when I got an email from a regular caller saying the phone “just rang and rang” and voice mail never picked up.  I heard of this from a few more people – the only thing I could come up with was that Google Voice wasn’t answering every now and then or there was some kind of forwarding black hole that I hadn’t figured out.  I’ll give Google Voice the benefit of the doubt on this one, but I still couldn’t figure out the black hole.

Problem #3 was a delay that I was starting to notice when talking on my cell phone.  The forwarding from my desk phone (4) to Google Voice to my cell phone was introducing enough of an IP delay to be noticeable.  I tried to mentally adjust for it but it was unpredictable.  This gave me a headache (a physical one, not a virtual one).

Problem #4 was caller ID wasn’t coming through correctly.  Again, I’ll give Google Voice benefit of the doubt – I think I probably could have figured out how to hack our phone system to forward to caller ID to Google Voice which would then forward it on.  But I didn’t.  And the Google Voice intro that announced the caller often was either blank (presumably the caller didn’t say anything), it was cut off (possibly due to the forwarding), or it was hard to understand.  Regardless, I found myself feeling less comfortable that I knew who was calling.

Problem #5 was the Google Voice transcriptions were unreadable.  I find the PhoneTag emails to often be entertaining, but they are never incomprehensible.  In contrast, I found myself having to listen to three out of four of the Google Voice messages because the transcriptions made no sense.

But Problem #6 sunk me.  Suddenly, I was getting a lot more phone calls!  My previously silent phone was ringing more often.  I hadn’t really thought this through but in hindsight it was obvious since I was generating so many more ring points.

At some level, I could bit the bullet and just try giving out the Google Voice number and see what happens.  But, after a week of being back in my old routine, where my phone rarely rings and when I get a PhoneTag email message I can quickly see who called and why, I’m sticking with the old way for now.

On Friday I spent two hours at Mahalo headquarters in Jason Calacanis’ studio filming This Week In Startups Episode #35.  Jason and I have known each other since the mid 1990’s – the last time he interviewed me was at Josh Harris’ Pseudo.com thingymabob as part of a roundtable with Fred Wilson, Jerry Colonna, and Matt Ocko (can’t find the audio on the web – I know it’s out there somewhere.)  No – I wasn’t naked during the interview, but I was a lot younger and thinner.  And I think there were some naked people wandering around.  If you know Pseudo, you know what I’m referring to.  If you don’t, then Steaming Video will give you a few hints.

Jason is coming to Boulder on February 2 and 3 for the first Open Angel Forum in Boulder (if you are an angel investor or an entrepreneur that wants to pitch, sign up on the info on the Boulder Open Angel Forum links.)  So – we talked some about Open Angel Forum, Startup Visa, TechStars, and a bunch of other things.  And then in hour two we did the standard weekly TWiST things.  Oh – and I got to meet Jason’s mom and dad!

A week or so ago, Fred Wilson Dictated a Blog Post.  In it he dictated a blog post on his Nexus One phone.  He then discovered Swype which now has an unofficial Android app.   As usual the comment threads on AVC were very active and had lots of thoughts about the future (and past) of voice and keyboard input.

When I talk about Human Computer Interaction, I regularly say that “in 20 years from now, we will look back on the mouse and keyboard as input devices the same way we currently look back on punch cards.”

While I don’t have a problem with mice and keyboards, I think we are locked into a totally sucky paradigm.  The whole idea of having a software QWERTY keyboard on an iPhone amuses me to no end.  Yeah – I’ve taught myself to type pretty quickly on it but when I think of the information I’m trying to get into the phone, typing seems so totally outmoded.

Last year at CES “gestural input” was all the rage in the major CE booths (Sony, Samsung, LG, Panasonic, …).  In CES speak, this was primarily things like “changing the channel on a TV using a gesture”.  This year the silly basic gesture crap was gone and replaced with IP everywhere (very important in my mind) and 3D (very cute, but not important).  And elsewhere there was plenty of 2D multitouch, most notably front and center in the Microsoft and Intel booths.  I didn’t see much speech and I saw very little 3D UI stuff – one exception was the Sony booth where our portfolio company Organic Motion had a last minute installation that Sony wanted that showed off markerless 3D motion capture.

So – while speech and 2D multitouch are going to be an important part of all of this, it’s a tiny part.  If you want to envision what things could be like a decade from now, read Daniel Suarez’s incredible books Daemon and Freedom (TM) .  Or, watch the following video that I just recorded from my glasses and uploaded to my computer (warning – cute dog alert).

I’ve done a few “Beers With Brad” in other cities such as Seattle and Vancouver.  On February 18th from 6 to 8pm, I’m going to be doing Beers with Brad in Boulder at The Twisted Pine Brewery.  It’s a fundraiser for KGNU (88.5 FM and 1390 AM in Denver) – tickets are $10 in advance or $15 at the door.  There will be free munchies, music, and plenty of beer.  Come join us for a fun evening where I’ll talk about whatever comes to my mind about entrepreneurship and innovation – especially ideas fueled by a few beers.

There’s a bunch of other great entrepreneurial stuff going on in Boulder in February.  Don’t miss the Winter in the Bunker series – new things are being added regularly. 

And – if you are a startup that wants to work with some CU students as interns (or recruit them for full time work), don’t miss University of Colorado Startup2Students 2010 on March 11th from 6:30 – 8:00pm.

I love this town.

The Open Angel Forum is coming to Colorado and having it’s first event in Boulder on 2/3/10.  David Cohen – the CEO of TechStars – has written an extensive post titled Open Angel Forum – Colorado bound! which includes all the background leading up to this, along with information about:

1. Attending OAFCO as an angel investor
2. Presenting at OAFCO as an entrepreneur
3. Sponsoring the event if you are a service provider

Each event will only have 10-15 angels in attendance – all will be active investors.  We’ll have five companies presenting.  It will be an intimate event – if you want to get a feel for the chatter check out the twitter stream on Open Angel Forum take a look at Mark Suster’s post on the Inaugural Open Angel Forum.

I’m made angel investments in over 75 companies since 1994 and had a number of magnificent outcomes including NetGenesis (IPO), Critical Path (IPO), Harmonix (acquired by MTV), and Nutrisystems (IPO).  Yeah – plenty of my angel investments haven’t gone anywhere, but in all cases I’ve had an awesome time working with entrepreneurs to create amazing new companies.

My relationship with David Cohen and TechStars has reinforced this for me as I’ve seen many of the young TechStars companies raise money from angels, go on to raise money from institutional VCs, or be acquired.  I’ve also seen a renaissance in the super angel category with folks like Jeff Clavier at SoftTechVC, Chris Sacca, Dave McClure, the First Round Capital guys, Ron Conway, and David Cohen start to “institutionalize” this category.

One of my deeply held beliefs is a key part of the role of an angel investor is to help the entrepreneur – and operate in support of the entrepreneur.  I’ve always despised the “pay to pitch”schemes that some angel groups have (where the entrepreneur has to pay to pitch) and wrote a post titled An Angel Investor Group Move That Makes Me Vomit. This started a bunch of noise around this issue which Jason Calacanis amplified – resulting in him creating the Open Angel Forum.  I count myself as a proud supporter of this effort and co-collaborator in OAFCO with David Cohen.

If you are an angel investor in Colorado, send David Cohen an email and come help us support new entrepreneurs. If you are an entrepreneur in Colorado looking for angel investors, apply to come to the first OAFCO event.

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Well – what’s old is new again. Dave Jilk – my first business partner and CTO of Standing Cloud – sent me this magnificent video on 1963 Timesharing: A Solution to Computer Bottlenecks where MIT Professor Fernando Corbato explains how timesharing works to MIT Science Reporter John Fitch (who has one of those magnificent deep reporter voices).

Since history can be so incredibly instructive to reflect on when you think about the future of science.  If you draw a curve of “computer technology progress” from 1963 to 2010 after you watch this and then ponder the progress from 2010 to 2057 you will have a very interesting few moments of reflection.

The following quotes are approximate but they will give you enough sound bites to motivate you to watch it!

“Computers used to be unreliable – they managed to lick all of those problems” (2:00)

“The man machine interaction is very poor” (3:00)

“The computers are very expensive – they cost between 300 and 600 / hour” (3:30) – (BAF: Kind of like a lawyer today)

“It’s a little noisy out here (in the data center) – let’s go in my office so I can show you how it works from a remote terminal” (4:30)

“It looks like a typewriter” (5:00)

The moments of drawing on a blackboard to explain how a computer works (starting around 6:00) is priceless.

“Eventually we’d like to see graphical display but there are technical problems right now” (9:30)

“Wooo the chalk is a little soft” (12:30)

“The disk memories have been available for a year or so but most people haven’t figured out how to use them yet because they haven’t figured out how to keep things from getting mixed up” (16:30)

“I’m moderately familiar with the keyboard – we have to study how humans interact with the machines” (19:00)

Watching the interactive demo at about 20:00 is just wild.

“In the long run we will have increasing needs for computer time by a large amount” (25:00)

Singularity anyone?  Or not so much?

On Friday I’ll be in LA at Mahalo headquarters at 1pm making a guest appearance on Jason Calacanis’s This Week In Startups show.  I told Jason I’d be happy to discuss whatever he wanted to which I hope includes the Open Angel Forum, Startup Visa, Abolishing Software Patents, and all kinds of fun things around entrepreneurship and venture capital.  Conversations with Jason are never dull so I expect this one to be spicy hot on top of the typical chocolately goodness.

I figured I should do a few Mahalo searches in advance so I looked up Brad Feld, Foundry Group, Sarah Palin, and “How To Cheat on Rock Band”.  I then poked around on Mahalo Answers and Mahalo Tasks to see if I could earn any M$.  So – at least I can now answer Jason’s question “have you played with Mahalo lately.”