CES is just around the corner and I’m psyched to be going again this year. Toss in a BigDoor board meeting early in the week in Las Vegas and I’ll be getting my annual allotment of sin city in the first week of the new year.
Lots of my friends and a number of our portfolio companies will be at CES this year. Lest you think it’s just a VC boondoggle, one of my favorite moments of all time happened at CES in 2009 when my dad bought the very first Pogoplug. We went on to fund Cloud Engines (the company that makes the Pogoplug) which just closed a new $15 million financing that includes Softbank and Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners. Oh – and they have had a totally kick ass year.
Last week, I noticed an article about Orbotix in Wired’s Gadget Lab titled Phone-Controlled Robot Ball, Like Marble Madness in Meatspace. Orbotix is going to be at the CES ShowStoppers event the night before CES begins (and at CES). As you can see from the article, Wired just challenged Engaget to a Sphero-off. As Paul Berberian, the CEO of Orbotix said to me in email, “it doesn’t get much more fun that this.”
If you are going to be at CES and are showing off something cool that you want me to see, toss your company name and booth number in the comments and I’ll make sure to come by on Wednesday or Thursday.