Brad Feld

Category: Places

What a CROX

Jan 15, 2008
Category Places

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!


Ahhh.  This all changes tomorrow morning.

 


Wandering Around Boulder

Jan 08, 2008
Category Places

I’m getting dressed and about to head out to Boulder Open Coffee Club.  It had been happening at Vic’s on Broadway, but they recently shut down.  Today’s is now at The Cup (1521 Pearl) from 8am to 10am.  The owners – Chris and Wendy – are great folks, it’s a superb venue, and the food is always great.

As I was rolling through my feeds this morning, I noticed a few interesting Boulder-related things.  It starts with Vic’s, and L’Absinthe, and The Reef, and Prima – four restaurants in One Boulder Plaza that abruptly shut down at the end of 2007.  This isn’t a huge surprise to me – they were all chronically empty.  The excuse of "no foot traffic" falls flat on me since they are two blocks away from the Pearl Street Mall.  Something else was wrong, including rents that are probably much too high.  Oh well – less short term choices for food and a reminder that the restaurant business is a bitch.

Then I noticed Gwen Bell’s post on ColoradoStartups that she’s Thrilled to be Back in Boulder. We’re thrilled she’s back also – especially since she’s going to be a regular writer about the Boulder entrepreneurship scene on ColoradoStartups. 

As I type this on my Vista machine, I realize that my "switch to Mac experiment" has failed miserably.  Oh well – at least the Mac is prettier than my Lenovo.  Ross also has configured all my Vista machines to be more Mac-like so at least I can feel like a cross-dresser.  Plus – I get a magic Linux Alt-click and drag enhancement.

Tara – who is one floor above us in Lijit’s office – is having fun talking about the sports bloggers that are using Lijit on their sites.  Lijit is not just for nerds and mommy bloggers – sports bloggers (my favorite is  We Suck at Sports are happily adopting Lijit in droves teams.  Of course, all proud Colorado members of the Red Sox nation need to pay attention to Sox & Dawgs.

We end our day at the Denver Boulder New Tech Meetup at the CU Boulder Law Wolf Law Building.  I’m having dinner with Mike Locatis – the CIO of the State of Colorado and we are going to swing by and hang out at the Tech Meetup first.  Robert Reich of Me.dium has done an amazing job organizing this event series which just gets better every week.

And you thought I was going to talk about what’s going on at CES or Microsoft’s acquisition of Fast Search & Transfer for a whopping $1.2 billion.


I just got a note and pictures two friends – one in Keystone and one in Aspen.  Both said the most recent storms were incredible and the snow in the mountains in fantastic.  The following is from Keystone.

The note from my friend is "We got nailed with snow this past weekend.  One of the top five storms I’ve seen after 15 years of living in Summit County.  We are nearly 100% open and the skiing is great.  Check out these photos from my back yard.  We got about 2 feet in Silverthorne."


As snowstorm #2 in Boulder the last week starts to diminish, I thought I’d offer up a picture of what it looks like in Homer, Alaska right now (at 10:30am Homer time.)

That dark stuff on the bottom 10% of the picture is land.  That lighter dark stuff at in the middle of the picture is the ocean.  The top half of the picture is probably dark, fog, and clouds.  That little dark stretch of land going to the left across the bottom of the picture is the Homer Spit.

Dark.

I went for a 5 mile run on the Boulder Creek Path this morning at 7:30am.  No one was out, the snow was coming down hard, and there was plenty of "cushion" (e.g. snow) on the ground.  It was stunning.  And light.


Someone is far down the negotiating path to buy the old StorageTek 440–acres in Louisville from Sun.  The Boulder Camera is speculating that it’s eBay, Google, or Apple.  Whoever it is will have fun demolishing million plus square foot eyesore that is the old StorageTek facility.


Josh Larson, one of the guys at MadKast, is completely obsessed with snow.  His new blog – Boulder Weather – is a must read for anyone that lives here and cares about the weather.  Josh is pretty sure we are going to have snow on the ground by Wednesday.  It was 70+ today (beautiful, perfect November day) and is still around 60 as we settle in for the evening.


Hedge fund Pardus Capital Management which owns 2.6% of Delta and 4.82% of United is urging them to merge.  While this might be good for Pardus, as a frequent traveler on United out of DIA, this sounds like a really bad idea to me.  Probably 50% of the flights that I’ve been on since United came out of bankruptcy have had some sort of problem (mechanical, routing, crew delay, undermined) and I have several situations where the plane simply didn’t show up. 

I’m actually starting to be impressed with the TSA folks – in comparison to United.  At least my experience with them is more random and entertaining – I never really know what to expect.  With United, I’ve become conditioned to just expect that things aren’t going to go as planned.


I got an email today from Ryan Roth, a long time reader of this blog.  He is giving away four tickets to Saturday’s World Series game.  The only catch is that you have to be a disabled Iraq / Afghanistan war veteran to be part of the drawing.  Following is the story:

So, we have four tickets! One upper deck, three lower deck. All for Game 3 of the World Series. We want to give them away to disabled Iraq/Afghanistan War Veterans. We don’t know you, but we are thankful for your service and your sacrifice.

We will draw four names from a Rockies hat at 2:00 pm. You don’t have to be present to win. We will contact the winners directly and also post the names on this website. To enter please fill out the form below. Please, we ask that only disabled veterans check the “Enter me in the Raffle” checkbox. This, of course, enters you into the drawing.

Additionally, Our hope is that we can create some community around this giveaway. Please feel free to join us, no matter who are. We plan on settling down and watching the game at Uptown Tavern in Denver. We would love it if you joined us. So if you win, you get to see a World Series game, if your name doesn’t get drawn, you can still meet new people, share experiences, and root on the Rockies over some tasty food and drinks. Can you beat that?

Want to donate another ticket? Perhaps a pair? Do you know where a good meeting place close to the stadium is? Don’t hesitate to call us or email us!

Ryan – pretty cool and very generous.