Brad Feld

I wrote a post earlier today about Matt Blumberg.  This afternoon, I was thinking about Jim Lejeal, another great entrepreneurs (and blogger) that I get to work with. 

Jim is the founder and CEO of Oxlo Systems (we are investors.)  Jim was previously the co-founder and COO of Raindance Communication (again, we were investors – see a pattern?)  We’ve worked together on various things since 1997 – Jim’s continued persistence was one of the reasons I invested in Dante Group (which was then acquired by webMethods for a nice 3.5x return in six months in 2003 – not a home run – but a nice venture deal – especially after the dry spell that was 2001 – 2002.)

Jim had a busy spring.  On May 31, he announced that Oxlo had closed a $5 million financing consisting of us, Appian Ventures, and Waypoint Ventures.  This loads up their gas tank nicely through the end of 2006.  Jim wrote a couple of posts on the financing process – including Fundraising…, Expectations and the First Chicago Method, Not everyone calculates an IRR, Well I did it again (a priceless story), and Everything-Assured Capital.  If you are raising VC money – or thinking about it – run, don’t walk your mouse  – to read these posts.  Now that the financing process is over, I hope Jim will write more about it.

While it’s easy to fall into the trap of “stopping everything else” when you are fundraising, Jim knows that’s an ineffective way to run a young company.  Oxlo continues to make steady progress with two major announcements in May – an exclusive partnership with BIGFNI and an integration relationship with RouteOne’s Credit Application Management System.  If you know anything about the auto industry, you know these are two big dominos that Oxlo needed to get to fall – and they have.  Well done Jim and team.

Matt Blumberg – the CEO of Return Path – has a great post up on “Shifting Gears.”  I get to work with some awesome entrepreneurs – Matt is one of them.  As I shift gears from five months of “heads down, obsessive, non-stop work and travel” to “summer”, his post really rang true.

Nerd week continues (and my pile of technology crap on the floor slowly diminishes).  At the Microsoft VC Summit last month, our parting gift (Microsoft has always given out nice gifts) was a Roku SoundBridge M1000.  For the past few years, we’ve been using a Turtle Beach Audiotron which has worked well until recently.  About six months ago, it stopped noticing when I ripped new CDs to my file server (I use my Mac G5 to rip to an old Windows NT Server box – it’s about all I use the G5 for – I know, not so smart.)  I’d occasionally thrash around and try to figure out the problem with the Audiotron (it worked fine – it just decided it wasn’t going to add anything new to its playlists no matter what I did, including hitting it with my fist, which occasionally works with electronics.)

Now – I suck at the “A” part of “A/V”.  I’ve never really understood it so whenever something doesn’t work, I patiently endure Amy’s berating while begging that Ross will come over to my house and fix stuff for me (which he eventually does.)  So – it was with some trepidation that I opened the Roku box.

I was done fifteen minutes later.  I took it out of the box, inserted the WiFi card that comes with it, put the batteries into the remote control, plugged it in to the same cables the Audiotron was plugged into (hint to the “A” impaired – put new device in exactly the same place and connection as old device), turned it on, and it worked.  Flawlessly.  It found both my Mac iTunes library and my SlimServer (hmm – I thought I’d uninstalled that when I couldn’t get Amy to use the Slimp3 player that I tried once).  Zero set up, zero configuration.  Perfect.

I now have an Audiotron for sale.  It’s in perfect condition (except for a bruise from my fist – actually the bruise is on my fist, not the Audiotron), comes with a full set of cables and a remote control, and has no sales tax. It appears to go for around $150 + shipping on ebay (the auction that ends today has it at $152.50) – make me an offer.  Paypal accepted.

I’m a marginal conductor, but a pretty good fundraiser for the Boulder Philharmonic.  Fortunately Gregory Walker – the Boulder Phil’s concertmaster (the first violin for those of you like me that didn’t know what a concertmaster was) keeps the Boulder Phil on beat whenever I’m conducting.  Since Gregory has always made me look good, it was very easy for me and my friend Howard Diamond (who – among other things – owns a jazz record label) to support Gregory’s efforts to record a version of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons using an electronic violin.  I just found out that Newport Classic is going to produce the CD – congrats to Gregory!

Bill Gates has a bi-annual “think week.”  I have an unpredictably scheduled “nerd week” that occurs whenever I no longer can walk into my office at home because boxes of electronics are piled up everywhere. 

Last weekend, I started chipping away at the physical (and virtual) pile of software and hardware products that have piled up in my life.  First up – Tiger.

While I spend most of my computer life on my various PCs (including my nifty new Tablet which I’ll write about soon), I keep a Mac G5 around for posterity.  I usually use it for two things: (1) manage all my music / iPods (excellent marketing strategy Apple – sell me an $8k computer to help me with my iPod) and (2) reboot it each week to watch it automagically update its software. 

Six months ago, I took a hard run at using it as my primary home machine. Given that I live in email and we are an Exchange shop, getting sync with Exchange working was an absolute requirement. I got about 90% of the way there with Entourage but couldn’t get contacts and tasks to sync correctly.  Plus – well – Entourage sucks.  So – I tried Mail.  I made a little progress with some add-ons but eventually gave up and went back to watching my Mac update itself once a week.

Tiger was promising.  I heard rumors that it did a better job of integrating with Exchange via OWA (Outlook Web Access) and that the Mail client was substantially better.  So – I gave it a shot.  The install was flawless – it’s always a delight to watch a new OS install itself and have no issues.  I fiddled around with the neat new UI stuff (yeah – Dashboard is cute but it held my attention for about three minutes.)  On to Mail and sync.

Tiger remembered all my previous Exchange config stuff and inherited it nicely (or did whatever the Mac equivalent is.)  Boom – my Outlook mail was in Mac Mail. I fiddled around a little and confirmed that they stayed in sync. Cool.  Now – on to Contacts.  Thirty minutes later, I gave up.  I can’t figure out what’s wrong – I’ve tried every combination of OWA stuff I could imagine, sorted through the various error messages, figured out the ridiculous new way Tiger handles Sync (what was wrong with the old way – at least it was obvious), tried using our LDAP server (bonk) and – well – Google and the Apple support site were no real help.  So – I gave up.  I never got to trying to get iCal to sync.

So – back to having my G5 control my iPod (at least it’s going to start controlling my Roku SoundBridge soon – that was on the floor in a box until about an hour ago – more in a future post on nerd week.)  At least I’ve done my part to help Apple make their quarter.

Adam Bosworth once again has an extremely useful post – this time on his thoughts about why Ajax is having an impact these days (compared to 1997 when he was involved in creating it).  Now, what’s up with that Greasemonkey stuff?

Yesterday I posted a chart showing the large cap tech buyers over the past two years.  Sun was on the list – but near the bottom (three deals).  This morning, I woke up to the news that Sun has increased its number of deals to four through their acquisition of StorageTek.  

I haven’t decided whether this is a good deal for Sun (I’m sure plenty of pundits will weigh in on this over the next 24 hours).  I do know that Sun has to either acquire or be acquired to maintain long term relevance, so from that perspective it’s a smart move.

I’m actually more intrigued by the implications for Colorado.  StorageTek has been one of the anchor tenant’s in the Colorado technology scene.  When PeopleSoft bought JD Edwards, many people bemoaned the idea that the largest independent software company in Colorado was no longer “independent” (of course, Oracle then bought PeopleSoft, making the entire conversation even more entertaining.)  Today, another anchor tenant is no longer independent.

Colorado tech companies have a long history of being acquired.  In the past 12 months, I’ve had two of my local companies acquired by out of state large cap buyers (ServiceMagic by IAC; Finali by Convergys).  BEA, Rational (now IBM), Doubleclick, and Mercury have also been visible buyers of Colorado-based software companies.  In some cases such as BEA and Doubleclick, the company has created a large footprint in the Boulder area as a result of their acquisitions.  In others, such as Rational, there’s not much left.

A while ago Sun built out a big presence in Colorado (ironically just across “the street” (actually the highway – US 36) from StorageTek) around a chunk of their services, training, and software business.  Sun obviously just increased their commitment to the Boulder area through this acquisition.

I think this is good for the local Colorado tech scene.  The entire technology business is undergoing a widely publicized (and very trendy) industry consolidation that appears to be accelerating among the larger cap players.  Colorado’s long term relevance in the technology industry is increased by its participation in this trend (better to be a player than to be on the sidelines.)  While there will be natural attrition and “rightsizing” (or whatever euphemism you want to use) at the acquired companies (e.g. StorageTek), the talented folks will quickly end up in new roles at younger emerging companies, helping with the chronic talent shortage – especially on the engineering side – that we have in this region.

Underlying all of this is an incredibly renewed sense of excitement around core innovation in the computer industry.  Some of this may be the contrast to the darkness we went through in 2001 and 2002, but there’s a level of excitement and accomplishment in many of the companies I’m involved in locally that’s refreshing.  While I’ll always have companies that struggle and/or fail (if I succeed 10 out of 10 times with my investments, I’d both be a mutant and wouldn’t be in the venture capital business), the fact that exits are happening to Colorado-based high tech companies should give everyone a nice lift.

Amy and I have a large collection of contemporary art (if you’ve ever been to my office, our house, Mobius’s California office, or The Nature Conservancy building in Boulder, you’ll get a feel for what we collect.)  Much of my love for art was inspired by my mom – the artist.  I’m always super proud of her whenever she has a show.  If you are in Mesquite, TX (near Dallas) between June 1 and July 7 and are into art, go check out her new show at the Mesquite Arts Center. 

Following is Echos 2 by 2 as a preview.  The show is a collection of work she’s done using a solarplate etching process. The show – called In A Different Light – is inspired by the notion that “to see a detail is to see one kind of reality.  Allusions to natural forms through lines, shapes, textures and colors shift that reality toward abstraction, a different kind of reality.  Light playing across forms, lines suggesting the edges where objects meet and the spaces in between objects create the abstract image.” 

If you are running a VC-backed IT software or hardware company, it’s much more likely that the success event for your company will be an acquisition rather than an IPO.  While the folks in the blog universe regularly hear about acquisitions being done by Google, Yahoo, and IAC, I haven’t seen much chatter recently about large cap tech buyers.

Last week at the GrandBanks Capital Annual Meeting, Ryan Moore showed a slide of the 2004 – 05 Technology M&A Deals listed by Large Cap Buyers (Source: Thompson Financial).  The data is instructive and follows: