Education

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. ...

Ok – so in addition to the Boulder events, I also go to Bay Area events. I’ve got a Return Path board meeting on 1/21 in the Bay Area and that evening Matt Blumberg – Return Path’s CEO – is going to be presenting at the great Startup2Startup series that Dave McClure puts on with the help of his glorious sponsors. I’ll be there along with a bunch of other great folks (I even paid my $90 for my ticket). Matt’s got a fascinating story and Return Path is another company in my world that had an awesome 2009 and is poised for a phenomenal 2010 (how’s that for adverbs adjectives.) Matt will be talking about the history of Return Path (dating back to 1999), lessons he’s learned, and best practices in email deliverability. ...

Well, the world is back at work (as evidenced by the 327 new emails I got today). And my friends at Silicon Flatirons at CU Boulder are cranking up the head with Crash Courses, Entrepreneurs Unplugged, and Workshops. 1/13/10: 6-8pm @ Wolf: Crash Course: How to Build a Company by Jason Mendelson followed with a “Start-up Internships” networking event for local startups looking for CU students interested in internship opportunities. ...

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.) ...

I’ve been to my share of tech conferences that either don’t have any music playing or have some horrible mix that the hotel supplies turned up either a little to much or not quite enough. In contrast, I know that Eric Norlin obsesses over every aspect of his conferences, including the soundtrack. He knows his audience well and nailed it this year. He’s published the soundtrack on the Defrag blog. ...

My friends at OneRiot and Adaptive Blue are organizing the second annual Add-on-Con. It is being held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA on Dec 11. If you are involved in a company that makes browser add-ons of any sort, this conference is for you. The conference is a full day of discussions about the browser and browser add-on market. The closing keynote is on the future of the web browser and is moderated by Douglas Crockford and features representatives from Microsoft, Mozilla and Google. ...

There are two CU Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurs Unplugged events next week – one on Monday November 2nd at CU Boulder in Atlas Room 100 and one on Wednesday November 4th at the Denver Art Museum. The 11/2 Entrepreneurs Unplugged is with Steve Halstedt, the co-founder of Centennial Ventures. Steve co-founded Centennial in 1981 and was one of the fathers of the venture capital business in Colorado. When I moved to Boulder in 1995, Steve was one of the first VCs I met with here and he’s been a great friend and mentor ever since. I look forward to interviewing him about his experiences, especially how entrepreneurship has evolved in Colorado since the early 1980’s. Please register and join us! ...

The Defrag Conference in Denver is just around the corner – November 11 and 12 to be exact. Eric Norlin has put together a remarkable agenda for this one including an incredible closing panel titled Cluetrain at 10 starring JP Rangaswami, Chris Locke , Doc Searls , and Rick Levine. This will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the The Cluetrain Manifesto and as far as I understand is the first time in a decade that Chris, Doc, and Rick have shared the stage. If we are lucky, Rick might even bring us some Seth Ellis Chocolates. ...

This year I’m the interviewer for the Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurs Unplugged series. On Monday @ 6:00 pm I’m interviewing David Cohen, the founder of TechStars at the Wolf Law Building in Room 204 on the CU Boulder Campus. I’ve known and worked with David for about four years. Prior to starting TechStars, he started three companies – two that were successful and one that failed. Since starting TechStars, he’s had an incredible impact on the Boulder Entrepreneurial Ecosystem during that time, is an awesome entrepreneur, and can be hilarious. Come watch me pry some great stories, anecdotes, and advice out of him. Register here. ...

I ingest a ton of information on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. My process for doing it today is entirely manual. I’m starting to look around for a way to automate this using the metaphor of a “personal dashboard”, not dissimilar to the idea from the 1980’s of an EIS (“executive information system”). Let me explain. Daily: I have an information processing routine each morning that is web-based. I open a folder in Firefox that contains 14 tabs. I then go through all of them – most, but not all are news related. A few are interactive and require data from me. I then scan through my tweets from the previous night. I then review my “Daily” email folder – most of the items are “daily reports” from a variety of companies I’m an investor in. Next up, my RSS feeds. Finally, I process whatever email came in from the previous night. Weekly: I have a weekly tab in Firefox. There are only 5 tabs here and they shift around a little. But – they reference a variety of text and numerical data that I check on a weekly basis. Monthly: I get financial statements (balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement) along with board packages from all of the companies I’m an investor in along with all of my personal financial information. Quarterly: Similar to monthly, but for the quarter. Annual: Similar to monthly, but for the year. I also generate a variety of other “annual data” much of it to do with either money or fitness. My Daily routine takes around an hour. Weekly, which includes reviewing my upcoming calendar, takes about 30 minutes. I don’t know how long Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual take as they are usually spread out over multiple days. ...