I love everything about french fries. And – much to my delight – Spud Bros. at 2010 10th Street in Boulder is the purveyor of possibly the best french fries on the planet. They are even poets, having written a poem titled Ode to Spuds. When I get my first no from Brad I can count on French fries to take away the sad When I can’t get tickets to Boulder Ignite I go to Spud Bros. to get a bite. ...
Are you a VP or C-level exec at a Boulder (or Denver) based startup? Eric Marcoullier , the CEO of Gnip has created a Boulder Startup Exec Email List . It’s open to people that fit the following criteria. Funded company (at least some angel financing) VPs and C-level folks Any vertical market (not just tech / Internet) Eric moved to Boulder from San Francisco last month and is getting deep in the startup scene here. He promises that VCs will not be invited to participate in this list – I tried and was solidly rejected. ...
I’m always amused by articles that are headlined “Jobs outlook uncertain for 2009 ”. No shit sherlock. I was pleased, however, to learn that Boulder, Colorado is one of thirteen cities (“metropolitan areas”) out of 381 in the US that are actually growing. The cities that are growing are Boulder, CO.; Lafayette and Louisiana, LA; Bethesda, MD; Jacksonville, NC; Binghamton, NY; Oklahoma City; OK.; State College, PA.; and Brownsville, El Paso, Laredo, McAllen, and San Antonio, TX. ...
No – not that kind of trip, although it might have made watching the debates last night more entertaining. I’m hitting the road for 10 days to travel our great country, check out main street, see some American heroes, and subject myself to more airplane travel fun. I wonder if I’ll stay in any of the same hotels as the presidential candidates. I start this trip in New York, where I’ll be exploring the now famous Wall Street greed and corruption people. I then travel to Bar Harbor Maine to run a marathon (sponsor me and support Accelerated Cure). As part of this quest, I’m going to search for main street; it seems like I should be able to find it in Maine. Then I’m off to Boston to return to my post high school roots, have a nerd party with some wikipedia worthy entrepreneurial friends, and explore the outer reaches of 495. A quick trip by train back to New York and then off to Virginia and Maryland to make sure the leaves are turning the appropriate colors there before they completely fall off the trees. ...
An annual institution in Boulder occurred last week – the Boulder Chamber of Commerce Esprit Awards. A bunch of my friends were winners this year and – since they were all nice enough to call me out for my contribution to them, I thought I’d reciprocate by congratulating them. So, a big congrats to: Mike Platt at Cooley Godward Raj Bhargava at StillSecure Krista, Johnathan, Tom, and Brent at Kerpoof Y’all are great – thanks for all of your hard work, vision, and contribution to the Boulder entrepreneurial scene.
I’ve lived in Boulder, Colorado since 1995. Six months after Amy and I moved her, we realized this would be our home for the rest of our life. When I moved here I had no expectation that I’d ever do any work here as most of my entrepreneurial and investing activity up to that point was in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. Between 1996 and 2000 the Boulder software / Internet scene grew. A lot. The crash of the Internet bubble slowed things down some but they came roaring back starting in 2003. Boulder is rocking today and – once again – there is way more demand for super amazing software developers than there is supply. ...
When I was a kid, one of my mom’s favorite lines was “go outside and play.” I spent a lot of time outside. As an adult, I spent a lot of time in front of the computer, in conference rooms, in airplanes, and in hotels. But, I still try to go outside and play – a lot. Colorado is an outstanding place to practice playing, especially on the weekends in the mountains. ...
A few weeks ago I wrote about the AEA survey that ranked Boulder as the #2 CyberCity in the US. I suggested that this was misleading since #1 was “San Jose/Silicon Valley”, which is not actually a city. If you’d decomposed “San Jose/Silicon Valley” into the various cities that actually make up Silicon Valley, they would have been #1 through at least #5 and Boulder would have been #6. Ever since I’m moved to Boulder in 1995, the “what do we need to do to be more like Silicon Valley” meme pops up ever regularly. I’ve spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley, have lots of friends and colleagues there, and have made (and continue to make) lots of investments there. It’s a special and unique place. ...
I’ve ranted about the TSA plenty on this blog – I travel a lot and find dealing with the TSA one of the more amusing experiences in my life. So does Patrick Smith of Ask the Pilot – one of my favorite travel blogs. In a recent post headlined Propped up by a culture of fear, TSA has become a bureaucracy with too much power and little accountability. Where will the lunacy stop? he discusses the case of “pilot re-screening” and the “dangerous airline cutlery.”
If you follow me on twitter, you know I’ve been whining about the lack of sun in Homer this year. We’ve been here for a week and didn’t really see the sun until today. A few days ago I promised “the sun” (via twitter) that I’d blog about it and put up a picture if it ever decided to show up here. We still have plenty of clouds obscuring the mountains across Kachemak Bay (which makes the sun reflect in strange and unusually ways), but when I returned home from my run Amy was jumping up and down shouting “the sun is out, the sun it out” confirming that it had finally made an appearance. ...