Book: How Will You Measure Your Life?

While FAKEGRIMLOCK and all of the humans he has let survive are hanging out at the TechStars SXSW party, I’m at home with Amy, buried in a snowstorm, reading. I haven’t read much this year – I’ve been overwhelmed with work and writing and haven’t had much energy for reading. Which is dumb, since I love to read, and it’s an important way I discover new things and think about things I’m interested in.

March 10, 2013 · 4 min

LazyHusband at SXSW

I’m not at SXSW this year. I sort of miss it, but not really. Last year I cancelled at the last minute (the day before – I was already in San Antonio at TechStars Cloud) to come back to Boulder after Amy fell and broke her wrist. This year I just didn’t feel like I had enough extrovert reserves in my tank to deal with it. I stayed home and am hanging out at my house in Eldorado Canyon enjoying what looks like at least 12 inches of snow in the last 12 hours. And yes, I’m heading out later for a very quiet and transcendent run.

March 9, 2013 · 2 min

Save UberDenver Rally On Monday

UberDenver and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick are hosting a rally at Galvanize after the Colorado Public Utilities Commission holds a public hearing on proposed rules changes that could shut UberDenver down. I’ve had a number of private conversations since I wrote my post The Colorado PUC Trying to Shut Down UberDenver. I continue to think the whole situation is insane especially given our state government’s strong position on advancing innovation in Colorado. The PUC’s behavior is clearly protectionist, anti-innovation, and undermines many of the efforts of entrepreneurs in Colorado to advance and amplify innovation here.

March 8, 2013 · 2 min

Go Fill Up Some Gas Tanks Today

I’m spending the day working at Yesware. I’ve been an investor from inception and love what this company is doing. I also love the culture – I wrote about it in my post The Monastic Startup. If you use Gmail and Salesforce and are not also using Yesware, take a look at email for salespeople right now. It’s an atypical day for me. I was supposed to be in DC all day today and tomorrow. I had full days of meetings, including two Startup Communities related events – one with the World Bank and one with a Congressional Caucus on Innovation. I had a few company meetings along with some stuff I was exploring. And I was going to drop in on 1776 and check it out.

March 6, 2013 · 3 min

How Is Your Q1 Going?

Now that we are in March, you should have a pretty good view of how your Q1 is likely to end up. If you are a revenue generating company, you’ve probably got a formally approved 2013 plan by now (if not, why not?) Your board is paying attention to your performance against plan, and you and your management team are executing based on the plan you had approved, which likely includes both a revenue plan and an expense plan.

March 5, 2013 · 3 min

What Do You Do On The Weekends?

Chris Dixon has a good short post up titled What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years. He wrote it on Saturday so it’s got a delightful self-referential twist to it now that he’s a partner at A16Z. I’ve always thought this was a great interview question. I’ve used it with founders of companies I’m looking at investing in, TechStars founders, and execs for early stage companies. Basically, anyone who I’m trying to understand what they are thinking about long term. The variety of answers is fascinating, often deeply personal, and occasionally very confusing to me. But they are always enlightening.

March 4, 2013 · 2 min

Why Am I Forbidden From Using My iPhone In US Immigration Areas?

I’m in the Little Rock airport on my way home. After having an abysmal travel day yesterday that started off at 5:30am with me being detained By U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the Toronto airport, I finally got to Little Rock around 4pm, made it to the Startup Arkansas event around 5:30pm, and did two hours of open office hours, a Startup Communities talk, and general Q&A. When I got back to my hotel room around 10:30pm and crawled into bed after hanging around with the entrepreneurs at a great after party, the crappy US CBP experience had been washed off of me. I had a great evening, and, like entrepreneurs everywhere, the people I got to hang out with in Arkansas are optimistic, fun, excited about what they are doing, and building the future. And they like beer, which I needed after a very long day.

March 2, 2013 · 4 min

The Joy Of Being Detained By U.S. Customs and Border Protection

I’ve had a shitty morning. After a really fun day yesterday in Waterloo at Communitech, which is really impressive, I woke up at 4:30am to make my 6:30am flight from Toronto to Chicago on my way to Little Rock, Arkansas where I’m speaking at the launch of Startup Arkansas. I was going to run the Little Rock Marathon on Sunday but I’m undertrained and – while I could get it done – decided I wasn’t ready to deal with the physical and emotional recovery cycle given all the work I’ve got going on. So I bailed on the marathon, but since they’d organized the Startup Arkansas event around my schedule and managed to procure me a number for the sold out marathon, I decided to go ahead and fulfill my commitment to that.

March 1, 2013 · 6 min

PATANG (The Kite) – An Award Winning Film by Prashant Bhargava – Comes to Boulder

I don’t invest in movies. Unless a long time friend, like Rajat Bhargava, asks me to join him for fun in an investment. Several years ago Raj asked me to invest with him in a movie a cousin of his – Prashant Bhargava – was making called Patang. I wrote a modest check without thinking twice. The result of Prashant and the work of his team is a beautiful movie. And it will be in Boulder for a few days – 2/27 – 3/2 – at the The Dairy Center for the Arts.

February 25, 2013 · 2 min