If you are looking for a cool job in the bay area, go take a look at the recruiting event happening on 10/5/12 organized by a bunch of our portfolio companies searching for amazing folks. The neat thing to me about this is that my partners and I had nothing to do with this – it was completely self-organized by the CEOs of the companies in which we’ve invested in the bay area. We have a very active internal CEO list and I saw a thread about this that started a week ago and then generated a long thread as the CEOs decided to do it and figured it out. I’m sitting with Seth, Jason, and Ryan after a long (awesome) day together doing email and watching football and Jason said “hey – did you see the tweet about the bay area recruiting event!”

A few weeks ago an entrepreneur of a fast growing consumer-oriented company told me that he has every new employee do customer support for two weeks. Their approach is they onboard the new person, given the a one week “get settled into your role / get up to speed on the company” period and then they spend weeks two and three full time in the customer support organization. I’ve let this roll around in the back of my head and think it’s absolutely brilliant. The first week is a typical “first week at a new company” which includes a formal day of orientation on the first day. The next four days are structured around on-boarding the person and getting them involved in their role and their team, but not too deeply. This allows there to be a “break in period” where the person is learning the systems and structure of the company.

It’s hard to describe the satisfaction of “shipping” your product. I know many of you out there have done it many times and I expect you know what I’m talking about. Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City is officially shipping. The Kindle version is available immediately; the physical copies are still on pre-order on Amazon but I know books are flowing. Vivek Wadhwa wrote a wonderful article in the Washington Post on Monday that highlights the Boulder Thesis. The article – This is how you build a tech community – follows up on a Bloomberg article that Vivek wrote in 2010 titled Why Boulder Is America’s Best Town for Startups. In his latest article, Vivek does a great job of summarizing the Boulder Thesis and highlights my views on the difference between entrepreneurs (as leaders) and government (as feeders) in the effort to create a vibrant long-term entrepreneurial ecosystem.

When I started Retrofit last fall, I weighed 216. I’ve struggled for a decade to get below 210 – it would happen sometimes but I’d quickly end back up in the 210 – 220 range. I ran marathons so this was frustrating – I am a pescatarian and eat healthy, just too much. I started Retrofit and within three months was down to 200. I’ve been between 195 and 200 for the past six months and have a clear understanding of how to be at 195 by simply cutting out a few things for a few weeks. My running has improved by a minute a mile, I’ve dropped from a 38 waist to a 36 waist (and could probably pull off a 34), and feel so much better.

In July I wrote a post where I was Searching For A Collaborative Writing Tool. I got a bunch of suggestions – some people suggested their startups, some suggested Google Docs, and one person (a friend who works for Microsoft) suggested Microsoft SkyDrive . Amy and I were deep in working on Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur. We were trying to use Scrivener but that wasn’t working for two writers so I moved us to Google Docs. But I knew that wouldn’t be great because I’ve struggled with long documents in Google Docs in the past, especially since eventually we had to move to Microsoft Word for our publisher (Wiley) anyway.

This is the second year that TechStars is running a thematic accelerator in Texas focused just on cloud computing. At Foundry Group, we believe in thematic investing both as a way to organize and filter the massive number of opportunities to look at, but also as a way to build a set of muscles around a sphere of knowledge. It’s been fun to experiment with this approach at TechStars. While we recognize the tidal wave trend of all technology becoming ‘cloudy’, we are approaching TechStars Cloud with specific focus. The companies in TechStars Cloud are the ones enabling the trend of cloud computing and providing the underlying technology, versus just the ones that are being carried along with it.

On Monday night 9/24 from 6:15 to 7:45 I’m co-hosting the first Entrepreneurs Unplugged session of Fall 2012 at CU Boulder. We’ll be at ATLAS in Room 100 and I’ll be interviewing Rustin Banks (CEO) and Holly Hamann (VP Marketing) of BlogFrog. If you are interested in coming, please register here. It’s free, but we do have a limited number of seats. I love doing the Entrepreneurs Unplugged sessions – it’s a chance for me to interview some of the great Boulder entrepreneurs, especially up and coming ones like Rusty and Holly. I’ve known Holly since her time as VP of Marketing at Service Metrics, a company in which I was an investor in the late 1990’s and was a huge Boulder success story when they were acquired in 1999 by Exodus for $280 million. I met Rusty more recently, a few years ago when he was just starting BlogFrog. While I’m not an investor, I introduced him to a few friends of mine including David Cohen of TechStars who helped him put together his angel round.

As an author, it’s always incredibly exciting to get the actual finished version of a book I’ve written. While I still haven’t seen a physical version of Startup Communities (it’s still in pre-order), the Kindle version is now shipping. If you don’t want to wait any longer for it, you can grab a copy on the Kindle right now. And, if you’ve pre-ordered it on the Kindle, it should be pushed to your Kindle by now (if it’s not, tell me and I’ll nudge someone.)

A cool company named Simplifilm made a trailer for my new book, Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City. What do you think of it? Any feedback – good, bad, constructive, or destructive is appreciated. And – if you like it – share it! If you want an intro to the gang at Simplifilm, just ask.