Did you know Twitter is going public? Of course you did – it’s all the mainstream media could seem to write about last week after the now infamous twitter tweet about it. We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for […]

I was having a conversion on Friday with Brad Bernthal, an Associate Professor at Colorado Law School who directs the Silicon Flatirons Center’s Entrepreneurship Initiative. Brad and I – in addition to sharing a first name – are close friends. We were talking about the recent amazing Techstars Demo Day that we had just had in Boulder, […]

In yet another insane move by government against entrepreneurs and job creators, the Colorado PUC is proposing a new set of rules that would shut down Uber in Colorado. This is protectionism and misuse of power in an egregious form. Government supporting powerful incubants (the taxi industry) that are threatened by disruptive innovators through regulation. Yuck. As […]

Following is something that happens to me on a regular basis, with a new and exciting twist. I’m telling this story both to vent (maybe I’m grumpy today – I don’t know) as well as for an object lesson on how not to interact with a VC, or at least with me. First – the […]

These days I’m regularly exposed to patent trolls. Sometimes I read about them, sometimes friends email me about them, and sometimes companies I’m an investor in gets sued by them. Whenever I read the claims in the lawsuits, I often think that the claim in question is “obvious.” For those of you out there who […]

The Apple patent suit against HTC really riled up my friend Sawyer.  I wasn’t planning on posting another missive from him until next week, but I thought this was particularly timely given the public statement from Apple, including a specific quote from Steve Jobs about its competitors stealing their patented inventions.  Sawyer explains why this […]

I have a number of friends who are patent attorneys.  Some have strong negative feelings about software patents that mirror mine while others keep me entertained by arguing both sides of the situation with themselves while I sit around and listen.  One of my friends – let’s call him Sawyer – has very strong negative […]

Brad Burnham at Union Square Ventures put up a very important post last night titled We need an independent invention defense to minimize the damage of aggressive patent trolls.  His partner Fred Wilson echoed Brad’s thoughts on his blog with a post titled Why We Need An Independent Invention Defense. Brad’s post starts out with […]

Two things really tweaked me in the past 24 hours. The FTC rules to regulate product endorsements in blogs The US Antitrust Inquiry of IBM The FTC thing is just fucking stupid.  Jeff Jarvis does a better takedown of it than I could ever do on his post FTC Regulates Our Speech.  I’m not a […]