If you walk in my office, you’ll notice a lot of art on the walls. Amy and I are huge art collectors and are always on a quest for new and beautiful things. Over the years we’ve tried to collect photographs and sculpture in addition to contemporary art – I view us as complete novices as collectors in these two domains. However, Amy has always been a great photographer. She carries a Nikon D-100 around and captures amazing pictures. I don’t have the eye she has so when I snap things on my cell phone they always feel ordinary to me. But I love to scroll through the endless stream of photos Amy has taken.

I had two similar experiences last week where I heard from employees of two different companies that I’m on the board of. In each case, a senior exec said something like “I heard the board wants us to do blah.” I was in each board meeting and the board most definitely did not say “we want the company to do blah.” Rather, in each case there was a discussion about the topic in question. In one of the cases consensus was reached quickly; in the other there was a robust discussion since two of the board members disagreed and the CEO wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. Ultimately in that case as well there was consensus.

On my run today I was thinking about GP – LP interactions. This line of thought was prompted by a contrast between two interactions, or rather one interaction and one non-interaction, that I’ve had in the past few days. The interaction was I had with one of my LPs over the last 24 hours. They emailed asking for a reference on someone who indicated they knew me and had invested with me. I didn’t know the person, but knew a few people who did, and quickly sent emails getting addition info for my LP. With a small amount of effort I was able to generate some useful feedback, including triangulating on the deal he was suggesting we were investors in together (it was a true statement prospectively as it’s something I’m working on.) I was also able to get some specific one degree of separation feedback for my LP.

Amy and I have had a great first week in Paris. The weather has been amazing, the food has been incredible, and the cell phone experience has been abysmal. Here are a few things that I’ve learned. Running on the Champs-Elysees at 4pm sucks. Go to the Bois de Bologne instead – it’s great. I need a lot of sleep. Sleeping until 13:00 is fun. It’s not worth the effort to get a local SIM card. Being a vegetarian at lunchtime is tricky if you like hanging out at a brasserie. French women often forget to put pants on under their short frilly nightgown-like tops. Smart cars are everywhere which makes Amy laugh. Nespresso coffee is delicious. So delicious that you should have four each morning. Wheeeeeeeeee. Balconies rock. At least the one we have does. Amy rocks. But I knew that already. We need to work harder at picking sushi places. Conveyor belt sushi is mediocre. No one seems to be paying attention to the Tour de France here. At least we aren’t. Paris is more ethnically diverse than Boulder. French people are nice if you say “Boujour, je ne parle pas francias.” They smile and then speak in English. You can buy pajamas at the Monoprix. Lots of fun Americans came to Paris this week including @fredwilson, @kimbal, @jason, @johnmaloney, and Cliff Shaw. FNAC is not the train station (something I’ll be able to tease Amy about for a long time.) There are a lot of paid porn channels on the TV which I may have accidentally subscribed to while trying to get the Wimbledon final on TV. There is less dog poop on the street than a few years ago. Everyone here smokes at night and outside. They are about a decade behind the US on this front. 16 degrees C is the right temperature for me at night in the bedroom. I kind of like walking up six flights of stairs several times each day. Two glasses of wine at lunch is too much for me but a bottle at dinner is just right. Google Voice doesn’t work in France. But who needs a phone anyway. It’s smart to bring backup glasses with you if you can’t see very well for when your glasses break. French is a hard. I give you poison and poisson as an example. Lunch takes two hours here. That’s a good thing. Overall we’ve spent of our time in the 8th and 17th – just hanging out, getting acclimated, writing, and living our life. I expect we’ll explore next week. And no, I am no longer carrying around my cell phone because who fucking a needs a cell phone that costs $17 a minute to use.

Trada is no longer doing Codespace – they’ve filled up the area with other companies. However, if you are looking for office space in Boulder for your startup, take a look at PivotDesk and give it a try. When developers come through Boulder, I regularly get asked if I know a place for them to camp out and work for the day. There’s now a great solution – Codespace – hosted by Trada.

A few weeks ago my dad said “Brad, you have to read the book I Am John Galt: Today’s Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It. You’ll love it.” That’s all the recommendation I needed – it went to the top of my Kindle reading list. I read it the other night in a jet lagged haze on my couch. I was wide awake at 2am without the book, but it had me consumed for a few hours. The author, Donald Luskin, is polarizing, as evidenced by his wikipedia page and entertaining conflict with Paul Krugman (who he skewers in the book).

I can’t remember when Angela Baldonero joined Return Path, but she’s been there for as long as I can remember. I invested in Return Path eleven years ago at the very beginning of its life. Today it is a profitable, 250 person company that is growing quickly, dominates its market segment, and is an awesome place to work. Angela has been a big part of both hiring many of the people and orchestrating the culture of the company so I very much value her point of view on interviewing. I hope you do also.

Finally I solved my Paris Internet Mobile 3G SIM cell phone nightmare poke my eyes out scream at my phone problem. It was remarkably easy, once I knew the magic trick, which I found on the site Pay as you go sim with data wiki (thanks Toby Ruckert – lunch is on me tomorrow.) Here are the steps (as of 7/6/11) for an unlocked Android phone and a Gmail user.

Many of the companies I’m an investor in are hiring a lot of people right now. For a current view, take a look at the Foundry Group jobs page. I’ve interviewed and hired a lot of people over the year and I’ve developed my own perspective and philosophy on the best way to do this. However, I don’t feel like I have all the answers so I asked a few people that I respect a lot (and fit in my definition of VP of People) to weigh in with their thoughts.