Congrats to my friends at Avalon Ventures on raising their new $200 million fund. I’ve been friends with and co-invested with Rich Levandov, one of Avalon’s partners, since the mid-1990’s, most recently in Standing Cloud, Zynga, and NewsGator. I’ve gotten to know several of Rich’s partners over the past few years and recently had a wonderful Do More Faster book tour dinner hosted at Avalon’s San Diego office by Kevin Kinsella (a fellow MIT-grad turned VC.)

I just had an exchange with an entrepreneur that I don’t know. It went something like the following via several emails over the course of a week. Entrepreneur: I’m working on something really amazing that I’m looking for funding for. Can we get together to discuss? Me: Can you send me a short email overview so I can tell you whether or not it’s something we’d be interested in exploring? I don’t want to waste your time if it’s not. Entrepreneur: I’d much rather get together face to face. Me: Can you send me a short email overview so I can tell you whether or not it’s something we’d be interested in exploring? I don’t want to waste your time if it’s not. Entrepreneur: My idea is special. Will you sign an NDA first? Me: I don’t sign NDA’s. If you are unwilling to send me a short overview that you are comfortable sharing, then I don’t think I’m a good target for you. Entrepreneur: Following is an email describing my idea. Since you won’t sign an NDA, you agree that by reading beyond this paragraph you are agreeing not to share my idea with anyone, forward this email to anyone, or discuss the idea without my consent. Me: I have not read past the end of the first paragraph (“”). I have permanently deleted this email from my inbox. Entrepreneur: Why aren’t you willing to read my email? Me: I’m unwilling to have an implied NDA applied to me via your email. You seem to be operating from a perspective of “implied suspicion.” I don’t work this way – I much prefer to operate from a perspective of “implied trust.” Since you clearly don’t trust that I’ll behave responsibly, then I don’t think I’m a good match for working with you.

Last night during my two mile post dinner walk from the Hard Rock (where I had an awesome dinner at Nobu) to the Venetian (where I subsequently had a very short night of sleep), my mind wandered around about the great time I had with my dad at CES. My dad and I have developed several annual traditions including a really delightful father-son weekend. Our annual 24 hours (usually more like 30) together in Las Vegas every January for CES is another one.

Today’s fun “company at CES that Foundry Group has invested in” is Orbotix. They’ll be in their booth #4419 in the North Hall iLounge. Orbotix makes Sphero, the world’s first robotic ball controlled by a smartphone. Here’s Sphero in action.

Several of the companies we’ve invested in are launching products at CES this year. The first one up is Sifteo. Today, Sifteo launched and you can preorder Siftables as part of their early access program. You may be familiar with them from a well known TED Talk that co-founder David Merrill did in 2009. Or maybe the recent TEDxMonterey Talk that David did earlier this year with a more in-depth demo.

After a two-fer of deeply annoying arrogance demonstrated by two different VCs on the first business day of 2011 that I’m still pondering (a mix of conflict avoidance behavior and passive aggressive behavior) I’m really looking forward to CES. Several years ago, my partners and I started going to CES together. Jason and Ryan had being going for a while. I’m not a trade show guy although I diligently went to Comdex for several years in the 1990’s as part of Softbank (which owned Comdex at the time.) Generally, I’m completely overwhelmed by the people and the stuff and the idea of spending a few days in Las Vegas playing trade show monkey makes me tired just thinking about it.

As 2011 kicks off, I think we are in for a ton of innovative software and Internet stuff this year. Yeah, some of it will be “just like everything else but different.” However, of the areas we invest heavily in – human computer interaction – has an incredible amount of activity going on. I’ll be at CES in Las Vegas this week so I expect to have a dose of nerd-eye-candy (e.g. the latest TV sets) along with a bunch of cool / amazing / clever / intriguing new HCI things.

Most of the companies I’m an investor in have a fiscal year that lines up with the calendar year. As a result, with a few exceptions, the 2010 numbers are done and the 2011 numbers have reset to zero. When I was running my first company (Feld Technologies) this was a big moment each year. I still remember it vividly – we pushed and pushed and pushed an increasing revenue (and profit) number each year with the goal of exceeding the previous year. On 12/31 at 11:59pm, the numbers were in and it was time to start over.

The TechStars Boston application deadline is 1/31/11. However, the early application deadline is actually 1/13/11 – anyone that applies by this date is eligible to come to TechStars for a Day in Boston on 1/19/2011. Katie Rae, the new TechStars Managing Director is doing an awesome job. I just got a note that we’ve already gotten more applications this year than we had last year. Even more excitingly, they are covering a wide range of companies – some deep tech, social media, health care informatics, robotics, and ecommerce.