One of my recent obsessions has become “human instrumentation.” I’ve always been really interested in the data that I generate (sleep, fitness, diet, medical) and in the past six months have started buying every personal measurement product or device I can find that is integrated with the web. One of my favorites is the Zeo. We looked at investing a while ago and I got to play with one of the alpha prototypes. It was cool but we just didn’t get there on the investment, even though I loved the product and had a great impression of the founding team and what they were up to. We keep a list of “companies we hope we regret not investing in” which means (in English) that we are huge fans and will do whatever we can to help, even though we aren’t investors. Zeo is on that list for me.

As 2009 heads into the home stretch, I’m feeling techno-restless. I’ve got two big end of year projects that I’m working on that will keep me in front of my computer a lot, along with a pile of new toys that have shown up in the past few weeks that I’m playing with. So – yesterday I decided to start trying to use new stuff and see if I would switch.

Speaking of the metaverse, we had a great TechStars summer program this year. The companies that graduated from the program are starting to announce their financings and two announced this week. SendGrid Raises $750K For Email Deliverability Software: I love these guys. If your company sends transaction outbound email to your end users (e.g. confirmations, alerts, notifications) you can either (a) do it yourself and build all the infrastructure / support around it or (b) outsource it to SendGrid. I’m a huge fan and really excited about their investor group led by Highway 12 Ventures, with SoftTech VC and FF Angel.

I’m still really cold this morning and I’m dreaming of a time when I can put my meat puppet into hibernation for a while and just romp around in the metaverse. Then I lost 30 minutes of my life to “restarting my connection to the metaverse” and it reminded me that if I went into hibernation, there’s a pretty good chance the metaverse would crash and I’d be in suspended animation forever.

For the last three years I’ve been laboring to help propagate the myth that it doesn’t snow much in Boulder and when it does it’s 55 degrees the next day and the snow all goes away. After getting back from a week of vacation on the beach in Mexico on Friday and now being on day five of the thermometer hovering around zero, tons of very frozen snow on the ground, and no chance that I’m going to contemplate heading outside for a run, I’ve decided to call bullshit on myself.

Yesterday was Return Path’s 10th Birthday. Matt Blumberg, Return Path’s CEO and founder, wrote a great reflective post on his blog titled A Perfect Ten*.* Among other things he covers what he is proudest of from Return Path’s first decade as well as what he regrets or would have done differently. Matt and his team have created a significant company that is profitable, a market leader in its segment, and is growing nicely. It has a strong balance sheet and an excellent leadership team. While the business has evolved significantly from its creation a decade ago, it has always has a clear sense of purpose and vision which has stayed pretty steady, in large part due to Matt and his executive teams’ leadership and stability.

On Monday, I’ll be interviewing Tim Enwall, the founder, president, and COO of Tendril Networks as part of the Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurs Unplugged series. The event will be from 6:15pm to 7:15pm at the ATLAS Building at CU Boulder. As a special bonus, you can use my bathroom on the second floor (if you are a guy). I’ve known Tim for many years and he’s another fantastic Boulder entrepreneur. I met him shortly after he had sold one of his previous companies – Solista – to Gartner Group. We’ve become good friends since and have done a handful of things together, including getting completely creamed at a monthly poker game we were regulars at (ok – I got creamed, Tim usually held his own and often came out on top.)

Amy and I just had an awesome week (mostly) off the grid at the Rosewood Mayakoba for my 44th birthday. Lots of sleeping, running, massages, eating, consensual activities between two adults, and reading. Lots of reading. Hothouse Orchid: I started the trip off with some light mental floss to get in the swing of things. Some of my favorite Stuart Woods characters, including Holly Barker and Teddy Fay kept me entertained for a few hours.

I was at a board meeting recently where the board and management was discussing the company’s market position. This is a strong company that leads its market and, as a result, one of the board members stated that we were “the 800 pound gorilla in the market.” In my world view, the market was still relatively small so I suggested that we were the 12 pound gorilla. While this got a chuckle, it was instructive and moved the conversation down an interesting path.