This year TechStars ran a program in Boston. Shawn Broderick was the ring leader and everyone had an awesome time. To get a feel for the scene, take a look at The Founders video on Bean Town. The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 13 | Bean Town from Andrew on Vimeo.

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 journalist, nor do I pretend to be. I’m involved in some way in virtually everything I write about on this blog. While I don’t directly make money when you buy a product or service from one of the private companies I have an investment in, I have the potential of eventually making money if the company is more valuable. I do get a share of the ad revenue that appears alongside the articles and I get affiliate fees from some services like Amazon whenever I write about a book or movie, link to Amazon, and remember to include my affiliate link. These are all well known practices among bloggers that adding “disclosure to” in every post is tedious, pointless, and irrelevant.

Last week I was interviewed by the Denver Business Journal for an article on the StartupVisa Movement. Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) – who represents the district in which I live – was also interviewed. Kevin Mann – the founder of Take Publishing (one of the TechStars 2009 companies) and a UK citizen – talked about his story. Good – and important – stuff – Polis wants foreign company founders to be allowed to stay in United States.

The other day I wrote about two TechStars companies (Occipital and DailyBurn) teaming up to create FoodScanner for the iPhone. That app is now in the top 65 in the app store. Occipital provided the underlying scanning technology which is based on the RedLaser SDK. Anyone can use that SDK to easily add magic bar code scanning to their own app. As of right now, RedLaser itself is #2 on the top paid apps list in the app store. You can use it to scan any barcode to quickly check online pricing. I love stuff that works like “magic” and RedLaser qualifies because it’s fast and effortless and uses nothing more than the built in camera to read the barcode, even on curved surfaces, and even without autofocus**.**

In the few weeks since I wrote the post The Founders Visa Movement there has been a ton of positive momentum, input, ideas, and support. Thanks to the efforts of Dave McClure and Eric Ries, we shifted the name to the StartupVisa, figured out that the EB-5 visa was the most logical one to try to “modify”, and got a web site up about it. In the mean time, I’ve now had extensive conversations with three of my congressmen, all of whom get it, including one who is deep in working on some draft legislation around it. I’ve also gotten a CU Law JD/MBA student to work with us as an intern to help put some substance around the approach and proposal. I’ve also been taken to task by some folks who think I’m naive, misguided, or simply are against increasing the number of legal immigrants into our country.

Defrag 2009 is happening in Denver on November 11th and 12th. As this is Defrag’s third year, I can say with great confidence that it will be an amazing experience. I’ve watched Eric Norlin orchestrate two Defrag’s and one Glue conference and he is a master at the small, intimate, high quality tech conference. The simple metaphor for Defrag versus all of the other tech conferences that exist can be summarized in one question: “Would you rather eat at TGI Fridays or the family owned restaurant, where the owner brings the food to your table?" 

I’ll start with the lesson that I learned: Always make sure your license plate matches your registration and insurance forms that you keep in your car and that these are the same as the information the DMV has in their database. Here’s the story. I was driving home last night around 10:30pm on the road to Eldorado Canyon. I drive this road hundreds of times a year and have trouble staying at the speed limit, especially when it’s late, no one is out, and I’m in a mellow happy mood. I was listening to the XM Chill station (my favorite radio station) and reflecting on the day. 

The Startup Visa movement is picking up a lot of speed. I’ve had more positive conversations about it than I have about any other government related thing I’ve been involved in or worked on in the past few years. David Binetti and the gang at @2gov have set up a way for anyone to make a $50 contribution to the Startup Visa effort. This is an anonymous donation and you have to be a US Citizen to make the donation – just go to the contribute page. If you want to contribute more than $50, just email donate@2gov.org. 

A few weeks ago I wrote a post titled An Angel Investor Group Move That Makes Me Vomit. In the post, I lambasted the practice of charging entrepreneurs to pitch to an angel group for funding. I think this is completely backwards – the angel group members should cover all the costs and the entrepreneurs should not be charged. Last week David Cohen (the founder of TechStars) wrote a post titled An offer to Funding Universe. On 9/30, Funding Universe is having one of their CrowdPitch events in Denver. The were originally charging $125 to present – David welcomed Funding Universe to Colorado and offered to pay the presentation fees for half the companies if Funding Universe covered the other half.