I received the following email earlier this week from an exec at a company that I am on the board of. He sent it out to his entire company. I thought it clearly described the different between panic and urgency and explains why – in a business context – panic is useless, but urgency is critical. I don’t think I could have said this better if I had tried. In recent weeks, many of my business contacts have discussed the economy and the pressure we are all feeling on a daily basis. They all have a sense of pressure. I am sure many of you can relate. If you are not feeling the pressure these days, then you may want to step outside or turn on the TV, or read a newspaper.

Two weeks ago, one of the companies I’m on the board of – Rally Software – announced that they have acquired a company called 6th Sense Analytics. I’ve been involved in Rally since the very beginning and it has been incredibly rewarding to see them grow from an idea that the founder/CTO Ryan Martens had to the market leader in Agile application lifecycle management. Rally updates quarterly their “by the numbers page” which gives a nice overview of the scale of Rally.

I’ve always enjoyed Greg Galant’s interviews on Venture Voice. He interviewed me early on (Show #10) and the list of folks he has interviewed is dynamite. Greg just interviewed David Cohen on TechStars. The show notes give you a great outline of the interview content where David answers a lot of questions about TechStars, why it exists, how it works, and why you should care. Don’t forget – TechStars applications are now open.

Yet again an article in the New York Times bemoaning the demise of venture capital – this one is titled Maybe We Should Call Them Venture Pessimists. *“*Optimism is in short supply”, “the quarterly Silicon Valley Venture Capital Confidence Index has reached its fifth consecutive quarterly low”, “there is understandable concern over the pressures on the VC business model”, and “the venture community should expect substantial structural changes to occur” are some of the snippets.

Howard Lindzon produced 4 minutes of fucking poetry. Episode #2 of the Fly. I’m not even sure I can spell all of those words. Hilarious. Remember – turn off the TV – especially CNBC, MSNBC, and CNN. They aren’t doing you, your brain, or your soul any good unless Paul Kedrosky is on and is ranting about something. Paul – when are you going to start your own Youtube channel?

One of the really fun things about working with Eric Norlin, the creator of Defrag and Glue, is watching how he evolves the agenda from a conference from idea to reality. It’s a very fluid process that Eric handles masterfully. Eric’s post The Glue agenda starts to get sticky summarizes some of the latest highlights on the ever evolving agenda. The headliner: Mitch Kapor is going to be giving the keynote on Wednesday, May 13th. 

I’m been fighting through one of the worst colds I’ve ever had. I started feeling crummy on Friday, spent the entire weekend in bed, suffered through work on Monday, and had the entire experience crest with the worst headache and one of the longest pain filed and sleepless night ever. I finally am feeling better today, but man that was a nasty 27 headed viral monster. I’ve never been a fan of handshakes. While I get the formality of it, I hate germs and – in a parallel universe – would probably spend all my time with my extremities wrapped in saran wrap. I’ve had a running joke of it with some friends, including Paul Kedrosky, who also thinks handshakes are stupid.

In 2006 I ran the Boston Marathon as a Charity Runner for The Michael Lisnow Respite Center. I had a tremendous Experience At The Boston Marathon even though I got a nasty email from someone a few days before that was a Major Emotional Bummer for me. I learned plenty from processing the entire experience (good and bad) and wouldn’t trade it for anything. A year ago I adopted Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis as one of my official 50×50 marathon sponsors. They are a great nonprofit based in Boston that is working to cure MS by determining its causes. It turns out that they have some extra Boston Marathon charity passes this year. They asked me if I wanted to run Boston again but since I’m still focused on one marathon in each state, I passed on this year’s race. 

My monthly column in Entrepreneur Magazine is up (and on the newsstands). This month’s article is titled VC or Angel Money? and has some suggestions for how to think about whether you should be approaching VC’s or Angel’s when raising a round of financing.