We’ve just wrapped up our second year of doing TechStars and I’m really excited about some of the companies that have come out of the program this year. We held a Demo and Investor Day in Boulder on August 20th, and 150+ investors showed up to see the ten new companies from 2008. It’s always a fun event where investors get to see some really interesting early stage web companies. I expect at least 7 or 8 of the 2008 companies will eventually close their seed rounds, which is similar to what we saw last year.

Ever since I left home for college in 25 years ago, I periodically get a call from my father that goes something like “Hi Brad, it’s Dad. I’m having trouble with my computer. Can you help me?” I fondly remember many long calls with my father where the exchange went as follows: *Brad: “Ok, now get to a DOS prompt.” **Dad: “I’m there.” **Brad: “What does it say?” **Dad: “C colon.” *Brad: “Ok, type C colon backslash D O S” *sound of dad typing way more than seven letters ** Brad: “Dad, what are you typing” **Dad: “I thought I figured it out, but now it’s asking me to Abort, Retry, or Ignore” **Brad: “Hit Control C” **Dad: “Ok” *Brad: “Now type C colon backslash D O S”

Now that I’m 42 years old, I’ve been around the computer industry long enough to understand that it runs in cycles. I don’t know how long the cycles are going to be, when they are going to reach a peak or a trough, but I do know that things will get better, will get worse, will get better, will get worse, will get better, … When I reflect on it, the long term trend over the last 42 years has been amazing. There are lots of formal and informal studies and articles on this that all link to Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction and Clay Christensen’s ideas around disruptive innovation. As the cycles play out, great new companies get created around new innovation, some reach escape velocity, some get absorbed into other large incumbent companies, and some disappear. 

One of last year’s TechStars companies – Filtrbox – is hiring. They are looking for a Java + LAMP developer and a Flash/Flex/RIA developer. If you fit the bill and are looking for a gig in downtown Boulder with a great early stage company, drop ’em a note at jobs (at) filtrbox.com.

The gang from Lookery is in Boulder tonight and having a publisher meetup from 6:30pm to 9:00pm in the TechStars Bunker. I’ve started using Lookery on Feld Thoughts and am starting to collect a different set of analytics about you, oh blog reader. Lookery is a user-targeting service and advertising network**.** They provide free analytics to promote to publishers, bringing them attention, organic traffic, sales leads, and partnership opportunities. They are looking for publishers who represent:

I’m speechless. I don’t think I even know how to process this anymore.

Eric Norlin – who runs the Defrag Conference – has a good post up today titled The metaphors we’ve outgrown. He riffs off of the Google Chrome announcement. At the end of it, he answers “what makes Defrag different.” People ask me all of the time what makes Defrag different? I kind of giggle and tell them that I’m proud that we’re not a conference loaded with case studies. Don’t get me wrong, that has a very useful place (in a nearly mature market). We’re just nowhere near that place. Defrag is about gathering to explore, imagine and build these new metaphors. The web should be getting smarter, more implicit, more enabling. Let the rest of the world get mired down in economic uncertainty, productivity enhancement and cost reduction. There’s plenty of time for you to do that (trust me). Come to defrag and help us grow out of these metaphors. And then watch as the supposedly “pie in the sky” things you find at Defrag are suddenly “real world” things that you’re using and implementing everyday. Kinda cool, huh?

I have completely fallen in love with my Kindle. I’ve now read over 50 books on it and have another 50 or so queued up. I’ve been reading exclusively on my Kindle when I travel (I no longer carry books with me), although I do read from the infinite pile of books in my house when I’m home. As a mega-reader, Amazon has completely nailed it. However, I have one problem with the Kindle. DRM. 

We’ve done TechStars for two years now. While I love every company involved, each year I’ve had a major crush on one particular company. This year it was Foodzie. I liked Rob, Emily, and Nik from the minute I met them at TechStars for a Day. They came up to me and offered me chocolate. Brilliant. They then explained that they were creating an online marketplace for artisan food producers and growers. Their target customer are foodies. As a foodie (and major consumer of artisan foods – just look at my body shape even after running all the marathons I do) I totally got it.