Great advice from Julie Alexandria on WallStrip to all the big thinkers in Davos who are Scornful of US Policies and worried about the impact of the fall of the “wounded giant.” To you, Julie says “Eh screw it. Let’s dance.” I loved George Soros’ quote: ““The current crisis is not only the bust that follows the housing boom. It’s basically the end of a 60-year period of continuing credit expansion based on the dollar as the reserve currency.” Is the US finally having it’s post-Edwardian England moment?

Andrew Hyde – the wonderful, fun, and friendly founder of StartupWeekend – wrote a great post recently On Burning Out. He’s back – after taking a long break – which is great. Last week I had dinner with another long time friend and entrepreneur who told me he “had the blues.” His company had a strong 2007 and is well positioned for 2008, but he’s been sick since the holidays, has been feeling down, and can’t seem to shake it.

The TechStars 2008 Applications are now open. Last year we had 302 applications and accepted 10 companies. 8 of the 10 companies are now either financed or profitable and several have received acquisition offers. If you apply before March 3rd, you are invited to come to our TechStars for a Day program. We are having a TechStars party in the Bay Area this Thursday evening January 24th from 6pm to 8:30pm at the Plug and Play Tech Center (440 N Wolfe Road in Sunnyvale, California.) Space is limited so if you are want to come, please sign up for the event on Facebook or drop the TechStars folks a note.

I was a keynote speaker at the University Venture Fund Conference last Friday. I had a great time and was blown away by the quality of the 300+ undergrad and graduate students from around the country who participate in the UVF program. Most of the conference was very relevant and substantive, including a great list from Martin Plaehn’s (Bungee Labs CEO) titled Quick Hits: Do’s and Dont’s of Entrepreneurship which was posted earlier today on Will Price of Hummer Winblad’s blog. I’ve known Martin since the mid 1990’s when the company he was running (Viewpoint) bought a company I was chairman of (Thinkfish) and while we haven’t worked together since, he was in fine form on Friday and brought back good memories.

I’m not a macroeconomics guy – never have been, never will be. I don’t watch CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, or even Fox News. When I was on the board of several public companies, I used to hit refresh on my My.Yahoo home page about 371 times a day – I no longer have a My.Yahoo home page (or any public company board seats – never again.) I’ve learned that the day to day macro stuff doesn’t impact what I do. It’s just noise. And I have more than enough things that I chose to focus on, so I do my best to consciously filter out the noise.

A humorous view on sales executives. My apologies to all my friends that are in sales. I love each and every one of you. (Thanks for the link Tim.)

Ok – I’m stretching for a clever title for this post. Several weeks ago I saw two great technical posts from friends. The first is from Stan James – the founder of Lijit. Stan was fiddling around with the idea of short URLs which have been made popular by TinyURL and recently amplified by Twitter. This is the “short” problem – simply, how do you turn a long url like https://feld.com/archives/2007/12/the-glue-that-binds-things/ into something manageable like https://feld.com/5v00v that is guaranteed to be unique for all cases. Stan walks you through the code at Geekout: How To Make Short URL’s. Yes – it’s simple – and I’m surprised more web services aren’t doing something like this.

Square 1 Bank has officially opened their office in Boulder with Ken Fugate moving to town full time. Bob Van Nortwick – one of Square 1’s founders – had done an awesome job of pioneering the Colorado market for Square, providing solid and constructive competition for the other main early stage banker in the area – Silicon Valley Bank. We work with (and love) both banks – and I’m delighted that there is a healthy enough entrepreneurial ecosystem in my backyard to support both of them.

My next marathon is in a couple of weeks so I’ve been logging plenty of miles lately. I had a 10 mile run scheduled yesterday but it was -5, pitch black, and very windy at my house when I needed to get started so I decided to change things up and do a shorter, more intense run. So – I drove to the office and ran Mount Sanitas – a mainstay 5 mile loop with serious elevation.