From a mug found in Fred Wilson’s office. It’s important to have a sense of humor in this business (and in every business, and in life.) The coffee was great.

Ben Casnocha’s book My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley is at the top of Amazon’s Movers and Shakers list today. Daily rank of #127 (up 18,848% from yesterday as of 4pm Eastern Time.) Congrats Ben – that’s really cool. Updated – at 4pm, it was actually ranked 94 and up 29,131% from yesterday.

Last week the CEO of one of the companies that I’m an investor in asked me why all the companies I was blogging about were Web 2.0 companies. I despise the Web 2.0 label so this made me cringe and I asked him to give me more feedback. We talked for a few minutes and he helped me see my blogging through a different filter than my brain. I’ve always been a “thematic investor.” I pick a theme that I’m interested in that I think has a long term (greater than ten year) investment horizon, hope I’m a couple of years (vs. a decade) ahead of the curve, and then go to work with great entrepreneurs to create some companies. Themes that you may have heard me talk about here including email, RSS, and the Implicit Web.

Over the last few years Amy and I have become close friends with Ben Casnocha. We adore the guy. Ben started his first company – Comcate – at age 14. As of today (age 19), he’s now a published author as his first book – My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley – is officially available. As an early reader / reviewer of the book, I highly recommend it. The story is oriented around Ben’s experiences as a teenager trying to deal with the pressures of both teenage and adult “business / entrepreneurship” life simultaneously. He does a magnificent job of articulating the characteristics of a startup without being preachy and weaves in a number of vignettes from experienced friends and colleagues. It is simultaneously personal, educational, and emotionally deep.

I know David Cohen is excited – I hope the TechStars teams are. The Denver Post had a nice article on How TechStars was born which includes several very silly pictures of us including one of me and David pretending to smash guitars while Jared talks on the phone and intelligently walks away from the nonsense going on in the background. The real stars of TechStars are the entrepreneurs, which the Denver Post got right. The supporting cast includes the awesome list of mentors that we have lined up for the summer.

I’m not a crazy baseball fan, but after 12 years living in Boston it’s hard not to have a soft spot in one’s heart for the Red Sox Nation. Fenway Park is one of the last great ballparks and I smile every time I’m there, even if I’m getting drenched. Game 1: Red Sox 13, Braves 3. First base side. 1:05pm Game 2: Braves 14, Red Sox 0. Third base side. 7:05pm

I had a great weekend in Boston with the men over 5 feet tall in my family. We watched the Red Sox paste the Braves (13–3) and then watched the Braves paste the Red Sox (14–0). It was rainy and shitty all weekend, but that didn’t stop us from having a great time. When reading my blogs this morning as I woke up and prepared for my long run, I came across yet another article on Geni and their $100m valuation. I’ve never really been into genealogy so I ignored Geni, but after spending a weekend with some genetically linked people, I was inspired to give it a try.

I’m in Boston this weekend for the annual Feld Men’s Trip with my dad (Stan), my uncle (Charlie), my brother (Daniel), and my two cousins (Jon and Kenny.) We had tickets to tonight’s Red Sox vs. Braves game (very expensive ones – thanks StubHub) and have tickets to tomorrow afternoon’s game (and now rescheduled evening) game. The weather has not cooperated. I’ve been here since yesterday afternoon and it has been raining continuously. We just finished our traditional annual steakhouse dinner at Abe & Louis (don’t ask what veggie-boy Brad ate) and we slogged our way back to the hotel in the monsoon.

The cliche “rules were meant to be broken” is a common one in the world of entrepreneurship. Paul Berberian – a great entrepreneur (and dear friend) almost died yesterday when flying his airplane because he broke three of his rules of flying in a row. Paul got lucky and I very glad he’s alive. As an investor, I’ve developed some rules. These are not absolutes – I break individual rules on a regular basis. These are not “ethical”, “moral”, or “legal” rules; rather they are functional guidelines for helping create companies that I’ve developed over 20+ years of doing this with 100+ companies. If you are an entrepreneur or executive at a company that I’m an investor in (or a co-investor with me) and have ever had to listen to me blather on about a story of something that has happened at another company to illustrate one of my points, you understand what I mean by “a rule.”