If you are a CEO or a VP of Sales, you should read Will Herman’s great post titled “Just Say No To Weighted Average Sales Forecasting.” Will’s a very accomplished CEO of both private and public companies, has spent many years managing “the sales number”, and has a very straightforward message about sales forecasts.

It was a magnificent (and very full day) in Seattle today. Amy and I have left Boulder behind until mid-August. We’re enjoying a spell of perfect weather in Seattle while I jam through a final wave of stuff in the lower 48. Running on Alaskan Way at 5:30am is – well – as good as it gets if you have to run on a road (since it’s sea level). Oh – and the “Sexy Fries” at The W Hotel are unbelievably great, as are the milkshakes at Daly’s.

Paul Kedrosky has a great article up on PE Week Wire about Venture Capital Best Practices. His conclusion – “There are no best practices in venture capital. You’ve either got it, or you don’t.”

Greg Reinacker – NewsGator’s founder and CTO – has a two part roadmap post up. His first post summarizes what NewsGator has been up to over the past 18 months. His second post talks about where NewsGator is going with their products. I’ve heard plenty of chatter lately about the fundamental differences in enterprise software between shrink-wrap software, appliances, and hosted (or SaaS) software. Most VCs I know have fallen in love with SaaS – often without understanding the fundamental economics of the SaaS model (“trendy is good – thank you SFDC”.) Others are convinced there will never again by any life in enterprise software – which is just fine with me as I love a counter cyclical trend (e.g. enterprise software is my friend again – but don’t worry, I’ll stay away from the “marketing automation” vertical.)

I’m looking for recommendations for headphones for running. I’ve been using some from Sony for a while – they are ok, but I’m having some trouble with how the right one fits (I guess my ears are different sizes – how exciting.) If you have any suggestions for sport headphones, can you leave comments here?

A few days ago I wrote that there wasn’t enough talk about failure. I had an awesome run tonight in the mountains behind my house and pondered – among other things – some of my early failures. As my mind wandered and I tried to keep from stumbling on the rocks, my thoughts drifted to my first software company – Martingale Software. I co-founded Martingale Software in 1984 with three fraternity brothers. Three of us were second term freshman (me, Andy Mina, and Sameer Gandhi) and one was a senior (Dave Jilk). After Martingale failed, Dave joined Viewlogic Systems as their first non-founder employee and – after having success there – went on to start Feld Technologies with me (which succeeded.) After college, Sameer had a strong run at Oracle in the late 1980’s, then spent some time at Broadview, before joining Sequoia Capital, where he’s been since 1998. I’ve lost track of Andy.

I’m two degrees of separation away from two people that died tragically yesterday. I’ve been thinking about it on and off all day. Both were friends of very close friends of mine. One died in a plane crash – he was in the prime of life, a huge success, and apparently a very happy person. He was flying his new plane with an instructor – they crashed and both died. The other was a young mother who was out for a bike ride with her daughter. A truck lost control and ran her over. I’m not sure what happened to the daughter.

Our good friend Mollie Fager (the executive director of The Dairy Center for the Arts) has a great rant up on the New West Network blog on “why opera rules” titled Opera: It’s Not for Wusses. In my endless effort to avoid wussness, I’m a believer.

Ryan McIntyre pointed me at a car that gets 3.14k miles per gallon. Now, if it only ran on pi.