Jason and I occasionally get asked “why are the majority of companies incorporated in Delaware, regardless of their actual physical location?” Besides being difficult to spell (c’mon – you thought there was an “e” instead of an “a”, didn’t you), Delaware offers some tangible advantages over incorporating in other states. While we aren’t experts on state laws outside of California, Colorado, and Delaware (e.g. feel free to offer “my state is better than Delaware to incorporate in” comments), we thought we’d summarize a few of the reasons below.

Al Gore on SNL. I have no idea if this is legal or not, but it’s hilarious. Thanks Don and Rick, my liberal friends.

A little more than a year ago, Amy and I had a legendary dinner at Le Cinq in the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris. Last night we had another amazing experience – this time at Restaurant Guy Savoy with our long time friends Warren and Ilana Katz. In fact, last night’s meal was so incredible that I’ve spent most of the day laying around the apartment recovering and keeping myself distracted from feeling full by doing email and phone calls.

One of my oldest (as in “known for the longest time”) friends – Dave Jilk – recently started a new company called eCortex with his business partner, CU Boulder Professor Randall O’Reilly. I – along with several other friends and The University of Colorado (through their Proof-of-Concept Investment program) – participated in the angel financing. I’ve known Dave since my second day at MIT. I was a lost and lonely freshman during the madness known as MIT Rush (MIT used to have fraternity rush the first week of school – this has since been modified for a variety of reasons – some good, some not-so-good) when Dave walked up to me and said something like “hey, want a beer?” (this was probably one of the “good” reasons since I was 17.) This started a 20+ year friendship that includes starting a successful company together (Feld Technologies), marriages and divorces, moves (we both ended up in Boulder), an unsuccessful entrepreneurial adventure (Wideforce Systems), several salvage operations (planetU, Xaffire) and lots of time spent exploring and learning new things. Dave was always one of the most intellectually capable people in the room (a 4.9/5.0 in Course 6 at MIT means something – I think the B was in psychology) and – while the startup company thing suited him well, he was never in love with the thing he was working to create.

Barry Eisler – one of my favorite authors – made me laugh out loud this morning. Amy and I had a legendary dinner at Guy Savoy last night with our friends Warren and Ilana Katz (more on that later when enough blood returns to my brain from my stomach to write about it) and we had the experience that this language was designed for. Barry’s blog has moved up into the list of “read the full post every day rather than skim” category.

There was a gang of bloggers at SAP’s SAPPHIRE conference that was organized by SAP’s Jeff Nolan. The wiki has a bunch of context and links to the various folks that were part of this gang. Niel Robertson – the CTO of Newmerix (one of my portfolio companies) – has started to trickle out missives from the conference. Ross Mayfield – the CEO of SocialText – covered the keynote nicely (eliminating my need to be there) and – well – if you just had to see some pictures of the conference, they even existed on the web.

I received the following question recently: Just want to ask you a question. I’m looking to bring in a couple of advisors for my startup, how much stock and the approximate % of equity should I give that’s fair to the advisors for their invaluable advice? I was thinking of 100,000 shares each that equates to 1% company equity. Can you advice me on what’s the norm? 1% is rich. In the past, I’ve given some ground rules for equity grants for directors – 1% vesting over four years is at the top end of the range. Advisors typically (although not always) contribute much less value to a company than directors and their equity grant should correspondingly be less. Of course, the amount you give depends on a number of factors, including things like your expectation of what the advisor will provide, how much you value this involvement, and the existing capital structure of the company (e.g. larger grants if you are younger, smaller grants if you are a more mature company.)

In Munich, der Lowe has eaten La Vache. The Munchner Lowenparade (Lion Parade) was out in force. I snapped about 50 pictures of beautifully painted lions like the one below with my favorite lioness. Amy informed me that the female lions do all the work while the male lions lay around all day.

Amy and I had a great few days in Munich earlier this week. The highlight was teaching Joachim Henkel’s class at Technische Universitat Munchen on the topic of “Why Innovations Often Come From Startup Companies.” I met Joachim through Eric von Hippel – they’ve worked together on some Open Source research that’s part of Eric’s Democratizing Innovation theme. The class was very engaged and humored me by speaking excellent English. Rather than stick to a tight topic, I did a lot of story telling and Q&A, which I always expect is a nice change of pace for a class like this from the more standard academic lecture (at least they seemed to have fun.)