I got the following email from service@cinemanow.com today. Brad, Thanks for posting comments regarding CinemaNow on https://feld.com/archives/2006/03/cinemanow-is-outstanding/. With regards to the comments about pricing/Netflix towards the end of the review; just wanted to take the time to let you know that we are working as hard as we can to provide our customers with the best experience possible. We are working to try to convince the studios that there IS a market out there for this kind of consumption of video, but ultimately they own the rights to their libraries, and dictate how/when/where/why regarding the distribution of their titles. Your review, and the comments of more consumers helps us greatly in this cause!

Slate has an outstanding article on a great Powerade ad you won’t find on TV. The ad itself is worth looking at, but the story is even more interesting. Thanks to Matt Branaugh – the Business Editor at the Boulder Daily Camera (who is rapidly getting blogging religion) for pointing it out to me.

On Thursday April 6, 2006, I’m on a panel at the final Silicon Flatirons conference called “Re-examining The Patent System.” The conference is from 3:30 to 7:30. My panel – titled “The Uses and Abuses of Intellectual Property: Facilitating Startups or Entry Barrier?” – is from 5:50 to 6:50. My co-panelists are Steve Halsteadt (Managing Director, Centennial Ventures), Tom McGimpsey (General Counsel, McData), and Steve Rodgers (Director of Litigation, Intel). 

Sarah Arnquist just wrote an article for Gelf Magazine titled “Could a treadmill / desk mashup be the solution to America’s obesity problem?” She apparently stumbled up my Treadputer post and interviewed me for the article. Even though she quoted me as saying “As a venture capitalist, Feld sees a definite market for ‘treadputers,’” please don’t send me a business plan for one of these contraptions. However, if you can figure out how to make a portable one that I can travel with, give me a call, as I sure wished I had one with me today.

I stumbled upon a new program online put together by USA Track & Field (USATF) called America’s Running Routes. It’s a neat web app that uses Google Maps and a nice user-interface to let runners everywhere build a database of running routes throughout the country. I don’t know when they launched it, but it already has over 15,000 routes in the United States. I tried it out by checking for runs in Seattle (where I’ll be for the next few days.) Seattle had 203 routes. I’ll actually be in Redmond, which had 18 routes ranging from 2.69 miles to 21.79 miles. Map creation is simple – it’d be super neat if it integrated with my Garmin 301.

I received the following question last week: I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the manner in which VCs should hold their entrepreneurs accountable – what should be the proper measures. Most VCs with which I have experience rightly, I think, avoid making this a numbers-only analysis, as that’s a better measure for larger and more steady-state organizations but not for young and growing companies. Wondering what your thoughts are here and if you’ve seen anything out there which addresses these points – entrepreneurs should be held accountable, they shouldn’t get a pass simply because “it’s too early” “we’re building value that’s not yet measurable” “numbers don’t matter” etc., but then again, applying ready-to-wear and traditional metrics probably doesn’t work well either.

I can’t wait until July. Amy and I spend a big chunk of the summer at our house in Homer, Alaska. We only have about 5,000 other people hanging around (it surges to about 10,000 at the high point of summer.) Up until now, most people that I mention Homer to say “huh?” Men’s Journal just determined that Homer, Alaska is the #1 Up and Coming city in the US (runners up are Newport, VT; Logan, UT; Walla Walla, WA; and Gualala, CA.) Now – I’m not sure this is a good thing – Amy’s immediate reaction to hearing this was “well, I guess we need to move to Cordova or Kotzebue now to get away from the coming hordes.”

They joy of having an “IT guy” (aka Ross) around is that he willingly expresses his opinion whenever given the chance. Since he plays around with even more stuff than I do, one of the ways I learn to is listen to him rant and rave about things he’s played with. A few weeks ago, it was his lousy experience with the iTunes Music Store for video. That post generated some useful comments – especially around DRM. Ross fired off another rant – this time a positive one about his experience with CinemaNow – along with a general response to the comments on the previous post. Again – I’ve lightly edited to fix spelling and grammar, but left the IT guy essence intact. Ross follows…

I can’t seem to get away from the “what structure should I use to set up my business” questions. Here’s another one that I recently got. I am trying to help an entrepreneur set up a distributorship to take US made products (tools) to a large market in asia with a huge need. Start up costs are under $1 million (5-10 angels and insiders), with proceeds going to pay for initial inventory take downs, field sales and support, and minimal opex. We do not foresee a future liquidity event for return of capital but rather generation of cash consistent with a distributorship. Question: what is the best equity structure for this company?