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?

I stumbled over a post on the re:invention Marketing blog (a toolbox for & about enterprising women) about BusinessWeek’s recent article on tech entrepreneurs under the age of 30. Kirsten Osolind points out that of the 16 “cutting edge entrepreneurs under 30” that were highlighted, none were women (ok – two were women – Sandy Jan and Elaine Wherry – of Meebo.) I forwarded this to Lucy Sanders, the CEO of National Center for Women & Information Technology – and she logically responded “well Brad – blog about it.” Interestingly, the ratio (2:16 or 12.5%) is about the same ratio of high school girls to boys that take the AP Computer Science test.

The line of the day at a board meeting yesterday was from the VP Engineering concerning a customer deployment. “The customer acknowledged the issue was on their side – it was a problem between the chair and the keyboard.”

Check Point and Sourcefire announced the cancellation of their deal on Thursday. This was a very nice deal for Sourcefire and its investors, as Check Point was paying $225 million for the company. Sourcefire had raised a total of about $33 million so the early investors, including Sierra Ventures, probably made about 15x, NEA which was a round 2 investor probably made about 10x, and Sequoia – which was a round 3 investor, probably made about 3x.