I can’t get Chris Wand – who works with me at Mobius – to write a blog. Nonetheless, he is a good writer. He’s just published an article on the Kauffman eVenturing site titled Considering Debt Capital. Well worth reading if you are an entrepreneur thinking about using debt financing, even if Chris won’t start a blog.

Googlepark: The Spaghetti Code is out in the continuing saga of Google vs. Microsoft vs. the world. I especially liked the sing along.

I’m chuckling as I write this. After writing a few posts on S-Corps, C-Corps, and LLC’s, I had an email exchange today with someone that is putting together a small angel round. He read my posts and concluded that he should do a C-Corp. He’s only planning to raise a small angel round now and a follow-on angel round in a year – no VC, no significant financing, and no complex capitalization. In addition, if the business is successful, it’ll start generating profits and positive cash flow in year 3. 

Last week West Corp announced it was buying Raindance Communications for $110 million. This comes two weeks after West Corp announced it was buying Intrado for $465 million. You could say this is “Omaha making a move to take over Boulder” as both Raindance and Intrado are based near Boulder (Raindance is in Louisville, CO and Intrado is in Longmont, CO – the two are 18 miles away from each other and the fastest way between them is through Boulder.)

Amy and I both travel with our laptops. Lately I’ve been using my Verizon EVDO card everywhere. It’s awesome. I was thinking about getting Amy one when Ross suggested that she could simply buddy breathe off of mine. We tried it for a week when we were in Miami – it worked flawlessly. It’s a little tricky (e.g. “non-obvious”) to set up – the directions are below. There are two laptops. The first – the “Master” (e.g. mine) is connected to the Internet. In my case, it was connected via EVDO, but it could be WiFi or via a physical ethernet connection. The second – the “Slave” (e.g. Amy’s) connects to the Master via a WiFi connection. 

A VC friend emailed me the following question(s) a few weeks ago: The rumor this week regarding Yahoo acquiring Digg for $30M sparked a discussion here around company valuation. The discussions revolved around the key factors in valuing an early stage web technology business and how these factors are being evaluated by investors today. For example, would Yahoo or other companies be buying the technology? Are they buying subscribers? Are they buying a brand or is it a weighting of a number of these factors? Based on what you are hearing, how would Digg, Technorati, livemarks or another consumer internet business be both evaluated and valued today?

Last week, I blogged an answer to the question “What’s The Best Corporate Structure For An Early Stage Company?“ A few people responded asking why I didn’t like LLC’s more. While there are several advantages of an LLC over an S-Corp (ability to issue different classes of securities, ease of set up, informality of operating agreements, lower state taxes, non-US investors), venture funds typically cannot (or don’t want to) invest in LLCs. When a VC invests in an LLC, they risk getting an income tax called UBTI (unrelated business tax income). This type of income is frowned upon by investors in venture funds partnerships and most funds have a provision in their fund agreements that they will use best efforts not to bring UBTI into the partnership. As a result, VC funds shy away from investing in LLCs.

My dad and I spent the last two days hanging out together in San Francisco. We try to do this once a year – just the two of us – exploring a different city together. This year we picked a perfect weekend – the weather in San Francisco has been incredible. We stayed downtown in the Hotel Vitale – an ideal location right on the edge of the Embarcadero Waterfront. 

Last week I was disturbed by the announcement that AOL was going to eliminate their enhanced whitelist. It was reported that they were doing this as part of a new program they were implementing to provide a pay-for-access program for mailers using Goodmail’s stamp program. I’m indifferent to AOL providing Goodmail’s stamp program as an option (the market will determine whether or not it works), but I thought it was a horrible idea to eliminate the organic enhanced whitelist and force all mailers to use the stamp program to pay for access to consumers’ email inboxes. I expressed my opinion publicly and forcefully (oh – the joys of having a blog that more than two people (me and Amy) read.)