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.)

279: Own Your Mistakes: FeedBurner screwed up the other day. One of the new guys on the publisher team sent out a generic, unsolicited email to about 90 people who aren’t FeedBurner publishers. While it’s arguable about whether or not it was spam, it was bad form, stupid, and not FeedBurner’s style. There was some immediate chatter about it from a few of the people that received the emails and rather than defend it, Dick Costolo (FeedBurner’s CEO) immediately commented on each post he saw saying “we screwed up – we’re sorry” and then put up a public apology on the web site later in the day. Every company (and everybody) makes mistakes regularly. Acknowledging them immediately, apologizing, correcting them, and learning from them is less common.

As regular readers of this blog know, I’ve been having a lot of fun with Tom Evslin’s blook hackoff.com. Several weeks ago, I got on a conference call with Tom Evslin, Matt Blumberg, Kelly Evans, Stephanie Miller, and Fred Wilson and recorded a scene in the book. Tom put it up on the hackoff site today in two segments: here and here. I played Joseph Windaw of Windaw and Wallar Venture Capital, a very white shoe VC who has a lifetime pass to the Harvard Club. As a jewish kid with a couple of degrees from MIT that wears sneakers, it was a tough role for me but Tom said I pulled it off fine. The balance of the cast is described in detail on Tom’s post about the recording.

It’s been a while since Jason and I wrote an entry for our Letter of Intent series. Yesterday, as I read through a confidentiality agreement that I had been asked to sign, I was inspired to address another typical part of an LOI – the dreaded confidentiality / non-disclosure agreement. While venture capitalists will almost never sign these in the context of an investment, they are almost always mandatory in an M&A transaction. If the deal falls apart and ultimately doesn’t happen, both parties (the seller and the buyer) are left in a position where they have sensitive information regarding the other. Furthermore, it’s typically one of the only legally binding provisions in a LOI (along with choice of law and break up fees.) Everything else is dependent upon the deal closing. If the deal closes, this provision largely becomes irrelevant since – well – the buyer now owns the seller.