Tom Evslin – founder/CEO of ITXC and author of hackoff.com – has started writing a series called “VC Primer from an Entrepreneur’s POV.” His audience is “an entrepreneur who hasn’t had VC funding – even a wannabe entrepreneur – read on. These posts are for you. “

I’ve been an unabashed supporter of Tom Evslin’s blook (online book) hackoff.com – An Historic Murdery Mystery Set in the Internet Bubble and Rubble. I’ve been reading it over the past few months as each episode (somewhere between 1/3rd and 1/8th of a chapter is published.) Each morning, one of the first things I read in FeedDemon is the latest episode, often with a smile on my face. As a result, I’ve gotten to know Tom’s publisher Kelly Evans at dotHill Press. She recently invited me to participate in an online book tour that she is doing by interviewing one of the writers on the tour. I read through the list and decided to interview Mark Leslie – who is a blogger in addition to being a writer – about the blook he is currently working on called “I, Death” – A Serial Thriller In Blog Format. The questions are mine, the answers are Mark’s.

Unless you don’t watch TV, don’t read the newspaper, and don’t watch Oprah (or you live under a rock), you have probably heard something about the James Frey / Oprah memoir lying thing. A few days after the rumors of this initially broke – and before Frey publicly admitted he was lying about some of the events in his books, I wrote that James Frey Should Not Be Hung Out To Dry.

Just Say No To Microsoft is a mandatory read if you fall into one of the following three categories: 1. Someone who wants to switch from Microsoft-based software to something else. 2. Someone who creates software that competes with Microsoft products. 3. Every single Microsoft employee. As you might expect, there’s plenty of snarky stuff in a book with a title of Just Say No To Microsoft. However, it’s extremely well organized, technically deep while being accessible to mainstream computer users, and often very entertaining. 

With a title like Sex and the Single Zillionaire, it’s either going to be really good or really bad. This isn’t my typical genre of mental floss, but since it is the first novel written by Tom Perkins, the co-founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, I decided it couldn’t be missed. The dust cover got me started nicely with Rupert Murdoch weighing in with “Fun, fast – a great read!” and Newsweek commenting “Loved the sex scenes.” When Amy saw me pick it up last night, she said, “Tom Perkins – isn’t that Danielle Steel’s ex-husband?”

I’m becoming addicted to Eminem. I had a huge breakthrough when I started thinking of it as poetry instead of music, at which point I started liking the tunes. It helped to have a little Dido tossed in for good measure. I haven’t decided yet whether or not this new addiction is a good thing.

I got the following question from a reader a week ago. A project I’m involved with is aiming to go from a team of “4 founders with a great idea and a prototype” to a full fledged online service. I believe that even at an early stage, structuring ourselves to allow for growth/investment is critical. Naturally passion for our core mission, competence, and an ability to connect with the existing team are critical. Yet compensation (with an equity component) is a big part of the equation. I want people to have a sense of ownership and our current back of the envelope structure just isn’t suited at the moment for bringing people onto the team. To avoid reinventing the wheel, is there a “best practices” template for early stage companies with respect to structure/incorporation? What’s the smartest structure for an early stage company?

After writing a “where are the women?” at Sun post last month, my partner Heidi reminded me that two high profile Silicon Valley CEO’s – Carol Bartz (Autodesk) and Kim Polese (Sun, SpikeSource) – are Sun alums. Last weekend, the Rocky Mountain News ran a nice profile of Barbara Bauer, VP of Software Engineering and Development at Sun’s Louisville, CO campus. Bauer (no relation to Jack as far as I know) was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame and had some good thoughts about attracting new blood into the technology field.

EDS announced yesterday that it was awarded the majority of the five-year multibillion-dollar General Motors system integration services awards. This is worth $3.8 billion over five years and – when added to the existing GM business that EDS has that was not rebid – results in annualized revenues of $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion of revenue for EDS. This is a huge deal for EDS. In early 2004 when EDS acquired the Feld Group (my uncle Charlie Feld’s company – I was an investor), the GM contract renewal was one of the major concerns that investment analysts had about the future success of EDS, as there was a substantial amount of business being rebid and there were concerns that most of it would go to companies other than EDS. While EDS’s share of GM’s outsourcing revenue will be reduced, the going forward revenue is higher then most people expected. As a result, a major long term concern about EDS has been put to rest.