Last week, Judy’s Book announced that Mobius led an $8 million Series B financing with existing investors Ignition Partners and Ackerley Partners and that I joined the board of directors. The founder and CEO of Judy’s Book – Andy Sack – is a long time friend and colleague. I was the lead investor in Andy’s first company Abuzz – which had a very successful outcome when it was acquired in 1999 by New York Times Digital. Andy has been involved in several other projects with me, including successful ones like Quova and not-so-successful ones like BodyShop Digital (what were we thinking – two American guys who rarely to use deodorant and often wash our hair with bath gel investing in the dotcom spinoff of a UK-based health and beauty company?) So – we’ve definitely had our ups and downs together.

I needed a break so Amy and I hopped on a plane and flew down to Hope Town, Bahamas (next to Marsh Harbor – where the airport is) to hang out with some friends. Hope Town is far enough off the grid where my cell phone didn’t work and while our friends had high speed Internet, I couldn’t get my computer configured correctly to use their cable connection so I chilled out instead and gobbled down some books, only occasionally checking my email via the web.

Do you like NewsGator? Do you want to make some extra money? Do you want to help one of my companies out? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’ll be happy to hear that NewsGator launched their global partner program last week. Affiliate programs are nothing new – Amazon has one that is well known to bloggers. Software reseller programs have been around since the beginning of PC-time. Co-promotion programs were made popular by the web in the mid–1990’s. NewsGator has combined all three into their global partner program. It’s easy to sign up for any or all of these programs.

I’m at CMU today for the National Center of Women & Information Technology semi-annual meeting (I’m chairman). We just had a fantastic keynote from Nick Donofrio – EVP of Innovation and Technology at IBM, a 42 year IBM veteran, and a strong supporter / advocate of woman in information technology. After wandering around enemy territory (the CMU computer science and robotics buildings – as an MIT grad, I kept expecting someone to notice that a spy from another school was snooping around – they didn’t notice me, they were too busy looking at all the Google flyers advertising for jobs) I settled into the conference room at Newell Simon Hall. I noticed this huge building out the window and overheard someone mention that it is called The Cathedral of Learning and was the second tallest academic building in the world. A quick search on Wikipedia turned up an awesome amount of information on this building which was commissioned in 1921 and finished in 1937 (fundraising started in 1925 – I hope the money was raised before October 1929). The building is on the University of Pittsburgh’s main campus and the view is stunning from the third flow of CMU’s Newell Simon Hall.

The Kauffman Foundation has re-released their “entrepreneur resource website” named eVenturing. In addition to the site – which is full of great information for entrepreneurs – they also have a blog that you can easily subscribe to. In the 1990’s I had a very rewarding affiliation with the Kauffman Foundation. I was an “entrepreneur-in-residence” (a fancy word for consultant) and got to work with Jana Matthews and several other folks on a series of programs that the Kauffman Foundation did around high growth companies. In addition, I helped with the original launch of Entreworld, the predecessor site to eVenturing. 

NPR had an emotionally devastating segment on the story of the Transorbital (or “Ice Pick”) Lobotomy created by Dr. Walter Freeman in 1946. It was told by Howard Dully, who received an Ice Pick Lobotomy by Freeman in 1960 when Dully was 12 years old. In Dully’s words: “If you saw me you’d never know I’d had a lobotomy. The only thing you’d notice is that I’m very tall and weigh about 350 pounds. But I’ve always felt different — wondered if something’s missing from my soul. I have no memory of the operation, and never had the courage to ask my family about it. So two years ago I set out on a journey to learn everything I could about my lobotomy.”

Back when I was 21 years old I figured you had to start somewhere. Our business plan started with a “charter statement” which – in hindsight – was roughly equivalent to a vision statement. ** 1 CHARTER ** Feld Technologies intends to become the industry leader in semi-custom software. It will do this by understanding and addressing all of the components of database application software for small businesses, thus defining the industry.

I had the following conversation recently. Entrepreneur: “Brad, I just got an offer for my company for $15 million from Company X.” Brad: “Awesome. Who’s Company X – I’ve never heard of them.” Entrepreneur: “It’s a private company funded by Venture Firm Y.” Brad: “Cool – $15 million – is it a cash deal?” Entrepreneur: “No, it’s all stock.” Brad: “Hmmm – are you getting preferred or common stock?” Entrepreneur: “Common stock – why?” Brad: “How much money has the company raised?” Entrepreneur: “$110 million” Brad: “What’s the liquidation preference? Is it a participating preferred? What’s the valuation of the company?” Entrepreneur: “Oh – I’m not worried about that stuff – the valuation is $300m and they say they are going public soon.”

Wired Magazine has a great article this month on Tim O’Reilly. The first time I heard Tim’s name was in 1994 at NetGenesis when GNN appeared on the scene. I remember when it was acquired by AOL for $11 million and I thought to myself “holy shit – there could be real dollars in this Internet stuff.” I’ve never spent any time with Tim, but the article reflects the way I think of him and the business he’s created.