I’ve been a remote worker for many years. As a result, I think I’ve used every flavor of video conferencing and screen sharing going back to Carbon Copy and PC Anywhere. Today’s bell of the ball is Zoom, which has an outstanding video and audio conferencing experience. But, like most video conferencing services, there are significant limitations when you are working with content in a video conference. Existing video conferencing is adequate when one person shares content with a group. Sometimes you can pull it off when two people share content within a single video call. But once you increase the number of users trying to share content, or get into a real collaborative situation where multiple users are trying to comment on and interact with multiple pieces of shared content, everything breaks down very quickly.

If you are an entrepreneur working on a physical product, Jules Pieri’s new book How We Make Stuff Now: Turn Ideas into Products That Build Successful Businesses is a must read. Jules is the founder / CEO of The Grommet, a website that discovers a new and amazing product every single day. They’ve been doing this for around a decade (over 3,000 products). I’ve known Jules since around the time she started The Grommet and they’ve discovered and reviewed a handful of products that we’ve invested in over the years.

Defy Colorado is growing nicely after some overall challenges with the national organization in 2018. Defy Colorado is now a separate 501c(3) and my partner Jason Mendelson and his wife Jenn Mendelson have been playing a huge leadership role with the Defy Colorado team. Defy is in the business of building restorative communities and that community begins with us. On Wednesday, April 24th at noon at the Dairy Center they are celebrating the graduation of two special EITs who were released before they had the chance to officially graduate from the CEO of Your New Life Program. The afternoon will feature a primer on Defy Colorado and its work in Colorado prisons, a panel discussing transformative change, and the opportunity to hear energizing pitches from our graduates. Don’t miss it – register now.

Amy and I are big supporters of the Media Archaeology Lab (MAL). I love the idea of a computer museum and believe Boulder deserves to have a large one. We’ve donated our computer collection to it, which includes my original Apple ][, my first portable computer (a Compaq luggable), an Apple III, an Apple Lisa, my original Mac 128K, a MITS Altair 8800b, a NeXTstation, and a bunch of other random stuff. Recently, my dad pitched in and contributed his entire cell phone and PDA collection, which included every cell phone he ever had.

Amy and I took our Q219 Vacation in Kyoto and then finished up with a few days of work in Tokyo. I had a terrible cold so I spent a lot of time in bed sleeping and reading. We wandered around some in Kyoto and saw cherry blossoms, but the food was mostly lost on me given how crummy I felt. I did, however, get a lot of reading done. So, as a return from vacation bonus, you get my reading list with some short comments.

I spent the past few days in Tokyo at the Kauffman Fellows Annual Summit. Over the past five years, there has been a large increase globally in the number of venture capitalists and people interested in becoming VCs. As a result, an organization like Kauffman Fellows is more important than ever as it helps build an incredible community of the next generation of VCs to learn from each other. In the mid-1990s, I learned how to be a board member by sitting on a lot of boards, learning from other experienced board members, and making a lot of mistakes. I still make a lot of mistakes (that’s that nature of venture capital, and of life in general), but I like to believe that I’m a much more effective board member than I was 25 years ago. That said, I still have my bad days and walk out of a board meeting feeling unsettled for one reason or another.

There are some blog posts that every entrepreneur should read. Hunter Walk at Homebrew recently wrote one of them. It’s titled Oh Shit, Your VC Just Quit Her Fund! What a Good CEO Should Do Next. He covers three cases: Bullish aka You Are Absolutely Killing It Written You Off Too Early To Tell – Some Good Stuff, Some Challenges But A Lot To Do The real gold in this post is in the Too Early To Tell category. Hunter has a great lead in:

Formlabs Digital Factory is happening on May 7th, 2019. If you are into 3D printers, this is shaping up to be a key event of 2019. The speaker list is epic and one you don’t want to miss. Yeah – there’s more … Formlabs also recently released two new printers – the Form 3 and the Form 3L. The Form 3 is impressive on its own, but the Form 3L is five times the build platform and double the laser power.

Amy and I recently decided to support Entrepreneurship for All (EforAll) and their national expansion to Colorado through our Anchor Point Foundation. EforAll’s mission is to accelerate economic development and social impact through inclusive entrepreneurship in emerging communities. They are focused on fostering small business development and entrepreneurial activity amongst under-networked and under-resourced populations in communities that have been traditionally overlooked for economic investment. The decision to support EforAll was easy for us as they focus on two distinct issues that we care about: building entrepreneurial ecosystems and supporting underserved entrepreneurs. Their metrics speak for themselves as their entrepreneurs have been: 57% unemployed or underemployed (when they started the program); 70% female; 41% immigrant; and/or 55% minority.