I’m a good friend and strong supporter of Congressman Mark Udall (Colorado District 2). I saw a note in today’s Rocky Mountain News that Mark got a perfect score on from the National Breast Cancer Coalition on his support of their interests in 2003 – 2004. A close friend and former work colleague was diagnosed with breast cancer six months ago. She’s young (under 40) and it shook us all up. She had an incredible attitude, went through a full round of chemo and a double masectomy, and is now cancer free. Amy and I had lunch with her on Thursday – she’s doing great and has a phenomenal outlook on life. This was my first close encounter with breast cancer and as the more I learned, the more I realized how little I knew about a disease that each woman in the US has a 14% chance of getting in her lifetime.

The recent article from New York’s Hometown Connection (NY Daily News) titled “Nerds make better lovers” made the rounds at my shop on Friday. I noticed this morning that it is one of “Latest Buzz” links highlighted on NewsGator Online. It warmed my heart to have confirmation from a highly reputable newspaper. Amy was very pleased that her choice have been validated.

Yesterday, I received an interview request for an Inc. Magazine article concerning angel investing. The article is being driven by a recent survey by George Washington University that found 58% of venture capitalist respondents said that angel involvement “sometimes” or “mostly” makes a company unattractive. The main reasons given were that angels tended to give start-ups overly high valuation, made negotiations unnecessarily complex, or were unsophisticated and uninformed about the requirements of venture financing. Occasionally my interview requests are via email (preferred) so in this case I wrote up my thoughts. I have no idea what will end up in the article so I figured I’d post the thoughts here for anyone interested in my point of view on the angel / VC dynamic.

Ken Norton has an incredible post up about his visit to Enron in 1999 while he was CTO at NBCi. Thanks for Mark Pincus for the link. I’ve filed this under “Internet Axis of Evil” because – even though “bogus stuff that doesn’t work” isn’t in Fred’s list, it belongs.

Heidi Roizen – one of my partners at Mobius Venture Capital and my close friend – just did her first podcast titled Heidi Roizen on Venture Capital: Silicon Valley is Back. Heidi never disappoints – enjoy!

This week’s Sunday New York Times was a treasure trove. In addition to having an incredible NY Times Magazine this week (Money 2005), Ben Stein had a phenomenal essay titled “Lessons in Gratitude, at the Basement Sink.” In contrast to the articles in the Magazine (money, money, money), Stein asserts that “Gratitude … is the only totally reliable get-rich-quick scheme.” He finishes with a lesson his dad taught him: “The zen of dishwashing. The zen of gratitude. The zen of riches.” 

I’ve been working my way through Eric von Hippel’s newest book Democratizing Innovation (Eric was my doctoral advisor at MIT – I didn’t get my Ph.D.) I needed a break (I’m reading it carefully because I’m worried that Eric will call me up and ask me hard questions about the book.) Amy and I went into Boulder yesterday for massages (the power was out at the hotel – so no massages) so we swung by The Boulder Bookstore to pick up some reading material for the time between ~massage and dinner.

Fred Wilson wrote a long post on his investment in del.icio.us six weeks ago. I’ve been playing with del.icio.us and some of the other tagging services and finally got around to putting a del.icio.us link on my blog posts. So – while you can’t yet tag del.icio.us from within NewsGator Online (hint, hint), you can click through to my blog and tag directly if you so desire. Of course, if you are an avid del.icio.us user, blogger, or podcast junkie, there are already plenty of ways to use del.icio.us with Feedburner.

In 1994 when I was first playing around with the Web, catalog publishing was a common example of something that would eventually shift to the Web over time. Last week, Thomas Register announced that they were discontinuing their print publication in favor of the Internet in a move that reflected “an over 10–year transition to the Internet as the primary information source of the industrial market.” I love this shit. Do you remember Industry.Net which morphed into Nets, Inc. – run by Jim Manzi (ex-CEO of Lotus) straight down the tubes in the Spring of 1997 over three years before the Internet bubble peaked? Perot Systems ended up picking up the whole thing for about $9 million in one of the most “gossipy” failures of 1997.