I’ve been working with Robin Bordoli at Mobius Venture Capital for several years and have enjoyed watching him be tortured by the version of english that we speak in America. Now that Robin has a blog, I look forward to reading the thoughts of a brit living in Silicon Valley – while the words will occassionally be mangled, I expect the thoughts will be clear. Welcome – Robin – to the blogosphere.

I’ve written about liquidation preferences (and participating preferred) before, as have most of the other VC bloggers (and several entrepreneur bloggers.) However, for completeness, and since liquidation preferences are the second most important “economic term” (after price), Jason and I decided to write a post on it. Plus – if you read carefully – you might find some new and exciting super-secret VC tricks. The liquidation preference determines how the pie is shared on a liquidity event. There are two components that make up what most people call the liquidation preference: the actual preference and participation. To be accurate, the term liquidation preference should only pertain to money returned to a particular series of the company’s stock ahead of other series of stock. Consider for instance the following language:

In the pet peeves category, I’ve seen Siebel misspelled several times already – by reputable, smart people (some with editors, some without) since the new year started. Guys and gals – i before e except after c for Siebel.

I believe that one can never have enough books. As an avid reader, I’m always on the lookout for random lists of “favorites” of other people so I can stretch my palate. I’m not selective as I’ve learned that if I don’t like a book, I can simply put it down and go to the next one. I got a nice note from a Steve Proper with a pointer to 20 Strange and Wonderful Books – a magnificent list by a guy named John Cartan. I don’t know John (and don’t think I know Steve, but he reads my blog) – but I am now the proud owner of 17 new books via Amazon (I already owned three of them – 2. Flatland; 11. Godel, Escher, Bach; and 20. The Tolkien Reader.)

Ah – it’s the first business day of 2005 and time for new product announcements. Newmerix announced the release of their newest version of Automate!Test for PeopleSoft. Newmerix has been working on a series of packaged application optimization, change, and quality software products. The first platform they’ve released products for is PeopleSoft (and – if you’ve been alive the past few months – you’ll quickly guess that the next platform is Oracle.)

A the end of the year, I completed a financing that was much more difficult than it needed to be. As Jason Mendelson (our general counsel) and I were whining to each other we decided to do something about it. At the risk of giving away more super-top-secret VC magic tricks, we’ve decided to co-author a series of posts on Term Sheets. We have chosen to address the most frequently discussed terms in a venture financing term sheet. The early posts in the series will be about terms that matter – as we go on, we’ll get into the more arcane and/or irrelevant stuff (which – ironically – some VCs dig in and hold on to as though the health of their children depended on them getting the terms “just right.”) The specific contract language that we refer to (usually in italics) will be from actual term sheets that are common in the industry. Ultimately, we might put this into a Wiki, but for now we’ll just write individual posts. Obviously, feel free to comment freely (and critically.)

Amy and I spent the week in Miami with our friends Warren and Ilana Katz. Warren runs a very successful software company called MaK Technologies that builds software simulation tools that are widely used within the military. Warren is on a holy quest for acquisition reform and we had several discussions about how government procurement of software works (or doesn’t work), what needs to change, what Warren is doing about it, and several reasons why I should actually like Donald Rumsfeld.

As everyone, we’re completely stunned and overwhelmed by the accounts of the tsunami tragedy. Tim Miller pointed me to fellow Boulderite Scott Raderstorf’s blog on his experience at the Golden Buddha Beach in Bangkok. Scott’s photo’s and account of the experience are humbling. Fortunately – unlike so many others – they are safe.

Ah – two of my favorite topics – running and entrepreneurship. Lucy Sanders – the executive director of The National Center for Women and Information Technology – sent me an article on a study from Ball State University that found entrepreneurs who ran regularly were more successful in sales, external goals, and internal goals. The study also found that regular weight training was positively correlated with success on external and internal goals (but not sales).