Kim Davis King, a partner at IDG Ventures, just started a blog. I’ve known Kim for a number of years – we are on the boards of Quova and Newmerix together and I’ve had a long standing relationship with her partner (and CEO of IDG) Pat Kenealy. When I started my blog in May, there were only a handful of VC and CEO bloggers (at least that I was aware of.) It has been fun to watch the ranks expand on a weekly basis. Kim’s first post is about how IDG Ventures is at a crossroads as they are starting to think about raising their first fund with LPs beyond IDG. For anyone that’s interested in how the VC fundraising process works (which I often refer to as “payback for VCs”), this should be interesting.

.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; } .flickr-frame { float: right; text-align: center; margin-left: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Trick Anything Toilet, originally uploaded by bfeld. I love toilets. One of my primary criterias for evaluating office space is to go to the mens room and check it out – it’s a great indicator of how the landlord thinks about his building (and his tenants.)

Get ready – here we come. NewsGator announced three new partnerships yesterday – each which enhances a different aspect of the RSS platform we are building out. Expect a steady stream of announcements over the next two months as the fruit from the first few months of our investment starts to ripen. In my original post on why we invested in NewsGator, I alluded to the notion that I viewed NewsGator as an RSS platform, not simply a newsreader. While we are moving toward a clearly integrated platform view for all of our products, we’ve decided to release components along the way rather than wait for one “big bang release” (I’ve long been a proponent of both in-line and incremental release approaches, which fits really nicely with some of the Agile development approaches I’ve been exposed to since I invested in Rally Software.)

I’m really proud of my Uncle Charlie (Charlie Feld – EVP of Portfolio Management at EDS.) He’s one of the most extraordinary managers and leaders I’ve ever met and had the pleasure of working with (and investing in.) He’s got an incredibly challenging task in front of him as he works with Mike Jordan and the rest of the EDS leadership team to turn around an IT institution that’s had a rough few years and in Jordan’s words, “I knew this company, and I knew the founders. This was the Marine Corps,” says Jordan, a former Navy officer. “But when I came here it was the Girl Scouts.”

Jeff Nolan from SAP Ventures has an excellent post titled Pick Your VC Carefully. This is a must read post for anyone that has either taken or is considering taking venture capital money. I’ve co-invested with a wide range of VC’s in all of the categories Jeff describes. Some have been outstanding partners, some have been horrifying, and some have been in-between (shocking, I know.) However, in almost all cases, I couldn’t have predicted where they would have fallen out based on my shallow perception of their reputation prior to getting to know them. Of course, there’s nothing like working with someone to decide whether they are useful or not, but often that’s not an option – especially for a first time entrepreneur or someone who is developing a new entrepreneur to VC (or VC to VC relationship.)

Ross Wehner – a new writer for the Denver Post – had a nice article in the paper this weekend titled Colorado high-tech industry shows some signs of revival. There’s been some perception in Colorado that we got hit harder than other states – primarily due to our emphasis on telecomm – although I think Colorado has experienced roughly the same tech dynamics (boom – bust – normal renewal) that other states have seen.

I’m a month away from my next marathon (Duke City Marathon – Albuquerque, NM) so I thought I’d do an easy run today since I have a three hour run tomorrow. I decided to head up Fowler Trail and check out the fire we had in Eldorado Springs last week. About 15 minutes into the run I hit a “Mtn Trail” sawhorse with a sign that said the trail was clue due to fire and trespassers would be subject to a fine or jail.

There was plenty of good chatter several years ago when salesforce.com started publicizing their foundation’s vision of being a “global leader in fully integrating business and the community by proving an inspiring and innovative service model for integrated philanthropy.” They committed to give 1% of their employees time, 1% of their equity, and 1% of their profits to the salesforce.com foundation. While lots of companies have a philanthropic side to them, it’s unusual for early stage companies to have much focus on this. When we funded Rally Software (previously known as F4 Technologies), the founder Ryan Martens created a “1% Fund” with the Community Foundation Serving Boulder County modelled after what salesforce.com had done. Ryan did this proactively – we obviously supported him and are extremely proud of his initiative – but it was his idea.

PeopleSoft made a brilliant move this week when they announced their strategic alliance with IBM. PeopleSoft is obviously under attack from Oracle. IBM has simultaneously been positioning themselves as the ultimate middleware player via their WebSphere products. IBM’s software strategy is to be complementary to enterprise application software providers rather than competitive to them. I got an email from IBM’s VC group about the PeopleSoft deal that said “Importantly, today’s announcement remains consistent with the software strategy you have become accustomed to when working with IBM and exemplifies the type of relationship we strive to achieve with our business partners. We remain firmly committed to building best-in-class middleware and leading the industry in platform innovation. Because of our focus on building middleware in an open standards environment, we continue to build relationships with a broad range of partners in the industry. We will continue to openly seek new ways to collaborate with you to develop an ecosystem that delivers profitable returns for IBM and all of our business partners, as well as maximum return to clients for their IT investments. “