I’m going to run my next marathon in October. I haven’t chosen it yet, but I’m getting close to deciding which one I want to do. And – I’m looking for some help on my training. Early this year, we invested in Dick Costolo’s new company, Chorus. Some of you know Dick from Twitter, where he was CEO for four years. But you may not remember that before he was at Twitter, he was at Google, and before that, he was the CEO / co-founder of Feedburner, where we were one of the investors and I was on the board.

Over the weekend, Mark Suster and Fred Wilson each put up awesome posts discussing the idea of profitability in startups. Mark’s is a master class about how to look at the financial characteristics of a startup and Fred’s discusses what he’s been working on with some of his more mature companies. They are both worth reading right now. I’ll be here when you get back. Between the spring of 2000 and the end of 2001, I had the worst, most stressful, and most painful business period of my life. While I’m sure the financial crisis of 2008 was worse for many people, for me it paled in comparison to the misery of this 21-month stretch.

My parents have been married for 54 years today. That’s 19,710 days. Mom / Dad – happy anniversary! Your relationship is an inspiration to me. You have set an incredible example of a full and equal partnership that I know has deeply influenced my approach to my marriage with Amy. I also know that it has inspired many others. Thank you. Congratulations. And Dad, it’s pretty cool to see a photo of you with hair.

My cell phone experience is so fucking miserable. As I drove home last night and tried to have a conversation, I had five drops during a 30-minute drive from downtown Boulder to my house on the edge of Boulder and Longmont. When I drive into my office this morning, on exactly the same route, I expect I’ll have five drops at exactly the same spots. This happens every day I drive between my house and my office. There is a dead spot at the corner of St. Vrain and 36. There is another dead spot on Broadway just across the street from Amante. There are four more that I can name (one on St. Vrain, one on 36, and one on Broadway), but I don’t want to give away all of Verizon’s secrets.

I’ve met and emailed with many pre-seed and seed GPs in the past year. Over sushi last night with two of them, who are also long-time friends, one of them asked me “Brad, how do you think we are differentiated?” This generated a rant from me that went something like this. There are over 500 seed funds in the market right now. Maybe there’s a thousand. Many of them are angels raising a VC fund. Others are entrepreneurs / operators raising a VC fund. A few are existing VCs who are starting a new firm. I don’t even know what differentiation means anymore as it all blurs together. The operators say we know how to run businesses and help the CEOs that way. The angels say look at the deals we’ve done and the networks we have. Everyone describes the expertise they have around whatever the current hot new technologies are. Regional funds are trendy again. Differentiation is bullshit at this point – the only thing that matters is strategy and returns. And many of these funds / GPs have no realized returns, so all that really matters is strategy.

Today Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) announced their support for Global EIR, a cause for which I care deeply. As you may know, over breakfast in 2015 Jeff Bussgang and I launched Global EIR with the hope of advancing the startup visa effort on a local and state level after it stalled in Congress. Since then, Global EIR has grown to 13 university programs across the country, helping 42 international founders start companies. These companies have created 123 new jobs and raised $29.9 million in investment for the US economy. And there is still an overwhelming demand of visionary international founders that want to start companies in the US. If Global EIR can raise $300,000 this summer, they can scale rapidly over the next 18 months, with an ultimate goal of helping over 10,000 founders per year.

I’ve come to despise the phrase “culture fit.” I don’t remember when I first heard it, but it was many years ago. Over time, it became woven into the world of entrepreneurship, as companies used it as a primary frame of reference for hiring. VCs turned it into a cliche, espousing the importance of culture fit during the entire spectrum of company creation, from the functioning of the very earliest teams through scaling a business.

I woke up this morning to see the following on our Human Utility monthly match Crowdrise campaign. It blew me away. I’m proud of our community. Y’all are awesome. THANK YOU. I then poked around to see how we got there and saw Fred Wilson’s blog post on the wrap up of the #GiveWater campaign. We crossed $20k last night so our $20k (Fred/Joanne/Brad/Amy) was released. And, Jessica Livingston matched the $20k again, so that was another $20k. Thank you, Jessica. Super awesome.

Does it surprise you that some people in the United States don’t have regular access to water? Our month match for June is The Human Utility. Fred Wilson, Joanne Wilson, Amy Batchelor, and I are matching up to $20,000 of contributions via our #GiveWater campaign. Hunter Walk introduced us to The Human Utility at the beginning of the year. Access to water has always been something that Amy and I support. We first started thinking about this after hearing about Charity Water a while ago from Chris Sacca, who has been a major supporter of them over the years.