You might get the feeling from the title of this post that you’re about to read a glib post about how VCs should treat their CEOs like kids. Just the opposite in fact. Recently, I received a phone call from one my CEOs. He had a particularly difficult problem that he was trying to sort […]
Archive for June, 2009
Jun
30
Jun
23
The “Heart” Of The Matter
This past December, I attended a dinner and sat next to a delightful young woman named Vanessa Cirillo. Vanessa had an incredible joie de vivre, a striking smile and she was wearing a beautiful evening dress with a plunging neckline (okay, I know this is a strange way to start a blog post but stick […]
Jun
22
Balihoo Gets Toasted
About 18 months ago, we invested in a Boise-based company called Balihoo which has developed an insanely slick web-based local marketing automation solution. Their platform allows local affiliates of national franchises the ability to customize and fulfill all of the franchise’s creative materials across all mediums including in-store collateral, direct mail, email, television, radio, online, […]
Jun
18
Simplicity - A Powerful Value Proposition
Every day I see, or read about, some new productivity tool that promises to make it easier to manage all of the information and/or complexity that seems to be growing exponentially in my life. I don’t have a lot of extra time, so it is such a pleasant surprise when I find a new product […]
Jun
15
The Truth Behind VCs And Entrepreneurs?
Below are two slideshows that have been making their way around the web, one aimed at venture capitalists and the other at founders/entrepreneurs. Sometimes the truth can be humorous and painful. VC Non Admissions View more Microsoft Word documents from vcobserver. Founder Non-Admissions View more OpenOffice presentations from Chris Yeh. This should provide some good […]
Jun
10
Good Books For Entrepreneurs?
During the Boise Idavation event a couple of weeks ago, someone asked Brad Feld to recommend a good book for entrepreneurs. His answer was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. Definitely a good read. I first read it over 35 years ago while in high school, and have read it several […]
Jun
09
Stop Listening To The “Experts”
Early last week, I saw at least a dozen “tweets” (messages on Twitter) from folks here in Idaho citing an article entitled “Which States Will Be The Early Risers?” which named Idaho as one of the five States most likely to lead our country out of the recession. Everyone seemed very excited about this terrific […]
Jun
03
TechStars: Everything That’s Great About Startups
(And Why I Love Being An Early-Stage Venture Capitalist) Yesterday, my partner George Mulhern and I spent a very long and exhilarating day at Techstars in Boulder, CO meeting with ten raw start-up teams who have been selected to participate in this year’s rigorous TechStars bootcamp. For the next three months, this very lucky group […]
Jun
01
TechLaunch and IdaVation Wrapup
In Boise last week, we had two wonderful events: TechLaunch business plan competition and Idavation. Phil Reed and I had the pleasure of participating as judges for TechLaunch and it is certainly refreshing to see the ideas and teams coming out of the universities and start-up community. Congratulations to all on getting to this point. […]