Absolutely fucking brilliant. 

I then went on to name another company I co-founded – this one that was one of the first email service providers (in the mid-1990’s we referred to this as “publishing email”).  Guess what we named it?  If you guessed “Email Publishing” you are now demonstrating your strong deductive reasoning skills as they pertain to my completely lame naming skills.

At some point, I took myself out of consideration for naming things.  I take no responsibility for any company names after 1997.

A year ago I learned that the “tech scene” in Colorado was referred to as “ICT” or “Information and Communication Technologies”.  This happened during my activity with the Colorado Governors Innovation Council while we were trying to  convince people (successfully) that the software / Internet industry is a key part of the economic activity in Colorado. A side note: we succeeded – as Governor Ritter has recently stated ICT is now the fifth pillar of economic development in Colorado, joining bio, aerospace, tourism, and the new energy economy.

As part of this, I discovered that ICT is a popular TLA in government for referring to software + Internet + communications.  Fortunately, very few people outside of government (except for the government affairs people at tech companies) use the phrase ICT or even know what it means.  I commented several times (especially after endlessly referring to it as CIT) that it was a terrible name.  When asked what I’d call this sector, I responded with “I suck at naming things.”  Kettle – pot – black.

Some of my friends have started talking about a better name for “the Colorado Tech Scene”.  After encouraging them to please please please not use the word “Silicon” in the phrase, I proceeded to bow out of any real discussions about this as “I suck at naming things.”  Recently a group of them got serious about figuring out a name and the guys at Rocky Radar agreed to take the lead on crowd sourcing suggestions.

So – if you have any ideas, send an email to nameCO@rockyradar.com or tweet it with the hash code #nameCO.  Help us replace ICT with something other than CIT.

I’m bummed I missed tonight’s Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup where a handful of the TechStars teams gave five minute demos, but I was busy indulging myself at Frasca while learning about flower abortions.

In the mean time, I neglected to mention a super cool site called Venture Maven.  Greg Galant and several others put this together – it’s a great aggregation of VCs who tweet – both individually and by firm (quick – name all the firms that have 100% of the partners tweeting).  If you are a VCtweeter and are not on the list, wander over now and add yourself.

And, as the bonus round, go check out Twittorati, a list of the Technorati Top 100 and their tweets. 

A year ago, if you had asked me a year ago if I would write a post with the word tweet in it so many times, I would have twittered at you.

A few months ago Lijit rolled out their “Blogger Network” service and I created a new version of the VC Bloggers Network that I have been managing for a while.  On the right hand side is a blogroll of all of the VCs in the network (if you are a VC blogger and you aren’t on the list, just email me and I’ll get you added.)  All of the other bloggy stuff is here (the site is powered by WordPress) including an RSS feed for all the aggregated content, archives, tags, and the recent content.

The special magic happy thing is the search box at the top right of the page.

This is a search capability across the entire content generated by the VC Bloggers Network.  If you want to search for something you “remember from a VC blogger, but can’t remember who wrote it”, this is a good place to search.  Or, if you want to learn more about something like the “Glue” theme that Foundry Group invests in, you’ll get a very different search result from Glue on the VC Bloggers Network than you will from Glue on Google or Glue on Bing.

Give it a try and tell me what you think.  Reminder – if you are a VC Blogger that isn’t in on the blogroll, just email me.  If you are a VC Blogger that isn’t using Lijit’s search service (it’s free), or for that matter any blogger that isn’t using it, give it a try.  As a special bonus, or for more context, see what our friends at Google Blogger just wrote in their Partner Profile on Lijit.

Over the weekend I saw two more blog posts on this meme.  The first – by Fred Wilson titled Freemium and Freeconomics – is clear and well written (and free).  It’s then followed by an excellent comment thread.  The second – by Marc Cuban titled When you succeed with Free, you are going to die by Free (also free) is a muddy as Fred’s is clear (and the comments are much less interesting).  Nevertheless, both are relevant and insightful.

Whenever I see this meme rise its head, I think of a line I use whenever I consider an investment or an acquisition of another company.  “Would You Want It If It Were Free?”  I learned this from Len Fassler, one of my early mentors who acquired my first company (fortunately he decided it was worth more than free).  Before I make an investment, or support an acquisition, I sit quietly and ask myself “would I want this if it were free?”  By this, I don’t mean as a customer, but rather “would I invest in this at a $0m pre-money valuation” or “would I want 100% ownership of this company if it cost me $0.”

Over the past 15 years, I’ve found my answer to this question to be “no” more times than I can remember.  It often surprises me when I realize this, as up to that point in the conversation, investigation, or negotiation I’d been focusing on “the deal” rather than “whether or not I perceived any value in the company being discussed.”  When I reflect on some cases that I remember, I realize how my internal rationalization machine had kicked into high gear as I got excited about “a transaction”.  By taking the transaction out of my thought process, I could focus on the essence of value (or lack thereof).

Of course I’ve been wrong (both directions) plenty of times.  But I can think of a bunch of situations where asking myself this question saved my ass or that of the company I was involved with that was considering an acquisition.

I realize this is a different version of free than the one Anderson, Gladwell, Wilson, and Cuban are discussing.  But, if you step back and think hard about it from a customer perspective, it magically becomes relevant.  Certainly lots of people “would try it if it were free”, but do they actually want it?

Our anniversary was June 21st and neither of us managed to get the other one a gift.  So – on June 21st we went trolling around the web for a piece of art to buy.  We each bought one and then decided to buy two more for our life dinner gifts on July 1st.  The two that we bought on our anniversary were Rick Dula’s – the first is R.I.P. Rocky Mountain News Building.

My world is all about innovation.  In the mid 1990’s, as the commercial Internet started to emerge and the World Wide Web became something that people both knew about and used, it seemed like the traditional newspaper (and traditional newspaper business) wasn’t long for the world.  While it took fifteen or so years for the real end game to emerge, I’ll definitely hang this one in my office as a reminder of how creative destruction works.

The other Dula that we decided to buy was D.A.M. Building Progress. 

This one is a big one – 41.5” x 55” – so we aren’t yet sure where it’s going to go.  Since we love to support local living artists, we’ll definitely try to find a spot for this other than “storage.”

Last night, at Ignite Boulder 5, I had a permagrin on my face as I thought about the amazing job Andrew Hyde was doing.  I first met Andrew a few years ago when we started TechStars – he basically volunteered to hang out with a video camera for free all summer to film stuff and learn.  He was so hugely helpful that it was easy to bring him on board the TechStars team in year two as the community manager.

I attended Ignite Boulder 2 and had a great time.  But last night – #5 – just blew me away.  700-ish people in the Boulder Theater, enormous energy, endless laughter and brain stimulation, and just a very good time.  Andrew organized a phenomenal show and really shined as the organizer / MC.

But TechStars and Ignite Boulder are not the only things Andrew does.  He also created Startup Weekend (I was at the first one in Boulder) and he was one of the founders of Boulder.me. And – with Matt Emmi of One Button -created the hilariously creative VC Wear t-shirt line (my favorite: “I went down on Sand Hill Road”.)

But wait, there’s more.  Andrew is everywhere in the Boulder startup community while managing to travel all over the world sharing his brand of entrepreneurial passion.  I don’t ever think I’ve seen Andrew without a smile on his face, and he’s even gracious when he kicks my butt in ping poing.

It’s been awesome to see Andrew come of age as a key driver of our local entrepreneurial community.  Good job man!

• Senior Software Developer
• Senior System Adminstrator
• Senior Web Developer

If you are Boulder-based and fit the qualifications, email Jenny-Lynne Elledge.

But – today’s silly patent popped up somewhere and I just couldn’t resist poking fun at it. Go Daddy has filed a patent for a method of selling equity in domain names.  I can’t wait to see what the SEC has to say about this one.

I sure do hope the new regime in Washington D.C. has the balls to address the software patent issue this time around and end this madness.

As my app portfolio continues to radically expand and I endlessly fiddle with placement, I thought it might be useful to reflect (and memorialize) the apps that are currently on my first screen.  Here’s goes – left to right, from top row to bottom row.

1. Calendar
2. Messages
3. Maps
4. IMExchange: Finally, someone got Outlook Task syncing with an iPhone app.  Worth the money.
5. Camera: Much improved – actually good pictures!
6. Photo
7. Weather
8. Kindle: Yes, I can actually read books on this.
9. Brightkite: I use this to post pictures to Twitter.  And occasionally log where I’m at.
10. Clock
11. 100 Pushups: Damnit – I will get stronger.
12. FlightTrack: Indispensible when used with TripIt.
13. Vlingo: Apple Voice Control is good, but Vlingo is great.
14. iPod
15. App Store
16. Settings
17. Phone
18. Mail
19. Safari
20. Tweetie: I’ve tried them all and this one is the best.

Page Two are my “less regularly used, but at least once a week” apps (like Fandango).  Page Three are apps from our portfolio companies (have you played Mafia Wars on the iPhone yet?  or Vampires?  or used your Pogoplug?)  Page Four is a bunch of random other junk, although I’m pretty aggressive about deleting apps I never use.

I wonder what Page One is going to look like a year from now?  Any gotta-have-em apps that I’m missing that you guys out there in blogland would recommend?

This week’s episode includes guest appearances from some of my closest friends, including Seth Levine, Jason Mendelson, and my Gist t-shirt.

Ian’s post is dynamite.  If you struggle to keep the pounds off, run (don’t walk) over to FistFulaYen, toss your Coca-Cola down the drain, and read “…look at me I’m skinny…”

As I whittle away a little bit of weight each week, I just keep telling myself “eat less, exercise more.”  As my weekly running mileage continues to creep up (I’m now steadily adding 10%+ / week to my base) it gets a little easier, but all it takes is one double large dinner and an extra big bowl of ice cream to completely wipe out the progress.

Ah, that tuna burger and truffle fries at Larkburger sure was nice today.  I guess that’s it for the week.  Thanks Ian for sharing what works for you.

I had another reminder of this as I cruised through my Daily folder.  The Astronomy Picture of the Day has been delighting me every day since I started looking at it a few weeks ago.  Today’s is a movie of Japan’s Kaguya spacecraft’s last moments.

Kaguya crashed into the Moon last week as planned.  Amazing.  We are small.