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VC’s are conspiring to take over your business

John pointed me to a Peter Ireland blog post and asks whether VCs really do co-opt businesses on a regular basis – investing with a plan to replace founders and bring in their own management. "[S]ounds kinda scary," he writes, "the thought that a ‘clever’ VC could take away one’s company just like that…" Scary indeed.  And while founding CEO’s are certainly replaced in venture backed businesses, it’s significantly overstated to say that "in about 50% of instances where an early stage company actually succeeds in raising venture capital, the founder CEO is fired within the first year". Before I get into this, however, I feel compelled to remind you that you really should not be taking venture capital in…

Only an 8th grade education

Here’s the 8th grade competence exam from 1895.  Thank god I went through 8th grade about 90 years later… Hat tip to dad for sending this over. Grammar (Time, one hour) 1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters. 2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications. 3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph 4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of "lie", "play", and "run." 5. Define case; illustrate each case. 6. What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation. 7 – 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar. Arithmetic (Time,…

John Hancock

I had a bizarre request earlier this week to send in original signatures to some board documents that I had signed (a lender to the company in question wanted them).  I regularly send around scanned documents – for everything ranging from board resolutions to investment documents (and shred the originals). I can’t think of the last time I actually had to provide an original signature.  Strange . . .

Check the job boards

Finding information out about your competitors is something that all companies do on a regular basis.  Trolling web sites, reading blogs, setting up news alerts for articles, talking to customers and prospects, trolling trade show booths and listening in on webinars are all pretty common occurrences in the business of knowing what you don’t know about your competitors. One great way to get a pulse on what’s going on down the street is to keep your eye on your competitors job board. The pace of hiring and the positions with open recs all give incredible (and generally overlooked) insight into the state of their business.

Apply early, apply often

TechStars applications for this summer are officially open and I’d encourage any budding entrepreneur with a half-baked (or quarter baked – or fully baked) idea they are passionate about to apply.  For those of you who are not familiar with TechStars, it’s a program started by successful Boulder entrepreneur David Cohen that brings about a dozen promising start-up teams to Boulder for an intensive summer of work on their start-up business idea.  You can read more about what the teams last year worked on (and some of the machinations they went through to get there) on both David’s blog and the TechStars web site.  I was a huge fan of TechStars last year and worked closely with a handful of…

Bill Gates last days

From CES. The bit with Bono is particularly amusing! Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr5w3X4R8b4

Marketers Unite!

Ryan Hunter, VP of Marketing for Mobius portfolio company Newmerix, has started the Front Range CMO’s – a networking and professional organization for marketing executives in the front range. You can check out the group’s blog at www.frontrangecmos.com. The group’s first event is going to be on February 4th down in Denver. You can email Ryan directly if you’d like to learn more. He’s got a great group of local marketing execs already signed up – should be a great event and long term a great resource for the Denver/Boulder marketing community.

Sonos – how have I lived without you?!?

I wrote in my last post that soon after installing Memeo I couldn’t figure out how I had lived so long without it. I had a similar – in this case instantaneous – experience last night after installing my new Sonos. I’m not entirely clear why I waited to long to buy one (actually I am clear – I’m cheap and Sonos isn’t exactly inexpensive) but now on the long side of my buying decision, whatever benefit my frugality brought me was completely dwarfed by the sheer joy and excitement I had about 15 seconds after setting up my system. Because my house was not wired for speakers and because of my aforementioned penurious nature I had cobbled together a…