Oppose HB 1192 – The “Software Tax”
My longtime friend Marion Jenkins, CEO of IT consultant QSE Technologies wrote what I think is one of the most eloquent and well thought out rebuttals to the proposed Colorado “Software Tax” (HB 1192). With his permission I’m posting it here in its entirety. If you feel the way I do about this issue, I urge you to take a stand on this issue. I urge you to oppose HB 1192, the so-called “Software” Tax. It is bad legislation and it will add significantly to non-productive administrative and legal overhead and kill productivity within the technology sector in Colorado (including not only technology-related businesses, but virtually every business – and every consumer – who uses technology). It will also lead to a mass exodus of key jobs and technology talent from Colorado, and it runs counter to many Federal initiatives aimed at creating jobs, improving job skills and implementing automation and efficiency to help the country get out of this recession. It will also lead to a massive expansion of government, whose only function will be to try to interpret and unravel an impossibly complex set of new tax rules. Those new government jobs will not provide any benefits to citizens, and particularly not provide any benefits directly to underserved populations, they will consist of auditors, analysts, enforcers and the like. …
February 1, 2010· 14 min read
iPad Launch vs the State of the Union Address
Both were compelling for sure, but what did the Twittersphere have to say about it? Buzz monitoring company Retrevo put together some stats which suggest that wile the Apple announcement was big (topping out at 7,000 tweets per minute), the President edged the iPad out (peaking at 9,000 tweets per minute). I’d love to see the graph below with an overlay of what topics caused each of the spikes (they have this for the iPad announcement, but not the State of the Union Address – click through to the article to see the detail). …
January 29, 2010· 1 min read
Customer Loyalty
image I travel a lot. It’s mostly to relatively fun places (New York, San Francisco, Seattle, etc), but it’s pretty much all within the US. Living in Denver and traveling to the coasts makes it pretty difficult to rack up frequent flier miles (a round trip to New York is barely 3k miles). So while I feel like I’m constantly on the road (trying to change this habit for this year – more on that in a different post), I’m perennially falling just a little short of reaching 1K status (100,000 flight miles) on United. …
January 26, 2010· 2 min read
Colorado House Bill 1192 Is a BAD Idea
In times of fiscal challenge you can always count on government to come up with some pretty bad ideas to fund deficits. House Bill 1192 is a particularly egregious example of one such boneheaded idea. The bill as it is currently constructed would place a tax on all software purchased or installed in Colorado. This is a tax not just on the software industry but on every business that uses software. And it’s an incredibly stupid idea. …
January 26, 2010· 2 min read
Immigration policy for recent grad school grads
I made reference to the issue of immigration policy in a post last week (see “Want more jobs? Support Entrepreneurship”). In that post I referenced a WSJ OpEd piece that my partner Brad Feld wrote last week with Paul Kedrosky about the Start-up Visa Movement (the idea that we should make it easier for foreign born entrepreneurs who are starting their companies and who have obtained financing to stay in the United States to build their businesses). In my post I went on to say: …
December 7, 2009· 2 min read
Want more jobs? Support Entrepreneurship
There’s a great CNN opinion piece out today by Amy M. Wilkinson that argues strongly (and correctly) that the government needs to do more to support entrepreneurship and small businesses. I whole heartedly agree. Quoting from the piece: “According to the Census Bureau, nearly all net job creation in the U.S. since 1980 has been generated by firms operating less than five years.” This conclusion is backed up by the National Venture Capital Association which tracks the impact of private companies who receive institutional venture financing. You can read the recent NVCA report on the impact of venture capital on the overall economy here (the quick take-away is that this impact is extremely significant). …
December 4, 2009· 4 min read
Our StockTwits Investment
This is a cross-post from our Foundry blog entry on our latest investment – in the microblogging company StockTwits. I’ve been working closely with Howard and Soren from the company as well as StockTwits investors Roger Ehrenberg and Tony Conrad as we’ve looked at the investment and worked on the financing. These guys are fantastic! For me it’s the chance to work with this team that’s the most exciting thing about today’s announcement. If you haven’t tried the service I’d encourage you to do so – there are links in the post below to grab the desktop client or directing you to the site. Give it a try and let me know what you think! …
December 2, 2009· 3 min read
Revolutionary Angels – Round II
Online technology magazine Xconomy wrote an article yesterday that focused on the controversy surrounding Boston based Revolutionary Angels – the angel group that is sponsoring a business plan competition in which companies are charged a $4,995 “entry fee” and vie for a $250k investment from the group. I wrote extensively last week about my distaste for the “pay to pitch” practice in general and Revolutionary Angels’ spin on that practice in particular. The Xconomy article picked up that post and used it to effectively represent one side of the story. They also talked to Chris Hurley, the CEO of Revolutionary Angles, who defended the group and their practices. Clearly this question has struck a chord with VCs, angels and entrepreneurs (it’s worth checking out the comments to my blog, the Xconomy story as well as the original NY Times blog that kicked off this round of discussion) and I thought it was worth addressing Hurley’s views with another post here. …
December 1, 2009· 6 min read
$5k to pitch your business? Who falls for this??
The NY Times is reporting today on the question of entrepreneurs paying to pitch their companies to prospective investors – “Should Start-Ups Pay to Pitch?”. Highlighted in the piece is a Boston-based group – Revolutionary Angels – that charges companies $4,995 to enter their “business plan competition” (the winner of the competition receives an investment from the group). To be clear on my view of this: image THERE IS NO CIRCUMSTANCE IN WHICH ENTREPRENEURS SHOULD PAY TO PITCH THEIR BUSINESS TO PROSPECTIVE INVESTORS. …
November 25, 2009· 3 min read
News Corp is spoiling Google’s fun (not to mention ours)
image So it’s really come down to this? News Corp is thinking about inking a deal with Microsoft/Bing whereby not only will Bing get access to News Corp data (WSJ, Fox, etc.) but they’ll also prevent Google from indexing their sites. This sounds like a lose/lose/lose/lose proposition. News Corp loses – fewer page views, less revenue for their online content, and to the 90% of Internet users who use Google for search their properties will effectively stop existing. …
November 25, 2009· 1 min read