Last week I did an interview on Rally Cafe with Chris Spagnuolo.  Some of the questions came from real time tweets to the show but we didn’t get to a handful.  Chris just emailed them to me – I figured I’d do a quick job of picking them off for those that asked or were following the show.

@jordanmuela What does Brad view as common themes in the investments (companies) that have failed? My failures have several common characteristics (note that these are applicable only to me – plenty of other entrepreneurs and investors have made plenty of money in these areas.)  I’ve consistently failed when I’ve invested in companies (a) in markets / segments that I know nothing about, (b) founded / run by people that I don’t like / enjoy spending time with, (c) that are “rollups” – where the company is trying to consolidate an industry focused on “rolling up” a bunch of small companies into one larger business, (d) based in Europe.  What “didn’t work” is one of the things that informs our thematic approach at Foundry Group.

@ksowocki What are Brad’s thoughts on the Lean Startup methodology coming from @ericries / IMVU ?  I saw Eric Ries present his Lean Startup ideas a month or so ago and really enjoyed it.  I’ve been a big fan of his blog and think he’s gone some great ideas.  I particularly like the notion of continuous deployment.  If you are interested, Eric is coming to Boulder on 8/19 and 8/20.

@ktinboulder Interested in hearing a bit more about the "Protocol" theme. I wrote a post about Protocol recently on the Foundry Group blog titled Theme: Protocol.  Our current investments in this theme include Gist and Lijit.

@theagent How would "GLUE" companies become monetizable and how far is the horizon line for that activity. ie. GNIP.  I’ll give two examples from our portfolio: AdMeld and Gnip – as both are generating revenue today.  AdMeld runs an “Ad Network Optimization” platform for premium publishers (they “glue together” ad networks.)  They take a percentage of the revenue they increase above a baseline amount determined with the publisher.  They now have 140 million Quantcast-verified unique users, so you can imagine the revenue they are generating.  Gnip provides a data transport service for the real-time web (they “glue together” data between systems publishing data and systems consuming data.)  They charge a monthly fee for use of their service – think of them as “middleware software – delivered via a SaaS model – for the real-time web”.

@chadalbrecht What does Brad think are some of the most important leadership characteristics in an entrepreneur?  I only have generic answers for this one as I’ve seen and worked with so many different types of successful entrepreneurs.  Leadership – especially in an entrepreneurial context – is a complicated thing.

@GEOpdx Does Brad generally find himself dispensing advice on what he would need to see for him to be interested in a project? Sometimes, although most of the time I’m pretty binary.  Within our firm, we filter very heavily on our themes.  If something doesn’t fit in our themes, I try to say No in less than 60 seconds.  If it’s within our themes, I then spend a lot of time trying to decide if I want to be partners with the entrepreneurs.

@brijacob How important is pre-money evaluation?  I’ve never thought that pre-money valuation is that important in an early stage company.  I’m playing for huge outcomes so I don’t over-optimize on the margins.  Rather, I focus on a “fair deal” at the early stages for everyone involved.

Over the past 15 years I’ve been to thousands of board meetings.  Last week I had four; this week I have two.  I’ve spent a lot of time – often during board meetings – thinking about how to make them better and more effective.

Yesterday, Fred Wilson (who was at the Return Path board meeting in Boulder with me) wrote a great post titled Face To Face Board Meetings.  Fred and I have been on a number of boards of the years and I strongly agree with his post.  To be effective, board meetings need to be (a) in person and (b) there is immense value in a board dinner the night before a board meeting (maybe not every meeting, but at least once a quarter).

While board meetings have a different tempo at different stages of the life of a company, I’ve developed the point of view that the vast majority of the board meeting should be “forward looking.”  Ironically (and frustratingly), the general culture of many VC-based boards – especially larger ones – is “backward looking”.

What I mean by this is that most board meetings are 80% status updates, 10% strategy / issues, and 10% administration.  I’m fine with the 10% administration, but the 80% / 10% split on status vs. strategy should be reversed.  There are plenty of different ways to organize the “strategy” (I’m using “strategy” as shorthand for “forward looking discussion”) and strategy includes a blend of short, medium, and long term issues, as well as plenty of “tactical stuff” (for those that think “strategy” is too specific a word), but I imagine you get the idea.

My favorite board meetings have the following characteristics.

1. All board material goes out 48 hours in advance, including a detailed financial package and operating review of the business.  This material includes any administrative stuff (draft 409a report, options grants, compensation stuff, audit stuff, prior board meeting minutes.)  Everyone reads this in advance – if the materials go out 48 hours in advance there’s no excuse to have not read it.
2. There is a dinner the night before that is at least the board and the CEO.  Sometimes it includes non-CEO founders; other times it includes various members of the leadership team.  This is a casual dinner (e.g. not expensive or full of pomp and circumstance) – a chance for everyone to catch up with each other.  If the board meeting is an afternoon meeting, sometimes you can pull off a lunch prior to the meeting that acts as a proxy for the dinner, or a dinner after, although I find the dinner after to be much less helpful.
3. The first 30 minutes of the meeting are administrative.  Everyone settles down, you go through any formal board business, discuss it, and get it done.  Often it takes five minutes (which gives you an extra 25 minutes for the strategy stuff); sometimes it takes the full 30 minutes.  I can’t think of a case where it has ever needed to take longer.
4. The CEO then puts up one slide summarizing prior period financial performance and asks if anyone has any questions about the board package.  This discussion takes however long it takes.
5. The CEO then puts up one slide with the issues he’d like to discuss.  These are bullet points that are crisp yet detailed enough to know what the issue is.  This is then the bulk of the meeting.

Some CEOs are capable of running a 2+ hour discussion off of one slide (I love these guys).  Others need slides to prompt them through the setup for each topic (which is fine).  Either way, the setup for each topic should be brief (five minutes at most) and the bulk of the activity should be a discussion.  The CEO and management team is looking for board feedback, input, advice, and guidance.  Ultimately, the CEO has to synthesize this and decide what he wants to do, but by engaging the board in an active discussion, the team will generally get useful input as well as discover where there might be additional domain expertise around the table on the particular issue.

I’ve found that the more time that is spent on #5, the more impactful the meeting is.  Obviously, it’s difficult for people on the phone to engage as effectively, which draws them into physically attending the meeting, or not participating.

I’ve got a lot more thoughts on this, but realize I’ve got to get off my ass, get in the shower, and head over to the Boulder Theater for TechStars Investor / Demo Day.  More on this another time.

Today is an exciting day in Boulder as it’s TechStars Investor / Demo Day 2009.  The unveiling of the 2009 class happens in a few hours to a large audience of mentors, angel investors, VCs, and the local tech gang.

I’m super proud of the 2009 Boulder TechStars gang.  This is the third year that we’ve done TechStars and it just gets better every year.  Once again, David Cohen, his team, and the Boulder mentor community have done a masterful job of working with ten “pre-seed” companies to get them up and running.

I’ve gotten to spent the past 36 hours with a couple of good friends, including Dick Costolo, Fred Wilson, Stewart Alsop, and Mike Marquez who have come to town for the event as well as other meetings.  Boulder has been buzzing all summer – today should be a fun one.

Good luck TechStars!

It’s Tuesday, so that means – well, I’m not sure what that means.  But I do know that if you want to watch me on video, following are three choices.

First up is Episode 10 of TechStars: The Founders – Crunch Time.  Special guest appearances from me, Paul Berberian, the Zenie Bottle, and the printer from Office Space.

The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 10 "Crunch Time" from Andrew on Vimeo.

Next, a panel from the Twiistup 6 event in Los Angeles last Thursday starring me, Dave McClure (Founders Fund), and Andy Sack (Founders Co-Op).  Note Dave obsessively checking TweetDeck throughout the event to make sure everyone is catching and retweeting his creative use of the word “fuck” (NB – I think I used it first around minute 6.)

Finally, I did an interview this morning on RallyCafe at the Rally Software offices. 

This is an exciting week for TechStars Boulder as Thursday is Investor / Demo Day.  As I was getting reacquainted with the early morning view from my condo in Boulder and pondered the great town I live it, I came across a few fun things.

First was a long post from the guys at Occipital (TechStars Boulder 2008) titled 2009 at Occipital: From the Hangar to the Crawler.  In this post, Occipital reminisces about the path they’ve traveled so far this year, including the creation of RedLaser, ClearCam, and OBE-1 (the Occipital Business Engine).  Look for another really interesting thing from them later this week.

Occipital Update from Jeffrey Powers on Vimeo.

Todd Vernon, the CEO of Lijit, wrote about his experience moving Lijit from “the burbs” (ok Louisville) to downtown Boulder in his post Does Startup Location Matter?  As someone who had an office in Superior for six years before moving to downtown Boulder, I completely agree with Todd’s view of “Now after another year of Lijit under my belt and exposure to Boulder I get it and would never go back to remote model. What changed?” Read the post for Todd’s answer.

If you are coming to Boulder for TechStars Investor / Demo Day, I look forward to seeing you!

I am so totally, utterly, and completely sick of air travel.  If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve had to put up with me whining for the past week on my Denver to Seattle to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Denver travel fiasco (hint: not a single plane was on time.)  I hurt my back playing tennis ten days ago so the extra stimuli of lower back pain made the experience extra-special enjoyable.

I fly a lot – mostly on United (for the compulsively curious, take a look at my Daytum page which lists all my travel from the beginning on 2009.)  I usually refer to it as Untied.  I’ve decided to start referring to it as United-Sucks.

As I sit in the San Francisco Red Carpet Club waiting for yet another three hour delayed flight (sorry – the airplane broke – but guess what – we found another one – just wait a while), I decided I’m not going to travel by air at all in August.   I’m just worn out, cranky, and not doing anyone (especially my twitter followers) any favors by adding insult to injury.

Let’s see if a month of no air travel fixes my very bad attitude.