Technosailor.com

Venture Files founder and former curator, Steven Fisher, wrote a series last year that remains one of the best of its time. Even though he has moved on and is working with Network Solutions, I think it’s as important now (if not more so) than it was last year at this time. This is a consolidates (and updated) version of that series.

“I love software,” my friend used to say, “But it’s soooo dehumanizing!” Perched 18 feet in the air atop a scissors lift the other day, it occurred to me that variety in work not only makes the experience more enjoyable, it’s essential . . . especially, something physical to contrast and complement time spent at the computer.

So, the Auto Bailout bombed in the Senate. Good. (Never thought I’d be writing about it in Venture Files . . . but then, I never imagined it might affect entrepreneurs — including me — directly.) It’s an intriguing tale of desperation, fear tactics, and irony . . .

Returning to quickly skim my blog reader 1,000+ after two weeks’ head-in-the-sand, I see ‘Pownce acquired,’ and ‘Yahoo’s Chief of Insights Joins Bunchball.‘ My spin radar immediately starts blipping, because I know that behind the ‘good news,’ guts are wrenching. Decisions are being made for people, and that never feels good. Yet another reminder that all the sacrifices may well be worth captaining your own destiny.

I have read Brad Feld’s blog “Feld Thoughts” for some time now.

Although I haven’t met him in person, I have exchanged e-mails a number of times and will say that he is a very insightful guy. I hope to move to Denver or buy a place there soon, so I owe him a beer for all his good advice.

Plus he is a huge 24 fan like me, so that gives him the extra gold star.

About a year ago, he started a series on “Term Sheets”. It is located here and it is what I will mirror in its structure. Why mess with a good thing, right?

Being a serial entrepreneur I have been through many business cycles, but the Internet boom of the late 1990’s was an extremely heady time. People were so enamored with what the Internet could do, every one really believed that the old rules didn’t apply.

The reality was that those rules applied more than ever and with the crash in the early part of the century we have tried to learn our lesson.