Nantucket Conference 2008

The final agenda for this year's Nantucket Conference has been published. As a prior participant, I wanted to make sure that readers knew about it. Highlights of this year’s agenda include IDG CEO Pat McGovern, IDEO CEO Tim Brown, Maven Networks CEO Hilmi Ozguc (a General Catalyst company that was recently acquired by Yahoo), Bob Metcalfe, and EnerNOC CEO Tim Healy. The sessions are always well organized and moderated but the networking over drinks and dinner is the best year-round in NE. I like this year’s “Game Changers” orientation and mix of cleantech, software, Internet and other companies, VC, markets and entrepreneurs. Too bad industry events that week will keep me on the road. Check it out here.

Black Duck PSA for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Massachusetts Office of Business Development (MOBD) is doing a radio campaign on WEEI / WRKO entitled: “Massachusetts. It’s All Here”. This campaign consists of vignettes from leading Bay State companies. After an introduction by Governor Deval Patrick, I do a testimonial featuring Black Duck Software and how we did all our design and development here in Massachusetts (instead of outsourcing or offshoring).

Click here for the 30 second spot or one minute spot.

Jonathan Kraft at the Vilna Shul

Tonight Jonathan Kraft – the president and chief operating officer of the Kraft Group, the holding company of the Kraft family’s varied business interests, and also the president of the three-time Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots – was the featured speaker at the historic Vilna Shul.

The Kraft Group has diversified interests including a huge paper and packaging manufacturing and forest products distribution operation, a sports and entertainment business, and a real estate development company. Additionally, they are involved in private equity investing – especially in early stage technology companies that are synergistic with the other companies in the Kraft Group, and philanthropy.

Jonathan painted very compelling pictures of leveraging the lessons the Krafts learned building a $1 billion packaging business, and their applications, to build the Patriots into a football super-power. He also reflected on his family and personal involvement with Judaism and charity. Jonathan made the evening wonderful by being insightful and offering a wonderfully candid insight into his businesses and NFL football.

Fake Steve Jobs Cocktail Party

Version 2.0 Communications and Atlas Ventures jointly sponsored a cocktail party and book signing this evening with Dan Lyons (picture left) of Fake Steve Jobs fame. Dan is great writer. IMHO FSJ is a tour de force.

This event was held at Rocca Restaurant on Boston's South End. Great food. It's now on my recommended list for event venues.

Click here for more pictures and the video.

Boston VC Panel Discussion at the Vilna Shul

Tonight there was a panel discussion held at the historic Vilna Shul entitled “The Venture Capital Industry: Looking Back on 2007 and Looking Forward to 2008” with three leading venture capital investor from the Boston-area: Larry Bohn from General Catalyst Partners, Jonathan Seelig from Globespan Capital Partners and Alan Spoon from Polaris Venture Partners. Scott Kirsner, Innovation Economy columnist from the Boston Globe, was the moderator and did a great job, as usual.

This was a candid, insightful discussion. An excellent panel Paraphrasing, here’s what they said:

With respect to 2007:

• Alan: There is a great value at this time in this market for startup investments; venture investing is well positioned as an asset class.
• Larry: the enthusiasm is back and innovation is back at rational prices.
• Jonathan: Ditto points made by Alan and Larry, plus enthusiasm for web and capital efficient investments.

With respect to 2008 and beyond:

• Alan: The rate of change is indeed accelerating. He will invest in portability and mobility; customization and vertical markets; e-commerce; the notion of cloud computing; life sciences – nanotech, stem cell research, and green or ener-tech, plus Asia.
• Jonathan: Energy, technology and Japanese investment interests. He asks what is the right capital structure for these investments, in particular, ener-tech companies? Also investment interests include advertizing measurement of the effectiveness of media spending, and companies addressing the battle over the utility bill.
• Larry: Indicated that the market has become frothy. Companies have to hunker down this year. If Boston-area companies are doing a C round, they should consider going to CA for investors.

There was some whining about Boston vs. CA. There was also concern expressed across the panel about a recession this year and it’s impact on investments, in particular, enterprise or B2B plays.

Other bloggers covered the event, including:

• Chris Herot wrote a nice summary of the event on his blog.

• Scott Kirsner wrote a brief summary on his blog.

• Dan Bricklin wrote an thorough blog posting complete with pictures.
  

Assessments of '07-'08 by Leading VCs

On January 8th, 2008, there’s a panel discussion at the historic Vilna Shul moderated by Scott Kirsner, Innovation Economy columnist from the Boston Globe that promises to be really interesting. The panel is entitled “The Venture Capital Industry: Looking Back on 2007 and Looking Forward to 2008” and draws on three VCs from the Boston-area: Larry Bohn, Managing Director, General Catalyst Partners, Jonathan Seelig, Managing Director, Globespan Capital Partners and Alan Spoon, Managing General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners.

My hope is that Scott asks the panel about the deals they did in 2007 and expect to do in 2008. Are there any singularly distinctive deals done last year? Which were the best deals of 2007 by way of return and other VC-metrics? Which deals are illustrative of Boston-area investments and reflect differentiation from what’s being done on the left-coast? Will there be a change in investments in 2008. What can we expect by way of industry (VC and entrepreneurial) trends? And, of course, which VC threw the best holiday party?

Let it snow

Heavy snow fell on the Boston-area last night. We sent home the Black Duck employees based in Waltham at 2:00. Pure gridlock occurred all over the Boston area. There were 3,300 snowplows, salters and sanders on the roads (according to WBUR) at the same time that everyone left work and headed home. Abandoned cars abounded along Storrow. I left the office at 3:30 and drove head-on into gridlock. It took me 4 hours and 39 minutes to get home -- the same trip usually takes me 30-40 minutes.

My wife Susana took this picture shortly after I got home. More than 12+ inches of snow fell today over the course of six hours (see photo on left).

An “interesting” soirée

A gathering of founders, CEOs and VCs called "Think Big" was held on Wednesday night at the amazing apartment of Wendy Caswell, President and Chief Executive Officer of Zink. The event was organized by Scott Kirner, Innovation Economy columnist for the Boston Globe, with the best of intentions -- to identify ways to improve Massachusetts' competitive positioning versus other tech magnets, especially California. (This has become a theme in my life.)

Attendees included Dharmesh Shah, CTO of HubSpot (blog posting); Bob Weiler, CEO of Phase Forward; Bill Warner, founder of FutureBoston, Avid and Wildfire; Russ Wilcox of E Ink; Jonathan Seelig of Globespan Capital Partners; Bill Schnoor; David W. Baum of Stage 1 Ventures; Misha Katz; John Landry, the always avuncular angel investor from Lead Dog Ventures; Frank Moss of the MIT Media Lab; and Noubar Afeyan of Flagship Ventures among others.

Founding partners Michael A. Greeley of IDG and Paul Maeder of Highland Capital Partners were the featured speakers.

The event was sponsored by Boston Search Group, Goodwin Procter LLP, and KMC Partners. Kudos to these guys.

Almost all attendees left the party saying it was “interesting.” Translation: “I'm glad I attended. It was a top-shelf gathering of diversified, high powered people. I loved the views of the Boston skyline, but the event was bemusing”.

Most of the individual conversations addressed the Massachusetts-California divide more concretely and genuinely than the featured speakers did. Why can’t an honest public conversation be had with a bunch of VCs in the room? Maybe that’s the problem with Boston.

Here are my takeaways from the evening:

• Massachusetts-based VCs sitting on venture boards should take the long view and support entrepreneurs who want to hold onto promising companies. In the process, the Boston-area will produce companies with greater enterprise value.

• Many large-scale California companies are built on a foundation or in subsequent stages on purchases of East Coast companies.

• MIT competes with Stanford in the entrepreneur area, but Harvard doesn't compete at all.

• Massachusetts' software industry is done, and our leadership in life sciences is ours to lose. Maeder asserted that Massachusetts can take substantive small steps each year for the coming years and catch up to California in the life sciences.

All in all, I have to agree with the scuttlebutt -- it was a very “interesting” soirée.

But don't take my word for it. Dan Bricklin published both a blog posting and podcast of the event. (Maximum kudos to Dan.) Have a listen and let me know what you think.

TechCrunch Boston -- A Happenin' Networking Event

Around 7-800 people attended TechCrunch Boston on Friday night. It was the best party of the year in the 128 startup-land. There was an army of entrepreneurs in attendance who offered great convo’s, lubricated by lots of beer, martinis, other drinks and great food.

I think it is important to note that IDG Ventures sponsored it and Mike Arrington and the TechCrunch folks organized it. With parties like this one, we can stem the tide of university grads seeking employment and a social life in the Silicon Valley. There was a strong consumer Internet presence, thanks in part to the IDG folks, who recognized the importance of addressing this area of historical weakness in Boston venture funding. Among the IDGers there, I talked with Michael Greeley, Chip Hazard, Jon Karlen and bloggers Jeff Bussgang and David Aronoff.

Others from the finance community in attendance included Michael Skok from North Bridge Venture Partners, Lucy McQuilken from Intel Capital, and Charley Lax from Grandbanks Capital, and John Prendergast from Jefferies Broadview. Also, there were a lot of PR people in attendance, including Ross Levanto, Maura Fitzgerald, and others.

From the blogosphere and related spheres Steven Woit, Pito Salas (his company is BlogBridge and blog), Chris Herot (his company is Zingdom and blog), Scott Kirsner (Boston Globe), Doc Searls, and my good friend, Don Dodge from Microsoft. These guys are heroic bloggers because of the fresh, original content they bring to their blogs.

Kudos to the party givers.