For many years now I’ve seen my role as a venture capitalist as investing in people, not companies. I finally decided to put it in writing.

Read my guest blog post on Forbes as to Why Entrepreneurs are the New Asset Class.

Partnerships are everything in Venture Capital.  Without the important relationships we develop with our limited partners, investment syndicates, portfolio companies and our own personal networks, the VC industry would not exist.  And I think it would do our economy a world of good if Washington, D.C. and the business community established some of the same high value partnerships we create in the VC world.  It’s time for us to put aside the partisanship, engage in meaningful policy debate and really come together for the common good. 

Business Forward  is an organization that is taking on this noble cause.  They are bringing together key policymakers and innovative business leaders to openly discuss the important challenges and opportunities our country faces.  The organization is focusing its efforts on several broad principles relating to job creation, health care, education, energy, the environment, innovation and have recently expanded their outreach to include trade and immigration.

I have attended three Business Forward events this year:  a CEO Roundtable with U.S. Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu ;  in early April, Ron Bloom, Senior Counselor to the U.S. President on Manufacturing Policy, met with 20 leading Silicon Valley CEO & entrepreneurs in manufacturing; and a Clean Energy Investments Roundtable with Executive Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs, Jonathan Silver.

 I observed some very refreshing differences between Business Forward’s events and similar events I have attended in the past:

• Steven Chu, Ron Bloom and Jonathan Silver all traveled to Silicon Valley to meet with us.  They  escaped the confines of the Beltway and were getting some real world experience with business leaders.
• These three gentlemen also showed up ready to listen and it actually seemed as if they had left their egos at the door.
• The groups were small, only 25-30 people in the room maximum, so it was a face-to-face, very intimate gathering.
• There was no censorship in these discussions.  Everything was on the table.  And I didn’t get the feeling that these guys were reading from a list of talking points.
• The policymakers actually got to hear firsthand what effects their policies are having on the business world.
• No lobbyists.

We need to continue these extremely valuable discussions.  The business community and government need to collaborate more around what scientific breakthroughs are worth funding and let’s put our dollars there.  Our government needs Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to work with D.C. policymakers to help revitalize the manufacturing sector.  We need each other.  With Business Forward, we are moving in the right direction.

What happened in Las Vegas in late July does not appear to be staying in Las Vegas. 

Sohail Ahmad, senior wireless security researcher at CMEA portfolio company AirTight Networks , recently discovered a large black hole in wireless security protocol that makes any wireless network susceptible to hacking.  Ahmad demonstrated this vulnerability at Black Hat Arsenal  and DEF CON 18  in late July.  

The vulnerability has been dubbed “Hole196” and is named for the page of the IEEE 802.11 Standard (Revision, 2007) where Ahmad found the original reference.   Hole196 involves a man-in-the-middle style attack, whereby a hacker inserts himself between a WiFi user and the network to capture all traffic to and from the user in order to compromise private data.  After reading a six word sentence on page 196 of the 1200-plus page of the industry’s wireless security protocol specifications, Ahmad realized the common group key used in wireless networks was not immune to spoofing.  He was able to send a broadcast packet using the group key over the air to all the wireless devices in his vicinity and redirect their traffic through his own computer.  Because the network is being used against itself, there is little detectable evidence.  And because the other WiFi client devices (laptops, POS systems, VOIP phones, etc.) assume the hacker’s computer is now the network gateway, the devices redirect all of their secure traffic to that computer and the network access points re-encrypt the traffic with the hacker’s own private key allowing the hacker to read the once private data without cracking the encryption.  Read Full Post »

For venture capitalists, boards seats are like martinis: one is good, and two is better, but three is horrible.  My guest blog post entitled Bored with Board Seats was published earlier today on Forbes.com.

My guest post on Forbes Velocity Blog on Data, The Facebook Nation, And New Opportunities was published today.  In it I talk about how the sophistication in data and computing power available is producing the next generation of technology companies.

Coming soon to a television station near you, the Mint Automatic Floor Cleaner.  It is an exciting time at CMEA portfolio company Evolution Robotics as they have recently launched the first Mint commercials in the Bakersfield and Oakland television markets.  But maybe you’ve already seen the Mint on The Martha Stewart Show or The Rachael Ray Show or in SkyMall.  Mint is designed to clean hard surfaces and uses the advanced NorthStar Navigation system to map floors so it doesn’t miss any spots and knows where it’s been.  It works with popular cleaning cloths such as Swiffer and Pledge. 

Did I mention that the Mint just won the International Design Excellence Award or the Popular Mechanics’ Editor’s Choice Award at CES 2010?  I know it’s just July, but the holidays will be here before we know it.  Click here to reserve your Mint.

My guest blog post for Forbes Velocity was published today.  In it, I write about how neither the Legislative Body or the Executive Branch seem to understand that focusing on making funding more easily available to entrepreneurs will ultimately drive economic growth and job creation.  There just aren’t enough entrepreneurs in D.C.!

For many months now dozens of people have asked me about what’s cooking at Blekko. And for many months all I’ve been able to say is “Blekko is a big, bold, bet in search. It’s in stealth. Stay tuned.”

Well,  today I can finally give them an answer.

And here it is, in video form (thanks Mike Arrington):
Here’s what Blekko’s founders Rich Skrenta and Mike Markson had to say about it:

You can also see what Rich and Mike had to say about Blekko on their respective blogs, here and here.

Finally, here is the original TechCrunch post on Blekko (I’ve included snippets and screenshots below):

“What Makes Blekko Different?

Blekko is a full web search engine, with regular crawls of billions of web pages. But they know that they can’t beat Google at size of index, relevancy and speed right out of the gate. So they’re differentiating themselves in  another way – by giving users tools to do new types of searches that they can’t do elsewhere. And by providing an unprecedented level of access to the algorithms and data that Blekko uses to determine relevancy.

That doesn’t mean Blekko’s relevancy isn’t great. The company says they’re on par with Google and Bing for most queries. But the differentiating feature are the query refinement tools they call Slashtags. These tools, like /news or /date or /amazon or /blogs, or any combination, make it very simple to quickly filter results to what you are looking for.

Users can create their own slashtags based on a group of URLs. I’ve created one that lists all TechCrunch sites to do easy site search. Others have created slashtags for conservative or liberal blogs, top tech sites, etc. If they make those slashtags public, others can use them, too.

The company also lets users search via a variety of APIs. Add /amazon to search on Amazon. Or /twitter to search via the Twitter API. Or just type /whatever.com to search just that domain.”

 Read Full Post »

This week I wrote a guest post for our portfolio company Jobvite called Jobvite our next CEO of WorkingPoint.  In it I talk about how as we embark on our quest to find a new CEO at WorkingPoint another CMEA portfolio company, we have decided to enter into unchartered territory by using Jobvite’s social recruiting technology.  Read about why we think using our collective personal networks may actually be the best way to find the next Aaron Patzer or Mark Zuckerberg to run your company.  Oh, and did I mention there is a finders fee involved?

I wrote a guest blog for Forbes Velocity earlier this week about Secretary Steven Chu and the effect he is having on energy innovation, entrepreneurs and the relevance of the Department of Energy in general.  The post is entitled, Here’s to Secretary Chu and the End of Energy’s Dark Ages.  Enjoy the read!