Per my post yesterday, I am officially retired as an adjunct at the University of Colorado. 

That of course didn’t stop my students from sending me off in "style."

I was awarded two very special gifts.  First, I received the "Most Kick Ass Professor" award of 2009, complete with my own Karate action figure.  And second, I received a nice Zildjian ride cymbal (how did they know that I don’t like Paiste?) signed by everyone in the class:

It was one of more thoughtful gestures that I’ve ever received.  In fact, there was a moment when the lump in my throat threatened to completely derail my last lecture. 

Thanks folks, I’ll remember you always and not because I am now looking for a 1985 Chevy Caprice Station Wagon to mount my trophy to the hood.  I look forward to the quick transition from teacher / student to friends / colleagues.

Today, I will give my last lecture at the University of Colorado. I’ve been co-teaching a class on venture capital for the past two years and it’s been a great experience.

I have always thought that one day, after I retire, I’d like to spend my time teaching at a university.  I taught drums while in high school and economics while in undergrad and some of my favorite intellectual moments have been while answering some well-thought question from a student. 

Teaching at the University of Colorado did not disappoint.  The students were inquisitive, intellectually honest and demanded that I arrived at class 100% prepared each day, otherwise their curiosity would expose my poor preparation.  I learned a lot about my own industry reading the academic works and thinking deeply about policies that affect venture capital – something that will be well used as I get ready to join the board of the National Venture Capital Association.

Thanks to all who put up with my diatribes, F-bombs, disorganization and occasional insults.  I had a great time and felt honored to come to the class every day.  While I don’t plan on retiring from venture capital any time soon, I do look forward to teaching again some day.

Thanks all.

In the continuing Entrepreneurs Unplugged series, next week Sam Zell will be visiting the university.

April 22nd, at noon in the large (Boulder NewTech Meetup) courtroom at the law school.  More info here.  It is free, but you must register, so keep that in mind.

Sam is always an interesting interviewee and speaker and even more so this year with his recent sale of Equity Office Property and sell of the Chicago Cubs.

Is he really that old?  Nah, not really, but last night Brad received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship as part of the first annual Entrepreneurship Mashup event. 

The event was a huge success with a couple of hundred of folks showing up representing all facets of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in and around Boulder.  It was nice to see veteran entrepreneurs mingling with the next generation of great company builders.

As part of the event, we made a video homage to Brad.  Congrats partner.  In typical Brad fashion, he was humble, gave a great acceptance speech and implored everyone to consider it a "half-lifetime" achievement award.

Brad Feld – Lifetime Entreprenurial Achievement award video from Kendall Media Group on Vimeo.

Fresh off the heels of my recent Ann Arbor visit, I came back to Boulder to find out that one of our companies, Newsgator is participating in a great executive educational program:  Making Social Computing Work In Your Enterprise.

It’s June 1-3 and will feature cutting edge research from faculty and on-the-front-lines practical advice from the smart folks at Newsgator. 

For more information, please see the Newsgator press release on the event. 

If you are in or around Boulder and are interested in all things related to entrepreneurship, startups and venture capital, here is your event of the year:

Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurship Week

The events are too numerous to list (see the link above), but some of my favorites will be:

1. NewTech meetup on 4/7 (okay this makes the event a little longer than a week)

2. The Entrepreneurial Mashup, where we honor folks like Brad Feld, David Cohen and several Colorado-based companies for what they mean to the community.  We’ll also play plenty of Rock Band.  What I’m most excited is that folks from CU to "grizzled veterans" will be there blending current, past and future entrepreneurs in an event that won’t soon be forgotten.  It’s going to have food, entertainment and plenty of surprises.

3.Feld versus Weiser – The second smack down (okay, not really, it’s friendly) between these two discussion important current topics, followed by an Entrepreneurs Unplugged session

4. The whole afternoon / evening of 4/16 has a variety of panels and events featuring our governor Bill Ritter.

5.  New venture challenge – on the morning of the 17th, the first annual new venture challenge at CU will have its first annual winner

All are welcome.  I hope that you are excited as I am to participate in the activities.  For more information, check out the link above. 

I (Jason) will be visiting the University of Michigan in a couple of weeks to speak to different campus constituencies about entrepreneurship and venture capital.

As part of that, I’m going to plant my butt in a conference room on campus for a couple of hours and talk to anyone that wants to come by and chat, pitch me, talk about venture capital, etc.

Location:  Lorch Hall (Economics Building) Room 171, 611 Tappan, Ann Arbor

Time: 3pm to 5pm

Date: Friday, April 3rd, 2009

Students, professors, members of the community all invited.

Thanks to my friends at Kendall Media Group, here is the video of my recent Venture Capital Crash Course at the Silicon Flatirons.

Venture Capital Crash Course with Jason Mendelson from Andrew on Vimeo.
I give a 25 minute presentation and then hold an hour town-hall question and answer session.  Great questions were asked, so if you are interested in what goes through a VC’s head, take a gander.

The video is really well done.  The slides are integrated into the presentation.  I’d highly recommend Craig Kendall if you need any video creation or editing work.  Thanks Craig for putting all the time into the video.  Here’s a bit about Craig:

Founded on 13 years web and video experience and a passion for top quality video, Craig Kendall is the founder of Kendall Media Group and eventon.tv. Currently partnering with many Boulder area technology programs including IgniteBoulder, the Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup, and Silicon Flatiron’s Crash Course for Entrepreneurs, eventon.tv is helping provide video recording and production for the web. Having recently returned to Colorado after 13 years in Tennessee, Craig is thrilled to be part of the technology community in Colorado.”There’s some really amazing things happening in the Boulder/Denver area as far as technology and entrepreneurship and Kendall Media Group is excited to be a part of it,” says Craig. Reach out to Craig at craig at kendallmediagroup dot com.

For those of you unfamiliar, the VCIC (Venture Capital Investment Competition) is an international competition pitting the best and brightest graduate business school students against each other.

I had the pleasure of being a judge this year in the Mountain regional qualifier and was really impressed with the program.  Each region contains six top schools competing against each other.  Each team has five students who must interview three real companies seeking venture funding, do diligence and then offer and negotiate a term sheet to what they consider the best team.

Oh yeah, and unlike me, they have 15 minutes or so to interview each company and about an hour to prepare a term sheet including return metrics.  In other words, it’s much harder than what I have to do.

I’m very happy to report that the University of Colorado team won their regional this year and will be heading to the University of North Carolina (the creators of the program) to compete with all the winners April 16-18.

I’ve gotten to know each of the team members, as they are either current or former students in my venture capital course and despite my miscellaneous ramblings, they seemed to have learned enough on their own to really impress.  Here’s to an outstanding result in the finals!

For more coverage and a nice picture of the winners, check out Julie Penner’s writeup.

If you are looking for something to do this summer, check out what Startup2Student is organizing. 

The goal is to introduce students interested in summer programming internships or jobs with early stage entrepreneurial companies in the Boulder/Denver area to these companies, as well as to introduce the students to some young entrepreneurs who have chosen a career path of entrepreneurship.

Mark your calendar for March 12th at 5:30pm.