Last May, I got an idea stuck in my head that I should create a music video to promote the release of Venture Deals:  Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, written by yours truly and my partner Brad Feld.  It was a germination of a conversation that I had with Emily Mendell (VP of Communication at the NVCA and great blogger at MothersofBrothers.com).  Emily is a great PR person and threw out an idea that the Foundry Group could actually pull off a music video, in the SNL Digital Short genre, to highlight the book and have a ton of fun in the process.Having very little logical sense and a severely limited good judgment filter, I immediately jumped on what I thought was a great idea and thus “I’m a VC” was born.

For those of you who know me, I can get a bit (a lot?) manic when I get excited about  something.  I stayed up most of the first night writing the song and story boarding the potential video.  I woke up the next day, exhausted, but pleased with my first efforts.  I had never written any music in this genre before (cheesy 80’s boy band) and certainly have never made anything with video, but I felt confident.

First I emailed by partner in business and music Ryan McIntyre, who immediately told me it was a dumb idea and that he generally hated parodies.  Awesome.  My project was starting off perfectly.

Undaunted, I brought the lyrics and story idea to our regular Monday partner lunch and after a beer, I found a receptive audience, including Mr. McIntyre.  I was given a green light to proceed and the rest is history.

We issued a fake press release along with the video that I find funny, especially the quotes from my partner Seth Levine about his insecurities as a venture capitalist.

So without further delay, I present to you “I’m a VC.”  Please share with everyone you know if you like it.  Also, don’t forget to buy our book!

And just in case, here are the lyrics thanks to Ryan.

One of our companies Organic Motion is powering an awesomely cool exhibit at Seattle’s EMP Museum. By use of their marker-less computer vision platform, one can put themselves in the middle of James Cameron’s Avatar. Here is a great news report about the event including an intro from James Cameron, himself.

Also, here is an example of a person using the system to reenact a scene from Avatar.

Today we announced our investment in Attachments.me.

What is attachments.me? It’s a really cool company and one that I’m proud to be associated with.

Imagine that you remember someone sent you a document about a particular subject or a funny video.  You just don’t remember who sent it to you or what the email text was.  Now, you will be able to search by subject matter embedded in links and attachments, and browse by content type, not just by sender, and the results will include not just data in the email body itself, but in the attachments and links themselves.

This mailbox crawling technology will allow for a single searchable interface to automatically group and filter the structured data and documents in a user’s email archive.  This data will also be accessible via mobile applications for on-the-go access.  Attachments.me recognizes the fact that for most users, email is their de-facto filesystem, knowledgebase and personal information manager, and that better tools are needed to access and manipulate the extremely valuable data in the messages a user sends and receives.

We were investors in Stratify (Acquired: Iron Mountain) which changed the way lawyers worked the discovery process by automatically reading documents and creating subject matter-based folders. Personally, I’ve always had a “thing” for technologies that allow machines to read, interpret and make our information processing faster as humans.  I’m stoked to get to try it again in a very different manner in a different industry.  I’m even more excited to work with Jesse Miller and Ben Coe on it, as well.

Today, Next Big Sound and Billboard announced the birth of the Social 50 which ranks the top 50 musical artists on the world’s leading social media sites.

Given the upheaval in the music industry in that it has moved away from radio spins and record sales as the sole factors in achieving success, it’s great to see the preeminent keeper of music charts, Billboard, agree that it’s time to start tracking other metrics to determine an artist’s reach.

Even more cool, however, is that our very own Next Big Sound is powering the charts that Billboard is using.

Check out the Social 50 here.

I’m really pleased today to report that we just closed on our second fund. 

The fund is the exact same size as our last one: $225,000,000 in limited partner commitments. We are pleased to be working with a great group of investors.

We will continue to do exactly what we have always done: invest in seed and early-stage investment opportunities in the software and IT space that are located across the United States. We’ll also continue to pursue a strategy of Thematic Investing that has served us well over our investing careers.

And we decided to celebrate by redesigning our website, too.  I honestly can say that I never anticipated having to use this much hair product for a work function. 

Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen.  From our investors, to entrepreneurs, to portfolio companies to our advisors, mentors and friends – we couldn’t have done this without you. 

My partner Seth has a great interview on Stocktwits TV, hosted by one of the smartest and funniest entrepreneurs that I know, Howard Lindzon.  The topic is whether or not the Web is Dead.  (It’s not).  Also, he will give you his stock picks, as well.  This I can’t wait to see if he is correct.   

Today, we announced our investment in Sifteo.  It was also picked up in PEHub. 

I’m really excited to be a part of the team.  Founded by David Merrill and Jeevan Kalanithi, out of the MIT Media Lab, we believe that Sifteo is developing the next popular generation gaming platform that will go beyond the early successes of the Nintendo Wii and Apple iPad/Pod/Touch. 

I addition, it’s another investment that we’ve made with the fine folks over at True Ventures, so that only adds to the happy factor. 

Check our their TED talk for a great demo of what they are working on.  And if you ever happen to meet Dave, let him know that you really like his shirt that he wore that day. 

I posted a blog today on the Foundry Group site about our trip to CES.  Among the topics discussed are why you shouldn’t buy a TV for the next 6 months and why Nobu is simply my favorite sushi place that I can dream of.

Also, for some reason, it’s harder every year for me to go to Vegas.  I must be getting old. 

For those of you not familiar with the Foundry Group, we collectively author a blog about our investment themes, our portfolio companies and what we think differentiates us from other venture capitalists.

Today’s post on the Foundry Group blog is titled "There is no "I" in Foundry," which describes our team approach to running Foundry and contrasts that with the more typical venture firm.  We have a philosophy at Foundry that we are stronger and more successful investors as a group rather than as individuals.

I hope that you enjoy the post and keep reading our blog.