I’m excited to announce a Boulder Digital Works course that will be open to the public in the Spring of 2012, StartUp: Learning Entrepreneurship.

This is the first BDW course inviting community members to join  graduate students and engage in the graduate curriculum.  StartUp is immersive and transformational––both theoretical and practical. It begins with the premise that entrepreneurship, rather than being the result of genius and magic, can be learned;  Startup then proves this premise through the actual conception, build, and launch of an original product or service by student teams within a single semester.

Led by serial entrepreneur Robert Reich with a supporting team from a variety of sectors from the contemporary entrepreneurial world, this course puts students inside the mind of the entrepreneur and immerses them in the daily leadership and innovation challenges of the startup environment.

While its primary focus is the startup and what it demands, this course is also a clinic in thinking, decision making and mental agility that will benefit any area of business––not just startups.

Download more detailed information on the course and the application to enroll here, or email bdw.info@colorado.edu for details.

Here is a great video talking about the program, too: http://vimeo.com/32882215

Today it was intimated that Yahoo! may enter the world of patent trolling.  If you haven’t seen the article, it’s here.  In short,  it appears that Yahoo! is increasing its patent filing activity and shopping itself, in part, based on the value of its patents.  Their patents generally revolve around search and social networking.

Now if they have real deep algorithms in search that are patented, I can get my head around it.  What I fear is that their “social networking” patents are business method patents that will cover business process ideas, but no real innovation.  And they’ll use these patents either to sell or to offensively go after real innovative companies like Facebook.  The article suggests that something like this could potentially derail a Facebook IPO even.

I can’t event begin to tell you how furious all of this patent trolling activity makes me.  My partner Brad wrote yesterday a great piece about Another Day, Another Patent troll.  There is a lot more behind his post than just what he says, but, unfortunately, we aren’t at liberty to talk about particular portfolio company situations.

If only the Supreme Court had not allowed itself to become politicized and actually decided Bilksi on the merits, then the world would be a better place.  I was at the oral arguments for Bilksi and I can assure you not one single justice was even partially sympathetic to Bilksi’s case, but evidently politics won out over reason.

Yahoo!  Don’t be evil.  Try competing on the merits of innovation, not the perverted incentives of a broken patent system that this country currently “enjoys.”

I co-teach a class at the University of Colorado Law School called “VC 360.”  We have both MBA and JD candidates and the course deals with all things in the entrepreneurial / venture ecosystem.

Each year, we have a pitch day where one entrepreneur comes in and pitches me.  The students get to watch.  The entrepreneur and I get an hour together and then the students get to ask questions for 20 minutes.

This is a real pitch.  It’s not any different than if someone comes to our offices, but there is a “studio audience.”

So if you are interested in pitching Foundry Group and want to do something great for the Boulder education community, let me know.  I can only take one.

The pitch date is 10/31 at 8am in Boulder.

Last week, I had the honor of testifying in front of Congress on the merits of enacting the Startup Visa.  It was a humbling experience.  I can’t remember being quite as nervous before a speaking engagement, but it all went well.  My partner in crime, Shervin Pishevar both sought bi-partisan support for the only guaranteed job creation tactic that I know.  Even better, it would cost American taxpayers absolutely nothing.

In preparation for the oral testimony, I drafted written testimony explaining why this bill must be passed, without delay and without the over politicizing that occurs any time the word “immigration” is heard in D.C.  The overall vibe on both sides of the floor seemed positive, so I’m cautiously optimistic, but then again this is Congress we are talking about.

If you are as passionate about this issue as we at Foundry Group are, get involved.  Tell your Congressperson to get engaged.

Special thanks to the NVCA, especially Emily Baker and Emily Mendell for helping Shervin and I through the process.

In case you don’t believe that I can put on a tie, above is proof.

David Cohen came over to my version of “the Bunker” and filmed an episode of This Week In Techstars.  Also, featured is Coursekit, a New York Techstars team that has impressed me enough that I’m using their software in the class that I teach.

VCs understand the reality that when we exit a portfolio company, a portion of the consideration is virtually always tied up in escrow for one to two years.  We hope that it is all eventually paid out, but sometimes it’s not and that’s difficult to plan for.

What if we could sell escrow interests at a discount, accelerating the payout and avoiding unpredictable losses?  That could help a VC redeploy the cash immediately, close out an end-of-life fund, or even improve IRR by receiving the consideration earlier.

That option is now available through an innovation called SRS EscrowExchange, which is a financial product designed to allow shareholders to convert illiquid escrow holdings to cash by selling their interests.  SRS | Shareholder Representative Services is using SecondMarket’s secure auction platform for the product, which gives sellers the opportunity to set their own offer price.

This is a major innovation for the private company M&A market.  It’s also one more great reason to engage SRS as the professional shareholder representative when selling your company, because the product is only available for select deals where SRS is the shareholder rep.

You can view the full press release here.

A new academic paper seeks to destroy the myth that venture capitalists use inside rounds to dilute founders by issuing themselves cheap stock.

Sure, there are plenty of lawsuits that claim this, but I’ve actually never seen it happen when reputable firms are involved.

This paper is the first empirical study of its kind and concludes that inside rounds are most often seen when companies can not find a new funding partner and the pricing seen in these types of transactions tend to be over-priced, not under-priced.

It’s a fascinating report and the authors (Jesse Fried from Harvard and Brian Broughman from Indiana) are seeking feedback on their article. So please read and fire away.

One piece of information that I’ve already given them is that in good economic times (like today) one sees more and more inside rounds done at attractive increases in valuations between companies and VCs that don’t want to waste management time to go seek a new outside lead investor.

The article is here.

Today, the University of Colorado Law School announced that Phil Weiser will be its next Dean. This is a tremendously good day for the law school and community.

Phil was previously a professor at the law school, the founder of the Silicon Flatirons and worked as a senior adviser for technology and innovation to the National Economic Counsel.

Alright, so what’s the big deal? Simple. I’ve spent a lot of time with Phil and I can confidently state that no academic leader is more innovative or thoughtful as Phil. In a time of turmoil for most law schools and their students, Phil is poised to bring his wealth of experience to evolving the law school into a truly great institution that is responding to the new world economy.

In addition, through his continued support of the Silicon Flatirons, all of Boulder can celebrate knowing that one of our central support hubs of the startup ecosystem will prosper for the foreseeable future.

A special thanks must given to outgoing dean David Getches whose leadership has brought the school to its current leadership position and has been an argent supporter of all things related to the Silicon Flatirons.

Congratulations Phil. This is an honor well deserved and I look forward to helping you in any way that I can.

Could the crowd be the answer to what ails our broken patent system?  Probably not for all the problems, but perhaps the crowd can put a stop to some meaningless patent lawsuits brought by patent trolls (er, excuse me. “Non Practicing Entities”).

A while ago, I wrote about Article One Partners.  They essentially use the crowd to find prior art for patents and other valuable research and evidence.  Here’s the basic concept: Article One uses crowdsourcing to tap into a global network of researchers to study the validity of patents that have been granted (which are often in litigation). You can read what I wrote about them last time here. One note of interest that came out of my conversations with Article One is the increasing number of times their solution is used to settle suits that come from licensing companies that do nothing but assert patents they have acquired.  And I believe that many of these patents are either of low quality or of the b.s. business method patent variety.  These are the folks that I like to call “patent trolls” or “destroyers of real innovation.”

This is particularly interesting as Article One announced this week that it has launched a new request for research of a patent held by Interval Licensing LLC. For those of you not aware, Interval asserted patent claims against major technology companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay and five others. One of the founders of Interval Licensing is Paul Allen, formerly of Microsoft.  Interesting to note that Seattle-based companies suchas Microsoft are missing from the assertion.  Also, as an aside, it makes me absolutely sick that he is behaving this way. Couldn’t he be more like Bill Gates and actually do something productive for the world with his wealth?

An Interval Licensing spokesman came out in the WSJ Digits blog to say, “I don’t take [Article One Partners’ crowdsourcing approach] to be a serious threat to our case.” I’m not so sure. The patent system is such a mess that someone in the crowd – maybe from here in Boulder, maybe from India – might just find the needle in the haystack.

So get involved.  If you are out there and have some skills in the area, click on the link and get to work.  Help make our patent ecosystem a little better and you can do well by doing good.

On a side note, I’m stoked about Articles One’s current success.  Good luck fighting the good fight and I wish you the best of luck against Interval Licensing LLC.

Shareholder Representative Service recently published a nice short piece on things one should consider before becoming a shareholder representative.

You can find it here: http://www.shareholderrep.com/Tips.pdf

Bottom line, consider the responsibility very carefully.