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Feld Thoughts

Increasing The Efficiency of LawyersJanuary 7

I have 2,143 lawyer jokes queued up.  Here’s a good one:

The devil visited a lawyer’s office and made him an offer. "I can arrange some things for you, " the devil said. "I’ll increase your income five-fold. Your partners will love you; your clients will respect you; you’ll have four months of vacation each year and live to be a hundred. All I require in return is that your wife’s soul, your children’s souls, and their children’s souls rot in hell for eternity."  The lawyer thought for a moment. "What’s the catch?" he asked.

Now some of my good friends are lawyers and several of my very best friends are ex-lawyers.  You probably know one of them – my partner at Foundry Group - Jason Mendelson.  When Jason started his blog, he made the wise choice of starting a series titled Law Firm 2.0.  His first post – Why Start-up Lawyers Frustrate Me – pissed off all of his lawyer friends, generated 54 comments, and was reprinted all over the place.  Not a bad start for a blog.

He continued posting about

Amazing BrainJanuary 7

There are many things I love about my wife Amy, but I especially like her brain.  Over the holidays, she came up with the idea for having a year of living alphabetically.  As a writer, she spends a lot of time with words and – besides have one of the most amazing vocabularies I’ve ever encountered (I don’t every have to use the lookup feature on the kindle – I just should “Amy, what does “ossiferous” mean?) – she’s really good at not misusing dashes or having run-on sentences.

B is for Being.  The first part of this week is being brought to you by the letter B and Amy explores Buddha’s last words.  If Buddha was Yoda, he would have said “Best you do, there is not less or more” before he died.

Is Your City Growing?January 5

I’m always amused by articles that are headlined “Jobs outlook uncertain for 2009”.  No shit sherlock.

I was pleased, however, to learn that Boulder, Colorado is one of thirteen cities (“metropolitan areas”) out of 381 in the US that are actually growing. 

The cities that are growing are Boulder, CO.; Lafayette and Louisiana, LA; Bethesda, MD; Jacksonville, NC; Binghamton, NY; Oklahoma City; OK.; State College, PA.; and Brownsville, El Paso, Laredo, McAllen, and San Antonio, TX.

I get LA, but Brownsville, El Paso, Laredo, and McAllen?  Must have something to do with that electronic border fence thing.

Don’t Forget to PlayJanuary 5

As everyone gets fully back to work after the Christmas / New Year holiday season, there was something that you just did with friends and family that will have a huge positive impact on your work (and life) if you apply it going forward.

While it might sound trite, make sure you spend social time with the people you work with.  Or – in English - “play.”

It’s 2009 and we can (and should) be optimistic about the future, but we are still in the midst of an economic down cycle.  I have no idea when the cycle turns positive, but the notion of enjoying social time together with the people you work with applies in both good times and bad.

Most of the people I’ve talked to this morning seems rested, positive, and ready to get going again.  Some of this is a natural dynamic that seems to happen when the clock in Times Square counts down to 0 and the calendar clicks over to a new year.  Some it is because of all the sugar we just ate.  Some of this is because many of us got to spend a lot of time with friends and family that we don’t see as often as we’d like (or – additionally – that we are now finished spending this time with family for a while.)

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we spend at least 33% of our lives at work (and often > 50% of our waking time working).  Don’t forget to hang out and have fun with the people you work with.  Lunch anyone?

Entrepreneurship in Boulder in 2009January 1

2008 was a fantastic year for entrepreneurship in Boulder.  While the VC firm I’m part of (Foundry Group) invests nationally, the partners have made a deliberate decision to live and work in Boulder.  As a result, we believe it is our responsibility to participate actively in Boulder’s entrepreneurial community.  I’ve been living here since 1995 and have seen and helped Boulder evolve into a serious entrepreneurial hub, as written about by my friend Ben Casnocha in his article Start-Up Town in The American Magazine.

There are many people that are now engaged in the Boulder entrepreneurial community in a wide variety of ways.  I believe that entrepreneurship and innovation are the fundamental drivers of long term economic growth in the United States and have dedicated my work life to this area.  Even thought no one really knows what the 2009 holds for us, I’m hopeful that the entrepreneurial energy and momentum that has been generated in Boulder over the past few years will continue strongly in 2009.

To get us started, Andrew Hyde put up two posts that are relevant to all Boulder-based software and Internet entrepreneurs.  The first is