Blogged his interview with Charlie Rose over at Business Catapult blog.

Unique and interesting perspective.  Check it.

I wrote last week about transcending (and including) the current financial crisis.  The inspiration for that piece was partially grounded in a column I had written for Colorado Biz magaine, which runs today.  Assuming (as I did in the blog post) that the world continues to operate after the bailout and election, some US economic sectors will be stronger than others.  And all signs indicate — and even the New York Times, in a relative comparison of city-by-city economies (pw req’d) corroborate — that a strong entrepreneurial trend is sweeping Colorado.

The trend is based on what many entreprenurial thought leaders — from investors to serial entrepreneurs to the lawyers and PR pros who live through the cycles — recognize as sectors that will thrive, even during a predictably rough national economic period.  These sectors are technology (and in Colorado, especially IT and web 2.0), energy and other CleanTech / GreenTech / Sustainability companies.

In the CoBiz column, I propose a few potential results of the current Wall St. banking crisis:

Many investing “truths” have forever changed. The question is: which ones? We suspect — and a quick query of investors this week has quasi-confirmed — that core investing principles are intact, but the situational realities as to who will be an interesting funding candidate are likely to be quite different.

Intuition suggests that fewer wealthy people will be making investments, but with the investment banking sector suddenly and irreversibly (lets’ check that assumption in a few months) extinct, more money and talent could focus on growth sectors like green tech.

It’s also possible that money will re-localize. Investors will want their money to be a bit more tied to tangible nearby investments as a backlash to the ideological bankruptcy of radical derivatives. Further, as investors take a deep stock of their values, the evolution toward a more holistic investing approach will amplify.

But that’s all speculation.  What’s real is that on November 21st, forty of the strongest Colorado start-up businesses will present to hundreds of venture capitalists and angel investors at the annual Angel Capital Summit.  And at the end of that day, we will present a once-in-a-generation opportunity to “not only learn about but participate in the co-creation the future of our regional business ecology.”

With Anita Burke telling us all how to measure sustainable business practices at lunch, and the as-yet-uncomfirmed special appearance by one of Colorado’s favorite political leaders open the day, it promises to be an exciting “first day of the rest of your career” type of experience.

Hope to see you there.

Over at the Business Catapult blog, we just wrote about the detailed and confusing report from the Small Business Administration (SBA) on angel investing.

One conclusion is that there are at least two major categories of angels — professional, accredited angels who number roughly 5,000 nationally and made just shy of 1,000 investments in 2006; and casual, unaccredited angels, who may number as many as 600,000 nationally, and could account for $20 billion injected into the US entrepreneurial economy.

In short, nobody does a good job tracking this data, because the activity is so distributed.  And while contradictions continue, we have yet to see any more comprehensive report.

Care to learn more?

Well, it took me a while.  I came off my game for almost two weeks.

But on a drive home from an inspiring meeting with Kevin (Johansen, my Business Catapult business partner and long time co-consipirator), I fully and completely transcended (and included, as the integral school teaches) the financial crisis.  That is to say, the crisis is a moment in time, and will be over sometime soon.  The future will have to include the history and (future) present of the impact of the crisis, but we will move beyond it.  So I am THERE.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss …

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

What am I talking about?

Continue Reading »

You need to watch a video that captures, in just over five minutes, a strong analogy of the American mindset.

Last week, Steven Colbert had Cornell West on his show.  It is an incredible interview.  Two highly influential American change agents — each of whom has built an impactful and borderline absurd public persona — face off in a risky (albeit taped, not live) venue.

What’s the nuance?

Beyond the good theater — which was in ample supply on both sides –  I think there’s something deeper.   At the heart of the debate is a question of values.  And as we’re seeing revealed here is an allegory for the evolving American mind, times, and people.

Take a look, and tell me if you see it, too.

I couldn’t be more excited about getting to work with AWhere on helping design a collective intelligence engine for the UN Foundation.

Here’s a recent two-part intervew I did at the AWhere Blog with UNF change agent Kevin Starace.  In his words:

As chair of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Performance Subcommittee we’re mandated to help the sector improve effectiveness.   Starting in 2007, we’ve been trying to find a technology that enables several things:

1. This one is the most important: we’ve got to break down silos across all boundaries, sectors and specialties, including but not limited to funding, institutional knowledge and to create a sector-wide peer review process.
2. Performance evaluation – how are we, collectively, achieving these huge global targets?  Specifically, those in alignment with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG), including an 85% distribution of bed nets and reduction of child mortality.
3. Provide platform by which all health initiatives can input information that is relevant to scientific advancement, investment evaluation, and providing a complete picture of what’s going on at the ground level.

After I first talked to [AWhere CEO] John Corbett, I realized that the common denominator for all of those problems is location.  What matters is not our organizational and bureaucratic divisions, but what’s happening to the people on the ground.  If we organize information sharing around the location of the problem, it helps us create a new collaborative holistic vantage point…

The ability to geographically correlate meaningful information from disparate sources in real time will forever alter our ability to improve the lives of people around the world.  That has never been possible before, and it’s literally going to change everything.

On a personal level, it’s incredibly humbling to even think in these terms.  That I’m helping design a small part of it is an honor.   Any advice?

Can you concentrate?  I’ve been having a rough time this week.

I have promised myself to leave politics out of this blog, but it’s not out of my mind.

And the economic debacle … I’m hardly consoled with the “I told you so” feeling that has been driving me nuts.  Since there were only one or two people who could stand to listen to me ramble on about you just can’t separate risk from reward for the past several years, it’s even less comforting to have been right.  As a good friend told me (in relation to a lawsuit he was losing), “being right is the booby prize.”  So where’s my booby?

In more trenchant commentary, see the following:

• The Underlying Basics of Finance and Credit is a great piece of  analysis of how we got here.

• Paul Kedrosky is doing a great job covering the story from a digital age perspective.

What happens over the weekend is anyone’s guess.  Enjoy the debates.

At Business Catapult, we’re powering the Angel Capital Summit.

As I wrote at the Business Catapult Blog,

As supporting partners, Business Catapult provides our entire suite of tools, and provide many new features to what would otherwise be a typical investor fair.  For instance:

• Investors can review deals prior to the conference, and participate in a collective intelligence process that identifies the best companies to present.
• Entrepreneurs use our Benchmark Survey as one component of the nomination process, and are able to refine their plan, based on the results of the business logic we build into the Benchmark Report.
• Trusted Advisors can contribute to the deal screening process, and gain an insight into the strongest new companies in the region.
• Organizations, including Business Schools, Small Business Development Center (SBDCs), incubators, angel investor networks and entrepreneurial meetup groups can each organize a group on the system, nominate their entrepreneurs and, after the conference is open, see the entirety of the pool of entrepreneurs who nominated themselves.

Entrepreneurs can apply now.  Investors can learn about unusual benefits.  Coloradans can look forward to what we’re calling an Entrepreneurial Renaissance, for as usual, the independently minded (seen the polls?) folks in the Centennial State are thinking differently.

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of reading and thinking about what it means to have virtual countries, as an extension of virtual communities.  I’ve investigated citizenship, legal and virtual, and have learned a lot about island nations, especially Sealand.

One of my current projects is designing a hybrid social network and media portal for citizens of a large South American nation.  We’re facing an interesting philosophical question — are we cataloging the experience of these ‘trans-nationalists’ (a term coined by the project founder), or are we creating a virtual country within which people fully exist, ala Second Life (but without the 3-d graphics).

Trans-nationalism becomes an interesting sub-text, the living of a life not in one country’s culture or another, but in two simultaneously.

The design challenges never end, which is the fun of nuance intelligence.

My “new best friend” Anita Burke has sent me two pieces recently that demonstrate how quickly climate change is affecting business in financial and legal ways.

First, a court in the UK just exonerated protesters who caused $70,000 worth of damage to a coal plant, using a British legal tenet exemplified as “it’s OK to break down a door to fight a fire inside the building.”

Summary:

The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified
in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power
station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked
ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared
six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage.

Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a “lawful excuse” to
damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even
greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of “lawful excuse”
under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to
property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door
of a burning house to tackle a fire.

Full story in The Independent.

Second, as the result of a high-profile law suit, New York State reached a legal agreement with  XCel energy that they must submit a comprehensive report of the financial risk related to climate change.

As [New York State] Attorney General Andrew Cuomo stated, the “agreement sets a new industry-wide precedent that will force companies to disclose the true financial risks that climate change poses to their investors.”

Read the entire legal briefing from Nixon Peabody.

What’s the nuance?

Climate change is hitting the balance sheets.  This will, in fact, change everything.