I was watching President Bush pardon two turkeys this morning on CNBC (appropriately named “May” and “Flower”) and, as I often do this time of year, reflected on all the things I have to be thankful for.  After spending the day thinking about them all, I decided it really came down to four things:

1) my family;

2) my friends;

3) my fund, and

4) all the fun I’ve had this year living in their increasingly concentric “spheres of influence”.

May you be able to enjoy the holidays with your family and friends.  Happy Thanksgiving!!!

“Paternal hiatus”… that’s what I’m calling my recent absence from my office and blog.  A long story cut short, my then pregnant wife was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and put on strict bed rest several weeks ago so I checked out to attend to her and our 2.5 year old son.  The pre-eclampsia developed into eclampsia and necessitated the delivery of our second child  5 weeks early.  We now have a beautiful (thanks to her mother) and healthy baby girl and both she and my wife are now doing fine.  I thank God for both.  Since the birth of our daughter, I’ve spent a number of my sleepless nights thinking (as I always seem to do) and will publish several posts based on my recent thoughts in the days to come.  I thank all of you that reached out to my wife and I during the past couple of months.   We greatly appreciate your kindness and support.

I’ve been buried on the home front so I thought I’d post this video to give you something to do while I ponder my thoughts for my next post. Hope you enjoy.

Well, I survived my wife’s 1st week of proscribed bed rest thanks, in large part, to my “professional mobility” and frequently found myself counting my blessings…which leads me to this post.  Is professional mobility a blessing or a curse?  I suppose it helps to define “professional mobility” first.  For me, it is the ability to work anytime from anywhere and is achieved thanks to the nature of venture capital and some combination of technology/communication devices (e.g. cell phone, Blackberry, and/or laptop with wireless data connection and service).  I first became truly “mobile” in 2000 and have been so ever since (except where culture or logistics dictated that I be somewhere in person).  While I first considered my mobility a blessing thanks to a new ability to get work done from somewhere other than my then bland cubicle at Intel, it quickly evolved into somewhat of a curse as I found myself working 18-20 hour days on most days… just because I could… and it seemed others were too so why shouldn’t I.

I eventually learned to go “off the grid” for at least small periods of time and set boundaries otherwise such that my professional mobility curse reverted back into a blessing.  So, my question to those of you who read this post: is professional mobility a blessing or a curse…and why?  For me, it is now clearly a blessing and has allowed me balance work & life efficiently and I can never see going back to the way it was.

I’ve been buried the past couple of weeks but thought I’d take a few minutes to share a brief historical aside about VC in OC.  I sat down with Chuck Martin several weeks ago to speak with him about the history of venture capital in Orange County and to get his perspective on the future of VC in OC and the industry as a whole (thanks again, Chuck).  For those of you that don’t know Chuck, he is considered the patriarch of venture capital in southern California.  Chuck formed Enterprise Partners Venture Capital in Orange County in early 1984 (holding the final close in February 1985) with roughly $30M under management from a mixture of institutional and corporate limited partners and began building his team and portfolio.  He explained how the industry was much more collegial back then and that Enterprise had its pick of the litter being virtually the only institutional investor in the area.  He brought Jim Berglund in to set up their La Jolla office in 1985 and Jim Gauer to open their L.A. office in 1988 — essentially giving them complete coverage of southern California’s venture landscape back then.  Chuck also pointed out how a $30M fund was formidable in those days and that their first few funds were all top-decile performers.  We discussed a number of deals and related activities at length and then moved on to the future of VC in OC.  Like a lot of us in the industry here, Chuck is very bullish on our collective prospects here in OC given the breadth and depth of industries in southern California as a whole, the sheer number of and our proximity to top technical universities that consistently produce cutting-edge research (CalTech, USC, UCLA, UCI, UCR, and UCSD), as well as our favorable geographical climate and general quality of life.  I, for one, am very encouraged about the VC ecosystem in and around OC and feel our impact to the region as a whole is just now beginning to be understood and appreciated.  Until next time, aloha.

I learned a lot at Intel and one of the more innocuous things I learned is to establish ground rules before engaging others in open communication in a public forum – especially if one (or more) of the topics presents possible differing viewpoints – so let me attempt to establish some basic ground rules for this blog as it is clearly “open communication in a public forum”.

Rule #1: I want to reiterate that I am and will be sharing my personal perspectives on a variety of topics in my capacity as a human being and citizen of Orange County, CA, USA…and only in this capacity will I communicate on this blog.  If you want my professional opinion, this isn’t the place but I’m easy enough to find.

Rule #2: This is simply my personal blog and nothing more. If you want in-depth reporting on the VC industry, subscribe to the Venture Capital Journal or one of the other seemingly endless publications on the subject matter. Similarly, if you’re looking for local start-up company analysis, best go elsewhere as I won’t go there here for a number of reasons.

Rule #3: With this post, I’m hereby introducing the concept of a “sidebar” wherein I’ll either establish one or more points (e.g. these rules), digress to clarify and/or correct a previous post (rather than re-posting), or to introduce a random thought or two out of out of place on OC VC.

Rule #4: I’m bloggin’ simply to have some fun (yeah, I’m a bit geeky), learn a few things along the way, share my thoughts on a few topical items, and to see if we all can’t stimulate the OC VC ecosystem in some meaningful way through our social interaction on-line (even if the only result is an increase in blogs about VC in OC or similar matters). Now, back to your regularly scheduled program…