Welcome Back!

It's been a rush the last month. I got back to LA at the end of September and the next day Kelly and I were up to Oregon for Pierce and Kyla's wedding in Hood River. After the great event we went to Bend to visit Courtney and Adam Bledsoe. Following a wonderful, peaceful few days we drove back up to Portland and flew to SF. It was there that "Career Search Tour 2006" really took off. I met with Adam DeVito, the co-CEO at Big Boing. We spent a few hours discussing BB's upcoming business activities and opportunities. BB is a small, nimble new product and innovation group that partners with large companies - with a strong focus around 'play' and right brain development. Their business model differs from most innovation consulting groups because they typically own the intellectual property or at least structure deals in such a way that they have royalties and/or licenses. I have known Adam for several years and he is a very talented individual with a great team around him. It was an excellent start to the career search. In a future post I will discuss more on my thought process regarding the next step in my career. After Big Boing I visited a friend down at Skype and saw the eBay campus. eBay bought Skype for $1.3 billion back in 2005. It was considered a ridiculous amount by many at the time but considering Google just bought YouTube for even more maybe it wasn't. Following our visit at Skype Kelly, Scott Berkley and I went up to Yahoo! and attended their first open Yahoo! Hackday. I'm not a programmer so I was a little out of place but it was a fascinating event. It made a lot of noise in tech world, especially considering they brought in Beck - a well known band - that also happened to be one of Scott Berkley's top 3 bands of all time. Well done Yahoo! The tour continued when I met up with a young, former Sierra Ventures VC guy, turned entrepeneur - Nisan Gibbay. He just recently left his position at SV to pursue a new opportunity. In the meantime he's publishing reviews on startups. It's worth the read: check out www.startup-review.com. After my time in SF, Kelly and I drove up to Sonoma to meet up with a serial entrepreneur and well respected investor, Jerry Sanders. Jerry came out to Oxford in August and gave a three-day lecture series on start-ups. I attended his class and when I found out he lived in the SF area I arranged a time to visit with him. Kelly and I took some time to visit a couple wineries and then headed down near Walnut Creek to visit the parents of Kelly's old teammate Nicole Branagh. It was a great break from the city and all the meetings. Our time in SF came to end. We headed back to the 'greater LA area' also known at The OC.