I attended First Tuesday on June 19, (which, of course, was
not the first
Tuesday in June). But never mind, it was a great party, as
usual. According
to one news report, over 800 people were in attendance. It
was back at
Brooklyn's, which is a perfect place to hold such an event.
It's a two-level club
next to the Pepsi Center. While the local newspapers are
running
stories about telecom layoffs and commercial real estate
gluts, this was a
very upbeat crowd. I even did a reality check with Dilpreet
Jammu, senior
manager, business and service integration, for Nortel
Networks
(http://www.nortel.com), figuring that if anyone had reason
to be gloomy it would
be him. Nope. His demeanor hasn't changed in the six months
I have known
him.
As I walked from the parking into the building, I ran into
my friends from Holme
Roberts & Owen (http://www.hro.com) -- Mark Weakley,
Suzy Thevenet and
Linda Wackwitz. Mark wanted to tell me that a client,
Lefthand Networks
(http://www.lefthandnetworks.com), has been moving right
along with its VC
funding. On a related note, Boulder-based Sequel Venture
Partners
(http://www.sequelvc.com), one of the investors in Lefthand,
just announced
that it has closed its third limited partnership, Sequel
Limited Partnership
III, providing it with $180 million for venture investment.
Sequel has done some
heavy-hitting investing in such companies as MatchLogic,
XCare.net, DataPlay, Finali,
netLibrary, Requisite Technology, Myogen, Allos
Therapeutics, HighGround
Systems, Zight and ServiceMagic. Another investment is
Petroleum Place
(http://www.petroleumplace.com), which I recently profiled
for eMileHigh
(http://www.emilehigh.com/news/viewnews.asp?alt=100001325&author=Lainson).
Rick Patch, a partner at Sequel, is quoted in a recent
Upside article
(http://www.upside.com/texis/mvm/money/story?id=3b30e5e01)
on investment in
Colorado. Even though it was written by an
"outsider," it's a good
description of life here in the state.
Once I got inside First Tuesday, I didn't do as much
circulating as I do at these
events because I was trying to figure out how to eat a plate
full of
Mexican food without utensils. It couldn't be done. As I
juggled my plate
and napkins, I chatted with Yvonne Lynott from Lynott &
Associates, a
PR and marketing firm based in Niwot. She introduced me to a
client, Linda
Bush, CEO of SafeRent (http://www.saferent.com), which has
gotten more than
$21 million in funding, most recently $13 million in a third
round. Linda
said that even more investors want in; she was in talks with
one
group just that week.
Yvonne, who also serves as an advisor to the Colorado
Technology Incubator
(http://www.btionline.org), and I spent time talking about
local singers. We
had both caught Sally Taylor (http://www.sallytaylor.com) on
Saturday at the
party releasing her latest CD. Sally, the daughter of James
and Carly Taylor,
lives in Boulder when she isn't touring. Sally is very cute
as she plays to her fans,
generally a group of equally attractive 20-something women
friends.
And then I was raving to Yvonne about Wendy Woo
(http://www.wendywoo.com),
whose CD launch party I attended in Boulder on Sunday. I was
so impressed
with her latest recording effort, Ecolalia, that I have
purchased multiple
copies to pass out to friends. The CD features Wendy singing
and playing acoustic
guitar, and her father reading his poetry. It’s very
Boulder, which means it's
much more folky than her live performances and not to
everyone's taste. Her
live performances are skewed heavily toward blues
("Down and Dirty" happens
to be a signature piece). She'll be opening for Karla Bonoff
in Boulder July
5 and for Sophie B. Hawkins in Denver on July 9. If you want
to hire some live
music for an event, I highly recommend her. She told me that
about a month ago
that she was flown out to Oklahoma to play for a private
party after someone heard
her at an outdoor concert in Denver. She'll be spending the
summer working on a new
CD and playing local clubs. In the fall or winter, she will
most likely begin a national tour.
Speaking of music, First Tuesday attendee Alex Teitz,
editor-of chief of
FEMMUSIC (http://www.femmusic.com), told me that his site
was included in a new book
for songwriters.
Brad Spirrison, managing editor of eMileHigh (http://www.emilehigh.com),
was
there taking pictures. Erika Brown from netGoddess
(http://netgoddess.com)
was also there. And I spotted Deborah Arhelger from the
Front Range Forum
for Women Entrepreneurs (http://www.fwe.org). (We also saw
each other later
in the week at an outdoor Woo concert in Boulder -- hey,
when times get
tough, there's always lots of live music around the area.).
Spire guys Mike Gellman and
Brandon Shevin were making the rounds. As sponsors, they had
a table upstairs. I also saw
Jack Mason and Mike Usery of EnergyWindow
(http://www.energywindow.com), a company I
profiled for eMileHigh
(http://www.emilehigh.com/news/viewnews.asp?alt=100001282&author=Lainson).
