Tim CFO

We have breakfast at the Claremont Hotel with Tim, who arrives yesterday in the Bay Area. Tim and Kitty have closed their life in Brooklyn to raise their two children, both under two, in California and around Kitty's friends (she is native to the state). Tim has taken a CFO role with venture-backed company Simbol which is in the renewables space. Simbol has proprietary technologies that strip precious minerals, in particular lithium, from the water produced in geothermal plants in Palm Springs. Tim is in his comfort zone having returned to the energy industry where he began his career at Enron.

From the Claremont, Sonnet and the kids visit Alison, whose wedding to Ivor where Sonnet and I met in 1993. Wow. I am with my friends at Correlation Ventures who had a small closing the other day and contemplating investing their dough while raising more capital. Recall this is a quant driven venture strategy and, as my friend Tony says, should "this jumbo fly" they will kill it (in my humble opinion). The venture industry inefficient when it comes to syndicating deals. Add to this A) 40% of US financings under-subscribed; B) the best companies tend to be in under-subscribed rounds and C) a VC has no idea at the time of investment if his company Google or a dog, well, you have a winner assuming, of course, your strategy exploits. While on venture, my friends at BlueRun sell Slide, founded by PayPal Max Levchin, to Google for $228 million while Industry Ventures in five of the 50 likely IPOs filed with the SEC. A nice week for venture.

From the East Bay, we drive to my parent's house in the mountains. Katie takes the kiddies leaving me and Sonnet to ourselves in the rental SUV. We listen to the SilverSun Pickups along the way as Christian treated us to their concert the night before at the Fox Theatre in Oakland. They are a new top band and we will definitely catch them when they come to London. Brixton, baby.