Quoted: Every six months I rethink the optimal startup go to market approach based on new insights gained at recent startups.

Quoted: But overall, as a contarian (AND as a resident of Washington State– the big winner by a nice margin), I was pleased by the results. The bottom line? It’s hard to quantify the COST of moving to a startup (months of distraction, expense, stress, loss of social network, etc), but my gut says (as it always has) that if you live in a technology hub like Seattle, NYC, Boston or Austin– hunker down and start building value- your success is based on how much value you can give versus how much you take.

Quoted: Earth Class Mail founder Ron Wiener is handing over the top executive spot at the Seattle company to Sarah Carr, a former Thomson and Print Inc. executive who has served as chief operating officer of the company for the past 10 months. Wiener, who founded the online postal mail company in 2004, will remain as chairman. Carr's title is listed as president, which means the company does not at the moment have a CEO. I have emails and calls into the company to get more clarification.

Quoted: "Thank god Friedman isn't heading up TARP. While we can debate whether the auto industry is worth saving, one thing that venture doesn't need is an extra $20 billion to 'invest.' Access to capital is not the issue. What we need are entrepreneurs working on breakthrough technologies (not 'financial engineering') that will transform existing industries and create brand new ones that did not heretofore exist.

Quoted: I think that's an important part of the economics of the web that are left out of most discussions of Internet business models. Yes, we are turning analog dollars into digital pennies in many cases. But we are also doing the same thing on the cost side, maybe even more so. And I think that "operating leverage" is going to create a lot of value.

The Balsamiq Mockups guy has made $100K in 5 months. I Faved about Balsamiq a little while back: http://faves.com/users/mohit/dot/127498885101

Quoted: That was a cute story, but now it's been just 5 months and today Peldi reports that he's just cleared $100,000 in sales of the four variations of his product. Talk about a simple tool coming along at just the write time! It's cool software, too.

Some very interesting data and perspectives on the VC model.

Quoted: The slides from his presentation are embedded below, but really all you need to look at is the one above. It shows that the money going into VC funds is now more than the money coming out of VC funds. That line was crossed last June and there is no going back anytime soon.