I am pleased to announce the formation of K9 Ventures II, L.P. – A $40M technology-focused micro-VC fund. This new $40M fund is backed by several high quality institutional limited partners including university endowments, foundations, family offices and fund of funds and key individuals.

“There is no such thing as a capital efficient company (at least in Silicon Valley). There are only two types of companies — those that attract capital, and those than don’t. And you obviously want to be the former.”

IndexTank (@IndexTank) has been acquired by LinkedIn! Huge congratulations to the entire IndexTank Team and especially to IndexTank’s founder Diego Basch (@dbasch).

Fifteen years ago, in 1996, while I was still a student at Carnegie Mellon University, I wrote an article (blog post in today’s parlance) about the future of computing…

Today, I am pleased to welcome Occipital in to the K9 Ventures portfolio. The company announced today that it is raising $7M in a Series A led by the Foundry Group.

I’m pleased to announce that K9 Ventures’ portfolio company BackType (@BackType) has been acquired by Twitter. Huge congratulations to the founding team of Christopher Golda (@golda) and Michael Montano (@michaelmontano)!

card.io lets any phone with a camera now become a credit card scanner! Or as I like to say: it’s Like Square, but without the square.

The impact of Ren’s technology is so fundamental that, if successful, it will completely change an entire market. Photography and imaging will never ever be the same again. What used to be “Ren’s Camera” is now the Lytro camera. Congratulations to Ren, and to the entire Lytro team. It’s been a phenomenal journey so far, and we’re just getting started.

The idea is the seed. It is the kernel that is the start of something new.
Ideas are powerful because they invade the mind. Once you are introduced to an idea, you cannot get it out of your head.
Ideas are what provide that little twist of ingenuity that can make or break a company.
Sometimes ideas are not revolutionary, but they get the ball rolling and without them, that wouldn’t happened. The best ideas are often simple ones. Maybe that is what a revolutionary idea is — an idea so simple that it sparks a revolution.

If you are a tech startup, where the technology is your business and not just supporting your business, then you shouldn’t be relying on any outsourcing, contracting, or distributed teams for developing your core product. I believe that the chance of success of a team is an order of magnitude higher when the entire team is local, in one room and working closely with each other. Bottom line: “When you stick a couple of smart people in a room together good things happen”