Super Duper Blog Tag: Five Things About Me

Owen over at Ugh!!'s Greymatter Honeypot just tagged me on the "Blog Tag: 5 Things About Me" meme. Here are 5 things you may may not already know about me:
1) I'm an avid University of Florida sports fan (and alum), loving the year of the Gator so far. I'm looking for Fiesta Bowl tickets or UF season ticket holders who aren't making the trip to see the Gators and Buckeyes battle for #1. Any ideas, please email me...
2) PayPerPost wasn't my most controversial, disruptive investment. That was backing Napster when Shawn & Sean needed some cash to scale beyond a single server. In fact, we were the only fund to make money on Napster -- strange but true, for such a world-changing company. Unfortunately, Napster never made the transition PPP made today to maximize value for all constituents.
3) We're the house in the neighborhood on Halloween and Christmas that annoys the neighbors. Actually, our Christmas decorations are pretty tasteful, but Halloween is downright scary as my daughters get into the act looking very Ring- and Grudge-like.
4) My only two groomsmen when I married my college sweetheart at the Herlong Mansion in 1991 were my dad and brother. I'd choose the same today.
5) I met my "college sweetheart" back in the seventh grade (Oak Grove). Despite my overtures, throughout high-school we were "just friends", but choosing the same dorm as her for our first UF semester was the smartest investment I've ever made ;-)

Who started Blog-Tag? Jeff Pulver gets credit this time around, but he also mentioned some bloggers before him (with no link?). It's a nice way to learn some tidbits behind the keyboard of your favorite bloggers -- just enough to keep everyone from flaming Blog-Tag as a big chainblog nuisance (although that's coming, I'm sure).

I'll keep the chain going with tags to Jason Baptiste, Steve Spalding, Rich Swier, Peter Pezaris, and Eric Marcoullier.

PayPerPost Gets Some Love, and Gives Some

Arrington had some nice things to say about one of my portfolio companies today. So did Scoble. Interesting that neither one touched the topic of undisclosed affiliate marketing bloggers -- a multi-billion dollar FTC magnet (supposedly 40% of Amazon sales come from affiliate links -- with disclosure requirements entirely absent in their Operating Agreement). Luckily, PPP's Disclosure Policy framework can help all those affiliate bloggers who have hundreds of undisclosed aff posts in their SE-indexed archives...

That's not the only thing PPP is helping with. They just launched another $1000 puzzle -- about RockStartup. If you haven't already found RockStartup, the world's first real-time reality show, check out what it's like in the belly of a venture-backed startup. After you've done that, collect this piece #19 and find/assemble the full puzzle first to win $1000.

Happy Birthday FVB!

Well loyal readers (even that guy who found FVB just because he googled for "horse porn"), it's been a great year.

My goal for the past year was to blog at least once a week on a variety of Florida, Venture Capital and Technology topics. CHECK! Since that time I've done 80 diverse posts, kicked off the FVB community (thanks MyBlogLog!), created a mind-blowing stir by backing THE Consumer Generated Advertising Marketplace (PayPerPost: try it, you'll like it!), helped launch DisclosurePolicy.org and met a ton of great people in Florida and beyond. A nice surprise was how many non-Floridians follow FVB for general VC topics or to track Florida startup activity.

If next year brings the same level of learning, discussion, networking and investments; I think I'll just explode. So, to FVB's subscribers, community members and casual readers, I present a year-end KangaRua -- thanks for reading and keep coming back!