Three, but not four.  This will be the year that I break my streak of returns.  The realities of grad school preclude a trip.  To all those who will be going: have fun!

At some point in my life, with any luck sooner rather than later, I will be a self-sustaining entrepreneur. What better place to learn than Silicon Valley?

SDForum, a Bay-area tech entrepreneurship organization, put on a panel discussion last week about venture finance.  Since the event was nearby in the Palo Alto offices of DLA Piper, I had no reason not to attend.

The three panelists were all entrepreneurs, investors, or both: Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC; Touraj Parang, Jaxtr; and Bill Reichert, Garage Technology Ventures. Sachin Maheshwari of Opus Capital served as moderator.

I was surprised by the demographics of the audience: it was far older than I expected, maybe 40 years on average. I think I was the youngest person in attendance. One thing that didn’t surprise me was the overwhelming maleness of the 50-70 entrepreneur attendees.

It was a good discussion.  They touched on numerous venture finance topics, from dilution to investor accredidation and everything in between.  However, the strongest point was also the simplest: the best time to seek outside investment money is never.  It’s not a new idea (one example), but it makes all kind of sense, especially for a capital-light venture like a web startup.  Bootstrapping, FTW!

One of the classes that I will be taking this quarter is MSE472: Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar.  The speaker list is impressive: the founders of Tesla Motors, TechCrunch, and BitTorrent are all on the docket.  Best of all, the presentations are available for free as podcasts.  The past ones were very good, so I have high hopes for those scheduled this quarter.

I just got back from my first bike ride near Stanford, and I can conclude two things:

1. I’m really out of shape.
2. It’s beautiful here!

My route was fairly short and relatively flat, but it did have a few fun parts. I was feeling pretty low after the main climb, but a multi-mile descent at speed put a smile back on my face. The weather was clear, so the views were nice, and the route had light traffic and few traffic-control devices.

The challenge now is to make myself hit the road more often.

Wow, I’m back in college!

After the pulley fiasco, the Subaru performed beautifully, and I made it to California around noon last Friday. That was one long drive – I don’t think I’ll be doing that again.

The Stanford campus is beautiful, as is the weather. My apartment, part of the Rains houses, is southeast of the main academic part of campus. I am about a mile from where most of my classes will be held, but I’m still on Stanford property.

Have I mentioned how beautiful the Stanford campus is? The landscaping alone is worth the price of attendance. Things look pretty good even in the student housing.

How about a tour of my apartment? There are two ways to approach. The first passes by some nice plants:

The second, well… it also passes by some nice plants:

My apartment is on the third floor. It’s the corner unit in the above photo. There are four bedrooms, so I will have three roommates. None of them have arrived. Upon walking in the main door, we find the living room and dining room:

Looking left, we find a kitchen:

Walking past the kitchen and bathroom, we get to my room:

It’s not huge, but it’s adequate:

Classes start in about two weeks. The time between then and now will be spent relaxing, getting to know people, and working on some pet projects. Like more blog posting.

This morning marked the beginning of my 2000-mile trek to California. Unfortunately, just an hour into the drive, I hit a snag.

I was cruising down the freeway, enjoying the beautiful morning, when I noticed the “low voltage” warning light on the dash. “No problem,” I thought. “It must be a broken belt. I’ll just put a new one on.” And so I pulled off at the next exit and stopped at a gas station. When I stopped, I heard a loud “THUNK!” “How odd,” I thought.

When I opened the hood, I found all of the belts to be in perfect condition. The actual problem was much worse than I feared: the crank pulley had fallen off the crank.

I got out my toolbox and began taking things apart. Here’s what I believe happened: the bolt holding the crank pulley on the crank loosened up, which allowed the pulley to fall off of the crank. The pulley and crank are keyed, and the loosened pulley wore away the key on the crank and the channel on the pulley enough so that they no longer engage.

So what now? I believe that a new pulley will engage enough of the key to be functional. Unfortunately, there are no Subaru dealers nearby. Fortunately, my dad is coming to the rescue with a new pulley. I’m glad that the problem occurred while I was still relatively close to Minneapolis. I would have been in a world of hurt if the failure happened in the middle of the Nevada desert.

I am currently sitting at that gas station, mooching off of a nearby beauty parlor’s WiFi, so at least I can stay entertained for a while.

Here’s to hoping that the new pulley fixes the problem.