Hi, I’m David G. Cohen.

Boulder AWS Anonymous held its first meeting last week, and there were eleven attendees despite the fact that the meeting had been inadvertently scheduled at the same time as Obama’s inauguration. Attendees represented a wide variety of uses and potential uses of Amazon Web Services, ranging from hosting popular websites and application development to load balancing, autoscaling, and internet telephony. The group is encouraging anyone in the area interested in getting updates to join their Google Group and/or to attend the next meeting at The Cup, 1521 Pearl St, at 10:00 am on Wednesday February 18.

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Eric Marcoullier of Gnip has set up an email list exclusively for local startup executives.

Here’s who’s eligible to join:

1. Your company must be funded (at least some angel money)
2. C-level and VP level folks only; and
3. Open to all verticals, not just IT / Internet, etc.

There are already 70+ on the mailing list. Apply to join here.

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Kudos to Cameron Robertson and the other organizers for kicking off an on-campus web developers club at CU.

The first meeting of DIV, CU’s new student web development club, is taking place on January 28th at 6pm in the Bechtel Collaboratory (check out http://cudiv.com for full details). DIV was created to foster discussion about topics like PHP vs. Ruby on Rails, building scalable web apps, and creating clean HTML & CSS, while exploring potential startup and career paths. We are planning on pulling in a couple of local developers to offer their own take on working in Boulder’s startup community on the code side.

Check out CUDiv.com or drop them a note if you need more info.

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I love this post by Jessica Mah (thanks for the link to Dave McClure). Jessica talks about 3 types of “amateur entrepreneurs” and says she’s “been every single one of them.” And she’s learned from those experiences and won’t make them again.

Type 1 Amateur Entrepreneur: All ideas, no implementation.
Type 2 Amateur Entrepreneur: Lots of ideas and half assed implementations.
Type 3 Amateur Entrepreneur: Lots of ideas, lots of implementations, and absolutely no focus.

Have you been guilty of of being a Type 1, Type 2, or Type 3 amateur entrepreneur? Jessica explains that it’s not too late to reform.

If you find yourself as being an amateur entrepreneur, it’s not too late to change. Pick one idea that you’re passionate about, and whole-heartedley follow through with your implementation.

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Here’s a trio of interesting events coming up soon.

Web Directions North is taking place in Denver from February 2-6 and features 8 half-day workshops, a full day seminar focused on educating web professionals, a free education summit, parties, receptions, and two days skiing or boarding at Breckenridge. It’s aimed at all web professionals, and has a very diverse program.

WordCamp is taking place in Denver on February 28th. This WordPress centric event is for local bloggers, web developers, publishers, designers, internet and marketing enthusiasts, companies interested in blogging and/or building on WordPress. Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg will give a keynote talk, and there’s a great list of other presenters.

Finally, the Glue Conference is taking place in Denver on May 12 and 13. This conference is about the web as a platform and all of the bits and pieces, APIs and meta-data, standards and connectors that will help us to glue together the varying applications of the new platform. David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails, will keynote as part of the fantastic agenda.

I hope to see you at one or more of these events!

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This is a lesson that first time entrepreneurs in funded companies usually learn very quickly. I’m on the board of several companies currently, and if you know me you know that I rarely take an aggressive stance. I use the magic of subtle influence, not a brick over the head.

I’ve adopted Brad Feld’s mental model and I try to think of my role on the board as one in which I work for the CEO until the CEO no longer has my support. It’s binary. If I support the CEO then I work for him or her. If I don’t support the CEO, then it’s time to find a new one or to get off the board.

Using this framework I think of my role on the board as a my conduit to make constructive suggestions. I’m very careful to make sure my suggestions are never perceived as marching orders. And I’m supportive and not disappointed when my suggestions are not taken as long as I know the management team has been thoughtful about my suggestion.

Something I’ve seen a couple of times now is a CEO hiding behind the board. This is almost always going to backfire. Here’s how it usually works: Someone on the board or the whole board has a strong opinion on an issue, and the CEO points something out as a board decision to a vendor, employee, investor, or partner. The cart is then pulling the horse – this is the definition of dysfunction. Here’s the punch line. Often, the CEO will actually agree with the board on the issue, and usually the CEO is on the board too! It’s just easier to say “well, the board decided that…”

As a general rule of thumb, a CEO should never start any sentence with “The board said …” or “The board decided…” The CEO makes the decision. Always. Presenting something to a third party as a board decision is simply going to cause a loss of respect for the CEO. Replace “The board said…” with “I’ve decided…” Parenthetically, the advice of the board was taken. So what. That’s irrelevant.

The bottom line is that the CEO is the CEO and as such should make and take responsibility for all of the decisions made by the company. This is true even in the face of a strongly opinionated board member. Magically, when they do so, they’ll almost invariably earn respect from the board members rather than losing it as they might have feared.

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