Physical activity has long been known to bestow such benefits as helping to maintain a healthy weight and reduce stress, not to mention tightening those abs. Now, a growing body of research is showing that regular exercise—as simple as a brisk 30- to 45-minute walk five times a week—can boost the body's immune system, increasing the circulation of natural killer cells that fight off viruses and bacteria. And exercise has been shown to improve the body's response to the influenza vaccine, making it more effective at keeping the virus at bay.

"No pill or nutritional supplement has the power of near-daily moderate activity in lowering the number of sick days people take," says David Nieman, director of Appalachian State University's Human Performance Lab in Kannapolis, N.C.

via online.wsj.com

Tuesday, I joined Howard Morgan, Josh Kopelman, Chris Fralic, Phin Barnes, and our GC Doug Bernstein on First Round Capital’s tour of NYC startup spaces—temp offices and incubators where there were critical masses of companies doing innovative things.  We went to two Sunshine Suites locations, all three TechSpaces, the Incubator at RoseTech, the NYU/Poly Incubator, and New Work City.  Our goals were twofold—one, of course, to meet new and interesting companies at an early stage and two, to let people know that we’re an active NYC investor willing to look at companies at such an early stage that the whole company is two people, two desks, and a whiteboard.  At the same time, we pride ourselves on being a hustling, customer focused business—like the companies that we invest in—so showing people that we’re willing to come to them versus being an “ivory tower” VC that waits for you to go to them.

Miko Mercer at LaunchSquad helped us with some of the PR event, which included a great piece in the WSJ and awesome coverage in CenterNetworks.  She collaborated with Ben Kessler on a great video record of the days events as well:

I learned quite a lot about the startup ecology during the walk:

1) First off, every space like this needs an advocate—not just someone to call when the toilet overflows but someone who not only knows the companies in their space, the residents by their first name, the potential synergies, but who is also tapped into the outside world that these companies live in.  I was struck by the shepard-like position that Bruce Niswander holds at NYU/Poly and how much Paula Hughes at Techspace Chelsea was tapped into the local startup community and paying attention to that world through social media. 

2) Some spaces are more tech-y than others—and one thing we learned is that there’s a big difference between a startup incubator and a temp office space.  I thought we were going to run into more bootstrapped companies like Yipit than we did—two guys putting out the money to work in a small office because they found themselves to be more productive outside of their house.  What’s clear is that most entpreneurs are not spending their own money on desk space—but perhaps to their own detriment.  Some of the facilities here were really impressive—and clearly there was a sense of collaboration among the teams we met that you don’t necessarily find when everyone is working remotely.

3)  Much more needs to be done to bridge the gap between the communites inside these spaces and the community outside.  Most of us at First Round hadn’t seen all of these spaces, and many of the residents I spoke to didn’t necessarily know about things like nextNY or any of the more focused meetups that have been going on.  I talked to a few of the spaces about hosting more events for outsiders to bridge that gap and help advertise what they have.

4) VCs are much more resiliant than I thought they’d be.  While not all of them made it the whole length of the trip, I was pretty impressed with the walking speed and general resistance to the 20-degree temps shown by the First Round Capital team.

5) A place where the innovation community could use a little more glue is among service providers, consultants, and investors.  I ran into two PR firms that had done work for First Round portfolio companies that I didn’t know too much about—and a graphic design and user experience shop that had built some of the largest ecommerce sites in the world.  These are important resources for an invester to be able to share with companies—and they also see a fair number of companies themselves.

6) Startups generally suck at “wide open networking”—where the purpose of a meeting isn’t specifically stated.  There were a bunch of companies that I met that didn’t initially come out to see us who hesitated because they weren’t sure if they were supposed to be pitching, if there was a signup, or they had already raised money.  As an entrepreneur, you need to be out there building a huge network.  Even if you raised money, as a feeder fund for larger VC firms, we probably have better relationships with most of the top tier funds than anyone else—and if you’re not right for us, we’re happy to pass you on.  At the same time, with more than 60 companies in our portfolio, it would be really surprising to me if there wasn’t someone you couldn’t strike a biz dev deal with, get bought by, etc.  Startups need to do a better job of realizing the opportunity that arises when someone with a big network just wants to shoot the shit and talk shop. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about areas I’m interested in from an investment standpoint—and there are a few problems I’m fascinated by, or ones I continuously go back to.  I’d love to see people working on these or talk to people with interesting ideas around them.

1) Social CRM/CMS/Plugging into my profession: Right now, I’m “tapped in” to my career in a very high maintenance way.  I blog and tweet, hoping that relevant people will find my posts, and then I maintain relationships with the people that interact with my content through email and DMs.  Some of those folks wind up on LinkedIn, some don’t… while others show up on my TwitterRemote page, or tag it, Digg it, RT it, and if I don’t notice it, they just fall by the wayside.

What I want to know is how I can a) capture and organize all of the inbound new professionals in my life as per their *total web presence* (like telling me when a NYC entrepreneur reads my blog or follows me on Twitter), b) make sure my content finds it’s way to relevant professionals and c) make sure that I’m reading the content of all the relevant people in my field.  Also, I want to understand trends and topics of things being published and read in my networks.

To some degree, this is what should be going on at the Wall Street Journal online, LinkedIn, TheLadders or Tracked.  The WSJ and these other sites should be places I go not just to consume content, but to meet people also interested in the same content—and to promote myself among that crowd.  As it is, the media sites have no good access to people and LinkedIn’s attempts at getting me to read and share articles on the site have been kind of lame.

2) Line item purchases and my personal inventory.  I just started using GDGT and I don’t think it’s really doing the most basic things it needs to to be successful—and that is to give me a compelling reason to want to put my items on there. Why?  To show friends?  To compare?  It needs to build simple tools to poll my friends, my blog, my twitter followers and ask “What phone do you have?”  That would be kind of fun and interesting.

But what I really want to get at is my total personal inventory.  I mean, I know what it is, but when is a startup going to come along and make it really simple and compelling for me to load that data.  That data is the key to what I’ll need to buy in the future, what I like, and also could instigate compelling relationships with consumer product companies. 

3) Events What should I do with my time?  Plancast is doing interesting things, but it’s really amazing that the web, after years and years, still does a horrific job at helping me figure out how to spend my weekend and what’s going on in the city.  There’s no Google for events the way that there’s a Google for jobs, and even if there was, it’s not just about the data.  Event search needs to realize that sometimes I start with knowing that I want to hangout with a particular friend, or a particular day first, or that I know what I want to do—and if should be able to figure out how to match the other pieces.  It would help answer the question, “If I’m free Friday, what is there to do, who should I go with, and are they free?”

4) Local retail marketing I have an issue with the fact that getting my local pizzeria to participate in the social web or to to advertise on the web requires a salesforce of 1000 people in the trenches just making cold calls.  How does a local establishment get bodies in the door—now?  How do people find them?  Anything that could form a relationship with local storefronts w/o needing the on the ground salesforce is interesting to me, especially if it improves their ability to drive traffic and revenues.  If I owned a website, I could drive traffic to my company—how does the local pizzeria do it?

5) Breaking open the cloud.  How do you get families uploading all their home video somewhere and feeling safe about it, for example?  (That probably means it needs to be a physical box… to take VHS tapes and DVDs alike?)  How can you get businesses moving off of enterprise software apps?  How do you break through the walls of data lock-in (ie letting me pickup and walk away with my Salesforce data and moving it to Zoho, or moving from Flickr to Facebook, etc)   There are predictions of cloud computing becoming huge, but it hasn’t answered some basic questions yet about continuity and portability. 

This is just a starter list…. I’ll have more…   If you’re thinking about this stuff, drop me a line.  Also, and hopefully obviously, this list is meant to be about my particular curiousities and interests.  Obviously, I’ll look at a wide variety of early stage technology deals and so will the rest of the team at First Round.

To subscribe to this list by e-mail each Monday, go here.

Welcome to the future...2010.  If you peek out your window, you'll see everything is different.  There are flying cars and you'll notice that you have a crystal embedded in your hand that will change color when you're 30.  Crime has been eliminated and disease is a thing of the past.

Ok, maybe not...  but you'll have a better shot at building Utopia if you attend these tech events:

Monday, January 4th

6:30PM Androids Dream of Monadic Sheep - New York Scala Enthusiasts (WAITLIST ONLY)

Even though this event is sold out, I had to include it based on the name alone--and to support the local Android developer community, given that I've got an HTC Hero in my pocket.
What's cool about this Meetup is that they'll actually be building an Android photo app during the meetup, so if you're a dev into Scala, sign up for the waitlist and maybe you'll get lucky, or just get in next time.

RSVP for waitlist: http://www.meetup.com/New-York-Scala-Enthusiasts/calendar/12057029/

Tuesday, January 5th

Special All Day Event: The First Round Capital Startup Trek

Are you and your co-founder renting temporary desks at Sunshine Suites, TechSpace or one of the city's new incubators?  Then the East Coast partners of seed stage venture fund First Round Capital may be coming to see you!  They'll be on an all day trek to 8 of the city's top startup locations visiting companies, answering questions, and talking shop. 

See when they'll be in your neighborhood:  http://www.frcstartuptreknyc.com/

6:30PM: MediaBistro AgencySpy Party

Because there's nothing agency professionals love better than drinks and feather boas--for agency folks only.  Undoubtedly the most gender balanced event on our list this week.

The Bubble Lounge
228 West Broadway
(between Franklin and Moore)

RSVP: http://www.mediabistro.com/events/view_event.asp?id=13996

7PM: EVENT OF THE WEEK: NY Tech Meetup

The mainstay event of the NY innovation community, the NY Tech Meetup brings together over 500 professionals to watch pitches and connect with up and coming startups.  This month features SpeakerText, Udorse, and drop.io's new Presslift product among others.

FIT - Haft Auditorium
27th St & 7th Ave

RSVP:  http://www.meetup.com/ny-tech/calendar/11998028/

Thursday, January 7th

6:30PM: Ultralight Startups presents: PR Branding, and Buzz

Why is brand important to tech startups? How can buzz be generated?  What is the purpose of PR for a startup? Do all startups need to do PR? When in a startups lifecycle should it become a priority?   All these questions and more answered by experienced PR professionals.

Sun Microsystems
101 Park Avenue

RSVP: http://ultralightstartups.eventbrite.com/