How does a first time entrepreneur raise money? One with no assets other than a MAC and an idea, someone that has a network so weak that they have more X-Box Live friends than real friends and their financial prowess could only be described as barely able to throw a small, but crappy, pizza party.

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FF Class Preferred and Super F are the new semi-exotic shares du jour, but how do you decide when to use them and when not to? Are these new types of shares the thing that founders have been waiting for? or could choosing the wrong structure accidentally just get you F'd?

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(2011...) About a year ago, I was working on a way to get personality trait and hard skill set assessment data on university students via a viral game mechanic. My purpose was to find the next Zuckerbergs before they became the next Zuckerbergs and then invest in them as human beings (i.e. take 5% equity in them). Long story short, it didn't work... but it gave me another idea...

(2011...) What if we could embed a YC like program inside of the UC University system? Where we could take the best startup at Berkeley and help them get funded? What if we could create a seed program that works with a student's education instead of in place of it?

Before you advise anyone: Most old people like me do a horrible job of advising young founders. Rather than actually giving good advice, most of us just spew crap. So I sat down, transported myself into my younger self and gave my older self rules to live by when advising young founders.

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(2010...) I thought I had met some tenacious people in my life, but Justin is ridiculous. In some super weird, proud way, he reminds of some little mangy dog that bites your leg and just won't let go. If Justin decides he's going to do something, he's going to do it, no matter how scrappy he needs to be to get the job done. Keep going you scrappy little dog... make us proud.

A new species rises: In the past decade we have seen the rise of a new species of startups, the FrankenBoomer Generation. The impact of this evolutionary shift is now radiating out to the rest of the species in our ecosystem - incubators, angels and venture capitalists.

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(2010...) My mint.com mafia investment. When I first met Stew it was because I was desperately trying to hire him to help run another of my portfolio companies. When he declined, I asked why. He said that he wanted to start his own company, which was the only legitimate answer, from my point of view. So did the only logical thing - I invested in his new company.

(2010...) Crowdflower = Powerset mafia, including Lucas, Chris and Ryan. I think that investing in these guys was a very proud moment for me because I've seen them grow from me hiring them at Powerset to the rock star founders that they now are. Crowdflower, perhaps more than any of my other investments, is a testament to what can be done if you stick to it no matter what.

How to hire engineers: Not all cults are bad. While cults of personalities can be very dangerous, a cult of "team" can make all the difference. Learn how to build a team from one person to an unstoppable army in a way that validates a founder as a leader and empowers employees to rule.

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(2010...) Boundary is another investment from my portfolio founded by Ben (from Amazon, then MSFT) and Cliff (Powerset mafia). These guys are basically totally bad ass and not just because of their engineering chops, but because they know how to hire a killer team. Their UX engineer, Steve, has the job I dream of - HTML5 UX Engineer.

(2010...) I had heard a lot about this new hot kid Daniel, so before I invested, I met him with the intent of breaking him. After I failed, I then sent one of my best engineers at Powerset/Bing (Kevin Clark) to try to break him as well. After he met with Daniel, I asked him how it went and he told me that he was going to join Greplin. I quickly invested after that.

(2007...) Carrotmob is a reverse boycott or a "buy"-cott. People get together and form a smartmob where on a given day they all show up and buy stuff from a local store. In return the shop owner takes a portion of the proceeds and makes their business more sustainable. It's sexy, but small scale right now. We'll see if Brent, my co-founder, can make it go big. I hope he does.

(2007...)TechCrunch for good? Can you build a dominant blog network using citizen journalists? The answer: YES. Can you make money doing it? Hmm.... that, I just don't know yet. GreenOptions was our experiment to create the definitive source for Green info. I learned a lot about the news industry, what's possible and what's not. GreenOptions is now Important Media.

(2007...) GroupOn for Solar! - but we started before GroupOn. 1BOG stands for One Block Off the Grid and is one of Virgance's incubated projects. It is also my latest applicant for worst named company ever. It is now funded by NEA (same VC as GroupOn) and is doing well. I am it's chairman and avid supporter. Dave Llorens, who was my entrepreneur in training, is now CEO.

(2009-2010) Sat as the Second Vice Chairman of the Board of the Directors of this startup university that offered an MBA with sustainability ingrained in each of the classes. Experiencing a startup university was a vastly different experience than that of a software startup. I truly enjoyed interacting with the students and helping them, but I frankly would have preferred teaching to being on the board.

(2007) The Economist called me an Obamapreneur when I started Virgance. It was do goodery capitalism at its best. The idea was to create an incubator that built companies that used the power and principles of capitalism to cause positive change and make the world more sustainable. We incubated three companies 1BOG, Carrotmob and GreenOptions to test the theory. Judge them for yourself.

(2007) I was chairman of this Social Gaming company, the maker of Friends for Sale. Perhaps what I am most proud of is that this company was founded by three former employees of Powerset. We were funded by Jeremy Lieu and LightSpeed Capital, who I would recommend to anyone. We successfully sold the company to Zynga. Bravo guys!

(2005) Sat on the Board of Directors at this VOIP startup founded by two friends, Phillip and Touraj. I was actually deciding to either found Powerset or join Jaxtr at the time. I ended up finding a way to do both. Good thing for me, I got to be on the board with Bill Keating and Touraj and Philip led the company to a successful exit. I remain close with Phillip and look forward to his new companies succeeding.

(2005) The Google Killer was born - or at least that's what the press said about us. Powerset was a new take on how to build a search engine from scratch. We were funded by founders from Paypal, Facebook, LinkedIn and had many of the angels that invested in Google. From the first moment we were announced, their was immense pressure. Powerset is now part of BING.

(2003) Started mobile voice-search division using voice recognition technology. This was my first engineering driven company. It was housed at the Stanford Research Institute. Most doors were made for left-handers and it wasn't uncommon to see a robot trying to escape the parking lot or a small explosion occurring on campus. I was in heaven and starting to realize my dreams.

(2002) Try, try again. Next company. This time I was much smarter and I picked a co-founder that could also be my mentor - Bill Keating, who was early on in Sun, helped take several companies public and was the founder of WebTV, Moxy Digital and headed up MSFT TV. My best move. I did my best to suck his brain dry. It was then I began to feel the force flowing within me.

(2000) 30. Started my first company. It was a great idea and it was a terrifying experience. I had no idea what I was doing and I think for a brief period of time I actually lost my mind. First the .com crash and then 9/11 and then I went 2 years with no income and basically was broke. We finally sold to Pumatech which is now Nokia. Glad I survived!

(1998) 28. Moved to California. Got turned down by Yahoo!, Amazon and every other .com so I joined a small startup called Ibis. We merged with Proxicom and then went on to go public. I helped to grow their energy practice and start their communications practice. Met two important influencers in my life Raul Fernandez and Scott McDonald - founders of Proxicom and Ibis respectively.

(1997) Comcast decided to trial free broadband Internet in my neighborhood and I did what any self respecting person would do. I set up a small server farm in my bedroom. With free hosting in hand, I partnered with my friends at Webcentric.com to create a price comparison search website called Top10sales.com. I chickened out and didn't start a company. They did, and sold it for $50 million 6 months later. OUCH!

(1993-98) 22-28. I started out as a junior accountant, got briefly fired and then unfired for telling my boss he didn't know what he was doing, then battled my way up in the ranks of this 80,000 person company to become the national director for software development for the United States. I hated corporate life, but I learned a lot. Met my first mentor Walker Lipscomb who told me to go West young man!

(1988-92) My band, The Electric Underground, was actually really popular despite the fact that we kind of sucked. At school I composed my first basic symphony, coded an accounting system for the school, started a music recording company and came in second place in the business plan competition - resume sharing using VAX machines. i.e. Monster.com pre Internet.

(Class of '88) Guess which one is me! In high school I wasn't the coolest kid or the nerdiest. In some ways I kind of had the no game, game. I was good in math and science, horrible in english and reading.

Perhaps the most revealing part was what I decided to put as my senior quote in the yearbook. "The best thing in life is doing the things they tell you can't be done"

1970 born. (Above) my Dad taking apart a radio as a child, but it's the best photo that I could find that represents how I was as a child. By the age of 12 I had helped my Dad build computers in our basement, designed, built, launched and exploded my first rocket made of shot gun shells, black powder, a straw and a coat hanger stuck in the ground.

Words that I make up, but really should be words...

anticifaking: Saying "Ow!" in anticipation of pain before your older sibling hits you.

Commonly used by younger siblings as a ploy to reduce their chances of actually getting hit and at the same time getting their brother or sister in trouble.

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I use pens, but I vastly prefer pencils. I don't know why, but I gain immense satisfaction and a small, but measurable sense of accomplishment whenever I sharpen a pencil.

In addition, like 2,672 other people on Facebook, I get immense satisfaction from going out of my way to step on a crunchy leaf, especially if completely disintegrates after I step on it.