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  Awesome rainbow 
  Originally uploaded by fredwilson.

We’ve spent the past week on the big island, Hawaii.

It was my first time in Hawaii. My dad lived here on an army base growing up but I’ve never made it here until now.

To be honest, I didn’t love it. We are headed for a day in Honolulu and then back to the states.

While I can’t say Hawaii is my favorite place on earth, we did have some great moments.

The Merriman’s Farm Trip

Deep Sea Fishing On Shogun

Surfing Lessons

Kona Coffee at Java On The Rocks and more surfing

The title of this post sounds like an oxymoron. But it is a fact of life for me and probably many of the people who read this blog.

The idea of a ‘get away from it all’ vacation is a romantic notion that I cannot seem to achieve as much as the Gotham Gal and my kids would like me to.

This week, for example, I am in the middle of assisting two of our portfolio companies close on very senior hires. I am helping with the negotiations and trying to keep the rest of the board in the loop. And we are closing a deal which requires some attention on my part. And we are working with all of our portfolio companies to ensure they have their cash invested wisely. None of these efforts will or should wait for next week

I do have partners and a very capable associate to back me up and I rely on them a lot more when I am on vacation.

But the reality of venture capital is that its a relationship intensive business. You can’t just disengage from a complicated negotiation and say ‘my partner is taking over for me for the next week’. We all wish it was so, but its not.

So what do I do to manage? First, I block out 90 minutes in the morning when my family is asleep for emails and phone calls. Hawaii makes that easy because at 6am in hawaii, its 9am in the bay area and noon in NYC. I schedule all my calls for this time slot.

And I keep my blackberry with me but try to keep it off unless we have some down time like waiting for a tour to begin. I have gotten very good at quickly scanning email to see if there is anything urgent.

I also find time to do stuff, like post on the eliptical trainer, where I am not taking time from the family and the vacation

Most of all, when there’s a question between family and work, family wins. That has to be asbolute

I’ve heard of some amazing tricks. A friend of mine listened in to a board call where he is an observer while skiing with his wife. He had the call on mute and the headphones under his helmet. We’ll have to ask his wife what kind of company he was on the hill that morning but that’s the kind of mutli-tasking we have resorted to at times

My friend Brad Feld does ‘go off the grid’ for one week a quarter every quarter. I’ve asked him how he does it and I honestly can’t see myself pulling it off. I wish I could.

But one things for sure. We all need vacations and we shouldn’t let the need to work ruin them for ourselves and our families.

Posted from the eliptical trainer

I am full circle back to where I started on the Presidency.

We need someone who isn’t hostage to either political party. We need someone who deeply understands markets and global economics. We need someone who has actually governed a large group of people.

McCain is allright but he doesn’t show any inkling that he understands economics. Hillary might be the best of the three but her own party has deep reservations about her. And Obama, as inspiring as he is, is looking more and more like the politician that he is.

I realize its not going to happen. Bloomberg has stated definitively that he’s not running.

But if you think about our country’s problems, our weakening balance sheet, our red ink stained P&L, our gridlock in washington, our quagmire in the middle east, and our decline in geopolitical standing, who would you choose out of the four of them to lead us out of the mess?

It’s no contest in my mind.

The downfall of Eliot Spitzer certainly generated a lot of joking on wall street, twitter, and elsewhere yesterday. I plead quilty to a private email with a client #9 joke myself.

But mostly I feel pained by this whole story. I’ve met Eliot a few times and although I wouldn’t call him warm, he did strike me as earnest and committed to public service. I know his wife Silda much better and I feel so much for her and their lovely daughters.

This story is a tragedy of shakespearian proportions. How does a man with so much going for him do something so stupid and self destructive? Why do people self destruct and what can we learn from it?

I am no psychologist, not even the armchair kind. I don’t know what deep dark issues lead to self destructive behavior. But I’ve seen enough of it in the 20+ years of investing and sitting on boards that I know a few things.

Most of the people that I’ve seen self destruct over the years have a drive that is almost overwhelming. They have a desire to succeed that takes them far. But they also have huge blind spots. They usually have someone or a group of people that protect them from the blind spots. But as they start to achieve their goals and rise beyond the people that helped them get where they are, they distance themselves. And then they are at the top, but all by themselves and they get caught up in their greatness and then the downfall comes.

I suppose we could see it coming with Spitzer. The arrogance and the fits of explitive producing rage seemed to be on display more and more. Could those close to him have helped him? Could the downfall be avoided or was it inevitable?

What can we all learn from this? Well first and foremost, there are no messiahs. Nobody is perfect and when we put people on pedestals, they mostly fall and let us down. That’s one reason that Barack Obama concerns me. I want him to be better than the rest. But is he? Is that even a reasonable expectation?

In the more mundane world of startups and startup investing, we have to be careful with the people we hire and back. I’ve backed a few founders with messianic tendencies. Its a problem. On one hand, they bring incredible drive and charisma to the startup equation. They can hire and raise money like no others. But they don’t build great teams around them and many times they self destruct and their companies suffer

I think, but I am not sure, that self destructive tendencies can be managed. I have become a big fan of coaching and counseling over the years. We all have our demons and blind spots. The first step in dodging them is to identify them, stare them down and become self aware. I know a few really good people who coach founders and CEOs and if you are looking for someone to help you or someone you’ve backed or love, send me an email and I’ll hook you up

Watching a man like Eliot self destruct is too painful and I hope something good can come of it

We had a dinner party the other night and seated to my left was a person who had been involved in writing one of the most popular blogs on the web for several years. That blog did not have comments initially and then launched a ‘velvet rope’ approach to comments where you had to get approved to leave a comment. The idea was sort of like TED. You supposedly increase the quality of the discussion if you keep the riff raff out. Guess what? It didn’t really work. It never does. The "riff raff" is always the source of the best discussions.

The next day I was talking to the founder of a popular blogging service about comments. He pointed out that many comment threads are filled with garbage like LOL, ‘you are an idiot’, or worse.

He pointed to the comments here at avc and noted how good they were.  He called them ‘discussions’.

First, I agree with him. The comments here at avc are the best thing about this blog. You all make this blog what it is and I totally appreciate it.

Back to the dinner party. On my right was our long time friend Helene. She’s totally into the presidential race this year and noted that she finds the political discussions on this blog quite good. She’s not much for the geek stuff that goes on here but she’s really enjoying our political debates

I pointed out to both of my dinner partners that I try to weigh in on the discussion as much as I can and they thought that had a lot to do with the overall quality of discussions.

I am not sure about that. First, until I moved to disqus and got the ability to reply to comments via blackberry, I wasn’t much of a presence in the comments here and they were certainly just as good for the first four years as they have been recently.

But I do think the blogger needs to be active in the comments. Arrington is. Winer is Scoble is. Jarvis is. And the comments at all of those blogs are pretty good.

I think that blog comments (or call them discussions) are fantastic and are often lost behind the main page. On many of the best blogs, the responses to the posts are where the action at, including this one.

I think that we should have called Florida a tie in 2000 and had them vote all over again. Settling a presidency in back rooms, even if the back room is the supreme court, is not good for our democracy. It reinforces the idea that we have a rigged system

And the same is true of the 795 ‘super delegates’ that are up for grabs and who will surely determine who is the democrat nominee for president

I read this quote in today’s New York Times:

‘The remaining undecided superdelegates … in many ways (are) the final contest of the nominating battle’

Apparently there are about 300 undecided super delegates. So this comes down to back room deals made with these 300 people?

In the book ‘The Bronx Is Burning’ there is a story about the runoff between Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo for the mayor of New York in 1977. There was a short period of time between the first primary and the runoff. During that period Ed Koch ran around promising whatever he had to give away to get the support of leading elected officials, unions, and other big democrat power bases. Cuomo refused because he felt it would impact his ability to govern. Koch won.

We can all see the same kind of thing going down in the democrat party and I don’t have to say who plays Koch and who plays Cuomo. That’s obvious

Howard Dean, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, and the DNC need to broker a deal now that forces the superdelegates to vote for the candidate who has the most regular delegates or who won their state or something similar. Otherwise this nomination process will be suspect and the party will be damaged in the fall contest and for years to come.

I just sent out about 40 invite codes based on all the emails I received in the past week.

Sorry about the delay but it takes a certain amount of concentration and coordination to get a different invite code via email to everyone.

A cross country plane ride is the ideal environment!

If you have asked me for one and have not received it, that means you either did not send me an email which is the only way I can really process invite requests or it means you did not include the word seesmic in the subject line.

If you asked for one and didn¹t get one, please resend an email with the word seesmic in the subject line.

I have a few more, but not many, so if you want a seesmic invite get your request in soon.

One of our companies is looking for an IT/Sys Admin in San Francisco. Either part time or full time would work.

Does anyone out there have any good recommendations?

A reporter sent me an email yesterday;

Fred, are you investing in seesmic?  We’ve been covering the company a lot.

First, no we are not investing in seesmic, at least not any time soon. Loic has plenty of money and fantastic investors. He doesn’t need money. He needs more users and he’s going to get a bunch more when I get to sending out all the invites you all have requested at some point this weekend

Second, I would never disclose that we are considering, making, or have made an investment on this blog or to a reporter until the company has announced it

I believe the venture business needs more transparency and have been pushing that envelope for the past four and a half years on this blog and elsewhere

But deals and dealmaking is a private matter and should remain so. So please understand that some things are off limits