My favorite speaking gigs are ones where I can have real-life conversations on stage with peers, journalists, and the audience.  One such event was the most recent Geekwire Summit in Seattle.  Even better was this conversation wasn’t just with me, but included my good friend Bill Gurley from Benchmark.  I joined Benchmark as a Venture Partner after I left Expedia and have had the pleasure of working with Bill and the rest of the team for years.  Bill is the rare wicked smart guy who can also communicate his analyses and opinions through compelling analogies and in with a “hat in hand” Texan’s drawl.  Check out his influential blog, Above the Crowd.  He’s added huge value on the boards of several of my companies.

I appreciate John Cook, Todd Bishop and Jonathan Sposato for creating the great forum to have such a fun and lively dialogue.  Let’s all help make the Geekwire Summit a northern rival to Techcrunch Disrupt.  John posted about the conversation on Geekwire, and you can see the full replay below.

Earlier this week I judged a session at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, and one of the companies I watched and reviewed, Layer, won the entire Disrupt Startup Battlefield.  Congrats guys.

While this type of format seems a little Shark Tank-esque, it is always interesting to hear from entrepreneurs, especially when they must pitch their business in six minutes or less.  It’s really, really hard.  Tech Crunch puts on a great event, and it was great to catch up with folks I haven’t seen in awhile.  Especially enjoyed chatting with Tech Crunch’s Colleen Taylor on TCTV.