This is the week of foodie topics. Tom Cole launched his culinary blog, Consuming Ambitions, covering Palo Alto restaurants, San Francisco Wine and Chocolate tasting, Grandma’s recipes as well as the Palo Alto Farmer market.

Fred Wilson has his business lunches at the Shake Shack, where you stand in line 20 minutes to place your order, then eat outdors in the park.

Christine Herron presents her favorites of the 25 or so mashups at Mashup Camp 2. She wrote a bunch of other articles on mashups. The title of one is quite telling: Monetizing Mashups – Still a Black Art. While the session discussed monetization plans like:

• Ad-generated revenue
• Sponsorships or vertical ads
• Affiliate links
• Premium services
• Data analysis services…

… these were just thrown out without getting into details. And she also heard:

• Better-paying job offers
• Selling out to an acquirer

That the above is quite a reality is shown by Zooomr being courted, reports TechCrunch. The asking price is reported to be under $1M, so Mike concludes this is basically “employment by acquisition”

Josh Kopelman ponders about the difficulty of sizing up entrepreneur in a few meetings. Comparing his striving vs. struggling investments, he finds few things stand out:

• There is greater risk (and variability) in first-time CEOs than in serial entrepreneurs.
• Just say no.
• It’s all about the team.
• A culture of accountability.

I buy it (almost) all but I’ve seen second, third-time CEO’s fail; on the other hand the true nature of being entrepreneurs is to go to unchartered territories… we’d all lose out big time not giving first-time CEO’s a chance.

Will Price discusses Age and Entrepreneurship. Quoting GSB’s Chuck Holloway: “There are two natural age peaks correlated to entrepreneurship – late twenties and mid-forties.” I’m relieved, all is not lost for me (hm, I guess I can’t hide I don’t belong in the first group)

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