AHAlife.com in New York says it raised $6 million in a financing round led by venture firm DCM, according to a press release. AHAlife.com is an e-commerce site for purchasing hard-to-find lifestyle products curated by so-called tastemakers that include fashion designer Donna Karan, filmmaker (and famously protective wife) Wendi Murdoch, and chef Daniel Boulud. FirstMark Capital participated in the latest funding round, following its investment in a March 2010 round of $3 million for AHAlife.com. DCM co-founder David Chao, Gen Isayama, general partner with DCM, and Taek Kwon, managing member of Toro Investment Partners, joined AHAlife.com’s board of directors following the latest round.

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We are increasingly a knowledge-based economy in the U.S., and work can be delivered digitally from anywhere. Take NightHawk Radiology in Coeur d’Alene, ID, for example—they are providing radiologists to any hospital that needs real-time availability and lower costs. They work online from Switzerland and Australia, but it could just as easily be Wenatchee or Usk, WA. These are often the jobs that create other jobs. An Amazon, Microsoft, or RealNetworks software technician for example, creates two to four other jobs within the communities they live.

This has all been made possible by the following 5 trends/innovations of the past decade:

1. Expansion of broadband throughout the U.S. and abroad.

2. Maturing of Web development tools and standards.

3. Usable Web access via handheld devices.

4. General acceptance of financial transactions over the Web as being safe and secure.

5. Emergence of online work and worker marketplaces.

I believe that a huge portion of the highest paying jobs in the next 10 years will be served across the wire, with less and less dependence on physical location. [Disclosure: The author is the co-founder of Smartsheet, an online collaboration and work management firm---Eds.] Small towns across the Northwest are currently growing with telecommuting professionals moving toward lower costs, higher quality of life, and less city hubbub.

The past decade’s innovations coupled with the increasing base of knowledge workers leads to my predictions for the coming decade:

1. Migration of professional people from high tax & regulation states to low tax & low regulation states.

2. Explosive expansion of work marketplaces and paid crowdsourcing for all kinds of jobs.

3. More productive people will work for themselves by shopping their considerable talents around the world via work marketplaces.

4. Job performance and work quality will become transparent as people’s work is reviewed online much as products are today.

5. Average earnings for high performers will be more than double the average earnings in their category.

Virtual assistants, a job category that is growing 50 percent a year, is already demonstrating these trends. More and more people are timesharing executive administrators. Most are home-based women (98 percent of V.A.s are women) who are now picking up extra income, or building full businesses.

I expect that we’ll look back in 10 years and wonder why we spent over $4.2 billion to move a relatively small amount of Washington state’s population less than 10 miles through a new tunnel [to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle---Eds.]. Had we spent half that much on schools, high-speed Internet access, and infrastructure across the whole state, it would have been a much bigger boon for the state’s economy.

Ten years from now, where you live will be a matter of lifestyle choice, not proximity to work.

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Xconomy has seen a vigorous discussion of work/life balance in Seattle. Is Seattle slack compared to the San Francisco Bay Area? If so, does the difference matter? Janis Machala of UW TechTransfer brought up this point during a recent panel discussion, and it has stirred debate. I personally don’t think work/life balance is the most important question facing the Seattle startup community. But, it’s a very important question to entrepreneurs. Everybody should know that startups are hard work, but is there an optimal level of hard work? And anyway, is hard work more than just long hours?

During the ’90s dot-com boom, it became popular to talk in terms of all-consuming, total-commitment startups. When many companies were going from pitch to liquidity in less than two years and when every idea seemed to have five well-funded companies chasing it, there was an unprecedented and understandable emphasis on speed of execution. People worked like mad for a year or two, and the company made it or didn’t.

But even if Total Commitment was appropriate for that environment, it isn’t best for other places and times. Most biotech startups have to persevere for many years. Even today’s web companies have to be ready for the long haul. So while there may be periods of all-consuming effort, almost all startups now last too long for sustained effort at the human maximum. Nobody sprints a marathon, after all.

So when we talk about the intensity of startups, we need to distinguish between what people may do for a few months, compared to what they do for the longer haul.

It usually makes sense to work quite hard in a startup. If everyone works hard, then the team can stay smaller for longer. This means more upside for the early players, but a more important benefit is that a small team can communicate more efficiently than a larger one. A small team is also easier to manage, and startups are often short on management experience.

But when a small team is strained to the limit of human effort, quality of judgment declines, along with attention to detail and the sheer ability to care enough to do one’s best. The point is not to work hard. The point is to win. Depending on the situation, you might best win by drowning your adversaries in your own sweat. But even so, a good night’s sleep will sharpen your wits and might allow you to formulate a better plan, or else just appear more cheerful and personable to a potential collaborator.

I think most people who work in startups do so because they want work that feels important, and adds meaning to their lives. We work hard because we like working hard at things we care about. We work for startups because they can be about big ideas worth caring about, and they can disproportionately reward hard work. No matter where I’ve been, I’ve worked hard, but I generally find the hard work of a startup more satisfying than hard work in other kinds of organizations.

Tomorrow, I plan to expand on these ideas a bit more with some lessons I learned about “cranking” through a short-run effort to meet an extremely important short-term goal. It was when I worked in South Africa in 1994 on the election commission during that country’s historic transformation from the era of Apartheid to a new period of free elections.

Continue to Part 2

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Want to simplify your holiday shopping lists this year? What about keeping track of who’s picking up the kids from the airport, or who’s going to watch the bird in the oven while you entertain guests? A Seattle startup appears to be gaining traction in helping people manage these kinds of tasks. Cozi, a software company that helps busy families organize their calendars, track to-do lists, and stay in touch, announced it has registered more than a million family members on its free Web-based service.

It’s been a busy and productive year for Cozi, as the company has made the jump from personal-computer software to a Web 2.0 service. In the process, it has added some partnerships with big companies like Whirlpool, Unilever, Best Buy, Gannett, and Meredith Corporation’s Better Homes and Gardens brand (just announced yesterday). And in the middle of the year, it began its advertising model and has signed on dozens of companies like Target, American Express, and Universal Studios.

Cozi launched its software product in the fall of 2006 and is backed by just over $16 million in funding, from Gannett and other investors. It was founded by veterans of Microsoft, Expedia, and Amazon. Most of its customers are based in the U.S., but Cozi also boasts users in about 125 other countries. “Reaching 1 million family members confirms the belief we’ve had all along that families will embrace technology to organize their busy lives and to stay connected to each other as long it simplifies rather than complicates family life,” says Carl Weinstein, Cozi’s chief marketing officer.

I asked Weinstein about the challenges associated with increasing numbers of users. “From a technical perspective, this is growth we expected and have been prepared for,” he replied. “We foresee no technical challenges that we haven’t already anticipated at this point. We’ve just finished the final phase of creating a highly scalable database architecture which will enable us to grow well beyond this level of use with little if any R&D overhead. As we add new features, and that is a big priority for us looking forward, we’re always considering scalability and redundancy given the size of our customer base.”

So where does it all go from here? Not surprisingly, Weinstein is upbeat. “This all bodes really well for Cozi in 2009. Our business model is strong, we are heavily focused on new feature development and our research indicates that more families than ever are ready to ditch their old ways of organizing for a modern solution,” he says. “Given that most families, regardless of how much technology they use personally at work or elsewhere, are still using pen and paper to manage the family, we are very excited about our prospects for the future.”

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It was almost exactly a year ago that Microsoft launched its HealthVault service, a secure online database for users to store and manage their medical records. And in recent months, we’ve reported on the software giant’s increasing efforts in health care, including its new partnerships with prescription drug provider CVS Caremark and Boston, MA-based health startup American Well. Now, Microsoft is teaming up with San Diego-based Scripps Health to study the long-term effects of personal genome testing on health and lifestyle.

The study, which is co-sponsored by the Bay Area firms Affymetrix and Navigenics, seeks to do genetic scans on as many as 10,000 people affiliated with the non-profit Scripps Health system. The scans and analysis will tell participants about their genetic risk for health conditions like diabetes, obesity, heart attack, and certain types of cancer. But the point of the study is to follow what happens after that: will participants change their lifestyle to combat their newfound health risks, and if so, how? The plan is to track their behaviors over 20 years using detailed questionnaires and periodic health surveys. To protect the privacy of users, the identifying information on their saliva samples and questionnaires will be “encrypted and kept in a secure database,” according to Scripps.

What’s in it for Microsoft? Participants will be able to store their clinical and lifestyle information in a Microsoft HealthVault account, and access it or share it with health care providers. “This collaboration is a significant step forward in empowering people to proactively address their specific individual health needs, as well as give clinical researchers access to a broader pool of genetic data to develop new disease treatments,” said Peter Neupert, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s health solutions group, in a statement.

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Distraction is getting a bad name.

This past month, I’ve been heads down on a few projects and noticing something I’d not been very conscious of before now. When I get “stuck” or when I reach a natural break point on a piece of work, the menu of potential distracters includes everything from email and telephone calls to getting food, socializing and more.

I did an informal audit. Sometimes I would check email. Other times, I would pace, get a glass of iced-tea, or walk outside for a few minutes. When I did the latter—any activity that was quiet, reflective and receptive, I would feel refreshed. I was open to receiving an insight and to being in the moment. When I returned to the project that had momentarily stumped me, I would enjoy new energy. I started calling this receptive distraction. Receptive distraction is any sort of distraction that creates mental space.

When I went to email, however, I would “spin out.” That is, I would completely lose track of what I had been working on and get immersed in all sorts of other issues. I started calling this deceptive distraction. I thought I could take a short break and crank out a few emails, but it took longer to do the emails than I thought, and longer to get back into my project afterwards.

I asked friends about their experiences with receptive distraction.

Don, a retired judge, related that he had always had a shower available in his chambers. On one occasion, during a 20-minute recess at a custody case, Don took a five-minute shower. “I let the water roll over me and let my mind go. Things that were subtle, that I’d heard but that had not sunk in—body language and other impressions—drifted through my mind, and surfaced. When I got out of the shower, I had a decision.”

Receptive distraction. “It’s like a palate cleanser,” commented Walt, a journalist.

Are your distracters receptive or deceptive?

This article also appears in the Huffington Post

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With the Sox driving for the World Series, the Pats early Super Bowl favorites, and the invigorated Celtics waiting in the wings to bring Beantown back to the NBA playoffs, Xconomy thought it was a fitting time to determine the best athletes amongst Greater Boston’s top private equity investors. You can read about the hunt and our exacting methodology here. But below is our 2007 roster, grouped in five categories: Hall of Fame, First Team, Second Team, Third Team, and Honorable Mention.

Hall of Fame

Lane MacDonald, general partner, Alta Communications (Boston)

MacDonald easily tops our list as the New England VC Varsity’s MVP and was a shoo-in inaugural inductee for the Hall of Fame. The son of a 14-year National Hockey League veteran, Lane excelled as a left wing. He took a year off Harvard to play for the U.S. Olympic hockey team in 1988. “Unfortunately, we didn’t do as well as the 1980 team,” he says. “We lost to the Russians on a late goal.” After that heartbreaking defeat, the team couldn’t recover and finished seventh. MacDonald returned to school the following year, though, leading the Crimson to the national collegiate hockey championship (the team went 31-3). That same year, he won the Hobey Baker Award as the nation’s top collegiate hockey player.

Drafted by the NHL’s Calgary Flames, MacDonald was quickly traded to the Hartford Whalers. Despite being offered the largest contract for any rookie in Whaler history, MacDonald was forced to forego an NHL career due to a series of head injuries that plagued him throughout college. He spent part of one year playing pro hockey in Switzerland, where the game is more wide open and far less physical, before another head injury led him to a career in business.

MacDonald, 41, tries to work out four or five times a week, spending time in the gym on the treadmill, stationary bike, and elliptical machine. He usually skates once a week, and in the winter joins other former collegiate players for hockey games at Harvard on Sunday mornings. “The pace gets slower each and every year,” he says.

In 2005, MacDonald was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. But playing in the Olympics was probably his crowning achievement. “After watching the 1980 team win the gold medal, that was absolutely my goal,” he says. “It’s an incredible experience to have the opportunity to represent your country and to play in the Olympics against some of the best players in the world.”

First Team

Tom Crotty, general partner, Battery Ventures (Waltham)

“I’ve been a soccer player all my life,” Crotty says. When living in Paris as a grade-schooler in the late 1960s, he took up le football by necessity because he “couldn’t play the U.S. sports.” He went on to star in soccer at his Connecticut high school, then lettered three years at Notre Dame, where he was MVP and captain his senior year. He’s been playing competitively ever since, and is currently in an over-40 league. “I stick with it. It’s kind of weekend warrior stuff now.”

Todd Dagres, founder and general partner, Spark Capital (Boston)

Baseball is the game for Dagres, although he also played basketball in high school and is known as a scrappy player in local hoops. The son of a Baltimore Orioles outfielder, Todd played center field all four years at Trinity College in Connecticut, where he set records in single-season and career home runs. “Somebody since has obliterated that record but I had it for about 10 years,” Dagres says. He played semi-pro ball for a time, “and then decided with the help of professionals that I was never going to make it to the big show and it was probably a good idea for me to do something else.” That would be venture capital, primarily, although he has also produced TV shows and movies. As far as sports goes these days, Dagres works out on the treadmill and with exercise bikes and plays golf. “So now I hit the little white ball that sits there and doesn’t move,” he says. “I think I’m better at hitting a baseball coming in at 90 miles per hour than a golf ball on a tee.”

While Dagres’ playing days are over, he still takes part in an annual Jimmy Fund event where you get 15 pitches at Fenway Park. “That scratches my itch every year. I get to go and bang a few off the green monster,” Dagres says. “Two years ago I hit one off the coke bottles in left field.” He’s also part owner of the West Virginia Power, a minor league affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Ed Kania, managing partner and chairman, Flagship Ventures (Cambridge)

Kania was All-American in 35 lb. hammer throw and weight throw (the indoor version of the hammer throw) at Dartmouth, and a three-time NCAA champion. While at Harvard Business School, he kept on competing for the Pacific Coast Club of Long Beach, CA. Kania set a national record in the weight throw and New England records in discus and hammer throw. He competed in the Olympic trials for the 1980 games (the one Jimmy Carter boycotted) but an injury prevented him from making the team.

Marty Mannion, managing partner, Summit Partners (Boston)

Mannion is a local legend when it comes to VC basketball—and beyond. “He’s just an elite athlete across the board,” says fellow cager Bob Forlenza of Tudor Ventures (see below). Mannion played four years on the famous Princeton University varsity that regularly took the Ivy League and seemed to always upset someone in the NCAA tourney.

He’s kept playing and at 48 still does it all, squaring off for the bounds, drilling the open shot, shutting down his opponent. Beyond basketball, he keeps himself in shape (joining several others on our roster, among them Forlenza and his fellow Tudor partners Rick Ganong and Carmen Scarpa,) in working out regularly with Boston Celtics strength and conditioning coach Walter Norton.

People are still talking about the 24-year-old Summit associate who about a year ago decided he could take Mannion in a one-on-one hoops game. “Said he’d beat me. I beat him 24-4,” Mannion relates. “The losing bet was that on Patriots day he had to dress up like Derek Jeter and go into the Rattlesnake bar.”

Peter Palandjian, chairman and CEO, Intercontinental Real Estate (Boston)

For a while there, if you said Harvard and tennis, you meant Palandjian, whose company, Intercontinental Real Estate, runs real-eastate-oriented private equity funds among its other activities. He was two-year captain of the Crimson team, playing No. 1. “I beat [Patrick] McEnroe my senior year at the NCAA’s and decided to turn pro,” Palandjian relates. As a singles player, he rose as high as 283 in the world rankings and played in five Grand Prix tournaments. But it was in doubles where Palandjian really shined. He played in all four grand slam events and peaked at 162 in the world rankings. Along the way, he garnered six ATP doubles titles, including one in Helsinki with Luke Jensen, the writer and sportscaster for ESPN.

Palandjian says he put down the game for a long time, taking up the natural post-tennis activities of ice hockey and yoga, but started playing tennis again a few years ago. As far as competition goes, he recently “came out of retirement” to join his 16-year-old daughter in the national father-daughter grass courts championships held last month at Longwood Cricket Club in Chestnut Hill. They came in fifth.

Second Team

Jeff Fagnan, partner, Atlas Venture (Waltham)

Oregonian Fagnan went off to the University of Alaska to study marine biology and swim butterfly and individual medley for the Seawolves. During Fagnan’s tenure, the Division 2 team ranked in the top 10 nationally, and he made all-conference. His competitive weight was 170. Fast-forward to his days in business, working as a consultant, on the road and eating fatty foods, “I blew up to about 215.”

In 2000, he and his wife attended golf school in Florida. One evening, their group was reviewing videotapes of the students’ swings. “I turned to her: ‘Who is that fat kid with the flat swing? She said, ‘What are you talking about?’ And I realized it was me.”

That, says Fagnan, “was just an epiphany.” He started working out again, brought his weight down to 175, and for the last five years has been doing triathlons, including Escape From Alcatraz last June. “I’ve not done the Iron Man distance, but want to try and do that next year,” he says.

Fagnan says he’s often up at 4:30 to get his workout in early. But he tries to supplement his solo training with some business workouts, running or biking with Atlas colleagues or execs from his portfolio companies. “It’s unique, and it’s a heck of a lot less time and better for you than going to spend five hours on a golf course,” he says.

Bob Forlenza, managing general partner, Tudor Ventures (Boston)

A crafty guard with devastating outside range who keeps defenders honest with the occasional drive and dish, Forlenza played hoops at Division 3 Virginia school Washington and Lee, where he handled point alongside All American Pat Dennis. Forlenza is hoops all the way. “Since then I have played in about a thousand different leagues. No triathlons, none of that stuff.”

In recent years Forlenza’s been benched by hip replacement surgery, “but I’m back playing slightly,” he says He tries to attend the twice-weekly game at the undisclosed location mentioned in my intro to this list. “There’s a lot of young guys, unfortunately, especially in the summer.”

Wyc Grousbeck, managing partner, governor, and CEO, Boston Celtics, venture partner, Highland Capital Partners (Lexington)

Wycliffe, aka Wyc, Grousbeck rowed at Princeton (class of ’83), where his team claimed the national lightweight championship. He’s still rowing, in fact. To raise money for the Perkins School for the Blind, he’s taking part in the upcoming Head of the Charles. His four-person “quad” will include fellow VC David Fialkow of General Catalyst, and two U.S. national team rowers, Mary Mazzio and Cindy Matthes.

Grousbeck reports he works out “nearly every day, running hills, stadiums and on the beach in the summer.” We also hear he puts in time at the Celts’ training facility, and playing some hoops (“I play terrible hoops. I was last man off the bench in high school,” he reports). Often times, he’ll drop his car off at an undisclosed location, run into the office, put in a few hours at his desk, run back to get his car, and return again to work.

“But my appetite for food still wins out,” Grousbeck says. “I’m still a size xl.”

Ted Philip, managing general partner, Highland Capital Partners (Lexington)

A co-founder—and later president—of Lycos, Philip sold the company to a Telefonica subsidiary in 2000, and then tried to get back into shape after a long stretch of putting in too many hours in the office. He started triathlons in 2001 and has now done six official Iron Man events (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, and a marathon run of 26.2 miles), among other triathlons. Why Iron Man? “I had already earned my black belt in Tae Kwon Do and was looking for my next athletic challenge…Iron Man seemed to make a lot of sense as one of the toughest challenges out there.” His best performance came at the 2005 Iron Man in Coeur d’Alene, ID, where his time was 10:26:56, enough to win the over-40 category of the CEO Challenge portion of the event and qualify for the world championship event in Hawaii.

According to Philip’s web site, his other sporting interests include racing cars, motorcycles, snowmobiles, and ATVs. Sounds like he could do a vehicle triathlon.

Rick Williams, managing partner, WestView Capital Partners (Boston)

Word is that Williams ground it out as a lineman at Yale. These days he puts in a lot of time lifting weights, and, according to our scouts, “is very aware of his bench press record,” which he tries to break regularly. His wife evidently acts as his spotter (a role not everyone we know would be comfortable trusting their spouse with).

Third Team

Tim Dibble, managing general partner, Alta Communications (Boston)

“A serious triathlete” was what we heard about Dibble. The Alta partner is more modest. “You’ve hit the bottom of the barrel,” he says. But Dibble is a two-time competitor (“I was only 3.5 hours behind the winner, shows you how competitive I was”) in the Speight’s Coast to Coast, a biking, running, and white water kayaking triathlon across New Zealand hosted by a local beermaker. It’s my kind of triathlon. “Finish the race,” Dibble reports, “and instead of water or Gatorade they have cans of Speight’s beer.”

Two years ago, to celebrate his 40th birthday and concurrent “mid-life crisis” (Tim, that’s a 40-percent life crisis), Dibble also did an 80-mile trail run in Canada. Had to bring his own Molson’s, I gather.

David Fialkow, co-founder and managing director, General Catalyst Partners (Cambridge)

General Catalyst’s Fialkow is known around town for doing an Iron Man event and other triathlons, always for charity. He’ll be rowing with Wyc Grousbeck in the Head of the Charles next month.

Rick Ganong, partner, Tudor Ventures (Boston)

Ganong was a tri-sport college athlete, playing football, baseball, and hockey at Maine’s Bowdoin College. He’s still active in “biking and stuff like that,” but downplays his status as an elite: “Anybody can play Division 3.”

Bob Metcalfe, general partner, Polaris Venture Partners (Waltham)

We all know Dr. Bob as a mental all-star, a quip-meister extraordinaire. But who’d have known he was a serious tennis player, captain of “a very winning MIT varsity tennis team” in 1968-69. He also played varsity squash.

But it didn’t end there, as Metcalfe diversified his athletic skills with his move west to California, where he co-invented the Ethernet at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center and co-founded 3Com. As he relates, “Went on to play finals of Menlo Park flag football A league as offensive eligible guard.”

Carmen Scarpa, partner, Tudor Ventures (Boston)

Scarpa was a high school baseball, football, and basketball star at Andover. “His moment of glory in high school was playing against Patrick Ewing,” says partner Bob Forlenza. Scarpa went on to play varsity hoops at Harvard, and is rumored to be a devotee of fantasy camps, through which he is said to have become friends with Michael Jordan and Coach K, Duke head hoops coach Mike Krzyzewski.

Honorable Mention

Howard Anderson, founder of now-closed YankeeTek Ventures (Cambridge)

The ever-fit, sports-car driving Anderson, an Xconomist, was a competitive rower. How competitive? “The older I get, the better I was,” Anderson relates. “To hear me tell it, I was THIS close to making the Olympic team.”

Editor’s note: We’re keeping Anderson on the list, even though he closed down YankeeTek Ventures two years ago, saying venture capital was dead.

Joshua Bekenstein, managing director, Bain Capital Private Equity (Boston)

Repeat after me, Bain’s Bekenstein bounced basketballs at Yale.

Mike Hirshland, general partner, Polaris Venture Partners (Waltham)

A defensive end on the Harvard Crimson’s 1987 Ivy League championship squad, Hirshland—who also clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy—now spends his time trying to help his portfolio companies avoid being sacked.

Ryan Moore, co-founder and general partner, GrandBanks Capital (Newton Center)

Moore played linebacker on the Princeton Tigers’ 1995 Ivy League championship football team. He plays hoops now.

Ben Nye, managing director, Bain Capital Ventures (Boston)

Nye played lacrosse at Harvard, we are told.

Stephen Pagliuca, managing director, Bain Capital Private Equity (Boston)

A freshman hoops player at Duke, Pagliuca rode his love of the game to become a managing partner and executive committee member of the Boston Celtics.

Jeff Schwartz, managing director, Bain Capital Ventures (Boston)

Another Bain athlete I couldn’t reach, Schwartz reportedly played lacrosse at Dartmouth, leading me to ask: What is it with Bain and lacrosse?

Who did I miss? What records need to be corrected? Who embellished their athletic achievements? Let us know.

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[Executive editor's note: Bob's about to wax philosophical about sports. It could take a while. To cut to the chase and see the roster, click here.]

The hoops game is serious. Invitation only. Two “runs” a week, at 6 a.m.—when it can be tough to get the juices flowing. And if I told you the gym’s location, they’d have to kill me. At least that’s the impression I got from a venture capitalist friend of mine (I actually posted him up for years before I knew he was a VC), who grew instantly alarmed when I told him I was writing this article. “Do not tell anyone where the game is,” he ordered (I like to think of it as “begged” or “pleaded”).

Welcome to the world of serious venture-capitalist athleticism. And it can be serious, indeed. “With all the type A’s in this business, I’m not surprised you’re finding a lot of athletes,” says Tom Crotty, a general partner at Waltham’s Battery Ventures and himself no slouch on the soccer field. “It’s a cry for help. Definitely a cry for help,” pronounces Tim Dibble, managing general partner at Boston’s Alta Communications. “It’s a compensatory behavior. We were all picked last for the softball team in eighth grade. Trying to make up for it now.”

Whatever the motivation, the game is on in the Boston private-equity community. It’s one thing to be playing with other people’s money, risking millions or tens of millions to make hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. It’s another thing to actually play, to experience anew the sheer joy of physical exertion, pain, sweat, and competition. Sure, you might pull down a few mil’ a year. But can you go to your left? Outmaneuver a McEnroe at the net? Finish the Iron Man? Put that young pup associate—the one who thinks you’re old—in his place? These, it turns out, are the serious questions that give many VCs and other private-equity investors a reason to bound out of bed each morning, rain or shine, boiling summer or icy winter.

Ultimately, of course, we all slow down. As I developed the roster, I can’t tell you how many times I heard the phrase, “He was an athlete?” Some go gracefully, some remain in denial, and some definitely have plenty of gas left in the tank. So who are—or were—the best athletes among venture capitalists and other private-equity pros in the Greater Boston region? My quest was to find out. I scoured gym, rink, track, tennis court, ball field, river, and pool (okay, I made a few phone calls and fired off a bunch of e-mails) to come up with the answers.

Twenty-four of Boston’s best private equity gurus made the cut. I then sorted these VC varsity all-stars into five classes: Hall of Fame, First Team, Second Team, Third Team, and Honorable Mention. It’s a totally unscientific, subjective ranking—based on a combination of how good they were in their heyday, and how good they are now. Weight was given to playing professionally or at Division 1 colleges. Those who made an Olympic team garnered double points because I’m partial to the Olympics.

In the end, then, it’s far from a perfect sampling. Regrettably, I found no women for the list (although a nod must be given to Anne Martin of Yale’s investment office, outside our hunting grounds, who was an Olympic rower). This is a sad testament to the New England private-equity scene, which includes very few women in its ranks. I’m sure, too, that I missed some stars of both sexes. And, while I caught up with most of my quarry, I couldn’t quite track down everyone to hear their personal accounts and to verify the record. In that case, I had no other choice but to rely on the words of their peers and competitors. Who better, though, to judge us than our peers?

One final word on methodology: golf. Several times in my discussions, the VCs asked that age-old question: does golf count as a sport? Sure, was my executive decision…if you’re a VC version of Tiger Woods. Otherwise, nope—you have to break a sweat to make this team.

Click here for the roster.

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