Feld Thoughts

JUNE 8, 2021

I reread Enough.: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life by John C. Bogle over the weekend. I’d read it in 2012 and it had a huge impact on me. If you aren’t familiar with John C. Bogle , he founded The Vanguard Group , is credited with inventing the index fund and is a spectacular writer (every one of his books is worth reading.) He passed away in 2019 at the age of 89, but I expect his legacy will last a very long time.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 24, 2021

Six months ago I wrote When The Big Companies Show Up about Sony releasing their first holographic display and what I thought about that development, given my role as an investor via Foundry and board member in the 40-person purveyor of fine holographic interfaces in Brooklyn called Looking Glass. In that post, I wrote: “When I ponder my life in 2040, I am confident that I will not be spending 12 hours a day in videoconferences on a 2D display.

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Feld Thoughts

APRIL 12, 2021

My partner Chris Moody recently sent around a note on a concept he refers to as Leader Leverage. I encourage every CEO to read and consider it. His rant follows. Many of you are probably tired of hearing me rant about some form of what I often refer to as “leader leverage” If you’ve been lucky enough to avoid these rants, the quick summary is that your biggest lever as a board member is the CEO and your biggest lever as CEO is your direct reports.

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Feld Thoughts

APRIL 11, 2021

Over the past year, we’ve seen an increase of people from across the business and political spectrum join the fight against climate change and pledge to support a greener, more sustainable future. Investors are seeking both financial returns and environmental impact and looking for opportunities to partner with ventures that are working to tackle our world’s biggest energy and environmental challenges.

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Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 19, 2021

A few minutes ago, Amy sent me this to ponder as we head into the weekend after an intense week. Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 11, 2021

Gramercy Park in June 2015. After 89 years on this planet, Len Fassler passed away on Friday. Len was my Yoda. As a paternal figure, he was a close second to my father. I loved him deeply. And I will miss him every day. We were introduced in the spring of 1993 by Jim Galvin, CEO of Allcom, which had just been acquired by Len’s company Sage Alerting Systems.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 10, 2021

For a long time, I collected computers (hardware, software, manuals, and magazines.) About five years ago, I donated my collection to the Media Archaeology Lab , located at CU Boulder. Also, Amy and I have made substantial gifts to MAL from the Anchor Point Foundation. And, last year, our gift enabled them to buy a vast collection from Benj Edwards.

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Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 1, 2020

Simply begin again. A year ago, I wrote in my v54.0 post that I’d decided not to have any goals for the year ahead. Instead of having goals, I wrote: I’m embracing the moment. Every moment. Simply being in the moment. Being present with whomever I’m with or whatever I’m doing. But that’s not a goal. I know I’ll drift – regularly – just like my mind does when I meditate.

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Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 22, 2020

I find it fascinating when a large company enters a new arena. Some of you will remember this happening back in 1981 when IBM announced it was getting into the personal computer market. This was a field that up until that point had been completely dominated by smaller players like Apple. Steve Jobs’s response was the now-infamous full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal welcoming IBM to the game.

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Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 21, 2020

One of my mantras for v54 is “Simply Begin Again.” As I get closer to v55 (58 days from now), I’ve been thinking about it more. During my morning meditation, I repeated it for a stretch and then did the same for about a mile on my run this morning. Garth gets so many things correct. I made a big shift earlier this summer after I finished up some of the work I was doing with the State of Colorado around Covid, specifically around the Innovation Response Team.

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Feld Thoughts

JULY 31, 2020

The week after George Floyd was murdered, I decided to read a book a week by a Black author. I went online and found a bunch of lists that had popped up. I bought about 25 books, all in physical form, and piled them up on my reading table near my couch. On Saturdays, my primary activities of the day are reading, running, napping, and being with Amy.

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Feld Thoughts

JULY 27, 2020

Tim Ferriss did one of his very long-form (150 minutes) podcast with me last week. I met Tim for the first time in 2007 and we’ve been friends since, although we’ve spent relatively little time together in person. Like many of my friends, I have a very comfortable remote relationship that has a lot of emotional intimacy in it. While many humans find this difficult, I never have and enjoy it a lot.

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Feld Thoughts

JULY 7, 2020

I’ve become aware that my existing network creates and perpetuates systemic inequities. Rather than abandon my existing network, I’m investing time and energy in expanding my perspective and network through the various things I pay attention to and get involved in. Today’s post covers two things I love to do: run and read. When I reflect on my running and fitness heroes, they are mostly men.

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Feld Thoughts

JUNE 18, 2020

I’m going to participate in the Juneteeneth 4.0 Celebration tomorrow from 1pm – 4pm ET. It’s being hosted by OHUB , ThePlug , and Living Cities. I’ll be part of a fireside chat with Rodney Sampson (CEO, OHUB) and Ben Hecht (CEO, Living Cities) where, among other things, we’ll discuss the introduction of Racial Equity Pledge.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 17, 2020

As the world shifts underneath us around Covid-19, Amy and I have focused our immediate philanthropic efforts on our local community in Boulder County. If you have the ability to contribute anything philanthropically, helping locally will make a huge difference right now. While many of us are hunkered down at home, we’ve got numerous frontline providers at hospitals and in the community out in public helping us all get through this.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 3, 2020

Covid-19. Presidential Primaries. Gyrations in the Stock Market. Global Pandemic. Trisolarians arriving in their droplet to exterminate us. It’s pretty intense out there right now. Somewhere. But not in my backyard where my dogs roam around. I was in the hospital recently, attached to those devices they attach you to that monitor everything. I was trying to relax by closing my eyes, breathing deeply and slowly, and meditating.

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Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

For the past week, I’ve been asked at least once a day (yesterday I was asked several times, with an R0 of 3) about what I think the coronavirus’ impact will be on the global supply chain. I have a perspective that it’s too early to really know but there are starting to be guidelines about how to think about it, especially as Chinese new year + a week has passed (and we are almost at +2 weeks).

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 24, 2020

I’ve always been a vivid dreamer, but I’ve been getting a lot more REM sleep due to the combination of a CPAP machine and the prostate reduction surgery I had last year (solving a “getting older” problem.). Every now and then I write out a dream after I have it just to remember it. Here are a few: Life in 2050 , Crazy Vivid Travel Anxiety Dream , and Metabolizing Stress and Anxiety.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 9, 2020

I’ve noticed a degradation in presentation styles when displaying slides on a screen. This is starting to become a pet peeve of mine, so feel free to ignore me or tell me to get over myself if you disagree with this advice. Assume a conference room with a large screen TV (or two) on the wall at the “front” of the room. The conference table – often a long rectangle – has chairs along the side perpendicular to the TV.

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Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 16, 2019

We are in the middle of the budget planning process at many companies. This is a recurring Q4 event that spills over into Q1. Budgets for the next year (2020) get finalized between December 2019 and February 2020. As I was daydreaming the other day during a budget discussion, I thought to myself “there has to be a better way.” Since I started investing in private companies 25 years ago, I’ve been experiencing the same cycle over and over again.

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Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 2, 2019

I love origin stories. David Brown , Techstars CEO and co-founder, just updated his and published a new edition of No Vision All Drive. It’s the story of Pinpoint Technologies, his first company with David Cohen, one of the other co-founders of Techstars. As an origin story, it’s a detailed autobiography of what David learned from the experience of his first company.

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Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

Over the weekend, we spent time with a friend who works for Ten Percent Happier. I’ve explored most of the popular meditation apps in the past few years after getting started meditating on a regular basis by using Headspace. I eventually switched to Insight Timer since I usually now just do silent meditation for 20 minutes first thing each morning.

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Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

Earlier this year Amy and I, along with a number of other local friends, supported the rollout of a new organization in Longmont called Entrepreneurship for All (EforAll). EforAll is a nonprofit organization that partners with communities nationwide to help under-resourced individuals pursue their dream of starting a business. They believe everyone should have the opportunity, resources, and support they need to successfully start their business.

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Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 22, 2019

Amy and I had dinner recently with Chris Couch , a friend from MIT who I hadn’t seen in 25 years. Before we had dinner, Chris sent us an email with a link to his High Altitude Photography Platform along with the video from Mission 1 of the HAPP. Chris has a day job, so this has been his hobby for the past two years. It’s pretty epic – both as a project and a hobby.

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Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

As Amy and I settle into our time in Homer, we spent a lot of last weekend (and the evenings) reading. We don’t have a TV up here, so our lying around entertainment is reading with some bonus knitting time for Amy. I’ve been working my way through the books at the upcoming Authors and Innovators Business Ideas Festival and got through three of them so far.

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Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 20, 2019

Insight Timer popped up this message after my daily morning meditation yesterday. I’ve been meditating on and off for a while. But it’s been an on and off thing, not a daily habit. In April, after some complex emotional dynamics (how’s that for a euphemism), I decided to start meditating daily. I missed a few days here and there and then in mid-May decided to cut the b t with myself and just do it first thing every morning when I woke up.

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Feld Thoughts

JUNE 26, 2019

Colorado Public Television takes an in-depth look at Colorado’s thriving startup scene in its new 5-part season called Street Level Startups. The first episode, which is above, includes me and Jared Polis reflecting on some fun Techstars founding history, Dan Caruso talking about Zayo and the bridge between Boulder / Denver, and a great segment at the end with Brad Bernthal talking about fundraising and #GiveFirst.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 22, 2019

If the majority of your understanding of how tariffs work is from Twitter, CNN, or Fox News, I encourage you to go read Trump’s China Tariffs Hit America’s Poor and Working Class the Hardest. And, if you think China is paying the U.S. directly for the tariffs, well, no … We have a lot of hardware companies in our portfolio so I’ve been living in the world of “what to do about tariffs” for several quarters.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 4, 2019

The post May the 4th Be With You appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

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MARCH 30, 2019

I wasn’t able to sleep last night, so after doing the final copy edit on Do More Faster 2nd Edition, I started reading J.D. Lasica’s new book Catch and Kill: A high-tech conspiracy thriller. My brain was toast and my head was full of dripping dead virus goo, so I hoped some good mental floss would help pass the time. I finally crawled into bed at about 3am after reading about half of the book.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 30, 2019

I’ve been open about my journey with depression and the importance of addressing and destigmatizing issues around mental health. So I was excited that one of our Techstars programs – the MetLife Digital Accelerator powered by Techstars – is looking closely at mental health startups for their 2019 class. If you’re a founder innovating in the mental health market, I encourage you to apply for this program.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 17, 2019

My dad turns 81 today. He’s one of my best friends. He loves the color green. And, a few of my other friends have a birthday today (happy birthday Dave.). Lots of people don’t realize that I grew up in Texas (did you know that 33.3% of the Foundry Group partners are from Texas?) My parents have been living in Dallas since 1969. I’ve been doing a Storyworth history book with my folks.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 15, 2019

If you are looking for something powerful, creative, provocative, and beautifully done, go look at True Blue by Eliot Peper and team. In 2017, I wrote a post titled A Clever Short Story About Discrimination about the short story that Eliot had written. It was an idea that David Cohen had. He shared it with Eliot, who then wrote the short story. David then funded a project for Eliot to turn it into an “internet public art project.” Eliot describes how they made True Blue.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 14, 2019

It’s still Pi Day at least in Boulder for a few more hours. And, well, robots. Misty is making a lot of progress and is still available to pre-order at 25% off her retail price , which is just slightly more than $3,141.59. The post More Robot Pi appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

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FEBRUARY 7, 2019

This is the final post (18) of the Techstars Mentor Manifesto. As with item 17, Jay Batson , a long-time Techstars Boston mentor, nudged me several times to finish this up and wrote a draft from his perspective. Following is item #18 of the Techstars Mentor Manifesto, in Jay’s words. During one of the Techstars Boston cohorts where I’ve been Mentor-in-Residence, I worked with a 20-something CEO founder (code named Mary) who, shortly after raising a seed round of several million dollars, hired a

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Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 4, 2018

I’ve watched a pretty remarkable thing unfold in the past year that culminated yesterday in the launch of a new product from Adero. For a one minute overview, watch the video below. For a longer overview, read the Hello from Adero post from Nate Kelly, the CEO. Adero is shipping now. As a reader of my blog, you can get 20% off a purchase using the code FOUNDRY20.

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Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 18, 2018

Every year or two I refresh the formatting on this website along with a few others that I help manage and generate content for. I work with a great firm called Valet that I really like and everything is hosted on Pantheon , so the process works smoothly for me. In addition to the refresh on Feld Thoughts, I also just refreshed Venture Deals (which used to be Ask the VC) and Startup Revolution.

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