Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

By 1994 the big software wins of the 1980’s were already funded or public.” Exabyte, one of Colorado’s hottest deals, was formed in 1985; Connor Peripherals (fastest growing company in the history of technology manufacturing, four years to $1 billion in revenue) raised its first round in 1987. “By This isn’t correct either.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 2, 2010

Will is finishing up his 31st angel investment (we’ve done a bunch together – including my very first one – NetGenesis in 1994) and he walks through what he’s learned from 16 years of angel investing. For context, I’ve made over 75 direct angel investments primarily in two time periods – 1994-1996 and 2006-2007.

Angel Investor 167

Angel Investor Boston Due Diligence Cofounder 167

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 30, 2016

They walked me through multiple origin stories, including how I started making angel investments (1994), the origin of Mobius / Softbank Venture Capital (1996-1997), the origin of Foundry Group (2007), and the creation of Foundry Group Next (2015-2016).

LP 70

LP Venture Capital 70

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 29, 2016

I’ve asserted for a long time that Silicon Valley is a collection of startup communities, which includes San Francisco, Marin (the first board I was on – in 1994 – was for a company in San Rafael), Oakland, Redwood *, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Menlo Park, and Sunnyvale.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Francisco Oakland Los Angeles 120

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 4, 2018

The entire experience was foundational for me, both as an entrepreneur and an early angel investor (I started investing in 1994 after I sold my first company at the end of 1993.). Over a decade ago, Brad Bernthal and Phil Weiser were putting real energy into Boulder Startup Community.

Private Equity 71

Private Equity Colorado Angel Investor Community 71

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 28, 2014

Between 1994 and 1996 I made 40 angel investments with the money I made from the sale of my first company. I remember in 2007 when the idea of a super angel appeared, where successful entrepreneurs were suddenly angel investors making 10 or more seed investments a year.

Angel Investor 140

Angel Investor Venture Capital IPO Sales 140

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 21, 2017

Since I started investing in 1994, I’ve been dealing with the annual cycle of the hot new thing. However, in the past few years, a remarkable acceleration of a subset of AI (or a superset, depending on your point of view) now called machine learning has taken over as the hot new thing.

Artificial Inteligence 90

Artificial Inteligence Cloud eCommerce Social Network 90

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 17, 2016

I’ve always been confused by the labels Hispanic and Latino and, after living in Boston from 1983 – 1994 and getting a dose of a totally different version of race dynamics than I’d had in Dallas, I realized my upbringing in fashionable far North Dallas was a comfortably privileged one.

Arkansas 70

Arkansas Dallas Texas Boston 70

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 29, 2015

When I started investing in 1994, I was involved with a few large companies. Over a long period of time, these interactions, and many others that I’ve had with other big companies, have shaped my view on interacting with large tech companies.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital Reputation Affiliate Conversion 70

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 11, 2021

When I started making angel investments in 1994, Len invested alongside me in many companies, including NetGenesis, Harmonix, and Oblong. We then co-founded Sage Networks (which changed its name to Interliant) with Raj Bhargava (NetGenesis co-founder) and Steve Maggs (whose company was also acquired by AmeriData.)

SEC 164

SEC Cofounder Boston New York 164

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 8, 2013

Rather, I’m making an observation about something I’ve experienced – both as an entrepreneur and investor – since my first angel investment in 1994. I’m not trying to explain a new behavior. Here’s the situation, as reported this morning by an experienced CEO of a company we are investors in.

Reputation 171

Reputation Venture Capital Matching Email 171

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 18, 2012

I’ve been investing in and around email since my first email-related investment in 1994 in a company very creatively named “Email Publishing” which was the very first email service provider. Since then I’ve had a number of investments in email companies including Critical Path, Postini, and SendGrid.

Email 132

Email Merger New York Analytics 132

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 6, 2012

Rajat Bhargava and I have been working together since 1994. We’ve been involved in creating eight companies together (the most recent ones are MobileDay and Yesware ) and, while most have been successful, we’ve had a huge number of positive and negative experiences along the way.

Entrepreneur 136

Entrepreneur Operations Product Venture Capital 136

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 2, 2012

” My review of it is really simple: “I wish I had this book in 1994 when I made my first angel investment, and then again in 1996 when I made my first VC investment. Wow – it would have saved me a lot of time, energy, confusion, and grief.” ” The book is expensive, but if you are a VC, you can afford it.

Venture Capital 136

Venture Capital Exit Strategy Angel Investor Deal Structure 136

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 26, 2011

When I first started investing in 1994, this was the norm. I find three hour “reporting board meetings&# where everyone sits around and goes through a 50 page PowerPoint deck to be tedious. I put up with it even though it wasn’t my style because (a) I didn’t know better and (b) I didn’t have any better ideas. ?27,351

Restful 138

Restful Video Management Product 138

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 18, 2011

Before the Internet (1970 to 1994). Comments of any sort are welcome and encouraged! The table of contents, as of today, follows. The Boulder Entrepreneurial Community. Boulder As A Laboratory. Pre Internet Bubble (1995 – 2000). The Internet Bubble (2001 – 2002). The Beginning of the Next Wave (2003 – 2011).

Community 142

Community Silicon Valley Incubator Colorado 142

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 23, 2016

1985 – 1994 was the initial entrepreneurial Grind. In addition to looking forward to the future, Steve uses his lessons from the past to explore how things play out. It spans the time frame from 1985 – 2015 which you can just lay down on the Gartner Hype Cycle. 1995 – 2000 was the climb up to the Peak.

Merger 70

Merger Stock Internet America 70

Feld Thoughts

JULY 18, 2010

My favorite Emily Eveleth moment was a Zippy the Pinhead cartoon from 1994 which I’ve been trying to find forever. She also pointed to the two galleries that we buy Eveleth’s from - Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston and the Danese Galler y in New York. Now I’m hungry for doughnut.

Boston 97

Boston New York Search 97

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 28, 2011

I started my first company (Feld Technologies) here in 1987 and made my first angel investment (NetGenesis) here in 1994. Sure – it’s had it’s ups and downs, but when I lived here from 1983 to 1995 the entrepreneurial vector was awesome.

Boston 138

Boston Entrepreneur Community Venture Capital 138

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

More of the history is at Oblong’s post origins: arriving here that go back to 1994. The TechCrunch article The iPad Is Step 1 In The Future Of Computing. This Is Step 2 (Or 3) gives you a little of the history. I personally have stories going back to 1984 when I first met John , but we’ll save those for another day.

Cofounder 113

Cofounder Revenue Operations Founder 113

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 14, 2014

By the end of 1994 I had a staff job, reporting to the co-chairmen of AmeriData where I travelled all over the US helping with acquisitions and generally causing trouble. While we have a home in Homer, where we will be for the next three weeks, we still call Boulder, Colorado our home. But we came very close to moving to Homer in 1995.

Alaska 110

Alaska Colorado Boston Cofounder 110

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 2, 2015

The web appeared in 1994 and a completely different method of communication started its long march into integrating in our universe. By 1987 I was regularly using faxes and Federal Express (the only overnight mail I was aware of), but a mobile phone and email didn’t really show up until around 1993 for me.

San Francisco 70

San Francisco Denver Venture Capital Boston 70

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 19, 2011

Raj and I have done a bunch of companies together since we met in 1994. To address this, we’ve invested in a new company called Yesware. At the beginning of the year I was kicking around some ideas with my long time friend Raj Bhargava.

Email 130

Email Boston Channel Finance 130

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 23, 2011

This board meeting update call is an artifact and is typical of the many board update calls I’ve been doing since I joined my first board (other than my own company) in 1994.

Government 125

Government Email Conversion Operations 125

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

It was 1994. I remember the attendees – Rajat Bhargava , Eric Richard , Matt Cutler , Matthew Gray , and Will Herman. The chalkboard was black, the chalk was white and dusty. Will and I had each invested $25,000 for a total of 20% of the company. The meeting was around a wooden MIT classroom table that looked like it was from 1894.

San Francisco 70

San Francisco Boston California Restful 70

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 21, 2010

When I started investing in companies that were building Web apps in 1994, it was once again all HTML / source code and examples everywhere. While Clarion was compiled, it still came with a solid library of example code, although we quickly built our own libraries that we used throughout the company as we grew.

Open Source 125

Open Source Bootstrapping API HTML 125

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 8, 2019

We’ve been working together since 1994 when I made my first angel investment in Raj’s first company (NetGenesis). It was a delight to interview Rajat Bhargava for the Give First Podcast.

Community 16

Community Startup 16

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

I started investing in 1994 and while there was some bumpiness in 1997 and again in 1999, the real pain happened between 2000 and 2005. It’s so nice there are other great VC bloggers who write this stuff so I can just point at it. I learned this lesson 127 times between 2000 and 2005.

Cap Table 70

Cap Table Down Round Liquidation Preference Founder 70

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 2, 2010

In addition, I’ve made many seed investments as an angel investor in two time periods,1994-1996 and 2006-2007, and seen many more through my involvement as a co-founder of TechStars. ?Our But before Foundry Group, my partners and I were involved in many seed investments, both at Mobius Venture Capital.

Angel Investor 152

Angel Investor Cofounder Syndicate Syndication 152

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 13, 2018

Since 1994, I’ve worked with the CEO, Rajat Bhargava , on eight companies and I’m psyched about the company and culture that the team is building there. JumpCloud’s mission deeply resonates with me because they are disrupting a two decade old monopoly in directory services and giving IT organizations freedom of choice with their IT solutions.

Engineer 18

Engineer Hiring Colorado Cloud 18

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 24, 2010

Since I started investing in 1994, I’ve been on the giving and receiving end of an endless number of contracts which often include SLA’s. There were a few cases where this wasn’t enough and our clients effectively fired us, but we always made it easy for them to walk away if they weren’t happy.

EC2 137

EC2 Software Review Technical Review Cloud 137

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 16, 2013

I joined my first board of a company other than mine in 1994 (NetGenesis). Since then, I’ve sat on hundreds of boards and been to a zillion board meetings. I crushes my soul a little to think of the number of board meetings I have sat through that were ineffective, poorly run, or just plain boring.

Continuous Deployment 166

Continuous Deployment Distribution Lean Email 166

Feld Thoughts

JULY 14, 2015

When I made 40 seed investments between 1994 and 1996, I had a philosophy that I’d double down on a seed investment. The founders usually get wiped out completely, but existing management usually ends up with new options for between 10% and 20% of the company. It’s not pretty, but it happens.

Recapitalization 70

Recapitalization Pre-Money Valuation Post-Money Valuation Angel Investor 70

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 2, 2015

I met Niel a few months after I made my first angel investment in NetGenesis in 1994 – he was the fifth employee. I first met Ben through my long time friend Niel Robertson , an entrepreneur we’ve backed many times.

Russia 70

Russia United States Canada Incubator 70

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 15, 2018

We’ve been investing in companies built around technology protocols since 1994. One of our themes is Protocol. One of my first investments, when I moved to Boulder in 1995, was in a company called Email Publishing, which was the very first email service provider. SMTP has been very good to me.

RSS 77

RSS Aggregator Web Email 77