Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 1, 2013

This first appeared in my LinkedIn Today column titled Give Before You Get. I post unique content on LinkedIn a few times a month (I ultimately reblog it here) but if you want to get it when I first publish it and you are a LinkedIn member, simply follow me on LinkedIn. As 2013 begins, I encourage you to adopt one of my deeply held beliefs, that of “ give before you get.”.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 3, 2013

This post first appeared in the WSJ Accelerators series titled The $100,000 Experiment in response to the question “When should you make a substantive change to one or more parts of your business model?” During the past few years, the word “pivot” has become one of the most overused words with regard to startups. For some, it means a tiny incremental change in the business.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 7, 2013

The second book in the Startup Revolution series, Startup Life: Surviving And Thriving In A Relationship With An Entrepreneur , is shipping in the next week or so. My wife Amy Batchelor and I wrote this one, with contributions from about 20 other entrepreneurial couples. Amy and I have been friends since we met in college in 1984. We have been together as a couple since 1990.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 13, 2013

This first appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s Accelerator series. A few our entrepreneurial heroes work on more that one company at a time. Steve Jobs (Pixar, Apple), Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX), Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square), and Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, Greylock). And we regularly hear of entrepreneurs who are working at companies that acquired their first company who are now working on new companies while still at their acquirer.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 20, 2013

An email was forwarded to me this morning that had the following text in it (I’ve anonymized “The College” but it’s a large, well-regarded four year university.). The College is Going Google! What does this mean? How will it impact teaching and learning at The College? Many K-12 school districts are using Google Apps for Education, providing their students with access to Google productivity tools as early as primary school.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 6, 2013

Last night Amy and I watched the movie Something Ventured: Risk, Reward, and the Original Venture Capitalists. This was my reward (I got to choose) since she watched both football games yesterday (and today). We have a 15 minute and 30 minute rule on any movie – after 15 minutes the chooser asks “still into this movie?” If the answer is no, we stop.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 27, 2013

My newest book, Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur , that I wrote with my wife Amy Batchelor , is shipping. As a result, I’m activating Operation Win A Dinner With Us today. Between now and Saturday (2/2/13), if you order a copy of Startup Life , you will be entered into a random drawing. I’m going to pick two random winners – one for orders from Amazon and one for orders from BarnesandNoble.com.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 9, 2013

I always enjoy hanging out with Jason Calacanis. We first met in the mid-1990s when Jason was hanging out in NY doing Silicon Alley Reporter. I can’t remember who initially introduced us – it was probably Fred Wilson. We covered a lot in the hour+ interview for This Week In Startups. Things like why I didn’t retire at age 30, what Amy’s ring tone is, Startup Communities , Boulder, what motivates me, the different between mentors and advisors, my biggest failures in the In

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 18, 2013

If you are reading this on Friday, 1/18/13 I’m probably doing one of a couple of things right now. The three most likely are sleeping, laying on my couch reading next to Amy , or just hanging out with her. There’s a chance I’m on a run or having some adult entertainment with Amy (different than hanging out). Or drinking something from my Vitamix monster smoothie maker.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 23, 2013

Amy and I talk a lot about big issues, such as depression and divorce, in Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur. I’ve been speaking from experience on each of these topics, as I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression my entire adult life (the official DSM-IV code I have for my diagnosis from 1991 is 300.3 – Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder ) and, in 1990, I was divorced from my first wife.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 30, 2013

Today appears to be government day on Feld Thoughts. This morning I wrote about the Colorado PUC trying to shut down Uber in Colorado (bad). Now I get to write about Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) re-introducing the Startup Visa Act of 2013 (good). Mark – thank you – you’ve been an awesome supporter of this and leader of the effort since the first day we discussed it in 2009.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 24, 2013

I participated in the lip dub of the song Lucky Ones, created by the gang at Undrip. They did this as a fundraiser for victims of Hurricane Sandy – I just contributed $900 to the effort ($300 each to Not Just Bagels , Jersey Shore Apparel , and Bungalow Bar & Restaurant ). I think you’ll enjoy the song – it’s fun and, if you are so inspired, help out the fundraiser.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 14, 2013

Techstars (Photo credit: Wikipedia). TechStars New York City has just been a great program. With close to 200 awesome mentors , investors, and seasoned entrepreneurs that roll up their sleeves and dive in, it’s no surprise that we’ve already seen an exit from the 2011 class , and the average company raises over $1.5M after the program.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 20, 2013

I recently decided to back three graduates on Upstart. In this new model of crowd-funding, accredited investors back entrepreneurs and have the option of signing on as mentors. In exchange, the “upstart” gives up a percentage of their future income over the next 10 years. FYI – I’m not an investor in Upstart , but I am a big fan.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 15, 2013

A bunch of the companies we’ve invested in were at CES 2013. Modular Robotics , the makers of Cubelets , were at the Eureka Village (where Startup America was). The first thing I had to do when I got to CES was a panel for Startup America so the Modular Robotics booth was literally one of the first places I stopped after getting to Las Vegas.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 24, 2013

A few weeks ago I did a long interview with Jason Calacanis on This Week In Startups. I got a bunch of positive feedback on it and thought it was one of the better long form interviews I’ve done in a while. The other day Jason released an interview that he recently did with David Cohen, the CEO of TechStars. I listened to it earlier today – it was also excellent.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 29, 2013

If you’re working on a quantified self product or are part of a startup that would benefit from integration with Nike+, you have less than a week left to apply to the Nike+ Accelerator, powered by TechStars (deadline is February 3rd). If accepted, you will receive $20,000 in seed funding and support from TechStars, and mentorship from leaders within TechStars and Nike.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 31, 2013

Over at the TechStars blog today, David Cohen introduced the new Managing Director for TechStars in New York, Eugene Chung. Thirty-five great candidates were interviewed for this position; the only offer we extended was to Eugene. His background includes NY-area investments BuzzFeed and Bedrocket while he was at New Enterprise Associates. Prior to that, he worked at Warbug Pincus and Morgan Stanley.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 2, 2013

My long-time friends Fred Wilson and Joanne Wilson each had powerful posts about saying goodbye to 2012 and welcoming in 2013 yesterday. Fred’s is titled Putting 2012 To Bed. I know many people who don’t know Fred other than via his online presence, public actions, and reputations. I expect that 99% of them, when asked if Fred had an awesome 2012, would say ”of course – he has an amazing life.” But my answer would have been more nuanced based on the time Fred and

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 28, 2013

Tomorrow night (Tuesday, 1/29) I’ll be doing another Entrepreneurs Unplugged – this time I’ll be interviewing Jeremy Bloom , the co-founder of Integrate. We are investors in Jeremy’s company which is doing extraordinarily well. Jeremy has been a total joy to work with and has an amazing story. If you recognize his name, “olympic ski champion”, “college football star”, and “NFL football player” may come to mind.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 17, 2013

Every year in December and January I go through the same cycle for all the boards I’m on. It’s the annual bonus, next year bonus plan, option grant refresh cycle. For many management teams, especially in rapidly growing, or mature companies, it’s an important part of their existence as culturally we’ve oriented compensation, bonuses, and future compensation around an annual cycle.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 28, 2013

I’m going to be doing the first public Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur talk tonight at Riverside at 7pm. If you don’t know Riverside, it’s a new co-working, event, and cafe space on 1724 Broadway in Boulder. It’s a beautiful old building that’s been a fixture in Boulder for a very long time.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 21, 2013

Following is a guest post from Lura Vernon, President of the Monarch High School PTSO. Lura is also a good friend, contributor to Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur , mother of two awesome young women, and wife of Todd Vernon, CEO of VictorOps. . Lura’s request is for laptops for Monarch High School Students.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 25, 2013

Xconomy is coming to Colorado – specifically Boulder and Denver. They are looking for a writer for the Colorado beat. See the request below. As Xconomy moves forward in Boulder, Denver, and beyond, we’re going to need someone in the Front Range with the right mix of enthusiasm, creativity, versatility, knowledge, and who also happens to be a top-notch writer.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 22, 2013

I’m crazy proud of my partners Jason Mendelson and Ryan McIntyre for their band Legitimate Front. In addition to being VCs, we each have a creative outlet that is super important to us. Mine is writing books ; their’s is creating awesome music. In August, their released the first album from their new band Legitimate Front. The idea of staying up until midnight on a Saturday night at The Fox Theater in Boulder is an odd thing for me, but I showed up and rocked out with them.

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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. I guess that’s part of the motivation I have in writing Startup Boards: Reinventing the Board of Directors to Be Useful to the Entrepreneur (the next book in the Startup Revolution series

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 11, 2013

I’ve been in three board meetings in the last month where it was painfully apparent that there wasn’t a person in the company who owned the UX philosophy of the product. I’m explicitly saying “UX” (user experience) rather than “UI” (user interface) as each company had an excellent designer and the application looked great.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 8, 2013

Historically, most of my writing has been either on my blogs or the books that I’ve written. Occasionally I’ve written for magazines, like a year-long stretch I did for Entrepreneur a few years ago, and longer form articles of mine appear in different places every now and then. But pretty much everything I write ends up on Feld Thoughts at some point.

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 8, 2013

I’m so sick of how – as a country – our authorities treat people as though they are criminals. A month ago a successful Boston entrepreneur who has been incredibly engaged in the Boston startup community was thrown in jail for three days after a CPB agent decided she didn’t have a valid visa (she did have a valid visa, and she was from that extremely dangerous country of Canada.).

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