Feld Thoughts

MARCH 15, 2015

We first met the founders of AppDirect – Daniel Saks and Nicolas Desmarais – when they acquired Standing Cloud , a Boulder-based portfolio company of ours. The post AppDirect Is Hiring After Closing a $50 Million Financing appeared first on Feld Thoughts. Investments appdirect Jobs standing cloud'

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 13, 2021

After some entertaining back and forth, I encouraged Craig Lewis, the founder/CEO of Gig Wage , to write up a quick story of how things unfolded, as he remembered them, and I’d post it here. I love founder stories, and origin stories, and always learn something from reflecting on them.

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Dallas Cofounder Texas Venture Capital 171

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

” Many companies have hired ahead of their growth rate because they had the cash to do so. I have two simple rules for founders in my head from this experience. Deal with reality as a founder as well as an investor group and avoid this complexity – just clean up your cap table instead. It’s simply not true.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 5, 2011

This approach worked much better, but by this point one of the co-founders was frustrated with the customer dynamics (all business facing) and decided to leave to start a new consumer-facing business (he left on good terms, we are still good friends, and he’s much happier today).

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 31, 2012

My partners and I spend time at CES each year along with a bunch of the founders from different companies we’ve invested in due to our human computer interaction theme. And, of course, I should say that Oblong is hiring. I want a replicator !

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Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 20, 2011

Gnip Is Hiring : Sales people and engineers in Boulder. I’ve backed Tim Wolters, one of the founders, in a previous company (Dante – acquired by webMethods). Every entrepreneur should read it. I’d also encourage every VC and angel investor to read it. Renee is in film school and doing amazing work.

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Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 7, 2019

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 high-powered exec, granting a significant equity option. And never forget that startups are hard.

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Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

The managing director for your cohort trusts that you’ll help the founders. And those founders are betting – with stock in their company – that you’ll be good for them. If you vent to another founder, you either hurt your own reputation or the mentee’s reputation.

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Boston LP Reputation Stock 94

Feld Thoughts

MAY 6, 2012

The Founder’s Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman is another book that belongs on every entrepreneur’s bookshelf. The Founder’s Dilemmas was the first. I’ve never seen a book before that was particularly helpful – to a founder – about the wide range of issues a founder will face.

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Founder Equity Hiring Email 138

Feld Thoughts

JULY 5, 2015

There was one construct that bothered me – Geis’ use of the phrase “acqui-hire” and his effort to categorize acquisitions as acquihires, ACQUI-hires, acqui-HIRES, and ACQUI-HIRES. billion “acquires” a two-person company, isn’t that more like a “hire” with a signing bonus?

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Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 29, 2012

For almost every startup, hiring a Veteran will add to the collective diversity of perspective and experience. Talk about hiring Veterans with your co-founders and employees. Take Action: If you are a founder, ask “How can we actively involve the Veteran community to find the right candidates for these jobs?”

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Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 10, 2015

It was the very first investment I did at Mobius (via Softbank – prior to us raising our first fund) and it was doing great until the Internet bubble collapsed and no one was hiring anyone. I expect he’ll be helping a lot of founders for the days to come. Jeff’s awesome.

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Startup Internet Hiring Founder 70

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 3, 2013

And larger law firms are significantly cutting back on their entry-level hiring. An entrepreneurial mindset is a must in the New Normal, and law students need to heed LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman’s teachings in The Start-up of You. Challenge employers on entry-level hiring. And it’s no secret why.

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Colorado Denver Community Hiring 155

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 21, 2016

“Many Unicorn founders and CEOs have never experienced a difficult fundraising environment — they have only known success. Also, they have a strong belief that any sign of weakness (such as a down round) will have a catastrophic impact on their culture, hiring process, and ability to retain employees. Long term is not a year.

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Feld Thoughts

JULY 8, 2014

” Reid is well known as the co-founder of LinkedIn, a partner at Greylock, an angel investor in many successful companies including Facebook and Twitter, and one of the kingpins of the PayPal Mafia. Books casnocha employee hiring hoffman retention the alliance' The post Book: The Alliance appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

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Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 6, 2011

Throughout the summer, interns will work during the day at the company that hires them; in the evenings, they will attend various dinners, events, and workshops.

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Colorado Startup Early Stage Matching 138

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 15, 2010

I first met Terry when we hired him to be CFO of Raindance Communications to help take it public. And – I’ll see you later this morning with the real TechStars Founders 2010 Episode 4 video. Instead, it will go down in history as another nerd period piece by Terry Kawaja from GCA Savvian. Enjoy the video – it’s a great one.

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Feld Thoughts

APRIL 6, 2014

If you need a taste of Jerry and haven’t seen him in action before, the following TWIST Interview on The 6 Biggest Mistakes Founders Make is dynamite. They did several more performances for different CEOs in the room including one about a hiring story that was happening and was unresolved and one about starting a company.

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Italy Leadership Founder Hiring 140

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 5, 2012

I hear some form of the following question frequently from founders that are starting to have early success: “How do we hire a bunch of new people and grow the company quickly without losing the culture we’ve worked so hard to establish?” The people you hire will come with their own set of values.

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Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 15, 2020

At Foundry Group, we are hiring a Head of Network. The Foundry Network , as we’ve been calling it, encompasses founders, CEOs, executives, general partners of our underlying venture capital fund investments, limited partners (our investors as well as other investors in the funds we have investments in), and other members of our ecosystem.

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Networking Hiring North America Venture Capital 176

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 10, 2010

While the founders of Harmonix (the guys that brought us Rock Band and Guitar Hero) came from the Media Lab, one of them (Eran Egozy) also lived at ADP. And two of the founders of Oblong – John Underkoffler and Kevin Parent. As did my first business partner Dave Jilk, who is now CEO of Standing Cloud.

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Massachusetts Boston Startup Cloud 118

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 25, 2015

If you are a founder or employee of a startup in Boulder and want to increase the overall effectiveness of our local Boulder government, please help us fund the Code for America Fellowship in Boulder. We are raising a total of $75,000 to match the $75,000 being contributed to this effort by the City of Boulder.

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America Community Denver Colorado 70

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 22, 2010

It was an awesome weekend – we held an event modeled after the Apprentice TV show (without the bad hair) that had three challenges: (1) Marketing, (2) Hiring / Interview, and (3) 5-Year Plan & Budget.

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Massachusetts Aggregator Boston Venture Capital 99

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 20, 2015

You probably have one or two salespeople and one of your founders – maybe your CEO – is still the head of sales. You think you’ve got it and it’ll keep scaling, but you hire the wrong VP Sales, you focus on the wrong metrics, or you end up struggling to renew your customers when the first annual renewal cycle hits.

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Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

Ben Huh, the founder/CEO who I adore and love working with, send out a powerful email about how he’s approaching Cheezburger’s next stage of growth, and how he’s thinking about building the business operating system. The early reviews are great, including this detailed one from Tech Cocktail. that help us do more faster.

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Operations Technical Review Metrics Email 157