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). The last three months have been pleasantly insane.

CTO Hire 131

CTO Hire Cofounder Architecture Product Development 131

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 1, 2011

Along with Kauffman, Steve Case , the co-founder of AOL, his wife Jean and the Case Foundation , has been working hard to help the White House craft a public / private partnership to shine a bright light on entrepreneurship and help accelerate it across the country.

America 149

America Fractional CTO Startup United States 149

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

Jack Tankersley, a long time mentor of mine, co-founder of Centennial Funds, and co-founder of Meritage Funds, wrote me a very long response. He was a former Wall Street analyst with no operating or investment experience, who became a VC by teaming up with operator LJ Sevin.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 29, 2019

However, he realized that of all the thousands of founders he speaks with each year, almost no one has a grasp on what it means to do “sales” in a startup. If you are a founder or responsible for sales in an early-stage company, do yourself a favor and grab a copy of Sell More Faster: The Ultimate Sales Playbook for Startups right now.

Early Stage 123

Early Stage Austin Sales Venture Capital 123

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 14, 2017

Others are entrepreneurs / operators raising a VC fund. The operators say we know how to run businesses and help the CEOs that way. Maybe there’s a thousand. Many of them are angels raising a VC fund. A few are existing VCs who are starting a new firm. The angels say look at the deals we’ve done and the networks we have.

Differentiation 147

Differentiation Later Stage Equity Founder 147

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 15, 2013

To become a member, each accelerator must meet the following strict criteria: Operate a 3-6 month long program. Provide some sort of seed capital to their founders. Becoming a member in the GAN is not easy, but neither is operating a quality accelerator program. Take no less than 5 and no more than 12 companies at a time.

Global 179

Global Networking United States Seed Money 179

Feld Thoughts

JULY 25, 2013

Following is a guest post by Zack Rosen , co-founder and CEO of Pantheon. Friends from the campaign went on to run Obama’s Internet operation. Pantheon is building “A big badass platform that will run 30% of the Internet.” ” They are making it easy for professionals to build, launch, and run websites.

Vermont 165

Vermont Startup Campaign Virginia 165

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 19, 2017

Instead, I, like many of my colleagues (investors, board members, founders, and CEOs), operated in a state of blissful denial until everything blew up. Instead, I should have paid attention to the message, thought about it, and taken appropriate action. I learned that the markets reward growth until they don’t.

Internet 162

Internet Revenue .Net Operations 162

Feld Thoughts

JULY 19, 2015

And entrepreneurship is the act of creating and operating the business. Note the and clause – you need to be the creator and the operator to be an entrepreneur, not just the operator. I’ve always loved the word founder to describe the person the word entrepreneur refers to.

Entrepreneur 70

Entrepreneur Small Business Administration New York Government 70

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 25, 2017

If you don’t know Scott, he was the co-founder and CEO of ExactTarget (2000) – one of the original SaaS companies. Are always learning is the essence of being a leader in a super high growth rapidly changing world which most SaaS companies operate in. I put him in the awesome category.

Atlanta 172

Atlanta Indianapolis Leadership Cofounder 172

Feld Thoughts

MAY 15, 2013

He brings amazing technical chops, founder experience and a strong network of his own. TechStars will operate out of Capital Factory in downtown Austin. I look forward to meeting this new class of founders! ” Applications are open today and the final deadline is June 30th. Apply now. TechStars austin'

Austin 143

Austin San Antonio Angel Investor Engineer 143

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 10, 2013

Chris is a huge part of this – he joined Gnip when they were 10 people and has been instrumental in working with Jud Valeski, Gnip’s founder and CEO, to build a mind blowing team, business, and market leadership position. This trust has been solidified through long days/nights in small offices working on hard problems together.

Portfolio 195

Portfolio Leadership Founder Operations 195

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 20, 2019

Since then, I’ve been a founder of a number of companies, a CTO of a public company that acquired my first company, an angel investor, a VC in two different firms that I helped start, and an LP in a bunch of VC firms. I finally realized a limit, and choose to abandon my operating roles and just be an investor.

LP 108

LP Angel Investor Cofounder Leadership 108

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 20, 2012

The first articles were weirdly hostile with a focus on how OnLive just laid all their employees off in preparation for a sale in order to enrich the founders/investors at the expense of the employees. The founders equity, the investors equity, and the employees equity. Companies fail – all the time.

Recapitalization 136

Recapitalization Stock Options Vesting Equity 136

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 17, 2017

In both places, though, competitiveness and operating at peak performance are prized. Even though many of us struggle at one time or another, needing help is not part of our cultural norms as founders, entrepreneurs, and investors. My body doesn’t get pounded each week. But what if someone falters? Few of us show this in the workplace.

Conversion 124

Conversion Operations Networking Email 124

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 15, 2017

Moody’s recent post Two Steps Forward, One Step Back talks about being a few months into his gig as a VC, after his announcement of his transition from operator to VC in Joining Foundry Group. Seth has started a Friday series named Friday Fun because the world needs more fun.

Partner 71

Partner Finance Naming Operations 71

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 12, 2014

We loved the two founders, Michael Beaudoin and Rodney Rice, but knew very little about marketplace businesses or the home improvement category. They understood the different dimensions of the business and were laser focused on drivers of supply and demand in each market they operated. We invest early in the life of a company.

Seattle 149

Seattle Metrics Cofounder Finance 149

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 24, 2017

On July 28th, my partner Jason told me that Matt Bencke, the co-founder and CEO of Mighty AI , had suddenly gotten a serious cancer diagnosis. Mighty AI’s weekly operations meeting would be getting started at 10:15, so I had a lot of calls to make.” It was around 9:10 Friday morning. Each day is precious.

Cofounder 144

Cofounder Restful Founder Operations 144

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 26, 2011

The investments by the founders created two transactions. When presented in the SCF, these transactions are broken down into three categories: operating, financing and investing activities. Next week we will introduce the Cap Table, and show how it changes when adding a co-founder.

Balance Sheet 128

Balance Sheet Cofounder Cap Table Delaware 128

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

Brown was one of the four co-founders of Techstars (with Cohen, me, and Jared Polis). Brown’s reflections on the experience are detailed and demonstrates his incredible talents as an operator. It’s written by David Brown and is the origin story of David Brown and David Cohen’s first company Pinpoint Technologies.

Boston 137

Boston Cofounder Partner Leadership 137

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 1, 2014

He’s a very experienced CEO with a large exit under his belt, a founder/investor in several other companies, and an excellent operator. But that person needs to be operating from a headspace of an independent thinker, not a proxy for one of the other participants on the board.

Operations 161

Operations Startup Leadership Entrepreneur 161

Feld Thoughts

JULY 1, 2010

Besides his involvement with TechStars as a mentor, he is a celebrity in the AJAX community as the co-founder of Ajaxian.com , and previously held senior positions within Mozilla and Google. He will talk about the direction of the WebOS operating environment specifically and the future of mobile and the web.

Colorado 94

Colorado Mobile AJAX Cofounder 94

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 27, 2016

I don’t know Lars, but know of him as the founder/CEO of SuccessFactors and now a partner at A16Z, and was curious after recently reading a Forbes article about Zenefits a few weeks ago titled ‘A Lot Of Things Went Wrong’: Lars Dalgaard On Zenefits Scandal. We strongly recommend them.

Government 70

Government Partner Finance Founder 70

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 11, 2015

But you have to be paying attention and operating under the right assumptions. If you are a founder running a high growth, VC backed company, here are a few questions to ask your investors today. I’m a strong believer that you can build great companies in time of both greed and fear.

.Net 70

.Net Lead Investor Internet Operations 70

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 25, 2015

But even if you, as the founder, believe it, you are still probably deluding yourself. And need money to fund their operations. .” It’s probably b t. There are so many reasons companies raise more money in the future that even making an assertion like this is generally nonsensical.

Finance 70

Finance Bootstrapping Acquisition Revenue 70

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 13, 2017

you are three founders and four other employees), as CEO you can own one, but not more than one. Naturally, you will have a product or engineering leader for Product, you will have a sales, marketing, or operations leader for Customer, and you will have a finance or admin leader for Company. Product, Customer, and Company.

Leadership 70

Leadership Engineer Finance Sales 70

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 21, 2018

New exporter for rendered scenes from Maya to the Looking Glass is fully operational! And as the Looking Glass founders Shawn and Alex say, thanks^3. Exporting 3D scenes directly from Autodesk’s Maya – and soon supporting a live viewport direct from Maya into a Looking Glass. AdskMaya @autodesk #ImpossibleThings More here!

Architecture 73

Architecture Engineer Developer Community 73

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

Sometimes the writer gets this right and links it back to John Underkoffler, the co-founder of Oblong, but many times they don’t. That’s a picture of John Underkoffler at Ted on Friday giving one of his jaw dropping demos of Oblong’s g-speak spatial operating environment.

Cofounder 113

Cofounder Revenue Operations Founder 113

Feld Thoughts

MAY 17, 2016

While I was trying to be helpful in general to the firm and my partners, I didn’t like the way we were operating. I felt a deep obligation to all the various people involved – the founders we had invested in, our LPs, and all the people who were still working for Mobius. There was no joy anywhere.

San Francisco 108

San Francisco Internet Portfolio New York 108

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 21, 2014

I was a co-founder and co-chairman. Focus on the reality – your reality – and do your best operating in the context in which you can’t control. A few months later the public markets for Internet stocks turned around and we closed a $330 million fund which ended up doing extremely well.

Stock 140

Stock Internet SEC Italy 140

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 22, 2015

Following is a guest post from Zack Rosen at Pantheon about his experience shadowing Jud Valeski, founder and then-CEO of Gnip for a day in 2012. That is the goal of CEO shadowing: to put you in the shoes of another CEO, let you observe, ask questions, and form a rich and detailed mental model of how another company operates.

NDA 70

NDA Portfolio Operations Management 70

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 1, 2011

Even when you go back in time to the origins of the software industry: MS-DOS – not the first operating system. Early on, his coach and Nike co-founder, the amazing Bill Bowerman , encouraged him to “change the game&# by running the 3 mile (5k) instead of the mile. Not the first deal site. Not the first music site.

Social Network 143

Social Network Cofounder Portfolio Networking 143

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 25, 2015

” These deeply held beliefs tangibly define our values and give us a frame of reference to operate. So, instead of being dogmatic about values you created when you were three founders in a cafe somewhere, make sure you have one layer of abstraction about how you implement them, that can be tuned over time.

Syndicate 70

Syndicate Syndication Limited Partner Finance 70

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 3, 2013

Phil also totally groks entrepreneurship and is aggressively applying it to the vision, the curriculum, and the operations of CU Law. 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.

Colorado 155

Colorado Denver Community Hiring 155

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 14, 2015

Large organizations like government agencies and international financial institutions started incorporating software into their operations decades ago. Big problems always represent big opportunities for creative founders. In the short run, it’s cheaper and easier to address the symptom instead of the cause. These are big problems.

Stock 70

Stock Government Security Exit Strategy 70

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? Enjoy – and comment freely, especially if you disagree or have constructive feedback.

Startup 152

Startup Semantic Hiring Employee 152

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 5, 2017

At some point, I realized that Labs was either (a) a random place to put a founder who is no longer working on the core activity of the business or (b) a place to work on a set of things that product can’t make progress on. If (a) random place for a founder, the CEO may not be dealing with an organizational issue around a founder.

Founder 117

Founder Product Development Engineer Revenue 117