Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 25, 2011

As my partners at Foundry Group know, every time I hear the word “marketing&# I throw up a little in my mouth. I hate traditional marketing and have always resisted it early in the life of a new company. Fred Wilson has a phenomenal blog post up this morning titled Marketing. were a key part of every startup plan.

Marketing 139

Marketing PR Startup Social Media 139

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 20, 2015

“We have product/market fit.” ” “We are searching for product/market fit.” ” “We are raising this financing to find product/market fit.” ” “Our customer traction demonstrates product/market fit.” ” Product/market fit.

Product 70

Product Marketing Valuation Search 70

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

They are searching for a great head of marketing. They are growing rapidly, generated over a million dollars in revenue in their first year, and are now looking for an experienced VP of Marketing to join the founders as an integral member of the executive team to lead all aspects of marketing.

Denver 119

Denver Marketing Revenue Search 119

Feld Thoughts

JULY 27, 2010

“People Product Market&# The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 10 from TechStars on Vimeo. As a special bonus, there’s a cute clip of me near the end watching the incredible record tennis match between Isner and Mahut. And some funny running footage. And a glider.

Founder 106

Founder Product Marketing Matching 106

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 6, 2012

1933, otherwise known as “Re-opening American Capital Markets To Emerging Growth Companies Act.” My partner Jason has a longer post up on Senate Bill 1933 , but I’m supporting S. ” In short, this act would allow for an IPO on-ramp that would minimize costly and burdensome regulation on smaller offerings.

IPO 120

IPO Marketing Partner Cost 120

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

They are looking for a VP or a Director of Marketing to join them in Santa Clara, CA. A description of the job and Memeo follows: Memeo is currently recruiting for a VP/Director of Marketing to drive its SasS SMB product growth. Oversee analysis of marketing database. Create a lead nurturing and lead scoring strategy.

Lead Generation 112

Lead Generation Marketing Cloud Database 112

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 6, 2021

A Complete Handbook for Light and Ultralight Backpacking : I knew of ultralight backpacking (and have heard the phrase a bunch recently in marketing stuff), but I didn’t really know the parameters or the style. I fell into the Kindle content market trap and clicked on links. Lighten Up!: This was a great intro.

Software 158

Software Software Developers Software Development Portfolio 158

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 19, 2014

Talk with any professional marketer about their websites and two things will become clear: 1) websites are absolutely central to how digital marketing gets done and 2) websites are a giant pain in the ass. At some point (hopefully) the business starts growing and a professional marketer is brought on board. Total break down.

Hosting 139

Hosting HTML Bandwidth Portfolio 139

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 9, 2021

They were bashing each other over the head in a non-existent market as the Internet bubble began collapsing. The founders of each company talked and, in between efforts to decimate the other, agreed it might be worth merging to survive. After the intro, the following sections are written by each exec.

Fractional CTO 70

Fractional CTO Cofounder Startup Lead Investor 70

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 28, 2021

They are a by-product of markets. I’m more interested in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order effects instead of the financial and market dynamics. I learned about the stock market by reading those magazines. Today’s news is that it is happening in the financial markets. Fiscal policy is. The dynamics are the same.

Stock 213

Stock IPO Restful Social Media 213

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

Working through my market portfolio this am and thought This metric would be of interest to this group. These 6 companies have more market cap than the entire emerging market sector. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix and Microsoft have added 3 trillion dollars to their value since COVID started.

Colorado 207

Colorado Small Business Portfolio Metrics 207

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 24, 2013

This means the bitcoin market behaves more like a commodity market than like a currency market, prone to volatility and some specific kinds of market pathologies. Currently there are about half that number of bitcoins in circulation. The rate at which new bitcoins are mined is designed to decrease over time.

United States 153

United States Software Engineering Government Design 153

Feld Thoughts

MAY 28, 2019

It was the first desktop holographic display to come to market for, well, extreme nerds (like yours truly) that have been hoping for holographic displays their/our whole lives. Last summer they launched their flagship product, a dev kit called the Looking Glass. The Looking Glass dev kits and the adjoining Unity and three.js

Technical Review 123

Technical Review Software Review Engineer Video 123

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

Instead, the driver was the 1983 bull market. Put a willing and forgiving exit market following any investment period and you get spectacular returns. There are five key risks in any deal: Market, Product (a/k/a technology), Management, Business Model, and Capital. Taking all five at once is crazy.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

Every time a marketing team works with a web design firm, there is the usual painful and broken handoff between the outside agency and the technical operations of the client which culminate on launch day. If I take a step back, it’s so clear to me how much the website market needs to change.

Technical Review 70

Technical Review Portfolio Web Design 70

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 30, 2022

The private markets lag the public markets. I’ve been involved in companies that have used these moments to gain huge market share from failing competitors. .” For perspective, all you need to do is look at a dozen high-flying IPOs from 2020 or 2021 to see that the peak happened just before Thanksgiving.

IPO 139

IPO Operations Entrepreneur Marketing 139

Feld Thoughts

MAY 3, 2012

The market is fully employed and while there is some movement between companies, great developers tend to be decided to what they are doing for a while, especially in an entrepreneurial context. Once again we are in a zone where hiring software developers is incredibly challenging. Last night I was at Angel Boot Camp in Boston.

Software Developers 135

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Software 135

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 24, 2017

This means FC avoids trends and relentlessly questions entrepreneurs about how their product enables specific use cases and market opportunities. Founder friendly” is an overused term, but there is a big difference between marketing this as a concept and living it every day.

Founder 75

Founder LP Technical Review Seed Stage 75

Feld Thoughts

JULY 12, 2018

All decisions and scoring were left to vendor claims (also known as “marketing”) while operational aspects of the customer, and how the various products addressed them, were ignored. This eliminated the opportunity for the analyst to understand the customer’s perspective and to compare and contrast the different solutions being evaluated.

Technical Review 73

Technical Review Warrant PR Portfolio 73

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Real Product and Market Focus – This company lost 3-6 months of execution because they got lost building towards a high level vision. A discussion around overall business viability, time to market, and capital impact would have ensued. The year would have been a full year, not just 7-9 months.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 31, 2020

” There were different flavors, but if I summarized, it would be: Is the public market in a bubble? ” I’ve never tried to time the markets. I am not going to ever try to time the markets. Is VC in a bubble? Are SPACs a bubble? Double, double toil and trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Venture Capital 181

Venture Capital Email Search Partner 181

Feld Thoughts

JULY 22, 2011

Kevin McCaffrey left his job as a strategy consultant in the Chicago office of McKinsey & Company to found Dot-to-Dot Children’s Books, a nonprofit social enterprise that works with children around the world to develop children’s books that are marketed to raise funding and awareness for the authors’ communities.

Finance 135

Finance Congo Chicago Cambodia 135

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 30, 2013

Though the notion of a “lean startup” that uses both Agile and Customer Development approaches is ostensibly strongly customer focused, the purpose of these methodologies is for the company to find an maximize its market, not specifically to optimize the user experience.

Technology 168

Technology Coder Semantic Social Media 168

Feld Thoughts

JULY 8, 2013

Although I initially dismissed DevOps as just another marketing fad, my friend John Willis corrected me, in the way that only true friends can do, saying, “Don’t be dense. Or, “the banner ads in my market are being served upside down and in Spanish.”. Since then, this journey has taken me straight into the heart of the DevOps movement.

Phoenix 175

Phoenix Software Review Technical Review Cofounder 175

Feld Thoughts

MAY 5, 2014

just before the end of 2011 so their first real year in the market was in 2012. Their first product will “reinvent the ball” through the creation of a robotic ball controlled by a smart phone. They shipped Sphero 1.0 shipped in the fall of 2013 and was praised in reviews like the one in TechCrunch which gushed Sphero 2.0

Software Review 136

Software Review Agile Mobile Programming 136

Feld Thoughts

MAY 26, 2014

Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising (APenguin Special from Portfolio) : I figured I’d read the cannon on Holiday so this was next. Dynamite book – I’m glad I put the time in. Holiday covers the topic well in a very accessible way.

Dallas 113

Dallas Technical Review Vertical PR 113

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 31, 2012

For those of us who pay a lot of attention to sensors, the automotive market is always interesting. Historically, adoption in cars has been one important way that new hardware gets to mass-market economies of scale. The general consumer imaging market continues to amaze me, though.

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Cofounder Video Cloud 127

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 18, 2017

Even better, it is powered by their new Global CDN , with over 30 points of presence and the most sophisticated Drupal and WordPress caching technology available on the market. With Pantheon, HTTPS just works out of the box and they are now providing HTTPS (powered by Let’s Encrypt) for all 200,000 of their websites, free of charge.

Caching 70

Caching Security Green Global 70

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 9, 2023

Diversity of experience and thought, along with an independent vs. investor perspective, is something every CEO can use, especially in this market environment. While leaving independent board seats empty or choosing someone you know is easy, this is risky. The post An Investment in Board Diversity appeared first on Brad Feld.

Curation 162

Curation Early Stage Hosting Portfolio 162

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 20, 2013

R/GA creates advertising and marketing products based in technology and design and has earned countless accolades over the years, including Advertising Age’s “Digital A-List” and “Agencies of the Decade.” They are the force behind the opening title sequence for 1978?

New York City 134

New York City Cofounder Technical Review New York 134

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 4, 2019

In 2011, my now-partner Chris Moody (and then-CEO of Gnip, which I was on the board of) kicked my butt about my endless statements about hating marketing. His thoughts on recasting “marketing” as “thought leadership” appeared on this blog in a post I Don’t Hate Marketing.

Leadership 136

Leadership Valuation Partner Entrepreneur 136

Feld Thoughts

MAY 26, 2021

The thing is, the categories were things like “Existentialism” and “Philosophy Reference” where overall sales are lower – they are applicable to the book as categories, but not really our target market (for the record, the book is selling nicely in “Entrepreneurial Management”, where it was briefly #2.). How is this marketing image different?

New York 169

New York Lean Reputation Email 169

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 30, 2011

It’s an extremely tight hiring market for software developers right now. I expect this to continue for a while given the obvious supply / demand imbalance for great people. So – if you are hiring – read Chris’s post and be thoughtful about how you go about this.

Software Developers 136

Software Developers Software Development Startup Hiring 136

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 6, 2016

Apprentices earn a living salary on their first day, and we as a tech community can support a program that puts more coders in the market with a keen eye toward diversity and opportunity while getting work completed. The benefits are obvious.

Coder 70

Coder Salary Software Engineering Software 70

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 3, 2010

We built AgileZen because we felt like there were a lot of tools on the market that served large organizations, but many of them weren’t designed to support the needs of small teams and startups. We felt confident that there was a large enough market for the product, so we took the plunge and decided to launch AgileZen as a startup.

Founder 122

Founder Acquisition Software Developers Software Development 122

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 10, 2018

Unlike the endless stream of predictions that are about to come out, it’s an analysis of the spread between the public market and private company valuations. Rates have risen significantly in the last eighteen months, pulling capital out of the equity markets and into the fixed income markets.

DC 112

DC Equity Hosting Valuation 112

Feld Thoughts

MAY 14, 2011

Fred and I are both investors in Return Path which he calls out in his post as the category creator and market leader in email deliverability. I love Return Path as a company and am incredibly proud of what they’ve done as a business.

SMS 138

SMS Social Media Channel Email 138