Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

My partners and I, especially Jason Mendelson, have been very involved with Silicon Flatirons over the past decade. Brad is currently studying finance instruments used in startup investment and has two forthcoming articles on this topic. He continually strives to connect the university and surrounding startup community.

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Feld Thoughts

JULY 28, 2020

My new book with Ian Hathaway, The Startup Community Way , is officially out. I’ve now written seven of them, all about startups and entrepreneurship. My next one, which I’ve been working on for a year with Dave Jilk (my first business partner), combined entrepreneurship and philosophy.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 14, 2023

Since the middle of last week, there has been extreme stress on founders, startup leaders, and the extended startup community. But, once again, I saw and experienced the extreme stress and anxiety that founders, CEOs, and leaders of startup companies face almost daily. He’s announcing the first supporters tonight.

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Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 10, 2014

My partners and I are focused on promoting diversity in our fund (here’s a run-down of our stats ) and have recently back several female CEOs, with a few more about to happen. Six months ago, two Boulder entrepreneurs and angel investors approached me and my partners about investing in a new accelerator targeting women-led companies.

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Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City is officially shipping. The article - This is how you build a tech community - follows up on a Bloomberg article that Vivek wrote in 2010 titled Why Boulder Is America’s Best Town for Startups.

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Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 8, 2012

As a result of this obsession, I’m launching Startup Revolution , starting now. I view Startup Revolution as a movement. Since my partners and I started Foundry Group in 2007 we’ve had an incredible experience working with a hundreds of entrepreneurs across the US in the 50 or so companies we’ve directly funded.

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Feld Thoughts

JULY 9, 2013

Pre-orders for the new book Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business by Matt Blumberg, CEO of Return Path, are available now on Amazon. They are incredible partners and Matt is still a first time CEO, but now running a 400 person company that dominates its market. Part II: Building the Company’s Human Capital.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 6, 2021

The program has been running in Colorado supporting pre-seed to post-seed stage startups at the intersection of conservation and technology since 2018. The Nature Conservancy is deeply involved in giving the startups access to the expertise of the world’s largest environmental non-profit.

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Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 7, 2013

With a handful of others, including my partner Seth Levine and Cooley’s Mike Platt, Ryan helped created the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. Rally was one of five founding members – the others were NewsGator, Collective Intellect, Me.dium, and Tendril.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 24, 2017

Foundry Group is best known for our investments in startups, but our vehicle currently investing in other venture funds, Foundry Group Next, is off to what we believe to be a great start and I wanted to share an update about it by talking about our new investment in a fund managed by Founder Collective. It starts with the people.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 19, 2012

Last week at our Yesware board meeting, we talked about the idea of “the monastic startup.” It embodies two concepts: The monastic startup is a place where engineers do the best work of their lives. This place involves work with long stretches of uninterrupted time. Oblong immediately comes to mind for me.

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Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 7, 2019

This new hire was a commercial hustler (code named Scott), moving quickly and broadly to try to secure customers and partners, including some of the tech industry’s largest companies. And this is critical as a mentor because startups are extremely hard. And never forget that startups are hard.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 6, 2023

My Foundry partners and I helped Kim and Eric Norlin create Gluecon in 2009 because we saw the need for a developer-focused event to explore emerging technologies around the cloud and APIs. In the interim years, dozens of products and startups have launched or used GlueCon as one of the venues for their early premieres.

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Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

Matt and I were on the FeedBurner board together and he’s got a powerful connection between LA and Chicago – another city with an incredibly thriving startup community. While they invest nationally, they have deep roots in both cities and are key players in the respective startup communities, along with the cities at large.

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Feld Thoughts

APRIL 11, 2021

Investors are seeking both financial returns and environmental impact and looking for opportunities to partner with ventures that are working to tackle our world’s biggest energy and environmental challenges. Enter Cleantech Open, the world’s largest and oldest cleantech accelerator for cleantech, climate tech, and sustainability startups.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 12, 2016

Fresh off a week of vacation, I’m rolling into the annual joyful madness that is Boulder Startup Week. If you don’t know the history of Startup Week (now owned by Techstars), it was founded by Andrew Hyde in Boulder in 2010 and subsequently begat the overall Startup Week program (powered by Chase) happening all over the world.

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Angel Investor Startup Colorado Cofounder 70

Feld Thoughts

JULY 11, 2014

We had a Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network Colorado meeting with her and her partner and in the middle of the discussion about their business Jenna used the phrase “digital paralysis” to describe one of the things she thinks is driving the incredible engagement of their customers. Startup Life life philosophy Technology'

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 14, 2020

Freestyle is one of our 32 partner funds (where we are LPs) and most of our new direct investing activity is in conjunction with one of our partner funds. Forbes wrote a detailed profile of the company and the investment in Foundry Group And Slack Are Backing A Virtual Therapy Startup That Raised $8.1

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Denver Partner Hosting Leadership 189

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 1, 2013

My close friend Jerry Colonna is giving an extraordinary seminar in Boulder on 4/19 with Parker Palmer called Surviving the Startup Life: The Toll of Merging Identity and Work. The post Surviving the Startup Life: The Toll of Merging Identity and Work appeared first on Feld Thoughts. at Naropa University in Boulder. It’s free.

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Merger Startup Conversion Partner 142

Feld Thoughts

JULY 5, 2011

Amy and I have just launched a new project we are working on together called Startup Marriage: Balancing Entrepreneurship and Relationship. The first, Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons To Accelerate Your Startup , was with David Cohen, the CEO of TechStars. Amy and I have been talking about writing Startup Marriage for several years.

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Italy Startup Partner 135

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 11, 2020

This is a completely separate initiative from investment activity with my partners at Foundry Group, which we’ll be talking about more soon once we’ve made clear decisions about what we are going to do over the next few years. My first of these commitments is to the Zane Access Inaugural Pre-Capital Program Cohort. ”).

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Programming Technical Review Cofounder United States 104

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 23, 2012

When I wrote Startup Communities, my mission was to provide a framework for building a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in any city in the world. I am excited to announce that I have partnered with Cojourneo to take this mission to the next level by launching a free online workshop for Startup Communities.

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Community Startup Framework Video 137

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 26, 2014

Our premise when we started doing branded accelerators with large companies was that we’d get deep mentor involvement from execs at the company we are partnering with. Len and his partner Jerry Poch bought my first company in 1993. Following are two examples from my own life. This took our relationship to a new level.

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Technical Review Boston Internet Venture Capital 150

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 26, 2013

I shipped off the publisher draft of Startup Boards last night. If you like my writing and want to do me a solid, pre-order a copy of Startup Boards today. The post Startup Boards Publisher Draft Is Finished appeared first on Feld Thoughts. Board of Directors book startup boards' That’ll make me smile.

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Miami Startup Partner Email 120

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

I spent the day in Kansas City yesterday at the Kauffman Foundation for my first Startup Weekend board meeting. I was at the first Startup Weekend in Boulder in July 2007. I was at the first Startup Weekend in Boulder in July 2007. If you’ve never done a Startup Weekend, try one. I bet it changes your life.

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Kansas City Kansas Startup Community 120

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 26, 2015

Sean Wise, my co-author for my next book, Startup Opportunities , is a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto. Each of the organizations is an integral part of their startup community. A number of the most entrepreneurially-minded companies in Canada act as our national sponsors for the Startup Opportunities book tour.

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Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 13, 2020

Jaclyn Hester, one of my Foundry Group partners , recently asked if there was an online definition of #GiveFirst. GiveFirst first appeared as “Give Before You Get” in my book Startup Communities published in 2012. I updated it in the 2nd Edition of Startup Communities (2e) which was published in 2020.

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Community Web Video Partner 154

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 5, 2012

My friend Chris Moody , the COO of Gnip, has another guest post up today titled Startup Culture: Values vs. Vibe. Values establish your company’s view of the world and determine how you treat others including employees, customers, partners, and investors. to add an extra level of scrutiny to your commitment. Play hard.”

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 17, 2011

Draper III ) has written a gem called The Startup Game. started Draper Gaither & Anderson , one of the first VC firms on the west coast that coincidentally was the first firm to use a limited partner (LP structure). It’s a mix of practitioner stories with some autobiography mixed in.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 24, 2021

I immediately introduced Mahendra to a bunch of Foundry Group LPs, partners, and entrepreneurs. Mahendra cornered me in a hallway and pitched the idea of doing a book together around how a board of directors works at a startup. Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors was released in 2014.

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Venture Capital Detroit Michigan Framework 175

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 8, 2015

A few weeks ago, I participated in a Q&A with Greg Avery at the Denver Business Journal titled Brad Feld Q&A: Bringing depression out of the shadows in startups. It was part of a more extensive series on Depression, entrepreneurs and startups. Q: How common is the issue of depression in the startup world?

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Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 29, 2015

I spouted all kinds of garbage and nonsense about what we were doing as part of the broader Softbank ecosystem to help advance the cause of Softbank while at the same time helping startups everywhere, especially the ones we had invested in. Then I realized that the big company has no fundamental obligation to the startup.

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Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 8, 2013

I am so very tired of MBO-based bonuses in startups. This is totally messed up in a startup. My partner Dave and I took the number, made a list of all employees, and figured out how much we were going to give each of them. Wikipedia reminded me – it’s another Peter Drucker creation from The Practice of Management.

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Stock Options Technical Review Leadership Equity 146

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 13, 2017

As you may know, over breakfast in 2015 Jeff Bussgang and I launched Global EIR with the hope of advancing the startup visa effort on a local and state level after it stalled in Congress. Others came to turn a great idea into a startup and ultimately into a world-changing company.

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Feld Thoughts

MAY 28, 2015

At the same time, his partner at his previous company – Tim Miller – was doing an entrepreneur-in-residence at a local Boulder VC firm (Boulder Ventures). Over the fast dozen years, Rally has gone from a raw startup to a 500 person public company. About a year after he got started, he was ready to raise a venture financing.

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Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 6, 2016

In the last five years, there has been an explosion of startup activity in LA that continues to be exciting as the startup community grows and evolves. Mark also invited me to the Upfront annual meeting given (a) our Next strategy and (b) my new partner Lindel Eakman being a prior investor in Upfront when he was at UTIMCO.

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Feld Thoughts

JUNE 25, 2020

said Valence CoFounder and General Partner at Upfront Ventures, Kobie Fuller. “We We want to even the playing field with the goal of exponentially growing the number of Black-owned startups that get funded.” Valence is upending this completely by bringing the top VCs to Valence to compete for the best Black founders.”

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Networking Silicon Valley Cofounder Aggregator 167