Brad Feld

Entrepreneur, author, and investor. Writing about startups, venture capital, books, and life since 2004.

Latest

Book: Playground by Richard Powers

Last night I finished Richard Powers' Playground, a novel about a dying tech founder, while Jensen Huang's story was unfolding at Nvidia. I kept waiting for Todd to be an AI.

An Art Deco bank hall with a wall of sealed safe-deposit boxes and a giant hourglass, where one figure holds a key up to the only box that glows

Binance Update: Waiting on a Zero-Knowledge Proof

Binance reopened withdrawals and says it has covered 95% of the $6.3 billion hack. The proof that the money is there is a zero-knowledge proof, and it's running a day late.

A concrete vault with a giant intact padlock on its front door while red coins pour out of a small open side door

Life Imitates Art: The $6.3 Billion Binance Hack

Someone stole $6.3 billion from Binance ten days after I published the last chapter of Zero Knowledge. Some of the coverage reads like chapters I already wrote.

A maker painting a 3D-printed miniature, with Form Studio 1 printers in the background

Formlabs Form Studio 1

On October 14th, Formlabs launched Form Studio 1, a professional resin 3D printer that starts at $699. I didn't get to play things out with MakerBot. I've gotten to with Formlabs.

Samantha running down a gravel road beside a creek with Cooper trotting next to her, aspens on the slopes - the chapter 82 plate, pop art style

Zero Knowledge: 116 Chapters In

I just finished chapter 82 of Zero Knowledge. That's 116 of 137 chapters in the first draft. Here's what the book is, how a chapter gets made, and where I want to take it with AuthorMagic.

The covers of The Wolves of K Street by Brody and Luke Mullins, The Nerd Reich by Gil Durán, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore, and Into the Wood Chipper by Nicholas Enrich

Gell-Mann Amnesia, Without the Amnesia

I'm completely baffled by the narratives about the last decade, so I've added contemporary political history to my reading diet. Four books that helped.

Founded Colorado

Today we launched Founded Colorado, a policy organization for companies based in Colorado, with Eleni Angelides as our Executive Director.

That Wanaka Tree, a lone willow standing in Lake Wanaka with the Southern Alps behind it

New Zealand, Colorado, and a Lunch in Boulder

I've fallen in love with New Zealand. On October 16, NZ investors and advisors are coming to Boulder for an Active Investor Plus roadshow lunch.

I'm So Confused: Are We Going Faster, Or Slower, Or Just Faking Everyone Out

Two weeks ago, Amodei (Anthropic) published We Must Pace the Frontier, and Altman (OpenAI), Hassabis (Google), and Musk (SpaceXAIZWQ5r) all agreed. But Huang (Nvidia) didn’t. I wonder what Zaphod Beeblebrox thinks. Last week, Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 5.5 - its first release since the pacing essay - and a few hours later OpenAI dropped GPT-6 Sol and Luna into a price war under Astra. Pacing the frontier is a serious idea that no one seems to be taking seriously. Or is it? Or are they?

The Real Luxuries In Life

I love Labor Day weekend. It’s the “back to school” moment of the year for me. When I was a kid growing up in Dallas, we didn’t go back to school until after Labor Day, so that was the weekend that summer ended and fall began. I wrote ten years ago that Memorial Day and Labor Day are the bookends of summer. What’s different now is that I’m 60, closing in on 61, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot more about what I actually care about.