Last week Don Dodge , Dan’l Lewin, and Dave Drach from Microsoft visited TechStars . Don has a nice post up about his visit including brief descriptions of several of the TechStars companies that I don’t think has appeared in the wild yet.
Don, Dan’l, and Dave are good friends – among other things Dan’l runs the Microsoft Emerging Business Team which is responsible for Microsoft’s relationship with the VC community and venture-backed startups. Scott Maxwell from OpenView – who sits on Dan’ls advisory board with me – summarized how EBT works from a VC’s perspective in a 2006 post titled Microsoft’s Work with Emerging Growth Companies – Five Stars .
TechStars was one of the stops on a day long tour that Don, Dan’l, and Dave made through Boulder. This was true evangelism – only two of the ten TechStars teams are heavy users of Microsoft technology. Some eyes got opened along the way – both directions – and I think the dialogue was great.
Don followed up his post on TechStars with a thoughtful essay titled Angel investors deserve respect from VCs which riffed off of Rick Segal’s post titled Shortsighted Greed . Great stuff for anyone playing in the seed stage of the investing universe.