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.