Brad Feld

Back to Blog

Early Stage Investing in an Uncertain Economy

Sep 02, 2008
Category Education

I’m on a panel on Tuesday September 9th from 5pm – 8pm titled Early Stage Investing in an Uncertain Economy.  It’s being sponsored by the Rockies Venture Club and is being held at the Denver Marriott City Center.  If you are interested in attending, you can register here.

Since the Rockies Venture Club is largely targeted at angel investors and entrepreneurs it should be an interesting conversation.  The TechStars Demo and Investor Day two weeks ago was packed and the 2008 TechStars teams are seeing very high interest in their early stage rounds.  If this is a data point, it would indicate that the "uncertain economy" isn’t having much impact.

As an early stage VC investor, I don’t pay much attention to the macro economy.  I’ve written about this in the past – some of our best investments have come during crappy economic periods (say 2001 – 2003).  We are funding very early stage companies with an expectation that it will take them 5+ years to mature into a successful business.  Lots can happen in 5+ years.

I’ll save my snarkier remarks for the panel.