Month: July 2009
I suck at naming things. I named my first company “Feld Technologies” (yeah, that was super creative, but I bet it made my dad proud.) I learned an important lesson from that one – when things go wrong people call for Mr. Feld and yell at him. Better to name your company Costolo Technologies if your last name is Feld.
I then went on to name another company I co-founded – this one that was one of the first email service providers (in the mid-1990’s we referred to this as “publishing email”). Guess what we named it? If you guessed “Email Publishing” you are now demonstrating your strong deductive reasoning skills as they pertain to my completely lame naming skills.
At some point, I took myself out of consideration for naming things. I take no responsibility for any company names after 1997.
A year ago I learned that the “tech scene” in Colorado was referred to as “ICT” or “Information and Communication Technologies”. This happened during my activity with the Colorado Governors Innovation Council while we were trying to convince people (successfully) that the software / Internet industry is a key part of the economic activity in Colorado. A side note: we succeeded – as Governor Ritter has recently stated ICT is now the fifth pillar of economic development in Colorado, joining bio, aerospace, tourism, and the new energy economy.
As part of this, I discovered that ICT is a popular TLA in government for referring to software + Internet + communications. Fortunately, very few people outside of government (except for the government affairs people at tech companies) use the phrase ICT or even know what it means. I commented several times (especially after endlessly referring to it as CIT) that it was a terrible name. When asked what I’d call this sector, I responded with “I suck at naming things.” Kettle – pot – black.
Some of my friends have started talking about a better name for “the Colorado Tech Scene”. After encouraging them to please please please not use the word “Silicon” in the phrase, I proceeded to bow out of any real discussions about this as “I suck at naming things.” Recently a group of them got serious about figuring out a name and the guys at Rocky Radar agreed to take the lead on crowd sourcing suggestions.
So – if you have any ideas, send an email to nameCO@rockyradar.com or tweet it with the hash code #nameCO. Help us replace ICT with something other than CIT.
I spent the afternoon today at TechStars Boulder in the Bunker meeting with about half of the teams. I’m delighted with the progress they are making – everyone is really cranking and a few companies are just crushing it. This week’s episode of TechStars: The Founders is dynamite and includes a trip to Amsterdam and a quick spin through TechStars Boston.
I’m bummed I missed tonight’s Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup where a handful of the TechStars teams gave five minute demos, but I was busy indulging myself at Frasca while learning about flower abortions.
Yesterday, I wrote about the new VC Blogger Network powered by Lijit. A handful of VCs emailed me asking to be added to the network (which has been done). There’s no time limit so if you are a VC and want to join, just email me.
In the mean time, I neglected to mention a super cool site called Venture Maven. Greg Galant and several others put this together – it’s a great aggregation of VCs who tweet – both individually and by firm (quick – name all the firms that have 100% of the partners tweeting). If you are a VCtweeter and are not on the list, wander over now and add yourself.
And, as the bonus round, go check out Twittorati, a list of the Technorati Top 100 and their tweets.
A year ago, if you had asked me a year ago if I would write a post with the word tweet in it so many times, I would have twittered at you.
I’ve long been fascinated by venture capitalists who blog. I’ve also spent a lot of time in and around various blog networks, as a participant, as an investor, and as an technology supplier.
A few months ago Lijit rolled out their “Blogger Network” service and I created a new version of the VC Bloggers Network that I have been managing for a while. On the right hand side is a blogroll of all of the VCs in the network (if you are a VC blogger and you aren’t on the list, just email me and I’ll get you added.) All of the other bloggy stuff is here (the site is powered by WordPress) including an RSS feed for all the aggregated content, archives, tags, and the recent content.
The special magic happy thing is the search box at the top right of the page.
This is a search capability across the entire content generated by the VC Bloggers Network. If you want to search for something you “remember from a VC blogger, but can’t remember who wrote it”, this is a good place to search. Or, if you want to learn more about something like the “Glue” theme that Foundry Group invests in, you’ll get a very different search result from Glue on the VC Bloggers Network than you will from Glue on Google or Glue on Bing.
Give it a try and tell me what you think. Reminder – if you are a VC Blogger that isn’t in on the blogroll, just email me. If you are a VC Blogger that isn’t using Lijit’s search service (it’s free), or for that matter any blogger that isn’t using it, give it a try. As a special bonus, or for more context, see what our friends at Google Blogger just wrote in their Partner Profile on Lijit.
The meme of “Free” is one again making the rounds. I expect it reignited when Chris Anderson’s new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price (available on Amazon for $17.81) quickly followed by Malcolm Gladwell’s semi-scathing review in the New Yorker titled “Priced to Sell. Is Free the future?” (I kind of feel like Gladwell wimped out on the review, even though I like Anderson’s point of view better than Gladwell’s.) This then created a predictable tussle in the blogosphere, the kind of which I find tedious and dull, so I avoided the rest of it.
Over the weekend I saw two more blog posts on this meme. The first – by Fred Wilson titled Freemium and Freeconomics – is clear and well written (and free). It’s then followed by an excellent comment thread. The second – by Marc Cuban titled When you succeed with Free, you are going to die by Free (also free) is a muddy as Fred’s is clear (and the comments are much less interesting). Nevertheless, both are relevant and insightful.
Whenever I see this meme rise its head, I think of a line I use whenever I consider an investment or an acquisition of another company. “Would You Want It If It Were Free?” I learned this from Len Fassler, one of my early mentors who acquired my first company (fortunately he decided it was worth more than free). Before I make an investment, or support an acquisition, I sit quietly and ask myself “would I want this if it were free?” By this, I don’t mean as a customer, but rather “would I invest in this at a $0m pre-money valuation” or “would I want 100% ownership of this company if it cost me $0.”
Over the past 15 years, I’ve found my answer to this question to be “no” more times than I can remember. It often surprises me when I realize this, as up to that point in the conversation, investigation, or negotiation I’d been focusing on “the deal” rather than “whether or not I perceived any value in the company being discussed.” When I reflect on some cases that I remember, I realize how my internal rationalization machine had kicked into high gear as I got excited about “a transaction”. By taking the transaction out of my thought process, I could focus on the essence of value (or lack thereof).
Of course I’ve been wrong (both directions) plenty of times. But I can think of a bunch of situations where asking myself this question saved my ass or that of the company I was involved with that was considering an acquisition.
I realize this is a different version of free than the one Anderson, Gladwell, Wilson, and Cuban are discussing. But, if you step back and think hard about it from a customer perspective, it magically becomes relevant. Certainly lots of people “would try it if it were free”, but do they actually want it?
Amy and I are huge fans and collectors of Rick Dula. We’ve got a number of pieces of his art of the construction of the new Denver Art Museum hanging in my office at Foundry Group that we bought from the William Havu Gallery in Denver.
Our anniversary was June 21st and neither of us managed to get the other one a gift. So – on June 21st we went trolling around the web for a piece of art to buy. We each bought one and then decided to buy two more for our life dinner gifts on July 1st. The two that we bought on our anniversary were Rick Dula’s – the first is R.I.P. Rocky Mountain News Building.
My world is all about innovation. In the mid 1990’s, as the commercial Internet started to emerge and the World Wide Web became something that people both knew about and used, it seemed like the traditional newspaper (and traditional newspaper business) wasn’t long for the world. While it took fifteen or so years for the real end game to emerge, I’ll definitely hang this one in my office as a reminder of how creative destruction works.
The other Dula that we decided to buy was D.A.M. Building Progress.
This one is a big one – 41.5” x 55” – so we aren’t yet sure where it’s going to go. Since we love to support local living artists, we’ll definitely try to find a spot for this other than “storage.”
One of the most satisfying parts of what I do is getting to work with people over a long period of time, starting early in their careers. It’s one of the things I love about TechStars, but it’s not limited to that as I have many other relationships with young and first time entrepreneurs.
Last night, at Ignite Boulder 5, I had a permagrin on my face as I thought about the amazing job Andrew Hyde was doing. I first met Andrew a few years ago when we started TechStars – he basically volunteered to hang out with a video camera for free all summer to film stuff and learn. He was so hugely helpful that it was easy to bring him on board the TechStars team in year two as the community manager.
I attended Ignite Boulder 2 and had a great time. But last night – #5 – just blew me away. 700-ish people in the Boulder Theater, enormous energy, endless laughter and brain stimulation, and just a very good time. Andrew organized a phenomenal show and really shined as the organizer / MC.
But TechStars and Ignite Boulder are not the only things Andrew does. He also created Startup Weekend (I was at the first one in Boulder) and he was one of the founders of Boulder.me. And – with Matt Emmi of One Button -created the hilariously creative VC Wear t-shirt line (my favorite: “I went down on Sand Hill Road”.)
But wait, there’s more. Andrew is everywhere in the Boulder startup community while managing to travel all over the world sharing his brand of entrepreneurial passion. I don’t ever think I’ve seen Andrew without a smile on his face, and he’s even gracious when he kicks my butt in ping poing.
It’s been awesome to see Andrew come of age as a key driver of our local entrepreneurial community. Good job man!
Yesterday I posted that Trada is looking for a Test Engineer. Gnip is also looking for software developers – three in fact:
If you are Boulder-based and fit the qualifications, email Jenny-Lynne Elledge.
Trada, one of our portfolio companies in Boulder, is looking to hire. They’re looking for a tech-skilled individual who thinks they can do just about everything, because they might be asked to. Primary role is testing their online advertising app but there’s a huge opportunity to contribute much more. There’s dev work; cloud systems admin; operations tasks; end-user support; and customer facing account management tasks that can be added to the mix for the properly skilled (and properly motivated) individual. While still in stealth these guys are already rocking. Interested – contact Michael Lawless at mlawless@trada.com.