Brad Feld

Back to Blog

Doubling Down and TechStars for Life

Aug 09, 2009
Category Techstars

I’m heading out for the first run in 10 days since I hurt my back playing tennis.  It’s a beautiful day here in Keystone and I’m looking forward to enjoying the mountains for a while.

I slept late, had breakfast with Amy, and then went through my morning information routine.  In addition to leveling up in Mafia Wars and Pirates, checking to make sure my Farm didn’t need harvesting until later today, and making sure my workers were feed and working the rides in Roller Coaster Kingdom, I ran across a pair of very inspiring blog posts.

Fred Wilson wrote a great post titled Doubling Down.  In it, he describes the biggest double down of his life – his decision around the Flatiron portfolio in late 2000 / early 2001.  In addition to a good story, he ends with some sage advice about how to think about doubling down.

Mark O’Sullivan, the CEO of Vanilla (one of the TechStars 2009 Boulder companies) also wrote an inspiring post titled TechStar for Life.  In it, he captures the essence of TechStars along with showing his depth as a person and entrepreneur.

While scanning my Facebook news feed this morning, I saw one more gem posted by Shawn Broderick (who runs TechStars Boston).  It’s the .sig of the day and says “How about instead of spreading the wealth around we spread the work ethic around?  Amen, brother.”  Having just come off an amazing summer with the Boston TechStars, I can comfortably say these guys all have an incredible work ethic that reinforces how important innovation and entrepreneurship is to our country and society as a whole.

I’m lucky to know and work with a large number of people that I put in the “strong work ethic club”, including many who are on their first venture as well as those that have been at it for a long time.  There is a common thread that runs through all of them – they believe in innovation, entrepreneurship, and getting things done that matter.  I’d like to think that I’ve been in this club my entire life and hope to retain my membership until the lights go out, whatever I’m doing.