Brad Feld

Month: July 2010

The second Boulder Open Angel Forum event is happening on August 4th at 7pm.  In case you aren’t familiar with the Open Angel Forum, the organization is dedicated to providing entrepreneurs with access to the angel investor community based solely on merit and without any fees.

The first Open Angel Forum in Boulder was dynamite.  David Cohen, the founder/CEO of TechStars drove the event and is also hosting this one. He has scheduled it the night before the TechStars Boulder 2010 Demo Day with the hope of having some out of town angels that are here for Demo Day attend.

Apply here to attend as an angel investor.

Apply here if you are a company that wants to present.

Finally, if you want to come to the TechStars Demo Day, please contact David or email me and I’ll get you plugged in.


In addition to missing the sun up here in Homer today, I miss my dogs.

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I guess I need to get them on a Skype call later today, kind of like what Todd Vernon did with me earlier today.


There are many things I love about Boulder.  One of them is the powerful sense of community that exists.  Talking about this is fine, but examples are better.  Here’s one:

On the first Tuesday of every month is the Boulder New Tech Meetup.  It’s one of the largest regular tech meetups in the world and is orchestrated by a bunch of folks, most notably Robert Reich of OneRiot who is the founder and ringleader.  Given my travel, I can’t make it regularly but I try to go a couple of times a year.  Each time is fascinating – I’ve always learned something, met some interesting folks, and had fun.

Last week Robert and the NewTech gang decided to do something different.  They lined up multiple non-profit organizations who presented New Tech style, but with a twist. Once all of the groups were finished on the podium (they each got two minutes instead of the typical five minutes to present) they split up into rooms all over the CU Wolf Law Building (where the New Tech Meetup is held) and started hacking. The tech community helped the non-profits on tech issues ranging  from web design to social media help, database support to graphic design, and everything in-between.

Robert sent me a list of the non-profits that presented.  They follow and include several that Amy and I support philanthropically:

  • Colorado Nonprofit Development Center presented by Kamela Maktabi
  • Food Bank of the Rockies presented by Janie Gianotsos
  • Cool Girls Science and Art Club presented by Mary Golden
  • Boulder International Fringe Festival presented by Alana Eve Burman
  • I Have a Dream Foundation of Boulder County presented by Lisa McAlister
  • The WILD Foundation presented by Emily Loose
  • Denver Curling Club presented by Alyssa Rossnagel
  • Boulder Community Computers presented by Eric Jackson
  • Ashoka’s Youth Venture presented by Matt Nathan
  • The “I Love U Guys” Foundation presented by John-Michael Keyes
  • Blue Sky Bridge Child Advocacy Center presented by Judy Toran Cousin
  • Leave No Trace presented by Dana Watts

Here are the stats of what happened:

  • 300 people showed up to listen to the non-profits present
  • 200 people stuck around for dinner
  • 130 people stayed around and directly helped the different non-profits hack

It’s pretty amazing what can happen when you put a bunch of smart techies in a room.  Boulder – I love you and miss you.  And, if you are in a NewTech Meetup in another city, I challenge you to help out some non-profits!


It looks like I got 25 haiku’s in my haiku contest for a copy of The New Polymath.  After consulting with Vinnie Mirchandani (the book’s author) we’ve chosen Rini Das as the winner for the following haiku:

Old Polymath all men

If New Polymath a woman

Then we call it “Progress”

Amy told me she approved of our choice. Rini – “the book is in the mail.”


Last Thursday, my good friends at Standing Cloud (we are investors) got a nice (and their first) write up in TechCrunch titled Standing Cloud Gives You One-Click App Installs Across Multiple Hosting Providers. I’m proud of the Standing Cloud team as they’ve resisted all the cloud hype and just stayed heads down and built out some really cool stuff that they are now rolling out.  I tuned into the TechCrunch article and scanned the comments and lo and behold, Standing Cloud seemed to have a giant issue being called out – namely the font of their logo.

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Who knew that Papyrus was so hated by TechCrunch readers? Who knew there was a Papyrus Watch website for font offenders? All I could think of was that the Standing Cloud font was better than the old Feld Technologies font, which was in Bauhaus.

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I laughed for a while, then laughed some more at several good natured emails between me, Dave Jilk (the Standing Cloud CEO), my partner Jason, my partner Seth, and Todd Vernon (Lijit’s CEO who is on the Standing Cloud board.)

Then Dave turned himself into Papyrus Watch and posted a comment about it in the TechCrunch comment stream:

“I failed to heed prior warnings about this issue and we will now have to pay our debt to society. In response to your comment and others, I have voluntarily turned myself in to the authorities at PapyrusWatch (https://www.papyruswatch.com), and we are already making plans to update the logo to something attractive and sensible. I hope you favor rehabilitation over punishment and would be willing to try the service, or at least read the article, despite our aesthetic transgression.”

Papyrus Watch did their part with a post titled The Story of Standing Cloud.  In it, Standing Cloud announced that they have put up the job of designing a new logo for Standing Cloud on 99designs for $395.  Please, no Bauhaus.



One of the side benefits of blogging is the various inspiring emails I get from readers about different topics.  I got a great one yesterday that I thought addressed the question of “Why am I having so much fun with challenges in my personal life and at the same time am so bored with work.  And – more importantly – what can I do about it?”  This morning, the New York Times had a great article which compliments this titled An Entrepreneur Who Took A Chance on Herself. If you are going to take a chance on something, why not take it on yourself?  The email I received follows with minor edits to anonymize the writer.  I hope it’s as inspiring to you as it was to me.

Fair warning: I have considered emailing you before, but since you are in Homer with some extra time I decided to send you the ‘unabridged’ version of an introductory email.

I have been following your blog for about  month now and I find it to be both informative and entertaining.  I was checking it every couple of days or so until I read your post about swimming.  In the last 11 months I have gone from occasional jogger to triathlete.  Swimming was the part I dreaded the most.  After hyperventilating on my first triathlon swim last fall (1/4 mile) and nearly drowning on my second one (1/2 mile).  I did manage to complete both events without assistance, although during the latter event a canoe was following me out of concern that I wasn’t going to make it.  I really had to question if I should pursue triathlons in the following year.  Fortunately after practicing at my gym over the winter I became comfortable in the water (bilateral breathing, endurance, etc…).  I also worked on running over the winter and completed my first half and full marathon in early spring of this year.  A few months ago I upped the ante and completed a half ironman.

It was shortly before this event that I began to question why I was having so much fun with challenges in my personal life, but opting for the safe and narrow while at work.  I work for a large corporation and managed to go from having no degree to an MBA by completing 7 years of night classes.  After finishing, I considered pursuing my doctorate, but it didn’t work out.  I had been bored at work for the last few years, but really wasn’t sure why.  I assumed that when I got promoted things would work themselves out.  About this time a friend and past co-worker approached me asking if I would be willing to work and eventually lead with him on a software development venture.  Initially I didn’t see myself as a good fit, but decided to help out in any way I could (process development, statistical analysis, survey design, business plan, etc…).  After reading a few books on the topic of entrepreneurship, I began to get excited.  I went back to the partner and we discussed where I would fit into the business and since then I have mostly done strategic planning in my spare time over the last 3 – 4 months.  We are planning to show our first product in mid July to a small company.  If the product is successful I may actually be able to make a job transition over the next 6 – 8 months.

While not my primary motivation, the thought of working without the rules and restrictions of corporate oversight seems like an interesting job perk.  Don’t get me wrong, I understand why the rules and policies are there, and they serve their purpose of guiding the many at the cost of few.  I suppose that from a utilitarian or Spock-like perspective, they are in the best interest of the company.  In many ways, I have allowed the rules and expectations of my company to limit my creativity and performance.  The blame for this falls solely upon myself as do so many other self imposed excuses for avoiding the idea of following my passions.

I would like to thank you for helping me get some of the basic concepts of starting up and for serving as an example of living with balance (family, work, health).  While I don’t know what changes I can expect to experience in the coming year I have already determined that I am happiest and most productive when I seek to live with balance.  I don’t expect to be wealthy, in fact I am quite certain that my compensation will reduce dramatically even if the transition is successful, but I’ve already determined that I would rather fail at this than succeed at what I’m doing.


Over the past 24 months, a deplorable activity in the money management business came to light.  It got the name “pay to play” but was just another form of bribery.  The common description of pay to play is “the practice of making campaign contributions and related payments to elected officials in order to influence the awarding of lucrative contracts for the management of public pension plan assets and similar government investment accounts.”  Yup – sounds like bribery to me.

However, for some reason, the definition of this expanded to include any campaign contributions to any state or local officials, regardless of the size.  So, if I contribute $1,000 to the campaign of the Colorado state treasurer, I violate this SEC rule and become someone who is “paying to play.” Now, as someone who gets multiple calls and emails most days to contribute to campaigns as an election approaches, I can assure you that it has never occurred to me to support the campaign for a state treasurer. However, I do know that a candidate for state treasurer has called me asking for campaign contributions. And I’ve politely declined.

After studying the implications of this ruling, I’ve decided it prohibits me and my spouse (Amy) from making any campaign contributions to state or local races anywhere in the country.  The NVCA has also studied the new SEC rule and has come to the same conclusion:

“This ruling is consistent with guidance the NVCA has been providing members.  It is now even more important to have a firm-wide policy against political contributions to these officials / candidates. This restriction does NOT include political contributions to candidates running for federal office (U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, U.S. President) nor does it include contributions to the NVCA PAC, which only gives to federal candidates.”

We’ve instituted this rule at Foundry Group, although it’s upsetting and offensive to me because I think it fundamentally violates my First Amendment rights. To err on the side of caution, we’ve determined that spouses cannot make state or local political contributions either.  This infuriates Amy, as it should.

It’s even more upsetting when you consider that there is no cap on political contributions that corporations can make.  The Supreme Court ruled on this in January stating that the government has no business regulating political speech.  So, on one hand we have corporations who can give any amount to any candidate running for office while on the other hand my wife can’t contribute $1,000 to someone running for governor of Colorado.

Now, don’t misunderstand me – I think pay to play is grotesque.  And Amy and I are huge advocates of campaign finance reform.  However, the core problem of pay to play is bribery, not the active support of state and local candidates for office by individual citizens.  They are totally different things and should be able to be easily and cleanly differentiated, without the government regulating my political speech.


I snuck another book in last night before I went to bed but was too tired to blog about it.  After The New Polymath, I felt like I needed something similar but different so I read Where’s My Jetpack by Daniel Wilson (CMU Ph.D. in Robotics).

It was hilarious.  Following are the chapter titles: Jetpack, Zeppelin, Moving Sidewalk, Self-Steering Car, Hoverboard, Teleportation, Underwater Hotel, Dolphin Guide, Space Vacation, Hologram, Smell-O-Vision, Robot Pet, Mind-Reading Device, Anti-Sleeping Pill, Invisible Camouflage, Artificial Gills, X-Ray Specs, Universal Translator, Robot Servant, Unisex Jumpsuit, Smart House, Food Pill, Self-Contained, Skyscraper City, Ray Gun, Space Mirror, Space Elevator, Cryogenic Freezing, and Moon Colony.

Wilson talks about the history of each invention, along with their original sci-fi source as well as the actual lineage of the invention in the real world.  It was surprising to me how many of these almost got commercialized but then died for – well – usually pretty obvious reasons.

Of these, the three I want the most is a Jetpack, a Hoverboard, and a Teleportation Machine.  Actually, I’d like a portable teleportation machine that my jetpack fits in.  Smell-O-Vision – not so much.