Month: October 2010
One of the events on our Do More Faster book tour will be something we are calling Angels in the Architecture. Mike Platt from Cooley (one of our book tour sponsors) came up with the idea of doing an hour long session with a panel of entrepreneurs, angel investors, and VCs discussing the dynamics between angels and VCs. Having been all three, I find this a particularly important topic and it’s something we spend a lot of time discussing at TechStars in the third month as the teams gear up for their financings.
We originally had these as closed events, but we ended up with some additional space and decided to open them up. While the west coast ones are short notice (e.g. Tuesday in Palo Alto, Wednesday in LA, and Friday in Seattle) if you are interested I hope you can make it. The Eventbrite signups are below:
Palo Alto: Tuesday 10/12/10 – 5pm – 6pm: Angels in the Architecture
Los Angeles: Thursday 10/14/10 – 4pm – 5pm: Angels in the Architecture
Seattle: Friday 10/15/10 – 4pm – 5pm: Angels in the Architecture
I hope to see you there!
Now that Do More Faster is out and I appreciate how hard it is to write and publish a book, I read every book through a different (more appreciative) lens. This morning, I spent three hours on the coach and plowed through Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry. It was excellent.
Marc Benioff, the founder and CEO of Salesforce.com, tells the story of Salesforce.com in 111 short stories. He mixes each story with clear advice, from his perspective, about creating, building, and scaling a business. I loved the format that Benioff used to organize these stories into clear themes, while still marching linearly through the story of Salesforce.com.
This is a book aimed at entrepreneurial CEO’s but scales nicely to any founder of a company. It also reminds us of the actual evolution of Cloud Computing, which several very large technology companies continue to try to claim credit for. When reading this book, you realize how deep and clear Benioff’s vision was from the beginning.
It was well worth the time to read and gave me some structural ideas for some writing that I’m working on.
I think the best way for entrepreneurs – especially first time or aspiring ones – to learn is to hear stories from other entrepreneurs. That was one of the motivations for David Cohen and I to write Do More Faster.
There are two such stories in Westword Denver this week. Both are companies I’ve been involved in that have gone through the TechStars program in Boulder. And both are rich in content.
The first one is about Next Big Sound and is titled Fueled by venture-capital funding and a love for unknown bands, can Boulder’s Next Big Sound predict the next rock star? My partner Jason Mendelson was Next Big Sound’s mentor during the TechStars Boulder 2009 program and led the investment in Next Big Sound shortly after the program ended. In addition to the story of the origins of Next Big Sound, there is a great discussion of TechStars and how it contributes to the Boulder entrepreneurial community. While the article is unrelated to Do More Faster, the CEO of Next Big Sound (Alex White) has several chapters in the book that address similar topics to those in the article.
The second one is about EventVue and is titled TechStars post-mortem: Could Boulder startup Next Big Sound suffer same fate as EventVue? EventVue went through the TechStars Boulder 2007 program (the inaugural year), raised an angel round (which I participated in) but never really got lift off. The founders Rob Johnson and Josh Fraser shut the company down in February and wrote a brilliant post-mortem which was republished in this post. Rob also contributed a chapter to Do More Faster which included this post-mortem by him and Josh along with a lot of additional commentary on what they learned.
When I ponder where / when I learn the most about entrepreneurship, it is when real entrepreneurs tell their very specific stories. Success stories are nice, but failure stories, and all of the ups and downs that occur along the way, are the real winners. Yesterday at Liberty NetLeaders the attendees had a treat as Mark Pincus spent an hour talking about his entrepreneurial experiences and the last night at the Boulder Esprit Awards (where David Cohen and I got an award for co-founding TechStars) there was more storytelling. And on Monday I’m going to interview Greg Maffei and Michael Zeisser of Liberty Media for Entrepreneurs Unplugged.
I never get tired of talking to entrepreneurs. I learn something new every time, and every story makes me a better investor.
With the release of our book “Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup“, my co-author David Cohen and I are taking the show on the road. Next week is Palo Alto on Tuesday, Los Angeles on Thursday, and Seattle on Friday.
In most cities, we are doing four separate events:
Pitch More Faster: Several emerging local companies will present their companies to me and several other local VCs. They will provide direct and specific advice to each company on how to improve their pitch and/or their business. This is an invite only event.
TechStars For An Hour: If you’re interested in learning more about TechStars or possibly applying, this is a great chance to come and learn about the program from me and David Cohen (TechStars CEO). We’ll talk about the results so far, what it’s all about, how it works, and much more. The event is also great for angel investors and venture capitalists who would like to learn more about how the TechStars program works, and how to get involved. These are open but limited attendance events – you need to pre-register on Eventbrite (links below).
Angels In The Architecture: A group of local angel investors, me, and a few angel backed entrepreneurs will discuss the role of angels investors in the VC / angel ecosystem. This is an invite only event.
Evening Entrepreneurial Meetup: We will have a party at night – venues will vary by city. These will be open events – sign up on Plancast (links below).
The tour is being sponsored by Cooley, Silicon Valley Bank, Microsoft, and Rackspace. We’ll be holding most of the day time events at one of their offices and we deeply appreciate all of their support. We’ll have plenty of good stuff to give away along with interesting people to meet and spend time with, including many of the people that contributed to Do More Faster.
If you are interested in attending, get sign up info via the Do More Faster Plancast, the Do More Faster Facebook page, or the Do More Faster Twitter account.
In the mean time, the sign up links for next week’s events follow. Since space is limited, please don’t sign up unless you are planning to attend.
Palo Alto: Tuesday October 12
3:30pm – 4:30pm: TechStars For An Hour
7:00pm – 9:00pm: Do More Faster Book Tour Kick Off: Gordon Biersch Brewery
Los Angeles: Thursday October 14
3:30pm – 4:30pm: TechStars For An Hour
7:30pm – 9:00pm: Do More Faster Evening Meetup (also knows as Two Guys and a Book and Beers): The Den of Hollywood
Seattle: Friday October 15
3:30pm – 4:30pm: TechStars For An Hour
7:00pm – 9:00pm: Do More Faster Evening Meetup (aka The Easy): TechStars Seattle
Of course, if you bring a copy of the book, David and I will happily sign it.
Entrepreneurs Unplugged With Grag Maffei and Michael Zeisser of Liberty Media
On Monday, 10/11/10 from 6:15pm to 7:30pm I’ll be interviewing Greg Maffei (CEO of Liberty Media) and Michael Zeisser (SVP of Liberty Media) as part of the Silicon Flatirons Entrepreneurs Unplugged series. Over the past few years I’ve become good friends with Michael as he’s been a dedicated mentor to TechStars Boulder and contributed a chapter to Do More Faster. I’ve also gotten know Greg as he’s been active in and provided leadership to the broad Colorado technology landscape, as well as being CEO of one of the most significant and important technology companies in Colorado.
Tomorrow, I’ll be at the Liberty NetLeaders Forum ’10, an invite only event for 200 software / Internet executives that Liberty hosts once a year. I’ll be introducing my friends and colleagues Mark Pincus (Zynga CEO) and Bing Gordon (KPCB partner and Zynga board member) who are going to talk about “Building Zynga”. I’m sure the conference will give me plenty of interesting things to bring up at our Entrepreneurs Unplugged session on Monday.
Please join us on Monday at the Wolf Law Building (2450 Kittredge Loop) at the CU Law School. I really enjoy being the interviewer for these sessions and the feedback on our events continues to be great. I think Greg and Michael will be particularly interesting guest.
Registration is open and the event is free.
During the Tahoe Tech Talk three hour Q&A segment with the panelists, someone in the audience asked about how to create a stronger entrepreneurial community in their city so that it could be “more like Silicon Valley.” After a little banter, Chris Sacca and Dave Morin called me up onto stage to do a short riff on what we’ve done in Boulder and what makes it special. Damon Clinkscales recorded it on his iPhone – the three minute video is embedded below.
The key points are:
- Don’t try to be Silicon Valley (it’s a special place – learn from it – but don’t try to emulate it)
- It takes at least a half dozen people that are committed to provide leadership over 20 years
- You have to do things that engage the entire entrepreneurial community (e.g. TechStars)
- You have to continually get new first time entrepreneurs into the entrepreneurial community
There’s a lot of stuff about this in our new book Do More Faster in case you want to go deeper on this topic.
When I opened my daily folder, a beautiful picture of an Aurora Over Alaska graced the front page of APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day). Just another reason to love Alaska.
I’m mentoring one of the TechStars Seattle companies that is working on a white label “Daily Deals” platform. I’m trying to come up with a few local Boulder deals to do where I can sell units of 100 of more. If you are a local Boulder merchant and want to play around with a new daily deal product, drop me an email and we’ll see where it goes.
While I’m not able to attend because I’ll be out of town, I was intrigued by the invite to the Wisdom 2.0 Boulder conference that I got last week. Alan Kaplan, a local Boulder entrepreneur, introduced me to the organizer (Soren Gordhamer). While I don’t know Soren, I like the idea and agenda for the conference and think a few of the folks he’s invited to speak, including Leah Pearlman (Facebook), Alex Bogusky (co-founder of Crispin Porter + Bogusky), and Gopi Kallayil (Google), look great.
While not a conference goer, if I was in town I’d check this one out, especially since it is in conjunction with Naropa University. Instead, I went and bought Soren’s book Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Teachings for the Creative and Constantly Connected. If this kind of stuff interests you, go check it out.