Author: Brad Feld
Mark Cuban had a great line a few weeks ago at the interview I did with him and Charlie Ergen at Denver Startup Week. He said:
“I like to invest in people who reduce stress and avoid people who increase stress.”
As I was dealing with something yesterday, this reappeared in my brain but slightly modified.
“I like to be the person who reduces stress and avoid people who increase stress.”
My world is filled with people who increase stress. It’s particularly true around negotiations, but it is also prevalent in board level interactions, relationships with founders, dynamics with leaders, and everything else that has to do with companies. And this is just in my business world. When you wander into other areas, like politics, news, and even social situations, the level of stress (which often masquerades as drama) is remarkable.
One of my meditation routines from Headspace that I like is on Anxiety. Another favorite is on Stress. In both cases, the goal is not to eliminate anxiety or stress but to acknowledge it and be more effective in interacting with it.
The word I’ve anchored on in the past few years around this is equanimity. It’s at the essence of my own personal approach to things. Given the work and larger world context I live in, I’ve accepted that I can’t eliminate stress. I also can’t avoid it. And, while I can avoid people who increase stress, they will still appear and I will need to interact with them.
So, by turning an element of this around 180 degrees, I’ve been able to change my relationship with stress. I accept that stress is everywhere. I don’t try to eliminate it. However, through my behavior, I try to be the person who reduces it. I do this through my approach to all things, carrying the notion of equanimity as a core principle.
This doesn’t mean I’m perfect. I know I generate stress for others in some situations. I know I can always get better at this. Whenever I realize I’ve created stress for someone else, I try to learn from it and improve.
The science fiction of the last 30 years is rapidly becoming reality as technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence are becoming more real and present with each passing day. While my jetpack still seems ponderously far away and cars are becoming self-driving instead of flying, we are making progress.
In medicine, progress is methodical and incremental. As lives are literally at stake, it’s imperative to move forward in a logical and data-driven manner. The resulting regulatory requirement of clinical trials may sometimes be seen as an innovation-stifling burden, but lengthy clinical trials protect patients by ensuring safety and efficacy of therapies. The result? As real advancements are being made in biotechnology, such as engineered cells to fight cancer or using stem cells to regenerate the spine, news and hype eventually quiets during decade long timeline for these technologies to clear trials. There is a bright horizon of therapies that many of us are unaware of.
While I’m not a biotech investor, I ran into a company in Techstars Class 92 (Seattle 2017) called Silene Biotech that fascinated me. The founder, Alex Jiao, has been focused on regenerative medicine for the past decade, an area of research that still feels strongly like science fiction. The idea is to use our cells outside the body to regenerate or regrow lost tissues and organs. A buzzword in this space is “stem cells” and nowadays most people are familiar with the general concept. Stem cells can self-renew and turn into other cells, so their potential is incredible for regenerative medicine.
Currently, there is a lot of mythology and misinformation surrounding stem cells. Unlike newts which can regenerate their limbs, our bodies have limited repair mechanisms and our stem cells can only do so much. However, there are businesses purporting that a simple injection of unmanipulated stem cells can work miracles. The FDA disagrees, and without any compelling data from a clinical trial, most scientists would disagree as well.
I learned from Alex that not all stem cells are the same. Different stem cells have varying abilities to regenerate and turn into other tissues. Furthermore, we are also realizing that it takes guidance and manipulation to coax a stem cell into the correct cell or tissue for regeneration. And new technologies allow us to reprogram adult cells into more “potent” stem cells. These factors have now led to stem cell-based clinical trials to treat diseases such as macular degeneration and heart disease, with some early promising results.
There are still limitations to stem cell technology. One major limitation is that we are realizing age and environment can have a profound effect on stem cell function and even safety. Essentially, the older we are, the older all of our cells (including stem cells) become, and as a result, our bodies’ natural repair mechanisms deteriorate or stop.
Given these factors, I was excited about Alex’s notion that “backing up” our cells and stem cells could be a valuable tool for improving and extending our health in the near future. We can stop the biological aging of our stem cells by putting them in a deep freeze at an earlier age, when they have fewer mutations and damage. Banking our stem cells will then allow us to eventually generate and bank other tissues for self-use, like a population of heart cells for cardiac repair or a population of liver cells to diagnose drug toxicity. As technology moves towards a future where it’s technologically possible to engineer tissues and organs from our own stem cells, backing stem cells up today can give us the best opportunity to use them when we need them.
I love the idea of backing up my stem cells. Alex and his team are coming to Boulder to do this for me on 11/29. If you are interested in backing up your stem cells, Alex has offered to do it for a few others in Boulder when he is here. If you are interested, just email me and I’ll connect you with Alex.
The audiobook version of Startup Opportunities: Know When To Quit Your Day Job is now available on Audible.
Unlike the Audible version of Venture Deals, this one was read by Stephen Hoye.
If you like audiobooks, grab a copy, give it a listen, and tell me what you think.
Yesterday, I wrote about the upcoming CO Impact Days. In it, I pointed to a Medium post titled Zebras Fix What Unicorns Break, which turns out to be the Zebra Manifesto.
Per the manifesto, a Zebra (unlike Unicorns) are real:
- Zebra companies are both black and white: they are profitable and improve society. They won’t sacrifice one for the other.
- Zebras are also mutualistic: by banding together in groups, they protect and preserve one another. Their individual input results in stronger collective output.
- Zebra companies are built with peerless stamina and capital efficiency, as long as conditions allow them to survive.
Yesterday afternoon, I got a text from Mara Zepeda, one of the founders of the Zebra Movement and authors of the manifesto, saying that we should talk. We had a great discussion where I learned more about Zebras, the Zebra Movement, and the upcoming DazzleCon Conference in Portland this week. Over 200 Zebra founders, funders and friends from around the world are gathering to co-create the community of companies that are building the goods and services we need for the society we want.
Mara also pointed me at the article Can “Zebras” Fix What “Unicorns” Break? on The Long Now Foundation website, one of the sponsors of DazzleCon along with the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation, and several others.
Amy and I signed up to support the Zebra Movement and decided to also sponsor DazzleCon through our Anchor Point Foundation. I’m excited – and fascinated – with what Mara and her colleagues are doing as they extend the perspective and engagement around 21st century entrepreneurship well beyond Unicorns.
VCs love to talk about Unicorns, where a giant return is possible. Some friends in the impact investing world have recently started talking about generating giant returns by investing in Zebras (such as a nonprofit building in rural Colorado) and Ponies (an immigrant restaurant in Seattle currently using payday lending at 35% for their working capital). While these returns have an economic component, they can also have dramatic impact on our society.
If you are interested in impact investing, I encourage you to join the Impact Finance Center (IFC) and presenting funders The Anschutz Foundation, Zoma Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation, Colorado Health Foundation, and Gary Community Investments at CO Impact Days 2017, Nov 15-17, in Denver, Colorado.
CO Impact Days is a three-day experiential executive education conference that teaches investors and philanthropists how to make their investments more effective and their philanthropy more efficient. It also will connect attendees to one hundred of the Rocky Mountains’ most exciting social ventures – projects, nonprofits, for profits, and funds.
CO Impact Days’ Founder Dr. Stephanie Gripne (recently written up in Forbes, Is This Wildlife Conservation PhD The Steve Jobs Of Impact Investing) points out that we need to stop bifurcating our philanthropy from our investing and start treating our philanthropy as an investment.
Gripne and a growing number of her colleagues are taking Emerson’s quote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” to heart. They are working on figuring out a new investment model where we can start investing in the companies, nonprofits, projects, and funds that society needs.
Another voice in the movement is Ross Baird in his new book, The Innovation Blind Spot: Why We Back the Wrong Ideas―and What to Do About It. Ross makes a strong case that we are missing many of our innovations because of an outdated, obscure, misaligned investment model. According to Baird,
“While most communities across the US think in two pockets – the business and philanthropy communities don’t intersect – Colorado is leading the country in one-pocket thinkers. From the way we invest and support startups, to how employees can own and build wealth in companies, to how finance can be used to reshape traditionally philanthropic sectors such as the environment and early childhood education, Colorado is leading the way.”
An article by Jennifer Brandel, Mara Zepeda, Astrid Scholz & Aniyia Williams, Zebras Fix What Unicorns Break, introduces Zebras as an alternative to to Unicorns. And Gripne’s paper, Laying the Groundwork for the National Impact Investing Marketplace, makes the case that the reason we do not have $1B impact funds for nonprofits, immigrants, and women, is not because we do not have $50M of institutional quality of deal flow. Rather, it’s because there is no incentive to create the infrastructure to do the necessary capacity building to find and scale up these investments. Gripne and her team are also working on a new paper to be introduced at CO Impact Days, inspired by the Zebras article mentioned above, “If Angels Invest in Unicorns, do Heroes Invest in Zebras and What About Ponies and Donkeys?”
This conference is not just about Coloradans. CO Impact Days was designed to expand regionally and replicate to up to five other regions throughout the U.S. creating the National Impact Investing Marketplace. Indiana is bringing a cohort of ten community leaders, Washington is bringing five, and Maryland is bringing three. CO Impact Days is the first statewide marketplace for direct investing, and is just Phase 1 of the national model. Gripne and her team (which Andrew Currie, Kathy Merchant, who led Greater Cincinnati Foundation for 20 years and wrote the book on Community Foundations and Impact Investing, and Nicole Bagley, trustee on Arca Foundation, Brenn Foundation, and Sapelo Foundation) have their sights set on a national marketplace, and they want to invite you in on the ground floor.
Last year’s inaugural CO Impact Days led to over 20 impact investments from first-time, direct investors. They included Nicole Bagley’s investment in Silvernest (a tech platform that provides a matchmaking service for the aging population to find housemates and additional income, companionship, or help around the house) and the Kenneth King Foundation’s investment in Colorado Lending Source’s Main Street Character Loan Fund (providing up to $50K loans to Colorado for those of who have a good idea and good character), among others.
In addition to producing CO Impact Days, IFC is also rolling out a new tool, impact investing giving circles, to catalyze new investors and source Zebras, Ponies, and Donkeys. Impact investing giving circles will provide philanthropists and investors with a low-cost, low risk, first safe investment opportunity by using a donation in a pooled donor advised fund (to be hosted by a community foundation, thus supporting their work as well).
IFC plans to pilot these impact investing giving circles in Colorado in the areas of Conservation & Water, Women, Rural Community Investment. Its Food Impact Investing Giving Circle will be piloted in multiple cities including Chicago, Boston, and Denver, with Chef’s Collaborative and an Immigrant & Minority Impact Investing Giving Circle is being launched in Seattle in partnership with Ethnic Business Coalition to refinancing payday loans for restaurants.
To Get involved in CO Impact Days 2017
Register as an Investor: http://bit.ly/2vMVtFb
Register as Community Attendee: http://bit.ly/2gIgQSf
Volunteer to be a Social Venture Judge: http://bit.ly/2gN41tO
Donate to support CO Impact Days & Initiative: https://goo.gl/3282Tg
Join CO Impact Days & Initiative Mailing List: http://tinyurl.com/y76n29ma
The Nature Conservancy and Techstars just announced a partnership to create the Techstars Sustainability Accelerator. Amy and I were part of the public announcement this week in Denver. Both organizations are important to us so it’s a joy to be involved in having them work together.
Amy and I have been supporters of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) since we started our relationship in 1990. So has my partner Seth and his wife Greeley, who is currently a trustee on the TNC Colorado board. A key shared value of ours is protecting our planet and we are huge fans of TNC’s science-based approach.
Over the years, we’ve been personally involved in a number of projects, such as protecting the Anchor River in Anchor Point, Alaska (the town Amy grew up in until she was eight.) Amy went to Tanzania and Kenya in 2009 with TNC to increase capacity of TNC non-profit partners. We supported an Anchor Point Fellow at TNC’s Berlin office and an internship in Australia through Wellesley College. Heather Tallis, TNC’s Global Managing Director and Lead Scientist for Strategy Innovation, generously participated in our August 2017 Anchor Point Fellowship in Global Leadership Conference. Amy is currently on the TNC Global Campaign Committee and on the TNC Africa Affinity Group for Women and Girls. We also support TNC’s work with indigenous women environmental community leaders in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. TNC’s global reach makes it a very exciting organization to support.
At a TNC event at our house in June 2016, I had a conversation with Mark Tercek, TNC’s CEO, around innovation. Mark joined TNC nine years ago after a long and successful career at Goldman Sachs. One of my favorite ideas of his is that we can ensure more financial resources go toward conservation by getting the world to fully appreciate the opportunity to invest in nature. We had a good exchange about a number of creative approaches TNC taking to conservation and sustainability and I started referring to Mark as Nature’s Investment Banker.
Earlier this year, Amy encouraged me to get together with Brian McPeek, TNC’s Chief Conservation Officer, who is based in Denver. She described the conversation around technology and innovation she’d had with Brian, and suggested that I should talk to him about Techstars.
Brian and I got together with the goal of batting around a bunch of ideas around what he was trying to accomplish. Without realizing it, he was describing the domain of things that Techstars has addressed for many of our corporate partners. We left the meeting feeling like the idea of a Techstars TNC collaboration could be powerful.
Brian and his team went deep on things very quickly, understanding Techstars and how a Sustainability Accelerator would work. Even though Techstars has expanded around the world, we’ve never expanded in Colorado beyond our Techstars Boulder program, which was the very first location in which we ran an accelerator. We’ve talked about doing an accelerator in Denver, but never had a compelling reason to do it. But with Brian and TNC’s involvement, doing an accelerator in Denver became exciting to us – especially given the focus on sustainability that clearly differentiated it from what we were working on in the Boulder accelerator. It’s now a reality and Mark does a great job talking about our goals and approach in his post about The First Tech Accelerator For Sustainability.
In the tech world, founders (and investors) are always talking about changing the world, with an implication that what they want to be doing is something important, meaningful, and long lasting. In the past few years, there has been increasing dissonance between these words and what results from so-called disruptive innovations, where what we are really creating are companies that improve online ad-targeted by 1%, or create yet another mobile app that distracts our attention from the physical world. This isn’t a denigration of those companies, but rather a comment on the disconnect between the desire to change the world against the reality of working on things that time and humanity will likely forget quickly.
There’s an obvious question:“Are there opportunities to not just do good, but to have big outcomes?” I have a deeply held belief that large and successful companies can be built while solving global challenges. It’s not just a feel good thing, but a powerful approach to creating companies. And, if you take it to its natural conclusion, we ultimately are looking for for-profit companies that can be themselves sustainable and important.
For any entrepreneur interested in working on things that improve our planet, there’s now a Techstars accelerator to add to the mix of things people are doing in the world. And I’m excited to be involved in the collaboration to do this between two organizations that are extremely important to me.
The third edition of Venture Deals is now available on Audible. It’s the unabridged version read by me and my partner/co-author Jason Mendelson with guest appearances by Matt Blumberg.
We’ve been getting requests for an unabridged audio version of Venture Deals since we first came out with the book in 2012. We like to think that it has now aged like a good wine.
If you are an audiobook person, you can know hear the dulcet tones of Jason’s voice alongside the scratchy whine (which has aged) of mine while learning how to be smarter than your VC and your lawyer.
Amy and I are financially supporting a new movie about mental health, depression, and suicide called The Weight of Gold. Jeremy Bloom (Olympic skier, pro-football player, CEO of Integrate, and awesome human) introduced me to the creator of the film Brett Rapkin.
THE WEIGHT OF GOLD / Sizzle Reel from Podium Pictures on Vimeo.
While the focus of the storytelling is around Olympic athletes, it highlights a challenge that one in five Americans struggles with. Our goal for supporting films like this is to help eliminate the stigma around mental health and depression. It’s an enormous challenge in our society and one that I think is worth working hard at.
I just finished the near-final draft of Cat Hoke’s upcoming book Second Chance. It is incredibly powerful on multiple levels.
I’ve gotten to know Cat reasonably well over the past year. I first heard of her through the Techstars Foundation, where we gave her organization – Defy Ventures – one of our very first grants. I first met her a few months later in my office. After hearing her pitch for 15 minutes, I said “Cat – I’m all in – no need to sell me. What can I do to help?”
Cat, in her inimitable style, said, “The first thing you should do is to come to prison with me.”
A few months later I spent the day at California State Prison, Los Angeles County in Lancaster with Cat, 50 EITs (Entrepreneurs-in-training), and 75 volunteers. I wrote about it as one of my top ten life experiences in my post Understanding Privilege – My Experience in Prison. Amy and I made a significant gift from our foundation (the Anchor Point Foundation) immediately after the trip and I joined the Defy Ventures board two months later.
Since then I’ve gotten to know Cat, her husband Charles, and the Defy Ventures organization. While I’ve learned a lot about prison, the criminal justice system, and the concept and experience of privilege, I’ve learned even more about myself. And I have Cat, Defy Ventures, and all of the people around Defy (both inside and outside of prison) to thank for that.
But, as Cat so eloquently says, she doesn’t scale. When I first heard of Defy, it was about 20 employees. Today it’s over 50 going to 100. Like many fast-growing startups, the CEO (Cat) has to evolve in her role. While it’s hard, Cat is doing a magnificent job of it. It was logical that she’d write a book about herself, her own second chance, Defy, the work that it does, and how/why it matters and impacts people and society.
Writing this book must have been incredibly challenging. Cat is an extremely hard worker. She travels constantly. Her work is emotionally intense and she puts 100% of herself into it. So, when I was on about page 80 of Second Chance, I thought to myself, “This is incredible. I can’t imagine how much extra energy of Cat’s went into this.”
She had one of the best guides in the world – Seth Godin. I’ve been friends with Seth since the mid-1990s when I met him doing diligence for SoftBank in conjunction with Fred Wilson on the investment that SoftBank and Flatiron Partners (Fred and Jerry Colonna’s new VC firm at the time) made in Seth’s company Yoyodyne (later acquired by Yahoo!). I felt a deep connection to Seth from day 1 and even though we don’t spend much time together, ever interaction with him is treasured by me.
I can see Seth’s fingerprints all over this book. As an enormous fan of Cat’s, I’m so glad Seth took this project on. I expect their collaboration will have an important and lasting impact on the world.
You’ll get more specifics, and a full review, once Cat’s book is published. Until then, if you are interested in learning more about Defy Ventures or getting involved in any way, just email me and I’ll connect you.