As many of my friends are cranking through the TripleByPass bike race and I prepare to go for a long run in the mountains near my house in Keystone, I thought I’d leave you with a few tech blog posts and articles I read this morning.
Too Much And Not Enough: Eric Norlin (Defrag) has a nice short piece on a phrase I’m hearing a lot these days.
CrunchUp Live: Real Time Search Panel: More of “too much and not enough”. Kimbal Musk’s (OneRiot) has the money quote of the panel: “Drinking from the firehose is a ticking timebomb.”
Has enterprise software has always been terrible? Gnip’s Eric Marcoullier says yes: Always one for a pithy quote, Eric Marcouiller (Gnip) got one in during his 30 minute panel (with 7 panelist – eek – just about enough time for one question for each panelist) at TechCrunch’s Real-Time CrunchUp. The real idea is that Consumer Internet is now setting the expectation for how enterprise software should work (e.g. the UI / UX is so much better).
Ok – enough of that real time shit, time for some other stuff.
Technology Going Downhill: Great story about a mountain bike crash, some dislocated fingers, an iPhone, and presence of mind.
Welcoming Andreessen Horowitz: The gang at True Ventures has a great essay on early stage entrepreneurship that ends with “If you are an entrepreneur today, this is an historic time to chase your dreams. With over $1 billion in fresh seed capital in the very early stage market, what are you waiting for?”
The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers: Fred Wilson talks about how he inadvertently spammed his 27,162 followers on Twitter, why that sucks, and how he tries to deal with it.
Playful New Ways to Waste Your Time: It’s fun to see how the mainstream media perceives the dynamic of social gaming. I assure you that my endless time spent in front of FarmVille and Mafia Wars is research, since I’m an investor in Zynga.
Ok – time for that run.
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!
I haven’t been reading that much lately (only 27 books so far this year) so I had a nice weekend chewing on a handful of them as I tried to catch my breath from a few weeks of constantly moving around.
The first – and most enjoyable – was Bricklin on Technology . I’ve somehow managed to end up with three of them – I know that Dan Bricklin sent me one and Amazon sent me one, but I don’t know where the third came from. Dan told me about this book a few months ago when I saw him in Boston at the TechStars for a Day event. He’s done an outstanding job of combining his essays on computing with updated thinking along with a bunch of great history. There are a dozen chapters – each are a “mini-book” within the book. My favorite was Chapter 12: VisiCalc (which is – not surprisingly – the history of VisiCalc) but the other chapters are all great and include things like:
I first heard of Dan Bricklin in 1979. I had bought an Apple II with my bar mitzvah money (and some help from my dad). When VisiCalc came out, we bought one of the first copies; we still have the original 5.25” disk in the brown vinyl VisiCalc binder (our copy was the one featured in the Triumph of the Nerds video series – that’s another long story.) Not surprisingly, Dan and his partner Bob Frankston were early heroes of mine. I even bought a copy of TK Solver when it came out.
I finally met Dan in 1995 when he was starting to think about the company that became Trellix. I think we were introduced by Aaron Kleiner, but I can’t remember. Yes – I was really excited the first time we met! I ended up helping out in the very early days of Trellix through the point that Dan raised a $200k seed financing from CRV. I’ve always loved the way Dan’s brain works and Bricklin on Technology is a bunch of it in one portable package.
I was at MIT on Thursday and Friday last week. One of my favorite things to do when I’m there is browse in the MIT Press Bookstore in Kendall Square. I ended up picking up a handful of computer books that I read (well – I read some and skimmed some) this weekend. They are:
Designing Gestural Interfaces: Touchscreens and Interactive Devices : HCI for beginners. If you are interested in HCI or gestural interfaces but haven’t thought much about them, this is a quick, easy read. However, it’s really simple and there is a ton of important stuff missing from it. One fascinating insight – the bathroom has become a test bed for gestural interface technology (ah – my heart flutters). C.
Semantic Web For Dummies (For Dummies) : Alex Iskold from AdaptiveBlue would be proud of me. Like most of the Dummies books, it was filled with filler (probably 50% of it could have been chopped) but it had plenty of useful examples. I didn’t learn much from it as I knew most of it but I was searching for something suitably “beginner” aimed at a software developer. I’d give this one a C+.
A Semantic Web Primer, 2nd Edition (Cooperative Information Systems) : This one was a little more serious. Again, it was aimed at beginners, but I thought it was much more logical, much better structured (how ironic), and more insightful than the Dummies book. It’s also more like a textbook so it presents the same concepts in a more serious nature. I give this one a B. As a result, I’m still searching for a great “beginners Semantic Web” book.
I think it’s time for some mental floss.
The videos from my talk in Vancouver last week are up on the Bootup Labs Entrepreneurial Society web site. They are embedded below – the first one talks about entrepreneurial communities and the second talks about the dynamics between VCs and entrepreneurs. There’s also a throwaway line about my mom, a reference to the smell hanging over Boulder on 4/20, and the last vestiges of my voice before it departed me for a week. Enjoy.
I did another Beers with Brad event tonight in Vancouver. Danny Robinson and Boris Mann of Bootup Labs pulled it together with some help from their friends and a few sponsors. 150 people showed up to talk about early stage entrepreneurship.
For these events, I have a few themes to riff on around entrepreneurship (e.g. entrepreneurial communities, the role of venture capital, and leadership) that are set in my head. Rather than do a presentation, I just get up and talk for 15 to 30 minutes and then do Q&A until everyone is done. I deliberately don’t have a prepared stump speech and what I say varies with each event, but the themes are consistent. I like to just talk off the top of my head because – in addition to requiring zero preparation time – I’ve always felt that overly prepared talks around entrepreneurship are missing the point. Entrepreneurship is messy; if the talk is too tidy, then it’s incongruent with what is being talked about.
The 15 – 30 minute talk simply sets the stage for the Q&A. Tonight’s Q&A went on for about 90 minutes and was fascinating. We covered a wide range of topics, including a handful that hadn’t come up before and wouldn’t have occurred to me in a vacuum. Part of the reason I do these types of things is very selfish – I’m always trying to learn and understand what is top of mind for entrepreneurs – and the questions bring that out. It’s particularly interesting to me to listen for the nuances in the questions from people in different parts of the country.
I picked up a cold a few days ago and started feeling crummy around mid-day today. The energy in the room tonight was a huge lift; even though my voice deteriorated rapidly and was basically gone by the end of the evening, I had a dynamite time with my new Vancouver friends. Boris promised to put up links to the video along with a summary in a few days; in the mean time you’ll have to make do with the Bootlabs tweets and the event hashtag which, after some debate, settled on #blesfeld.
Time for bed. At least I won’t be talking in my sleep tonight.
I had a phenomenal day.
A few months ago my friend Bill Flagg recommended that I be a speaker at this year’s Gathering of Titans (GOT) event. This is an annual gathering of graduates of the Birthing of Giants (BOG) program. I participated in the first or second BOG event back in the early 1990’s and it was my introduction to the Young Entrepreneurs Organization (then about 100 members; now called EO and over 7,000 members around the world). BOG was a transformational experience for me – it was the first time as an entrepreneur that I really found my true peer group.
I came to GOT as a speaker but immediately felt like a part of the gang. There were about 70 people in the room that were entrepreneurs of a wide variety of businesses, many of them on their second, third, or fourth company. These weren’t all tech businesses – they covered a wide range of industries and experiences – but shared a common passion for creating things and for entrepreneurship.
After about 15 minutes in the room listening to the first speaker today (Jack Daly) I was immediately entranced and emotionally transported back to 1992. The energy in the room was fantastic and very familiar. The next speaker – Ayanna Samuels – was equally awesome and inspiring. I was up next, had a lot of fun, and was met with a warm reception. Kyle MacDonald and Neal Petersen were the afternoon speakers – both dynamite.
It wasn’t just the speakers, but the Q&A, discussion in the hallways between sessions, and the energy in the room that was so inspiring. I was invited to attend next year as a member of the gang (instead of just a speaker) and immediately accepted.
The theme for this year was something like “addressing adversity” which translated very clearly into – as Jack so beautifully stated over and over – “Golden Rule: Purpose”. The day stimulated a lot of interesting blog fodder that I’m sure I’ll be wrapping into some of my posts over the next few weeks – whenever I use the word “purpose” you can tie it back to Jack!
As I was reflecting on the day, I realize that one of the key pieces of advice that I regularly give entrepreneurs is to “join a formal group of your peers that meets regularly and spend deep time with them.” I don’t mean “industry associations” or “random networking clubs” – I mean things like EO, Vistage, or YPO. When I was a first time entrepreneur, I often thought “I don’t have time for this.” Bullshit – I didn’t have time not to do it. And that continues today even after having been involved in hundreds of companies. Entrepreneurial communities aren’t merely geographic or industry focused – peer groups that build deep, intimate, and long term relationships between the members play a key part in the process of entrepreneurship.
I’m heading out for a run to reflect a little more on the amazing day and then I’m going to the Olde Irish Alehouse in Dedham, MA for the GOT afterparty. Wow – what a great day.
At Foundry Group, while we live and office in Boulder, Colorado, we invest all over the United States. In the last 18 months, we’ve invested in companies based in Seattle, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Colorado. My partners and I are regularly exploring new entrepreneurial communities, thinking about what makes them unique, and trying to figure out what makes them sustainable over the long term.
Last week, Jason took a trip to Ann Arbor, Michigan – the home of his alma mater. He spent a couple of days talking to folks throughout the university and the community about entrepreneurship. He summarized his trip in his post titled Entrepreneurship in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Mark Maynard of the University of Michigan TTO wrote a comprehensive post on Jason’s talk titled Building an Entrepreneurial Community: Lessons from Boulder, CO.
While Boulder (and Colorado) have gotten a lot of things right around building a sustainable entrepreneurial community, I believe that there is always a huge opportunity to learn and grown. As part of this, I’m co-hosting a trip to Silicon Valley for Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, Don Elliman (the head of Colorado’s Office of Economic Development), and Michael Locatis (Colorado’s CIO). We are meeting with a number of IT / software / Internet companies and a bunch of entrepreneurs throughout Silicon Valley over the next two days to discuss what is special about Silicon Valley and what we can learn from it in Colorado. I’ve been adamant that Colorado’s goal should never be “to be like Silicon Valley”, but instead we should listen and learn what works here and figure out how to apply some of the chocolaty goodness while avoiding all the traffic jams.
I believe that the future of most economic development and growth comes from entrepreneurship. Plus, it’s a ton of fun. More later.
I usually sleep in on Sunday’s but I’ve got a 16 mile run and want to meet Amy at the end of it at 10:30 for brunch. So – good morning 5am and my normal daily reading routine. I ran across a lot of intriguing stuff this morning that I thought I’d share with you. I encourage you to trade your TV watching time for a handful of clicks.
Will Google’s Purity Pay Off? If you have engaged in the “yes Twitter is cool, but how will it make money” conversation I encourage you to read this BusinessWeek article from Pearl Harbor Day in 2000. And I quote: “LIMITED BUSINESS. But how will Google ever make money? There’s the rub. The company’s adamant refusal to use banner or other graphical ads eliminates what is the most lucrative income stream for rival search engines. “
Are We Home Alone? Sometimes Thomas Friedman nails it and sometimes he doesn’t. Today, he nails it. I completely agree that Obama (who I voted for) completely blew it on the AIG bonus thing. Per Friedman:
“President Obama missed a huge teaching opportunity with A.I.G. Those bonuses were an outrage. The public’s anger was justified. But rather than fanning those flames and letting Congress run riot, the president should have said: “I’ll handle this.” He should have gone on national TV and had the fireside chat with the country that is long overdue. That’s a talk where he lays out exactly how deep the crisis we are in is, exactly how much sacrifice we’re all going to have to make to get out of it, and then calls on those A.I.G. brokers — and everyone else who, in our rush to heal our banking system, may have gotten bonuses they did not deserve — and tells them that their president is asking them to return their bonuses “for the sake of the country.” Had Mr. Obama given A.I.G.’s American brokers a reputation to live up to, a great national mission to join, I’d bet anything we’d have gotten most of our money back voluntarily. Inspiring conduct has so much more of an impact than coercing it. And it would have elevated the president to where he belongs — above the angry gaggle in Congress.”
Dov Seidman, the CEO of LRN (I’m an investor) summarizes it well: “Laws tell you what you can do. Values inspire in you what you should do. It’s a leader’s job to inspire in us those values.”
Tit for tat: TomTom sues Microsoft for patent infringement: The Microsoft / TomTom patent suit battle is heating up. This is an important one to watch for a variety of reasons including it’s one of the few offense patent litigations from Microsoft to date.
SpringStage goes live: A year ago, David Cohen (TechStars co-founder and author of the ColoradoStartups blog) told me about the idea he had with Alex Muse for creating a national network of startup blogs. SpringStage now has over 30 startup blogs in its network. Pretty cool – take a look.
Concur’s stock sinks after CEO admits he didn’t earn degree: I have never, ever understood why people lie about graduating from college. The reputational effect (and general ease) of getting caught – especially today – far outweighs any benefits. For the record, I have an S.B. (bachelors degree) and S.M. (masters degree) in management science from MIT and was in the Ph.D. program for three years before I got kicked out. I do not have a Ph.D. My dad is Dr. Feld, but I am not.
Investing in open source hardware: Eric von Hippel – my MIT advisor and professor that I worked with (before getting kicked out of the Ph.D. program) has been researching user driven innovation since the 1970’s. He invited me to come talk at his annual MIT Innovation Lab seminar last week about open source hardware from a VC perspective. I wasn’t able to make it to Boston, but suggested Bijan Sabet from Spark Capital talk, as Bijan is an investor in BugLabs and Boxee and has a point of view about this stuff.
What Is A Good Venture Return: Fred Wilson digs a little deeper into what makes a good venture return on the heals of the PE Hub article asserting that the $590m acquisition of Pure Digital by Cisco was a decent return for a middle-of-the road VC firm, but “for big name backers Benchmark Capital and Sequoia Capital that’s pretty much a dud.” Fred decomposes this more and concludes “It’s an investment that worked out well for the investors and I am sure they are quite happy they made the investment and with the returns.”
Try, Try Again, or Maybe Not: I guess I have to go read this paper by Harvard professor Paul Gompers, Anna Kovner, Josh Lerner, and David Sharfstein. In it, they claim to have determined that the answer to the question “Does failure breed new knowledge or experience that can be leveraged into performance the second time around?” is “In some cases, yes, but over all, he says, “We found there is no benefit in terms of performance.” Mark Pincus and Zynga (I’m an investor) are highlighted in the article. I’ve been an investor in two of Mark’s successes and missed one of his failures; my experience is that the lessons he learned from his failure have been extremely well integrated into his brain. My own anecdotal experience runs counter to the study – I love working with entrepreneurs that have both success and failure.
Ok – I’ve stalled long enough. Time to go run.
I’m back in Boulder from my Q1 vacation with Amy. We spent the first few days at our ski house in Keystone with the Wilson Quintet (Fred, Joanne, Jessica, Emily, and Josh). We then went to Paradise Island in the Bahamas with our Boston friends Warren and Ilana Katz. We had a great time chilling out, enjoying our friends, sleeping a lot, eating at Nobu (twice), reading, and being completely off the grid.
I read five books on vacation. All of them were great; two were incredible and highly relevant.
The first was an economy themed book. John Bogle’s Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life was one of the clearest books I’ve ever read about the difference between investment and speculation. Bogle is the founder of The Vanguard Group and is a tireless advocate of the superiority of index funds over traditional actively-managed mutual funds. I’ll follow up with a longer post on my view of the difference between investment and speculation; suffice it to say that I think America (and the world) needs a lot more investment and a lot less speculation. Bogle also does a great job talking about what matters in life (yes – “enough” has several meanings in this book.)
The second was a foreign policy themed book. I learned more about how to think about foreign policy in the context of the US government by reading Madeleine Albright’s Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America’s Reputation and Leadership than I’ve learned cumulatively from all other sources I’ve been exposed to over the past decade. She writes plainly, with a clarity of thought that I find unique to books like this. Brilliant.
If you are a leader of any organization, you should read both of these books. They will help you realign your principles with our current reality while giving you a clear context to consider what has gone wrong with the US economy and US foreign policy. While you probably won’t agree with everything written, both books will cause you to pause and think, which I always find to be a good thing.
Lest you think it was a completely serious vacation, I can assure you that President Will Lee once again saves the world in Mounting Fears by Stuart Woods (and yes – the wordplay in the title is delicious) and Nicholai Hel holds up well as the protagonist in Trevanian’s classic Shibumi, although it took me a while to get into it this time around (my fourth I think).
Finally, I started the week with Dean Karnazes 50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days — and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance! . Karnazes is a remarkable athlete, human being, and story teller. If you are a runner or endurance athlete, Dean never disappoints.