Rocky Radar has a great schedule of a bunch of entrepreneurial events happening from 2/2 – 2/9 in and around Boulder. I’ve been getting lots of questions lately from people recently asking “how do I get involved in the Boulder entrepreneurial scene” – the short answer is “show up!”
I’m participating in a couple of the events this week.
Also, this month’s Boulder Open Coffee Club is happening on Tuesday 2/3 at 8am at The Cup. I can’t make it because I’ve got a board meeting at StillSecure, but there’s always a good crowd (and some great coffee).
Venture Capital in the Rockies (VCIR) is the key annual Venture Capital / Entrepreneurship conference in the Rocky Mountain Region. It’s held in late February / early March each year; this year it’s happening from March 3 to March 5th at Beaver Creek. There’s a full day of keynotes, presentations, and networking, along with two good nights of networking and partying, and a full day of skiing (followed by a party).
My partner Seth Levine is the conference organizer this year. Among other things, Seth is a blogger so it’s not a huge surprise that VCIR now has a blog. Now that the presenters – listed below – have been chosen, I’m looking forward to seeing some posts from them!
If you are thinking about coming, it’s time to click on the magic register button and sign up. Make sure you stick around for the party.
One of the really fun things about working with Eric Norlin, the creator of Defrag and Glue, is watching how he evolves the agenda from a conference from idea to reality. It’s a very fluid process that Eric handles masterfully.
Eric’s post The Glue agenda starts to get sticky summarizes some of the latest highlights on the ever evolving agenda. The headliner: Mitch Kapor is going to be giving the keynote on Wednesday, May 13th.
While I’ve never worked with Mitch, he’s one of my heroes as the creator of several of the most amazing pieces of software products ever. If you guessed Lotus 1-2-3, you are only partially correct, as the real mind-bender was Lotus Agenda. I was an undergraduate at MIT between 1983 and 1987 in Lotus’ heyday as emerging company (IPO in 1984, 1000+ employees in 1985) and watched as Lotus buildings were erected along the Charles River. I had a number of interesting meetings at Lotus for a variety of things between 1985 and 1993, including several visits with my Uncle Charlie during the Lotus OS/2 – pre-IBM days. I also had a really groovy fight with the GC at Lotus at an MIT event during the Borland / Lotus look-and-feel lawsuit (which Borland thankfully won.) I still refer to 55 Cambridge Parkway as “the Lotus building” even though I only go there to visit VCs these days when I’m in Cambridge.
Mitch joins other great speakers recently announced, including David Heinemeier Hansson (the creator of Ruby on Rails) and Kevin Matheny (the head of Best Buy’s Remix API initiative.)
Registration for Glue – which is happening in Denver on 5/12 and 5/13 – is open now. It’s only $395. Come to Denver and stretch your brain.
The National Venture Capital Association regularly has webcasts aimed at various members of the venture capital community. On January 23rd from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. Eastern they are having one titled Beyond the Limited Partnership Agreement – Issues For Challenging Times. The description follows:
The current global financial crisis is impacting the venture community in ways that no other economic crisis has. For the first time in our industry’s history, some of the most committed, long term investors in the private equity asset class are reevaluating their commitment, shifting strategy and making the future uncertain. Join us on January 23rd for a provocative discussion as our panel discusses many of the provisions that define the relationship between General Partners and Limited Partner investors, and how these are impacted by challenging economic conditions. In addition, our panel will cover some of the inevitable consequences that may affect the internal operations of the venture firm.
The panelists are:
Howard Rosenblum, Partner, DLA Piper LLP (moderator)
Eric Fitzgerald, Director of Venture Capital Investments, MetLife
Michael Greeley, General Partner, Flybridge Capital Partners
Tom Hodge, COO and General Partner, Frazier Healthcare & Technology Ventures
If you are interested, register directly on the NVCA site to participate.
Late last year, Phil Weiser (the omnipresent head of Silicon Flatirons and CU professor of Law and Telecommunications) asked me if I was interested in doing a “One-on-One” public interview series with him. Phil and I have stirred up plenty of trouble together over the past few years and I’d never pass up an opportunity to share a stage with him.
So – on February 3 from 5pm to 6pm at the Wittemeyer Courtroom in the Wolf Law Building at CU Boulder we will be doing our first One-on-One on “Finance”. Here’s the summary:
Our first interview will focus on the basic questions around the state of corporate finance and what it means for start-ups, evaluating the role of angel financing, venture capital, private equity as well as the public debt and equity markets. Our discussion will touch on whether venture capital is now in trouble, as some suggest, whether the private equity model can come back from its bust (which Brad predicted), whether Wall Street’s model of financial engineering was corrupt and unsustainable, as Michael Lewis has suggested, and when the current credit crisis will end. If you have questions for Phil to ask Brad, please email him ahead of time at phil.weiser@colorado.edu. After the event, we will post a podcast for those who cannot make it in person.
The very popular Boulder Denver New Technology Meetup will happen immediately afterwards – I’ll stick around and see if I can cause more trouble at that event also.
If you can’t make the February 3rd One-on-One, the next one will be on April 14th and will discuss the nature of entrepreneurial ecosystems and what Colorado has going for it.
As I sat at Gate C18 of the Las Vegas McCarran International Airport on Friday afternoon, I heard the phrase “Wheel of Fortune” about 120 times during the 40 minutes I waited to board my flight home. I was amused the first three times, increasingly annoyed the next 37 times, and then just numb the remaining 80 times.
While I was on the edge of one of those “going postal” moments (if my plane had taken 50 minutes to board, I might not have made it as the Las Vegas police officers would have taken me somewhere dark and quiet for destroying a Wheel of Fortune slot machine with my bare hands), it did occur that me that the phrase “wheel of fortune” has some applicability to my universe.
I hate big tradeshows. I haven’t been to one since Comdex in 2000. While most of my trips to Las Vegas were for short term debauchery (of which I rarely participate in since I don’t gamble, don’t like strip clubs, and don’t drink much), I thought I’d give CES a try this year since most of my partners and a bunch of my friends were going.
I had fun – a lot of fun! I managed to spend a day walking the floor of CES; Jason summarized what we learned on a creatively titled post What We Learned at CES. I also got to go see the new iRobot 562 Pet Series (I just bought one for Amy’s February 1st life dinner gift – shhhh – don’t tell her), my friends at BugLabs and DeviceVM, and lots of cool Boxee stuff.
I sandwiched my floor walking between two awesome dinners – one at Guy Savoy in Caesar’s Palace and one at Nobu in the Hard Rock. I managed one strong run, got to party with Topspin, hung out with my dad, and didn’t get enough sleep. And – I caught a cold.
But I saw a lot of really cool TVs.
Are you into browser Add-on’s? The first Add-on-Con is happening on December 11th in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum. My friends at OneRiot and AdaptiveBlue are organizing it along with Sxipper. The lineup is shaping up nicely to including folks from Mozilla, Google, Xoopit, Alexa, and Microsoft.
It’s only $150 for the day. If you use the discount code "feld" it’s only $100.
On Wednesday, November 12th Silicon Flatirons is hosting a panel discussion titled Crash Course – Growing a Startup Amid Uncertain Economic Times. The discussion will be held at Room 204 in the Wolf Law Building on the CU Boulder campus from 5:15pm to 6:45pm. My partner Jason Mendelson will be speaking along with Ken Fugate of Square 1 Bank and Jim Cowgill of EKS&H. Brad Bernthal, Brad Bernthal, Associate Clinical Professor and Silicon Flatirons’ Director of Entrepreneurship Initiatives, will be moderating.
It’s free – click here to register. See you there.
David Cohen has a detailed post up describing the types of companies that should apply to be presenters at Venture Capital In The Rockies Winter 2009. VCIR is now in its 26th year and is the premier conference for startups in the Rocky Mountain region. If you think you fit the bill, drop an executive summary to submissions@vcintherockies.com.