Category: Events
I love to read. I love everything about books. LLMs will not replace good writing anytime soon, although they have mastered the art of slop. Oh, and I love communities of people who love writing and reading.
Authors & Innovators is a free, community-based event happening on October 30th in Newton, MA, for entrepreneurs, students, CEOs, venture and angel investors, and anyone interested in business. I attended in person a few years ago, and this year I will be there virtually with my book Give First: The Power of Mentorship (and a video). Larry Gennari created it a while ago, and if you like books, writers, readers, and entrepreneurship, it’s a blast.
Their overall goal is to introduce new ideas, foster meaningful dialogue, and move their motivated audience to read business books and engage with other like-minded entrepreneurs to learn more about the exciting journey of building a business!
This year, their theme is The Resilient Entrepreneur. They will be celebrating the spirit that drives founders to adapt, evolve, and thrive. Through thought-provoking conversations with visionary authors and business leaders, we’ll explore how resilience fuels innovation, creativity, and growth—both personally and collectively. From navigating uncertainty to cultivating curiosity and courage, this event shines a light on the mindset and community that empower entrepreneurs to turn challenges into catalysts for change.
The event is complementary, but registration is required at www.authorsinnovators.org.
I’m not aware if there has ever been a book launch associated with a Yom Kippur Break Fast, but we are going to have one as part of the launch of Sue Heilbronner’s excellent new book, Never Ask for the Sale: Supercharge Your Business with the Power of Passionate Ambivalence.
It’ll start at 6:30 pm on Thursday, October 2, at Greeley Sachs’ bookstore, Composition Shop, in downtown Longmont.
Sue and I will do a fireside chat about her book and my latest book, Give First: The Power of Mentorship. We will both be signing books. And … food!
Come join us at Composition Shop for the Break the Fast.
Amy and I love autumn. It’s crisp, harvest time, a shifting balance between day and night, back to school, new pencils and notebooks, and reaping what you sow.
September and October will be filled with plenty of extroversion before I go back into hibernation. The feedback on Give First: The Power of Mentorship has been gratifying, and as I enter the last two months of discussing it before wrapping up this particular book project, I’ve already started a few new projects. Hint: AI is everywhere. It’s fun. It’s getting more expensive. And it’s definitely not AGI. But, AI muppets are a reminder never to take yourself too seriously.
Following are the events coming up.
- 9/2: Virtual: Board Prospects AMA
- 9/8-9/9: Aspen: Aspen Venture Summit
- 9/10: San Francisco: NVCA Venture Forward: 5-Year Celebration
- 9/11: Sunnyvale: illumyn Boardroom Excellence Fellowship Summit
- 9/15 – 9/16: Boulder: Techstars Foundercon
- 9/17: Denver: Colorado Startup Week
- 9/18: Virtual: Las Vegas Startup Week
- 10/1: Denver: Access Mode “Colorado Innovators Breakfast” Fundraiser
- 10/2: Longmont: ‘Break the Fast’
- 10/3: Boulder: Silicon Flatirons
- 10/9: New York: Techstars
- 10/14: Washington, DC: Distilled Intelligence
- 10/29: Golden: Colorado School of Mines
- 11/8: Virtual: Startup Mountain Summit
- 11/18: La Jolla: Alliance for SoCal Innovation
I’ve now flipped to default no on anything new. My cave awaits.
On Saturday, May 31st, from 3:30 to 5:00 PM in downtown Denver, I’ll have a public conversation with Phil Weiser about various topics, including technology and innovation in Colorado. We will also talk about what (and how) we’ve learned from each other over the years and how we’ve worked constructively through disagreements, conflicts, and mistakes.
Phil’s blog post Startup Community Leadership discusses many of the things he’s done to positively impact the Colorado startup community. My journey with Phil started in 1999 when he co-founded a new center at CU Boulder: the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship. While unfortunately named (I hate the name Silicon X for anything, and over the years, I’ve teased Phil many times about this), this began a collaboration between us that resulted in organizations like Startup Colorado and BEN Colorado. It also resulted in the New Technology Meetup, the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic, the Entrepreneurs Unplugged Series, and CU Boulder’s New Venture Challenge.
If you’ve read my book Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City, you know about the incredible impact that Phil and Brad Bernthal had on engaging CU Boulder with the Boulder Startup Community, starting around 2007. It meaningfully impacted how I thought about how the culture across a University could be changed around entrepreneurship and engagement with a local startup community. I attribute much of the early leadership here to Phil and Brad, who worked as incredible thought partners early on the new approach to developing startup communities I codified in that book, and it has now had a global impact.
Given the other public conversations Phil and I have had, including one with Jamie Dimon at CU Boulder as part of Entrepreneurs Unplugged, I expect we will cover a wide range of topics. It’s a chance to get to know another side of Phil and better understand how we’ve learned from each other over the past 25 years on technology, entrepreneurship, startup community development, government involvement with technology and innovation, leadership, and mentorship.
Anyone who attends will receive a copy of my newest book, Give First: The Power of Mentorship, which I will happily sign if they wish.
Now that I’m out of hibernation for a while and back in Boulder for a month, I’m doing a bunch of public events.
My approach, in general, is fireside chats or AMAs, so that’ll be the rhythm rather than me getting up in front of a crowd and blathering about something for 30 to 45 minutes. While my new book, Give First: The Power of Mentorship, is part of the content (and a giveaway that I’ll be signing at some of the events), I’m planning on staying around, talking to whomever is there, and just enjoying a month of the Boulder and Denver startup communities.
The following is what is currently scheduled. I expect there will be a few more things.
5/12 @ 8am: 2025 Boulder Startup Week: Welcome Breakfast and Kickoff to Boulder Startup Week: There will be lots of socializing as Boulder Startup Week gets started. Join me for breakfast and a short talk on the roof of Rosetta Hall. The rumor is that the weather is going to be awesome.
5/13 @ 3pm: 2025 Boulder Startup Week: Startup Communities – The Next Generation: My partner Jaclyn Hester and I will have a fireside chat about the evolution of a startup community. We’ll talk about the importance of existing leaders (e.g. me) to hand off the torch to the next generation (e.g. Jaclyn), why the development of the startup community is not a straight line up and to the right, and how to incorporate concepts from my upcoming book Give First: The Power of Mentorship into your daily activities in the startup community.
5/16 @ 10am: 2025 Boulder Startup Week: Building and Managing Your Board: I’ve been on a zillion boards. This panel includes several people with whom I’ve been on great boards (Tim Miller, Todd Vernon), along with Walter Knapp (my partner Seth is on his board). I’m also been on a lot of mediocre boards and several crappy ones, so I’ll bring those experiences to the discussion also.
5/28 @ 11am – 6pm: Random Day at Composition Shop: I’ll spend the day at Greeley Sachs’ new bookstore in Longmont doing a Random Day (where I have 15-minute meetings with anyone who wants to meet). Look for a separate post with an online calendar to reserve spots soon.
5/29 @ 2pm: 2025 Conscious Entrepreneur Summit: I’ll share my perspective on mentorship, community, and how Give First applies not just to business but also to the way we live and lead.
6/5 @ 5pm: Techstars Workforce Development Demo Day featuring a Book Launch with Brad Feld: I used to go to every Techstars Demo Day. I think this might be the first one I’m going to post-COVID, and I’m excited to experience its energy.
Startup Community Trailblazer Brad Feld to Release New Book at GEC 2025
“Startup Community Trailblazer” is a fancy title for me, but I’ll take it. I’ve decided to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Congress 2025 in Indianapolis to launch Give First: The Power of Mentorship.
I’ll be there from mid-Monday (June 2) through the end of Tuesday (June 3), and my presentation will be the closing keynote on Tuesday from 4:15 to 5:00 on the main stage.
I attended GEC in Rio in 2013 and have been friends with Jonathan Ortmans, the founder and president, for many years. Jonathan and his team have had an enormous impact on spreading and democratizing entrepreneurship worldwide, along with his board members, several of whom (Jeff Hoffman and Donna Harris) are friends from whom I’ve learned a lot.
If you are interested, register and join us. I’ll be hanging out all day Tuesday and hope to meet many new folks interested in entrepreneurship worldwide.
Registration is open for the 2022 Q4 Leadership Bootcamp, which is happening in Boulder, Colorado, on Nov 10-13, 2022.
Regular readers of this blog know about my long-time (back to 1996) friendship with Reboot co-founder and CEO Jerry Colonna. What you may not know is that several years ago, Jerry and his partner Ali Schultz moved exactly 0.8 miles away from me (there is one 40-acre parcel of land between us.) In the evening, when we are both in Boulder (well, Longmont), he sits under his Cottonwood Tree, I sit 0.8 miles away on my couch next to my pool, and we text and wave at each other.
I’ve been to several Reboot Leadership Bootcamps as a special guest. They are unique and powerful experiences for entrepreneurs. As a bonus, the Reboot Retreat Center is actually on my property in a building called “The Carriage House.” Amy and I don’t charge Reboot for the use of The Carriage House – it’s our gift to entrepreneurs and Reboot for this amazing experience.
If you’re looking to reboot and refresh your leadership, join Team Reboot this November 10-13, 2022, in Boulder, CO, for their fall Leadership Bootcamp.
In the last seven months, the venture / entrepreneurial world has gone from “the only thing that matters is massive growth” to “the world is going to end.” For perspective, all you need to do is look at a dozen high-flying IPOs from 2020 or 2021 to see that the peak happened just before Thanksgiving.
The private markets lag the public markets. That’s not new. This time around, the lag was about a quarter, as many VCs started to talk about what was happening around the beginning of Q2.
There is no doubt that we are in the middle of, well, whatever you want to call it. “Correction” and “Choppy Waters” is probably a generous phrase for what is going on.
Having lived through this as an entrepreneur in 1987, an entrepreneur and VC in 2001, a VC in 2008, and a VC today, I embrace that this is just part of the entrepreneurial and economic cycle. I also know that many people freak out at this moment. If you’ve never been through this (like I hadn’t in 1987), it can be terrifying. If you are experienced and suddenly find yourself caught flat-footed for any number of reasons, it can be equally terrifying.
I no longer believe in clichés or prognostications such as “make sure you have three years of money in the bank” or “do a RIF quickly and deeply regardless of the situation you are in.” Instead, I think it is crucial for each company to understand its current reality clearly and make rapid and appropriate adjustments. This could mean “do a RIF quickly and deeply or “make sure you have three years of money in the bank,” but there are many other things to consider and do.
I’ve been involved in companies that have used these moments to gain huge market share from failing competitors. I’ve also been in companies that, in these moments, simply failed. I’ve been involved in companies that made adjustments, soldiered through, and came out the other side stronger. And, I’ve invested in brand new companies founded during these periods that ended up creating entirely new categories and extremely successful companies.
I expect that’s the tone of what we will discuss on 7/14 as part of Bolster’s Speaker Series about the VC Perspective on Navigating Choppy Waters. Fred Wilson has been through this many times, and his post on Amy and my 29th anniversary in Staying Positive is a wonderful perspective. Martina Lauchengco and Heather Hiles are long-time operators turned VCs who have also been through many cycles.
Join us on 7/14 @ 3pm ET for a discussion on Navigating Choppy Waters that hopefully will not be full of the same old clichés currently making the rounds.
CU’s Silicon Flatirons Center Startup Summer is back!
Startup Summer provides a fantastic experience for college-age students and interns interested in entrepreneurship and the Front Range emerging company scene.
Startup Summer is a free offering that enhances your company’s internship program. Your company hires and pays your intern(s). You can hire an intern out of your own pool of candidates or, alternatively, let us know and we will get you student resumes from individuals who have reached out to us.
This program is free – there is no charge for companies or interns. Now in Year 10, Startup Summer is one of CU Boulder Silicon Flatirons’ most popular programs.
Startup Summer pulls college-age students together on Tuesday nights from 5:30 – 7:30 pm during the summer. Startup Summer students and interns get to (1) meet leaders in the Front Range emerging company community, and (2) build their own startups on the side. More info is available at our website Startup Summer page.
If your company is interested in Startup Summer, please reach out directly to Sara Schnittgrund (Sara.Schnittgrund@Colorado.EDU) and Brad Bernthal (Brad.Bernthal@colorado.edu) at Silicon Flatirons by Thursday, June 3.