Here’s another one. What a view. Floor number please (hint > 50).
Finally. We had an amazingly wonderful normal weekend in Boulder – sunny, 50 degrees, a little snow hanging around, especially in the mountains. Notwithstanding the daylight savings nonsense (which is irrelevant to me since I wake up while it’s still dark outside and I use Vista now), it’s beautiful here once again now that the White Witch of Narnia has apparently been defeated.
Of course, Amy just reminded me that March and April typically bring major spring storms. Fortunately I’m on the road most of the next two months. Wait, what am I saying?
The New York Times had a great article early this week titled Fine Dining With a Hippie Past. It highlights the recent revolution in the Boulder fine dining scene. When I moved here in 1995, the casual dining scene was outstanding (think Santa Monica, but more casual) but there were only really two “serious” restaurants – Flagstaff House and Q’s. In the last few years, a number of new great ones have popped up including The Kitchen (owned by Me.dium CEO Kimbal Musk), Frasca, and Mateo. Earlier this week I had breakfast at Radda Trattoria. Yum.
Lest you think the old standards aren’t good, we had an excellent dinner at Flagstaff House celebrating Ben Casnocha’s 19th birthday last night. Now – if the St. Julien would just admit defeat and completely reboot Jill’s we’d have the chance at yet another great upscale place.
I am often asked “what the state government in Colorado should do to help promote entrepreneurship and innovation.” My answer is consistent – “education, education, education.” I went to school at MIT and saw first hand how one of the best “communities of higher education” in the world (Cambridge / Boston) directly impacted Massachusetts activity around entrepreneurship and innovation. While I’ve gotten stuck in the “public university / government / private university” discussion loop many times around this, I always suggest that we “take the discussion up a level” since the core question is “how can state government help?”
Today, Roger Fillion of the Rocky Mountain News wrote a damning article summarizing the new Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation which showed Colorado falling to #9 from #3 over the past five years in “adapting to the new economy.” When this study was done in 1999 and 2002, Colorado was #3. Colorado is now #9 (the top five spots are Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington and California.)
I haven’t studied this report, but I think Roger nails it in his article. The key quote is from Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation: “Other states have made major investments in expanding higher education, particularly research centers related to their state economies and specialties. My sense is that Colorado didn’t do that as much in the last decade.”
There are other issues, like the crash in the telecom industry, that impacted Colorado. But – fundamentally – the issue seems to come back to higher education.
There is some good news – Colorado continues to rank in the top three in several categories including education level of the work force, companies selling stock to the public for the first time, high-tech jobs, and patents. Plus, I believe the quality of life in Colorado is #1 in the country – notwithstanding yet another snow storm that we are having today.
Atkinson ends with the following: “It has such a great quality of life, and it’s a wonderful place to live. It’s this mecca for college-educated workers. And it has a lot of high-tech firms. [But it has] failed to combine these with a policy that spurs innovation – one, for example, that boosts the role of colleges and universities in promoting innovation and growth.”
Governor Ritter – you have a fresh shot at it. Let’s reverse the slide that your predecessor helped create.
Yesterday a group of us announced the creation of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. This is a project I’ve been working on since last fall that I’m especially proud of. The press release is a good overview, as is the short article in today’s Rocky Mountain News titled Young firms urged to give helping hand.
The founding member companies are Collective Intellect, Me.dium, NewsGator, Rally Software, and Tendril. I want to thank the leadership teams, the employees, and the investors in these companies for their great support and help in figuring out a lot of the details of how this should work.
The founding trustees are me, Tim Connor, Sequel Venture Partners, JB Holston, NewsGator, Kyle Lefkoff, Boulder Ventures, Ryan Martens, Rally Software, Mike Platt, Cooley Godward Kronish, and Bill Roberts, Hogan & Hartson.
The Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado is a “sub-fund” of the Community Foundation Serving Boulder County. We’ve already built alliances with the two primary Denver-based Community Foundations – The Denver Foundation and Rose Community Foundation – and hope over time to have alliances with all of the Community Foundations in Colorado. Thanks to Josie Heath and the great folks at the Community Foundation Serving Boulder County for their enthusiasm, support, and help.
We are an affiliate of the Entrepreneurs Foundation, an organization that began in the Bay Area that now has affiliates around the United States and in Israel.
Finally, a special thanks to my assistant Kelly Collins for being the ringleader of all of the people involved.
Look for more coming soon – please follow our progress on the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado web site. If you are part of a company in Colorado that is interested in finding out more about participating, please email me.
Our regional event – Venture Capital in the Rockies – was excellent this year. I’m usually good for a half a day at something like this – I managed to last almost 30 hours. I started off by participating in a press roundtable, had a few meetings, enjoyed a packed cocktail party, and then had an outstanding dinner at Anderson’s Cabin with the folks from Square 1 Bank.
I woke up early the next day and sat through most of the presentations in one of the software / IT / Internet tracks. David Cohen has an excellent summary of many of them – so I’ll be lazy and just link to him. Dan Primack also put up a post of the cliffnotes of who is raising what along with his explanation that VCIR isn’t a skiing boondoggle – really – it isn’t – really!
David Cohen also has a nice summary of his experience as this is the first VCIR he has been to. David is an active angel investor and co-founder / CEO of TechStars – we’ve gotten to know each other pretty well over the past year and I loved his conclusion.
“Above all, my biggest takeaway was simply the fact that I met a great number of amazing people. Sure, it was cool to network with these very talented VCs from Colorado, Silicon Valley, Seattle, and elsewhere. But it was fantastic to meet many of the great entrepreneurs in the area that I had not met in person before, as well as the people supporting and encouraging them. It was said several times at VCIR that the VCs simply go where the entrepreneurs are. Luckily for all of us, entrepreneurs and therefore the ecosystem that develops around them, are alive and well in Colorado.”
As the climax, Tracy Kerr – a partner at Meritage Funds and the Chairman of the Colorado Venture Capital Association (CVCA) announced that the CVCA was becoming the Rocky Mountain Venture Capital Association which now includes Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Nevada. I’ve always viewed this area as the “Rocky Mountain West” (as evidenced by my investment in New West) and am delighted that there is more integration between the various VC firms in this region. Of course, I’m the guy that used to think that “New England” was a state before I moved to Boston.
I participated in the press roundtable at the Venture Capital in the Rockies conference that the National Venture Capital Association put together today. David Cohen sat in and recorded it – the podcast is up on the ColoradoStartups.com site. We hung in there for almost 90 minutes and covered a lot of ground – if you are interested the show notes (per David) follow.
5:00 – What does Colorado have to offer from a venture capital perspective?
8:45 – Where do Colorado companies get “serious capital”? Do they tend to need to move to get access to that kind of capital?
10:00 – Good discussion of why Colorado is a great tech startup region.
11:25 – Out of staters are surprised by the depth of technology present here in certain segments.
12:30 – Out of state VCs trust Colorado VCs to “look after the shop” and it may be attractive for B rounds.
14:05 – What are the staple industries that are being invested here, and what are the ones which may be emerging?
18:45 – Surprising number of life science companies being funded (30+ in Colorado last year)
20:30 – Less “follow the leader” in Colorado than elsewhere.
21:30 – Are VCs here stringent in terms of business plans, revenue models, etc?
24:45 – Renewable energy, CleanTech discussion.
27:45 – What role can the government play in promoting energy and CleanTech?
29:50 – How strong is the local market for venture debt?
31:45 – Consumer products (natural foods, beverage, restaurant chains, LOHAS, etc).
36:00 – How does globalization affect Colorado?
39:55 – VC industry in general is much smaller than it was a few years ago.
40:40 – Where is the money going if it’s not going into VC funds?
44:40 – Does every VC firm in Colorado see every funded deal here?
47:25 – How have Colorado VCs done in comparison to the rest of the country?
50:45 – Has your mindset changes regarding exits and how you think about them lately? IPOs, strategic acquisitions, etc?
56:10 – Is there an appetite for foreign IPOs (e.g. AIM)?
58:00 – Is it rhetoric that companies may go public overseas because of Sarbanes-Oxley?
59:20 – Should startups/small companies have different Sarbanes-Oxley rules?
1:03:50 – Discussion of the history of the accounting industry – Books that Brad references (and couldn’t recall) are here and here.
1:04:30 How generous are you all feeling with your checkbooks in 2007?
1:06:35 (2 minute drop in audio due to technical problem)
1:07:20 The best things the state of Colorado can do for entrepreneurs? Brad and John say focus on education.
1:10:30 What few things would you like to see if Ritter could make one or two key moves?
1:11:30 The most underestimated thing about Colorado is simply that people want to live here.
1:14:15 What Cleantech technologies look most interesting?
1:15:30 Thoughts of VCs on recent Union bill veto by Ritter.
1:17:00 What keeps VCs up at night these days?
1:20:30 Energy/aerospace collaboration with government?
1:23:45 Are Colorado Springs and Fort Collins second fiddle to Denver/Boulder/CU?
On 8/8/06, while in excellent shape (I ran the New Mexico Marathon on 9/3/06), I somehow convinced myself that it would be a fun idea to run the North Pole Marathon. By the end of December, I realized that there was no way I’d be able to maintain the level of training necessary to do it. I also realized that I’d taken leave of my senses in August when I signed up for this.
I’d paid for everything so I decided that – in conjunction with YourRunning.com – I would give away my entry. Today we’ve announced that Bobby Bostic is the winner of our contest and will be running the North Pole Marathon in April.
See more videos like this at Running at YourRunning.com
There were 65 incredible entrants with awesome stories. I’m blown away – and inspired – by the fitness level and accomplishment of these folks. Congrats Bobby. Time for my run.
Minus 3. By the time I got to Keystone it was minus 8. Colorado is having a sucky winter.
At least I’m home.