Tag: Boulder
I attended the second Open Angel Forum in Boulder tonight. Simply put, it was dynamite.
This is an intense week for seed stage stuff in Boulder as TechStars Demo Day is tomorrow where 11 new companies are having their coming out party. The Boulder New Tech Meetup had a special double header (Tuesday and Wednesday) where six teams practiced their pitches to a room of 300+ people on Tuesday followed up by the other five on Wednesday. The streets are crawling with angel and early stage investors – local and from other parts of the country – and the vibe feels great as tomorrow is the big day.
I had high expectations for Open Angel Forum after the first one in Boulder in the spring. Jason Calacanis came up with a great format when he created Open Angel Forum and David Cohen has done an awesome job of hosting and coordinating the two Boulder events.
The format is ideal. 20 qualified angel investors – to qualify you must be active making angel investments (at least three in the past year). Six companies all raising seed rounds ($1m or less). Dinner and drinks paid for by sponsors. No fee to either the entrepreneurs or the angels. Casual setting (we did it in the TechStars Bunker) – some mingling before it got started, followed by five minute pitches + five minutes of Q&A for each company. The whole thing took an hour – just the right amount of time.
All six companies – Pavlov Games, Rapid.io, Adapt.ly, Awesomebox, PlaceIQ, and BrowseAndPay did excellent jobs. They were each high quality and totally fundable and I heard several commitments happen during the evening. I left about 45 minutes after the pitches ended – the event was still in high gear and with Jason leading a table full of angels and entrepreneurs in a game of Texas Hold’em while the beer drinking and discussions continued.
The thing that is so cool to me about this is that it’s a super high signal to noise ratio – all the companies had clear, tight, and relevant pitches and the entire audience was accessible angel investors. No BS, no posturing, no fees for anything – just entrepreneurs and angels doing their thing.
Over two days, 17 early stage software / Internet companies are having high quality exposure to angel and seed investors in Boulder. And on Saturday, we have TEDx Boulder. It’s good to be back in town.
The second Boulder Open Angel Forum event is happening on August 4th at 7pm. In case you aren’t familiar with the Open Angel Forum, the organization is dedicated to providing entrepreneurs with access to the angel investor community based solely on merit and without any fees.
The first Open Angel Forum in Boulder was dynamite. David Cohen, the founder/CEO of TechStars drove the event and is also hosting this one. He has scheduled it the night before the TechStars Boulder 2010 Demo Day with the hope of having some out of town angels that are here for Demo Day attend.
Apply here to attend as an angel investor.
Apply here if you are a company that wants to present.
Finally, if you want to come to the TechStars Demo Day, please contact David or email me and I’ll get you plugged in.
In addition to missing the sun up here in Homer today, I miss my dogs.
I guess I need to get them on a Skype call later today, kind of like what Todd Vernon did with me earlier today.
There are many things I love about Boulder. One of them is the powerful sense of community that exists. Talking about this is fine, but examples are better. Here’s one:
On the first Tuesday of every month is the Boulder New Tech Meetup. It’s one of the largest regular tech meetups in the world and is orchestrated by a bunch of folks, most notably Robert Reich of OneRiot who is the founder and ringleader. Given my travel, I can’t make it regularly but I try to go a couple of times a year. Each time is fascinating – I’ve always learned something, met some interesting folks, and had fun.
Last week Robert and the NewTech gang decided to do something different. They lined up multiple non-profit organizations who presented New Tech style, but with a twist. Once all of the groups were finished on the podium (they each got two minutes instead of the typical five minutes to present) they split up into rooms all over the CU Wolf Law Building (where the New Tech Meetup is held) and started hacking. The tech community helped the non-profits on tech issues ranging from web design to social media help, database support to graphic design, and everything in-between.
Robert sent me a list of the non-profits that presented. They follow and include several that Amy and I support philanthropically:
- Colorado Nonprofit Development Center presented by Kamela Maktabi
- Food Bank of the Rockies presented by Janie Gianotsos
- Cool Girls Science and Art Club presented by Mary Golden
- Boulder International Fringe Festival presented by Alana Eve Burman
- I Have a Dream Foundation of Boulder County presented by Lisa McAlister
- The WILD Foundation presented by Emily Loose
- Denver Curling Club presented by Alyssa Rossnagel
- Boulder Community Computers presented by Eric Jackson
- Ashoka’s Youth Venture presented by Matt Nathan
- The “I Love U Guys” Foundation presented by John-Michael Keyes
- Blue Sky Bridge Child Advocacy Center presented by Judy Toran Cousin
- Leave No Trace presented by Dana Watts
Here are the stats of what happened:
- 300 people showed up to listen to the non-profits present
- 200 people stuck around for dinner
- 130 people stayed around and directly helped the different non-profits hack
It’s pretty amazing what can happen when you put a bunch of smart techies in a room. Boulder – I love you and miss you. And, if you are in a NewTech Meetup in another city, I challenge you to help out some non-profits!
If you are a fan of my mom’s art (Cecelia Feld), she’s part of an exhibit at the St. Julien Hotel in Boulder called Splash. The opening is this Wednesday July 7th from 6pm to 8pm. I won’t be there as Amy and I are hiding in Homer, Alaska for the month, but my mom is coming down from Keystone and I know she’d love to see my friends if you are around. It’s a real exhibit opening, so there will be food and wine for anyone that shows up!
Another TechStars company has been acquired. Well – part of it has been acquired. Today it was announced that eBay has acquired the RedLaser product from Occipital. The Occipital guys tell the story in their post titled Arrival at the Launchpad.
Occipital’s founders – Jeff and Vikas – are the epitome of bootstrap entrepreneurs. Every TechStars class seems to have one and Occipital wins the bootstrapper of TechStars Boulder 2008 award. At the end of the program they had a few chances to raise money but weren’t happy with the valuations so decided to hunker down and just bootstrap things. They reinvented themselves several times until they launched RedLaser which has been a runaway hit (over two million copies sold to date.) As RedLaser took off, they had another set of interesting investment offers but no longer have any need for outside capital.
While they were on their way to creating an interesting mobile ecommerce company, they wanted to work on a much bigger set of technical challenges than RedLaser in computer vision and augmented reality, their areas of passion and technical expertise. In their travels they had a few inquires for an acquisition of the company, but really only wanted to sell the RedLaser product, not the entire company. Fortunately, eBay was very interested in the RedLaser product and the match worked extremely well for both parties.
Given this sale, I expect Occipital is now a long way from ever raising outside capital. Jeff and Vikas are now extremely well funded, are scaling up a very interesting team, and going after a huge vision. Oh – and RedLaser is now free in the iPhone AppStore. Congrats to Occipital, Vikas and Jeff!
If you are a senior Java developer anywhere in the US and are interested in moving to Boulder, I’d like to hear from you.
There was a nice article in Bloomberg Businessweek last week about Why Boulder Is America’s Best Town for Startups. With the combination of the new startup activity over the past few years combined with the rapid growth of a number of medium sized companies and renewed hiring from some of the outposts of major tech companies based here, we’ve clearly entered another cycle in Boulder where talent is tight and demand for senior folks is once again at a high point.
Of course, if you are living in Boulder or Denver and aren’t happy with your current job, feel free to reach out to me. But I’m also game to talk to people that are interested in relocating to what I think is the best small city in America.
Amy and I stayed in downtown Boulder over the weekend. It was pouring rain on Friday afternoon, flawlessly beautiful on Saturday through Sunday morning when we went for a long walk on the Boulder Creek Path, and then it snowed overnight last night. Here’s the view from our window.
My iPhone tells me that it’s going to be 70 degrees on Wednesday. Welcome to spring time in Boulder.
After the chaos of some days, it’s a delight to come home, stand outside, and look at my backyard.
Today was (another) one of those days.