Tag: techstars
It was the second week of TechStars and I was doing office hours with each of the 11 teams going through the Boulder 2010 program. I was sitting across the table from Adam Wilson and Ian Bernstein who each looked tired and dejected. In front of them were three slides.
I asked them what was wrong. They said they were having trouble deciding which of three different products to pursue. They’d had a dozen meetings with different mentors and were getting wildly conflicting data, which we refer to in TechStars as “mentor whiplash” and is a normal part of the first 30 days of TechStars for every team.
A few weeks earlier, Adam and Ian had their company Gearbox accepted into TechStars. They were hardware / software / robotics nerds and loved to tinker around. Their TechStars application and video had something to do with robots and their crazy desire to stay up all night hacking on them. When I’d last seen them a few weeks earlier, they were full of energy and life. Now they just looked defeated.
“Tell me about each of the ideas.” I asked. Adam started with the first one. “It’s a door lock controlled by your smartphone. The door lock market is really big.” said Adam in the most deadpan monotone voice I’ve ever heard.
“Ok – what’s the next one?” I asked. Ian mumbled something about the second slide on the table. I don’t even remember what he said.
“What about the third one?” Adam chimed in again, a little more animated this time. “It’s a robotic ball controlled by your smartphone.”
“Why are you having trouble deciding?” I asked. Adam kept going. “Some of the mentors like the door lock market but it seems like a really easy product to create and there are lots of door lock companies. And some don’t like it because it’s not defensible. No one really understands the second idea. And then there’s the ball – some mentors love it and others hate it.”
“Well,” I asked, “Is there one you love a lot more than the other two?” Adam and Ian looked at me quizzically, the same way my golden retrievers do when I ask them if they want to go for a walk. “Really, you just want to know which one we love the best?” asked Ian.
Adam jumped in, “Are you kidding. The ball. It’s a robotic ball you control with your smartphone.” Adam stood up with a gleam in his eye. “Brad, IT’S A ROBOTIC BALL YOU CONTROL WITH YOUR SMARTPHONE! HOW COOL IS THAT.”
At that moment, Sphero was born. And I knew that if Adam and Ian could make any progress over the next 10 weeks creating a robotic ball controlled by a smartphone, I wanted to invest in these two amazing guys. Their passion and obsession around the idea of a robotic ball you control with a smartphone was awesome.
Over the ensuing weeks they were regularly asked “what’s the market”, “who is the customer”, “how big is the market”, “isn’t it just a toy?”, and a bunch of other skeptical questions. As the weeks went by, they kept answering these sames questions with some variant of “we don’t really know but here are some ideas.” They kept working on the prototype and once they could drive something in a sort of a straight line, more eyes started lighting up and the “how big is the market questions” started to diminish.
Fundamentally, they didn’t know the answer, nor was it important at this stage. There are a zillion balls in the world and an endless set of applications for them; at this point Adam and Ian were pursuing the vision of a product that they were obsessed about. While some mentors and investors wanted to understand all the market and customer dynamics, others were able to see, or dream about, the enormous potential opportunities if the product could ever be created.
Three months later Foundry Group led the seed investment in Orbotix. And we are just as passionate about it today as Adam and Ian were way back when.
We’ve been investing in our Glue theme and Protocol theme for a long time – well before we started Foundry Group. Many of our Glue investments and our Protocol investments are growing quickly and becoming integral parts of the Internet and web software infrastructure.
It made me smile to see a recent post from Promoboxx titled We’re Powered by TechStars Companies. It’s a great post about focusing on what matters for your product while leveraging great technology infrastructure from other companies. Several of the companies we are investors in are mentioned, including SendGrid and FullContact, each which are TechStars companies that we invested in after they finished the program.
For as long as I’ve been involved in writing and creating software there has always been a deep philosophy of creating building blocks that you can leverage. Something magical happened around this with the web and in the past five or so years there have been a number of amazing companies created that are easy to quickly integrate, either through a little bit of code or an API. It’s part of thing that has changed the dynamics of creating and launching a web software company, dramatically lowering the price of just getting something out there so you can start getting real feedback from users and customers.
When I reflect on this year’s Glue Conference, it feels like we’ve finally reached a tipping point where this concept is ubiquitous. I expect we’ll talk about it at Defrag and Eric Norlin’s post from yesterday titled The 20 Year Cycle hints to some of the deeper ideas about how this affects enterprise software and corporate IT, in addition to all the obvious consumer implications.
It’s a great time to be building software – the innovation curve is speeding up, not slowing down, and I expect when we look back 20 years from now we won’t recognize what we were doing in 2012.
I’m still buzzing from yesterday. The entire day was dedicated to TechStars Demo Day in Boulder. It started with a run on the Boulder Creek Path, followed by Demo Day, lunch with Paul Berberian, Mark Solon, and Pam Solon, a handful of TechStars meetings in the afternoon including one with the guys from J-Squared Media (members of the very first TechStars program), a hangout with Jerry Colonna at his new house in Boulder, dinner with Jerry, Mark, Pam, David and Jill Cohen, Nicole Galaros, and Jason Seats, and then the TechStars Demo Day afterparty.
When I got home at 11:30 I was done. Deeply happy, but wiped out. I woke up late this morning (7am) and wandered into my kitchen to see Mark Solon on his laptop preparing for a run (Mark and Pam stayed at my condo in Boulder this week). We talked for a few minutes and the deep pleasure we were both feeling about being alive and part of the Boulder startup community was apparent.
He then said something that I noticed last night but hadn’t thought much of. At about 10pm the Boulder Cruisers, on their weekly Thursday ride, went by Shine where we were having the afterparty. There was the usual cheering, hooting and hollering, and just generally good karma at 10pm on a warm summer night. This morning, Mark pointed it out as a magical moment. The mix of two totally different communities of people – a huge crowd of entrepreneurs, nerds, and techies in Shine crossed with an equally cruising bike crowd on the street. And the only feelings that were flowing were happy ones where everyone was glad to be there.
Mark then said “That’s the magic of Boulder and TechStars. Everyone is part of the community. Everyone feels like part of the community. Every single person at TechStars Demo Day was part of it – whether they were mentors, investors, lawyers, or the hundreds of people from the broader Boulder tech community who attended.”
The third of the four key principles of the Boulder Thesis at the core of my Startup Communities book is “The startup community must be inclusive of anyone who wants to participate in it.” We saw that on display in many different ways yesterday. Listening to Mark play it back to me reinforced once again how powerful it is.
TechStars Boulder Demo Day was today and all I can say is WOW! This is the sixth TechStars program in Boulder and I’m just blown away by the entrepreneurs, their companies, the mentors, the investors, and the Boulder community. Clare Tischer put up a TechStars Demo Day 2012 post with descriptions of the companies and links – rather than repeat that here, I’d encourage you to go take a look. There are already a handful of posts from various teams up – my favorite so far is a tribute to Nicole Glaros from the RollSale gang.
If you are an investor and missed demo day but find any of the companies interesting, it’s easy to connect with them via the TechStars Demo Day Email Intro App (ok – that’s not the official name for it, but it just reinforces that you shouldn’t let me name things.)
And – if you are interested in following the story of these teams, the Founders series is back in the fall that tracks a number of them through the program. Here’s the trailer.
I just got out of a meeting with one of the TechStars Boulder teams from the first program. They are going strong, have grown a sizable company, and are amazing people. It makes me so incredibly happy to get to hang out with and work with everything around TechStars. David – thanks so much for showing up for random day in 2006 – it continues to be an awesome journey.
I continually refer people to the post I Don’t Hate Marketing which is a great example of a bunch of chocolaty goodness all rolled into one little post. Now, my friends at Haiku Deck have made it slick and pretty!
Don’t let your marketing suck. Set your story free with Haiku Deck.
On August 9th, TechStars in Boulder will wrap up with their annual Demo Day investment event. If you’re an active investor and are interested in attending, send me an email and I’ll get you an invitation.
It’s always amazing to witness how the teams transform in three short months and this program has been no different. This year, we have everything from internet-of-things companies to travel, enterprise software to consumer devices, and platforms to crowdsource plays. There’s a strong showing out of Boulder this year and its yet another reason why my partners and I at Foundry Group continues to support the program.
I’ll be there all day so I’d love to see you.
TechStars is running an event called the Patriot Boot Camp in Washington D.C. from July 18-20. About 75 veterans who are active or aspiring entrepreneurs have already been accepted and will be attending.
During this three day event, they’ll get a mini TechStars-like experience. The number of people who have stepped up to offer to mentor these veteran-formed companies is just awesome. Todd Park (US CTO) and Aneesh Chopra (Former US CTO) are delivering a keynotes, along with Paul Bucha (Medal of Honor Recipient) and many others. LivingSocial will be welcoming these veterans to their office for a tour and to meet the team and hear their inspiring story. And there will be a ton of one-on-one mentoring during the event by some fantastic mentors. I’ve included the full list of mentors as a thank you to them for “giving first” at the bottom of this post. But of course the biggest thanks are due to these entrepreneurs themselves, for their service to our country.
While the entrepreneurs who are participating have already been selected, there is still a chance to show up and support these veterans in D.C. and see their mini “demo-day” next Friday, July 20th. Perhaps you are an investor or maybe you just want to try and help these companies in some way. Whatever the case, there are seats remaining at this finale of the Patriot Boot Camp which is open to the public.
You can learn more and register here.
The TechStars Patriot Boot Camp is made possible by sponsors: Kauffman Foundation, Kauffman FastTrac, SoftLayer, Silicon Valley Bank, Georgetown University, and Prediculous. And Taylor McLemore of Prediculous has also put in an incredible amount of work on this event on a volunteer basis.
Finally – thank you, thank you, thank you to all the mentors helping out next week:
Aneesh Chopra, Former US Chief Technology Officer
Donna Harris, Startup America
David Cohen, TechStars
Jared Polis, TechStars
Jason Seats, TechStars
Kwasi Asare, Moodlerooms
Nicole Glaros, TechStars
Al Doan, Missouri Star Quilt Co.
Allen Gannett, EmployInsight
Austin Evarts, GoChime
Brad Harrison, BHV
Brian DeWitt, SocialThing
Bobby Ocampo, Grotech
Charles Kelly, Silicon Valley Bank
Chris Ennis, Function Interactive
Chuck Cullen, Grotech
Chris Onan, Galvanize
David Mandell, Pivot Desk
David Sandrowitz, The Fort
Don Rainey, Grotech
Edward Barrientos, Brazen Careerist
Eric Koester, Zaarly
Evan Morgan, Revolution Growth
George Solomon, George Washington University
Glen Hellman, Driven Forward
Hannibal Bray, Infraredx
James Chung, George Washington University
Jeff Reid, Georgetown
Jeremy Gocke, Fliptu.com
Jerry Johnson, RLJ Equity
Jim Booth, Orbotix
Jim Brinksma, Visible Arbitrage
John Casey, George Mason
Josh Emert, GoChime
Justin Fishkin, Local Motors
Katie Rae, TechStars
Katya Vasilaky, TroopSwap
Kelley Hilborn, SoftLayer
Larry Broughton, Broughton Advisory Group
Lawson DeVries, Grotech
Leslie Jump, Sawari Ventures
Mark Drapeau, Microsoft
Mark Spoto, Razor’s Edge Ventures
Matt Talbot, GoSpotCheck
Matt Thompson, TroopSwap
Michael Kelley, Arc Angel Fund
Michael Mayernick, Spinnakr
Nathan Day, SoftLayer
Nick Wichert, VETransfer
Nola N. Miyasaki, Oklahoma State University
Patrick Riley, Global Accelerator Network
Paul Berberian, Orbotix
Paul Ford, SoftLayer
Paul Laurence, Cooley
Phillip Dyer, Broughton Advisory Group
Porter Montgomery, Category One
Rami Essaid, Distil
Ray Jefferson, Leadership Consultant
Richard Moxley, Razor’s Edge Ventures
Rob Painter, Razor’s Edge Ventures
Sean Stone, Silicon Valley Bank
Shai Goldman, Silicon Valley Bank
Shaun Johnson, Boston Startup School
Smith Wood, Seneca Corporation
Timothy Ericson, Zagster
Tony Huynh, TroopSwap
Tuan Pham, Silicon Valley Bank
Vivek Malhotra, VMD Systems
Will Kern, TroopSwap
Zack Nies, Rally Software
It’s 2012 and the “contact information problem” is getting exponentially worse. I’ve personally been struggling with this for 20+ years since I remember going from a custom database we built at Feld Technologies (in DataFlex) to Act! to try to manage the contacts across the company. While all the technology has changed, the problem has gotten substantially worse, as every web-based and mobile app now has some kind of contact info associated with it.
Today, there is no single authoritative contact record for an individual. I’ve been through a bunch of different iterations of technology around this such as SAML, FOAF, and Oauth. I remember Firefly and Passport. I’ve been involved in a number of companies who have tried to build “clean contact lists” and tried virtually every service I’ve ever run into. I’ve completely fucked up my address book more than once, especially as I tried to wire in data from other services that use Oauth or an email address to join data across web services. And yet we still have address blocks in emails, vcards, and crappy, incomplete, and incorrect data everywhere. And I still get referred to as Brad Batchelor in physical mail that I get from Wellesley College (which both Amy and I think is cute.)
Nothing works and it’s just getting worse. Fragmented data, incorrect data, changed data, duplicated data – it gets proliferated. All you need to do to see the core problem is look at the same data for a person in LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Multiple email addresses, lots of different contact info, time-based information that isn’t treated correctly, and huge errors all over the place.
That’s why we’ve invested in FullContact. They are on a mission to solve the world’s contact information problem. Imagine a unified address book in the cloud that has perfect information for every single person with a contact record of any type. This unified address book is continually updated, cleansed, enriched, and validated. It integrates with every web-based or mobile application that uses any sort of contact data, and it is available to every developer via an API.
This is a massive data problem. The team at FullContact is approaching it as such. It’s one where the machines do all the work and don’t rely on us silly humans, or the IT people, to change behavior and systems. For a look behind the curtains watch this short example from FullContact’s Identibase.
If you are a developer, FullContact’s goal is for you to use their cloud address book via their API. If you are an individual, you can use the FullContact cloud address book as your source address book. And if you are a business, you can finally get a unified contact management system across your organization without having to do very much. Data will automagically get cleaned up, enriched, de-duplicated, validated, and backed up, making it easily accessible in any context.
We’ve gone after the world’s contact information problem a number of times in a number of different ways over the years with different investments. We’ve never been involved in conquering it and it’s just gotten worse. This is the first time I feel like we are investing in the right approach to solve the problem once and for all.
Oh – and we love the team. If you want a fun view of why, take a look at From Basements to Brad Feld: The Story of 126 NOs and 1 Big YES.
Deal Co-op, the company that powers Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals, released their software last week as a self serve, SaaS product. This means anyone reading this post can go to dealcoop.com and create their own deal store like I did with Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals. This type of software works great for bloggers, entrepreneurs, publishers – basically anyone with an existing online presence looking to monetize their audience.
I was a lead mentor for Deal Co-op during TechStars Seattle 2010. Back then, the founders (and brothers) Nate and Mike Schmidt had already created a great white label software that powers daily deal and group buying sites. Now that their software is self serve, you can hop on their site, sign up, and start designing your store with an Interactive Store Designer tool. It’s fun and you can build a new business in seconds. On average, I make $555 for each deal I post and blog about. Not bad!
Nate and Mike have spent a bunch of time thinking about the long term sustainability of daily deals and group buying. Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals is a good example of Deal Co-op’s vision for the industry. Relevant offers to a targeted audience are the key – and you don’t have to make offers every day to be successful. To explain this with real numbers, they just put up an excellent blog post discussing the history of Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals.
But that’s not all. Don’t miss our deal this week, Learn How to Build iPhone Apps! Check it out – a $49 course that is normally $197. Yet another amazing deal brought to you by your favorite huckster.