In July 2015, I wrote about New Story asking readers to crowdfund one $6k house for a family in Haiti. At the time, Brett was only a few months into building New Story and had built less than twenty total homes. They were young and inexperienced but had a strong conviction to do things differently as a nonprofit which appealed to me.
In the past four years, New Story has funded over 2,200 homes, building 17 communities for over 11,000 people across Mexico, Haiti, El Salvador, and Bolivia. They started out by chasing one crazy idea, and have grown nearly 100x since my original post.
They have now come up with a unique model for scaling their impact. There are over a billion people living without safe shelter. The need for safe housing is as staggering as the lack of solutions to meet the need — one traditional home at a time will never scale to the size of the problem. To even begin imagining a solution, New Story had to change their strategy.
In the past two years, they have shifted their primary focus from funding and building their own communities to pioneering solutions for the entire global social housing sector to use. The strategy is to create innovative solutions, prove their value in New Story’s work, and then share everything with others in the social housing sector.
In 2018, New Story partnered with ICON and developed the first 3D printer of homes designed to serve the families who need shelter most. This is a breakthrough technology that will cut costs, increase speed, and improve home design quality. New Story is on track to begin creating the world’s first 3D printed community of 50+ homes this summer in Latin America.
In addition to 3D printing communities, New Story created a SaaS team to help other organizations working to end global homelessness become more transparent and efficient. They’ll be sharing the tools they’ve created, including everything around 3D printing, while continuing to develop new breakthroughs.
The magic for creating this innovation-focused model has been New Stories private group of donors, the Builders. This group of about fifty families partners with New Story to fund their operating expenses and give them the license to take calculated risks through new R&D projects. In addition to me and Amy, my partner Seth Levine and his wife Greeley Sachs are members of the Builders program.
In Summer 2019, New Story is offering vision trips to see the world’s first 3D printed community. For families interested in learning more about the Builders program, email Brett Hagler.
From June 5 to June 8, Techstars Startup Week West Slope will be happening on the western slope in Colorado, with the main event in Grand Junction.
I’m doing a Keynote at on Thursday, June 6 from 11:30am – 1:00pm at Colorado Mesa University. I’ll be talking about building startup communities outside Colorado’s front range in a fireside chat / AMA format.
Startup communities in Colorado that are outside the front range (Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins) have become something that my partner Seth Levine and I have been very involved in the past few years. Seth’s providing a lot of on the ground leadership, through his work with Startup Colorado and the Greater Colorado Venture Fund. I try to show up or help remotely whenever I can and Amy and I have been writing plenty of checks from our Anchor Point Foundation to support various initiatives.
We have family in Hotchkiss, a house in Aspen, and have spent a lot of time in Summit County over the past decade when we had a house in Keystone. There are magical things going on all over Colorado, especially on the western slope. I have a strong belief that startup communities should exist everywhere and can have a meaningful impact on cities outside the large urban concentrations that we have in many parts of the U.S.
What’s happening in Colorado’s Western Slope is powerful and an example that can be used through the U.S. and the world. If you are interested, come join us at Techstars Startup Week West Slope to learn more.
In December, Amy and I (through our Anchor Point Foundation) committed a matching gift to fund All Colorado First Time DonorsChoose.org Projects.
At the time there were 108 projects that fit the profile. Our hope was that our match would fund these projects, encourage more teachers to put their projects up on DonorsChoose.org, and get more new donors involved.
We ended up funding 394 projects, helping 40,404 students, 246 schools, and 380 teachers in Colorado.
At the time, we didn’t announce the size of our matching gift, but it was $100,000. So, through Donorschoose.org we’ve helped fund $200,000 of direct purchases for classrooms in Colorado.
Thank you to everyone who supported these teachers. We love supporting Donorschoose.org because the projects are initiated by teachers who know what they need in their classroom to best serve their students’ educational needs.
David Cohen and I are doing a podcast together called Give First. Readers of this blog likely know that this is the mantra of Techstars and the title of an upcoming book of mine that will be published in 2020.
While I’ve been interviewed for many podcasts, I’ve never hosted one before. David and I have been massive fans of Harry Stebbing’s 20 Minute VC so we’ve modeled Give First after it. Harry really hit his stride after about 100 episodes so my guess is it’ll take us a while to be in the same zone as he is. It’s good to have something to shoot for!
The first episode is an intro with an overview. We’ve got a steady stream of episodes coming that are already recorded, so subscribe to Give First and give us feedback.
In the super cool thing category, it’s always fun to see two companies we are investors in easily put together a demonstration of the integration of their products.
Oblong is a master of spatially interacting with 3D data on a 2D display. Looking Glass lets you interact with 3D data in a 3D display with their product (the Looking Glass.)
Together, you can move and interact with 3D images on either a 3D display or a 2D display.
Now, if we could only print this out on a 3D printer. Hmmm.
Last week, Return Path announced it was being acquired by Validity
My fellow board member Fred Wilson wrote a great history titled The Long Game and Matt Blumberg wrote a beautiful tribute titled OnlyOnce, Part XX.
I’ve been involved in Return Path as an investor since 2001 when Return Path and Veripost merged as part of a funding done by Sutter Hill (Greg Sands), Flatiron Partners (Fred Wilson), and Mobius Venture Capital (me). I wrote the very long story in a post titled Return Path Acquires Netcreations in 2004. This post has a ton of Return Path history in it in case you want to go back in time 20 years. And, if you want to only go back in time 10 years, take a gander at Happy Birthday Return Path which is a post about Return Path’s 10 year anniversary and includes the story of the negotiation between me and Fred to merge Return Path and Veripost.
I count my involved in Return Path for 20 years since my investment in Veripost (which became my investment in Return Path) was done in 1999.
Today, Matt is one of my closest friends. In addition to our personal relationship, we’ve had a number of other work experiences besides Return Path. Matt has served on two boards of companies I’ve invested in – FeedBurner (acquired by Google) and Moz. Matt was an early, and engaged mentor in Techstars. Matt introduced me to Scott Dorsey, which led to our investment in High Alpha. Finally, Matt – working with Andy Sautins, Cathy Hawley, and Tami Forman – co-founded Path Forward which was spun off from Return Path.
I’m proud to have been involved in all of these companies with Matt.
Finally, Matt’s been a strong supporter of my quest to do a marathon in every state in the US. We’ve done two together – New York and Idaho.
Twenty years is a long time to be involved in anything. When a VC talks about a quick exit, you can mention that you know a few (Fred, Brad, and Greg) who has a 20-year board experience. As Fred says, “entrepreneurship and startup investing is a long game. It requires patience, resilience, capital, commitment, and much more.”
Matt – and everyone at Return Path – thank you for letting me be part of your journey.
Recently, Amy and I hosted a conversation with Scott Wasserman, the president of Colorado’s Bell Policy Center. For those not familiar with the Bell, it is a research and advocacy organization focused on economic mobility in Colorado.
In his presentation, Scott presented a range of data about four major forces affecting our economy: demographics, public investment, technology, and inequality. As he went through his presentation, it became clear that while Colorado is home to a booming economy that many of us enjoy, there are many others in our state who are being left behind.
Several aspects of the Bell’s work stand out as concerns that all Coloradans need to grapple with. The demands of an aging population have technological, social, and financial implications. Demographics are shifting rapidly, including a growing Latino population that is not getting access to the education they need to keep our workforce competitive.
Scott presented a different look at inequality, focusing less on the gaps between the top 1% and the bottom 99% and more on what’s happening with the “middle class”. According to a report that the Bell produced with the University of Colorado, our state’s middle class is shrinking as it is unable to afford things like child care and college. Meanwhile, Colorado, which is one of the top economies in the country, has seen an increase in the percentage of low wage workers from 13% in 2014 to 22% in 2016.
Scott also called our attention to the dramatic decrease in public spending that is happening in our state. Colorado’s spending measured as a percentage of total personal income has gone down from 5.5% in 1970 to 3.9% today for higher education, public schools, and human services.
After Scott’s presentation, the group of attendees (about 50 of us) had a vibrant conversation about the implications of what Scott presented and what we can do about it. Some of our guests believed the answers to these challenges were to turn public investment around to take advantage of our strong economy to invest in the future. Other guests were reluctant to make dramatic changes in tax policy that might upset the balance that currently exists between predictable tax levels and investment.
Regardless of your political orientation, these are issues we can’t ignore. I’m grateful for the work that organizations like the Bell do, as they help us better understand issues we need to be paying attention to.
LinkedIn Learning: Raising Venture Capital and Validating Your Startup Idea
I recently recorded two free courses with LinkedIn Learning. They are each under an hour long and broken up into a bunch of small segments.
The first one is on Raising Venture Capital and is based on content from the book Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist that I wrote with Jason Mendelson. Amy tells me that this is her favorite shirt from my current rotation of Robert Graham shirts.
Raising venture capital from Brad Feld on Raising Capital by Brad Feld
The second one is on Validating Your Startup Idea which based on the book Startup Opportunities: Know When to Quit Your Day Job which I wrote with Sean Wise. Same recording studio (an Airbnb in Rancho Santa Fe) but a different shirt.
Evaluating your startup idea from Brad Feld on Validating Your Startup Idea by Brad Feld
The team I worked with at LinkedIn Learning was dynamite. They reached out to me about this and I was happy to give them a day of my time to see how it worked. My goal was that in the worst case I’d give them some useful content to do something with.