Books

Over the summer, I’ve been exploring Buddhism. I’m focused on it as a philosophy, not as a religion, but decided that reading a broad survey book that covered the history of Buddhism from multiple angles – historical, philosophical, and religious, might be interesting. I stumbled up Buddhism 101: From Karma to the Four Noble Truths, Your Guide to Understanding the Principles of Buddhism at Explore Booksellers in Aspen. I grabbed it along with a few other books (something I do every time I enter a bookstore) and observed it sitting on my living room book table over the summer. ...

I’m an enormous Jim Collins fan. It’s a special bonus that he lives in Boulder. He just came out with a short monograph called Turning the Flywheel . It’s only 40 pages but stunningly good. In it, he dissects the concept of the flywheel, which he first described in his seminal book Good to Great . Every CEO in our portfolio will be receiving a copy in the next month as part of our “book of the almost every month club.” ...

I don’t know whether it was Jerry Colonna or my therapist who recommended this to me, but I listened to David Whyte’s Midlife and the Great Unknown yesterday on my evening run. As part of my acceptance of midlife, which I define as the transition into the stage where you know you have fewer days to live than the number of days you have already lived, I’ve been exploring a bunch of different things. One of them is poetry, which has always been extremely difficult for me to read. ...

When we started Techstars in 2006 we had one core goal in mind – helping entrepreneurs succeed. While it started as an experiment with one accelerator in Boulder, we now have about 50 accelerators annually around the world funding 500 startups a year. We also run Startup Weekends and Startup Weeks in over 150 cities globally, have a venture capital fund that invests in companies after they go through the accelerator program, and have a set of corporate innovation and ecosystem development programs that help bridge the gap between large enterprises, cities, and startups. ...

In 2010, David Cohen and I wrote a book titled Do More Faster . It was filled with stories and advice from founders, investors, and mentors from around the first two years of Techstars. This was the first book I wrote. David and I learned the joy and pain of writing a book. We were lucky to get to work with Bill Falloon, who has been my long-time editor on all the books I’ve written. Bill guided us through the process and helped us understand what was required to put together a real book. ...

I didn’t read much last month, but I got an email this morning from someone who mentioned that I’d like Greg Egan’s Permutation City . I read it in April when I was in Japan on my Q219 Vacation with Amy but never really blogged much about it. When I got the email today, I thought of two novels that I’ve read this year that are in the same vein. They are Blake Crouch’s book Recursion and Neal Stephenson’s book Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. ...

Jerry Colonna has written a “must read for everyone on planet earth book” titled Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up . Seriously, go buy it right now. I’ll be here when you return. Regular readers of this blog know that Jerry and I are extremely close friends and have been for 23 years. I first met Jerry when he was beginning his partnership with Fred Wilson at Flatiron Partners. But, I didn’t meet him through Fred. I met him through NetGenesis, a company I was chairman of at the time that had been started by Rajat Bhargava (who we still work with as CEO of JumpCloud ), Matt Cutler (who we still work with as CEO of Blocknative ). I won’t repeat the story of Brad, Jerry, eShare, and NetGenesis , but it makes me incredibly happy to reflect on 23 years of friendship, which nicely lines up with my 23 official years of marriage to Amy . ...

I recently met Renata George through a referral from Katie Rae (MIT Engine CEO, previously Techstars Boston MD). Renata told me about a book she was working on called Women Who Venture and asked me if I’d write the foreword. I was honored to be asked to do this. The foreword I wrote follows. The book is out and available now in hardcover and on the Kindle. As an avid writer and reader, I feel that a book is a unique medium that serves a different purpose than the other written media that we consume regularly. A book can display a variety of perspectives at once, providing enough details on the subjects it explores, while giving us space to contemplate. ...

One of my guilty pleasures is reading biographies about financiers and their companies. On Saturday, I gobbled down King of Capital, which is the story of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone from inception through 2011. While I’ve never met Schwarzman, I’ve had a handful of experiences with Blackstone, mostly with the Blackstone Foundation and the head of it, Amy Stursberg. The two most notable are the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network Colorado and the Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars . Both have been great and impactful organizations and Amy has been a delight to work with. ...

I had surgery recently and a few friends, including Chris Moody and Sarah Ahn, gave me some books as gifts. They knew I’d be spending a lot of time on the couch either napping or reading, so my pile of infinite books to read became more abundant with a few good ones including The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates. While I’ve met Melinda’s husband Bill a few times, but I’ve never spent any time with Melinda. I know plenty of people who know her or work for her and have overlapped with a few organizations that we both support. However, after reading The Moment of Lift , I feel like I now know her. And, she is awesome. ...