Education

Today, my partner Seth Levine , Eric Norlin, and I cooked up the idea to Pitch Brad and Seth at Glue. If you are an entrepreneur working in the area we define as Glue we’d love to spend some time with you at the Glue Conference . Here are the rules according to Eric: Register for Glue. (use “pitch1″ to take $100 off of the price.) Shoot me [enorlin AT mac.com] (or Brad ) a paragraph describing what you wanna pitch. Brad and Seth will pick 6 startups. Your pitch will be 5 minutes (in a room with just them; no “big stage” pressure), and 5 minutes of honest feedback. If you register and don’t get picked, fear not — the guys have vowed to make themselves uber-available during Glue (for a hallway pitch). If you aren’t aware of the history of the Glue Conference and the Defrag Conference , they both came out of our desire at Foundry Group to participate in focused conferences around themes that we are currently investing in (Defrag emerged from the Implicit Web theme; Glue emerged from Glue theme.) We couldn’t find any conferences like this so we decided to try to create them. We got lucky and found Eric Norlin (or – more accurately – he found us) and he has turned out to be a master at putting these types of conferences together. ...

From April 30 to May 2, the 10th annual Nantucket Conference is happening on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts. I haven’t been to a Nantucket Conference, but I’ve heard of it and have considered going in the past. This year Scott Kirsner invited me to be on a panel and I happily accepted as I was already going to be in Boston for the TechStars Boston Mentor Dinner on April 30th before heading to Cincinnati to run the Flying Pig Marathon on May 3rd. ...

In February, I did a “Beers and Boulder with Brad” event in Seattle . Local Seattle-based entrepreneurs Dave Schappell of TeachStreet and T.A. McCann of Gist put the event together and I was blown away by the response. Several hundred people showed up; I had a great evening of talking about entrepreneurship, local entrepreneurial communities, and the dynamics of startups. I also got to hang out for a few hours with a ton of Seattle entrepreneurs who looked like they were having as much fun as me. ...

I’m going to be at SXSW from 3/17 to 3/19. At 1pm on 3/17 at Mezzanine 1 at the Austin Convention Center I’ll be giving a talk titled What’s Next For Venture Capital Investing and Entrepreneurship in the US. It’s being hosted by CanadaConnects, a partnership of the Canadian Interactive Alliance, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and the Consulate General of Canada. If you are interested in attending, drop Michael Mendoza an email. ...

I’m heading out to Seattle for a board meeting and a few other things. Tonight, I’m going to be doing an event called Beers and Boulder with Brad. I’m going to talk about entrepreneurial communities, the critical importance of entrepreneurship and innovation today, TechStars , what we’ve done in Boulder to drive entrepreneurship that can apply to other cities such as Seattle, and why we are expanding TechStars to Boston . I’m then going to stick around until they kick us out answering any and all questions and talking with whoever wants to hang out. ...

I spent last Sunday at CU Boulder at the Silicon Flatirons Digital Broadband Migration: Imagining the Internet’s Future conference*.* Not surprisingly it was an interesting day where early on, surrounded by lawyers, public policy people, academics, and telco executives, I realized I existed in a parallel universe to them. For example, when I asked who used twitter, less than five hands went up in a room of 250+ people. Phil Weiser, the major domo of Silicon Flatirons, has a great post up summarizing the conference. If you are curious, go take a look at From Imagining The Internet’s Future To Examining The Internet Ecosystem*.* ...

If you are in Seattle and interested in startups, entrepreneurship, venture capital, or TechStars , I’ll be in Seattle having a party with up to around 150 people to talk about these topics. T.A. McCann of Gist and Dave Schappell of TeachStreet have pulled this together – we’ll be doing it on Wednesday February 25th from 6pm to 8:30pm at the Palace Ballroom at 2100 5th Avenue in Seattle . ...

My partner Jason Mendelson – who is also my co-conspirator in writing the blog AsktheVC – is having an open session called Crash Course – Raising Venture Capital*.* It’s part of the Silicon Flatirons program and is happening on February 24th from 5:15pm to 6:45pm in Room 204 at the Wolf Law Building. Jason says he’s going to cover: Everything from what makes VCs tick, who are our bosses, what are things that you can do to improve your chances of receiving funding and things that many VCs don’t want to talk about. No question is off limits and I hope that it will be a very interactive forum. Consider this to be a live version of Ask The VC. ...

Rocky Radar has a great schedule of a bunch of entrepreneurial events happening from 2/2 – 2/9 in and around Boulder. I’ve been getting lots of questions lately from people recently asking “how do I get involved in the Boulder entrepreneurial scene” – the short answer is “show up!” I’m participating in a couple of the events this week. Tuesday @ 5pm: Feld on Finance, Wolf Law, Boulder: Phil Weiser, professor at CU Law and the head of the Silicon Flatirons program, will be interviewing me on finance (aka “whatever questions Phil feels like asking me.”) Tuesday @ 6:30pm: New Tech Meetup, Wolf Law, CU-Boulder: I’m going to participate in this month’s New Tech Meetup. I’ll be doing Q&A on VC / financing for as long as Robert Reich chooses to keep me on stage. Sunday @ 9:45am: The Digital Broadband Migration, Wolf Law, CU Boulder: The Internet’s Challenge to Policymakers – part of the Silicon Flatiron program “The Digital Broadband Migration: Imagining the Internet’s Future” Also, this month’s Boulder Open Coffee Club is happening on Tuesday 2/3 at 8am at The Cup . I can’t make it because I’ve got a board meeting at StillSecure, but there’s always a good crowd (and some great coffee).

Venture Capital in the Rockies (VCIR) is the key annual Venture Capital / Entrepreneurship conference in the Rocky Mountain Region. It’s held in late February / early March each year; this year it’s happening from March 3 to March 5th at Beaver Creek. There’s a full day of keynotes, presentations, and networking, along with two good nights of networking and partying, and a full day of skiing (followed by a party). ...