My partner Seth sent out an email to our CEO list this morning titled Taking a deep breath after we received several emails from CEOs with questions along the lines of “how should we think about the result of the election / what should we do?” After I saw a few responses to Seth’s note, I asked if he was ok with me republishing it here. I realize that very few of you who read my blog are on our CEO list so I hope it’s helpful to you to see what Seth sent around. ...
Each quarter Cooley does a VC market update. This quarter they interviewed me as part of it on Quarterly VC Update: Brad Feld on the State of Venture Capital Investing . The full Cooley Q3 report includes a bunch of data and trend graphs which I encourage you to go take a look at. The interview with me follows. Based on Cooley data for the quarter, how does your experience in the market compare? Similar/different? The tone of Q3 felt like a continuation of Q2 with summer vacations tossed in. The existential freakout that occurred in January and February seemed like the distant past with the lingering hangover being a clearer focus on valuation and overall funding needs from new investors. While there are a few clear trends in the data, such as lower valuations for Series A through C rounds and more flat rounds, the overall changes from Q2 is not dramatic. ...
I attended the 20th Reunion of the Kauffman Fellows on Monday and Tuesday. I’ve recently joined the board of directors and enjoyed spending two days in Kansas City immersed in things with the Kauffman Fellows, a bunch of friends, and a number of LPs and GPs that came to the event. As part of it, I gave a talk and did Q&A with Lesa Mitchell (now the Managing Director of Techstars Kansas City). We covered a lot of ground around startup communities, investing, government, multi-turn games, and other things I can’t remember anymore. Buried in the middle is a story of my experience with Startup Weekend Tehran and a long rant on transcending geographic borders. ...
The final event at Boulder Startup Week a few months ago was Founder Fights . A bunch of founders got in a boxing ring for a real, USA Boxing sanctioned event (three rounds, two minutes each). To see a two minute version of what played out, take a look at this great video montage from the event (I make a startling entrance at 0:52 in the video.) It’s worth clicking through to Vimeo if the security settings don’t let it play in your browser.) ...
I was recently asked the question “What is your next career?” as part of a discussion with an LP. I thought it was the best diligence question that I have ever been asked. Upon reflection, the LP was clearly asking me indirectly about my long term commitment to venture capital and, without asking “how much longer are you going to do this VC thing?” she was looking for how I answered the question to get an understanding for how I thought about what I was currently doing along with an indication of how much longer I’d be doing it. ...
I’ve made a lot of major decisions in my life – both personal and professional. For the professional ones, I’ve come up with an approach that I now use consistently. I try on the decision for a period of time – the more significant the decision, the longer the period of time. For the really major decisions, I try them on for 30 days. Here’s an example. In 2003 I seriously thought about quitting Mobius Venture Capital. I was tired, burned out, and very frustrated. While I’d been a partner in Mobius from the beginning, I hadn’t really been engaged in managing the overall firm. I had my office and a small team in Boulder. I did my deals. I flew to the bay area often (where everyone else was located) but focused most of my energy on the boards I was on and the investments I’d made. ...
Fresh off a week of vacation, I’m rolling into the annual joyful madness that is Boulder Startup Week . If you don’t know the history of Startup Week (now owned by Techstars), it was founded by Andrew Hyde in Boulder in 2010 and subsequently begat the overall Startup Week program (powered by Chase) happening all over the world. The schedule begins Monday morning (5/16) and continues through Friday night (5/20). I’m speaking at / co-hosting the following events. ...
I’m seeing an endless stream of hardware-related companies these days. In our world, we are focused on software wrapped in plastic , a line I think I first used some time in 2012. If you understand our themes, it fits squarely within human computer interaction for us. There was a point in time – probably less than six years ago – where very few VC firms would even consider an investment in a hardware related company that was aimed at consumers. Every financing for every company we’ve invested in this area has been extremely difficult. We were not the first, nor are we the only, but in 2010 it was a very large, very dusty, and very dry desert landscape. ...
In a world of endless signal and noise coming at us from all angles including TV, radio, the web, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, blog posts, email, text messages, Slack, and fill in another 50 different sources of stuff, we don’t have a measurement for the sentiment of the noise (and signal) and the toll it takes on our thinking. If you pay attention to finance, you are familiar with the VIX , which is officially the implied volatility of S&P 500 index options. It’s unofficially known as the fear index and is a measure of the market’s expectation of stock market volatility over the next 30 days. For example, here’s the VIX for the past 12 months. ...
Bill Gurley wrote an incredible post yesterday titled On the Road to Recap: Why the unicorn financing market just became dangerous … for all involved . It’s long but worth reading every word slowly. I saw it late last night as it bounced around in my Twitter feed and then read it carefully just before I went to bed so the words would be absorbed into my brain. I read it again this morning when I woke up and I expect I’ll read it at least one more time. I just saw Peter Kafka’s summary of at at Re/code (We read Bill Gurley’s big warning about Silicon Valley’s big money troubles so you don’t have to ) and I don’t agree. Go read the original post in its entirety. ...