Entrepreneurship

The Kauffman Fellows Academy is offering another session of the Venture Deals course on the NovoEd platform. This time it is free and runs from April 24, 2016 – June 13, 2016. We’ve done this course several times in the past with classes of around 100 people and have gotten great feedback. Last year, we started talking to the Kauffman Fellows Academy and NovoEd about doing it for free to reach a wider audience, and in the context of #GiveFirst offer it for free, as the primary motivation for Jason and I had nothing to do with money. The original few sessions has recouped the cost to NovoEd of producing the course so they, and the team at Kauffman Fellows Academy were willing to give free a try. ...

Applications are open for the second group of Colorado Global Entrepreneurs in Residence. If you are interested in applying send a resume and a cover letter, including a statement of interest, to GEIR-apply@colorado.edu . The Global Entrepreneurs in Residence (GEIR) Program brings international entrepreneurial talent to the CU-Boulder campus and community. GEIRs work across the CU-Boulder campus mentoring students in a wide array of projects requiring an entrepreneurial mindset. GEIRs guest lecture in classrooms, advise on entrepreneurial research, and provide mentorship to CU community members developing their own startups. ...

Last week New York was the third state to create a program – called the International Innovators Initiative (IN2NYC) – based on the construct of the Global Entrepreneur in Residence program . This is a New York City based program created by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and the City University of New York (CUNY) . IN2NYC is by far the most ambition program to date. It will help up to 80 selected entrepreneurs gain access to the visas they need to grow their businesses in New York City and is projected to create more than 700 jobs for New Yorkers in the first three years. ...

I received plenty of interesting feedback on my post titled Sources of Insecurities . A good friend and one of our investors, Jamey Sperans, even put together a slide trying to process the concept. If you were interested in the original post, I expect it’ll be fun to ponder Jamey’s slide on a Sunday morning. Sperans View on Feld’s Post about Sources of Insecurities from Brad Feld

After all these years, I’m still a heavy RSS user. Every morning I click on my Daily folder in Chrome, open it up, and spend whatever time I feel like on it. The vast majority of what I read is in Feedly and includes my VC Collection as well as a bunch of other stuff. It’s almost entirely tech related, as I stay away from mainstream media during the week (e.g. no CNN, no CNBC, no NYT, no WSJ, no USA Today, no … well – you get the idea) since I view all this stuff as an intellectual distraction (and much of it is just entertainment anyway, and I’d rather read a book.) ...

A few weeks ago I noticed my post How Can This Be A Billion Dollar Company? getting a surprising number of new Twitter shares. Since I wrote it in the summer of 2014, it must have been picked up somewhere and hit a new chord. I wish I had titled it what was in my mind when I wrote it, which was “How Can This Be A Billion Dollar Company and other bullshit VCs ask early stage companies” – that would have been more fun to see in my Twitter feed. ...

When I was in LA last week, I had breakfast with Nick Grouf. We’ve been friends for 20 years and, while we don’t see each other often, it’s the kind of friendship that immediately lets you talk about deep, interesting things with almost zero foreplay. At a small Coffee Bean coffee shop in Hollywood, with a music track from our childhood playing over and over again (I’ll spare you the track so it doesn’t get stuck in your head also), we ended up in a discussion about sources of insecurities. ...

I was at a fascinating dinner with a bunch of founders and investors last night. Until I was 35, I was often the youngest guy in the room. While this was a seasoned crowd, much of the experience – both around creating companies and funding companies – started around the mid-2000s. As someone who has been doing this since the late 1980s (I started my first company in 1987) I definitely felt like one of the old guys in the room. ...

Or at least on the blogs and in the mainstream media. It’s kind of amazing to me how two shitty weeks in the public markets can impact how every one thinks and talks about things. I know the early presidential campaign is impacting this. The amount of vitriol, hatred, and fear that is coming out of the mouths of the various people running for president always surprises me. I know it shouldn’t, but it does. ...

Welcome to 2016. We’ve already heard lots of predictions about the late stage financing market, tech IPOs, and what is going to happen to unicorns this year. And it’s only Monday, January 4th. Remember that these are predictions. No one really has a clue. And a year is a long time. My simple advice for 2016 is “control your destiny.” There are lots of different ways to control your destiny. It’s dependent on the stage you are at, the size of your company, and the configuration of your investor base. ...