A month ago Mark Suster (Upfront) and I hosted 75 colleagues for a full day at the California State Prison, Los Angeles County – also known as Lancaster. We did this as part of Defy Ventures , an entrepreneurship, employment, and character development training program for currently and formerly incarcerated men, women, and youth. It was a top 10 peak life experience for me – easily one of the most profound things I’ve experienced to date. ...
SRS Acquiom and Pledge 1% have teamed up to created EscrowUP by SRS Acquiom . As investors in SRS Acquiom and members of Pledge 1%, we are excited about the creative idea the two organizations have come up with to increase charitable giving as a result of merger transactions. When one company buys another, a portion of the proceeds (usually between 10% and 20% of the deal) goes into an escrow account for a period of time (usually a year or two). This escrow is used to cover any undisclosed or agreed to liabilities that come up for this period of time after the transaction. One of the shareholders, called a shareholder rep, is responsible for managing all the activity on the sellers side. It’s a thankless task and a number of years ago my partner Jason Mendelson helped create SRS Acquiom to address this . Instead of a VC, board member, or founder being the shareholder rep (and doing what can turn into a lot of work for free), you can now outsource this to SRS Acquiom. ...
One of my core values is diversity of everything. I’ve been involved deeply in several organizations, such as National Center for Women and Information Technology , that have been focused on increasing gender diversity in computer science and entrepreneurship. More recently, I’ve expanded my lens a lot to include many other dimensions of diversity. The mission of the Techstars Foundation , which is improving diversity in tech entrepreneurship, is an example of that. ...
Tami Forman, the Executive Director of Path Forward (a new non-profit that I recently joined the board of ) just did a powerful five minute presentation on making space for moms in the workforce. I knew that Tami was a great speaker because of my interactions with her at Return Path, but she just totally blew me away with this talk. Making Space For Moms | Tami Forman | DisruptHR Talks from DisruptHR on Vimeo . ...
Last week, I joined the board of a new non-profit called Path Forward which has a mission to get people back to work after they’ve taken time off for caregiving. Specifically, Path Forward works with companies to create mid-career internship that are an on ramp back to the paid workforce. Andy Sautins (at the time Return Path’s CTO) and Matt Blumberg (Return Path’s CEO) came up with the idea two years ago . After running two cycles at Return Path , they expanded it to other companies including ReadyTalk, SendGrid, MWH Global, SpotX, and Moz . ...
When I sat down this morning with Amy she started reading off people who had funded entire cities worth of projects on DonorsChoose this morning. Amy has DonorsChoose in her twitter feed and we quickly figured out what was going on. I saw Fred Wilson’s post on #BestSchoolDay and we agreed to fully fund projects in a number of cities that we have connections to. We ended up fully funding all the DonorChoose projects in Alaska, Boulder, Longmont, Brighton, Breckenridge, Richardson, and Detroit. ...
The current grant cycle for the Techstars Foundation is now open. We are providing grants, scholarships, and sponsorships to underrepresented groups in entrepreneurship, including women and minorities. Apply here . And, if you want to contribute financially to support the mission of the foundation (a 501c3) – donate here .
At Foundry Group, we have a deeply held belief that we benefit from our local community (Boulder, in our case) and that we have a responsibility, as we have success, to give back to our local community. My partner Seth Levine just had an excellent OpEd in the Boulder Daily Camera explaining this. It’s titled Entrepreneurs can give back, by giving early to EFCO . In it he explains more about Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado (EFCO) and Pledge 1% , two organizations we have helped create. ...
I got a random email from Brett Hagler last Thursday asking me to help his startup New Story . I looked at his web site and quickly told him it wasn’t something we’d be into exploring as an investment. He wrote back immediately, telling me that he wasn’t looking for investment, but had created a non-profit that used crowdfunding to finance and build life-changing houses around the world. Our mission is to create life-changing stories that transform communities. We’re focused on funding 100 homes in 100 days in Leveque, Haiti. ...
In my role as chair of the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), I’ve learned that one of the powerful things men can do in the gender equality discussion is be a male advocate . This is easy to say, but difficult to do. Recently, there has been some controversy around the role of male advocates and an ensuing debate, not about the core issue of gender diversity, but about how men who are trying to be helpful potentially make things worse through their actions. ...