Techstars

A few weeks ago I had my weekly mentor meeting with Ian and Adam from Gearbox . We messed around with the latest version of “the ball” on an Android phone and then talked about a bunch of things that were going on. I am totally amazed at the technical progress they are making this summer – these guys are magicians. But they’ve been shy about getting out there and showing off what they’ve been up to. My sense after talking to them is that their hesitancy was a combination of prioritization, focus, and “the need to get everything right.” ...

This week’s episode of The Founders is all about “the team.” Ryan Sarve r from Twitter is the guest of honor so all my links will be twitter handles. David’s mom (gingerale ) makes a nice appearance (follow her and follow my dad sfeld while you are at it) along with Eric Norlin of Glue , Defrag , and now Blur . “The Team” The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 8 from TechStars on Vimeo .

This week’s episode of The Founders appears to be “baby themed.” With cupcakes. Fun stuff. “The Element of Surprise” The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 7 from TechStars on Vimeo .

Gearbox , one of the teams that I’m mentoring in this year’s TechStars Boulder program, is starting to blog about their product. One of their taglines is “reinventing the ball” and while this potentially generates plenty of 14 year old boy jokes it’s pretty amazing stuff. The ball, which consists of a custom circuit board inside a 3D printed spherical shell (which is pretty cool all by itself) with lots of fun things on it, is completely controlled by a smartphone (in this case, an Android). ...

After a long and awesome day in Seattle ending with a great dinner with the BigDoor board at Emmer & Rye , I came back to my room and watched Episode 6 of this year’s TechStars Founders video serious. It was about the TechStars reunion event and included scenes from the world’s largest Ignite event as well as some beautiful Boulder pictures. It made me smile a big smile. Whenever I see stuff like this and reflect on what I spent my life doing, I’m just a happy little kid. ...

It is so nice to be back in Boulder after my 10 hours trip home from New York yesterday that included a lot of time on tarmacs, a diverted landing in Colorado Springs, and an I-25 road trip. I really want a personal portable teleportation machine. I’m about to head out for a run but thought I’d toss up a few fun posts and videos that I saw when scanning through my email and news this morning. ...

Recently, TechStars began expanding outside the United States through its new TechStars Global Affiliate program. From experience, we know that investing internationally from the United States is difficult. However, the demand from entrepreneurs throughout the world for a TechStars-like program has been substantial. So, TechStars opted for an affiliate model which gives the local partner the benefits of working with TechStars such as process know-know and access to the TechStars network. TechStars Global Affiliates are independent entities but we intend to bring them together at least once a year and are in touch with them continuously to help out as we can. ...

Your friends Jason and Brad make guest appearance, as does the infamous Do Not Call list. “Let’s Be Honest” The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 4 from TechStars on Vimeo .

One of my often quoted lines is that “fear is a useless emotion in business.” Sure – self doubt enters the picture on occasion and there are plenty of dark days, but why be fearful of anything? There’s just no value in it. Watch as some of the TechStars founders confront some new and exciting types of fear that includes some of Boulder’s majestic rocks. “Be Fearless. Today.” The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 3 from TechStars on Vimeo .

The TechStars Boston 2010 program finished up the other day. I was at investor day and it was awesome to see how far the ten companies came over the last 90 days, especially since I was there on the first day of the program and really had a baseline perspective. If you follow my twitter feed , you’ll notice that I’ve been posting a bunch of “Mar.gy links” from a company called Marginize. This is one of the companies that I was a mentor for this year and I love what they are doing and what their vision is. But they weren’t recently on CNN – and StarStreet Sports was. If you are into The World Cup, you’ll love this one.