It’s Tuesday, so that means – well, I’m not sure what that means. But I do know that if you want to watch me on video, following are three choices. First up is Episode 10 of TechStars: The Founders – Crunch Time. Special guest appearances from me, Paul Berberian, the Zenie Bottle, and the printer from Office Space. The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 10 “Crunch Time” from Andrew on Vimeo . ...
Yesterday, I wrote about the new VC Blogger Network powered by Lijit . A handful of VCs emailed me asking to be added to the network (which has been done). There’s no time limit so if you are a VC and want to join, just email me . In the mean time, I neglected to mention a super cool site called Venture Maven. Greg Galant and several others put this together – it’s a great aggregation of VCs who tweet – both individually and by firm (quick – name all the firms that have 100% of the partners tweeting). If you are a VCtweeter and are not on the list, wander over now and add yourself. ...
The meme of “Free” is one again making the rounds. I expect it reignited when Chris Anderson’s new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price (available on Amazon for $17.81) quickly followed by Malcolm Gladwell’s semi-scathing review in the New Yorker titled “Priced to Sell. Is Free the future? ” (I kind of feel like Gladwell wimped out on the review, even though I like Anderson’s point of view better than Gladwell’s.) This then created a predictable tussle in the blogosphere, the kind of which I find tedious and dull, so I avoided the rest of it. ...
I say “no” all the time. I could start keeping track of the number of times I do it a day , but I’d guess it’s a minimum of 10 and occasionally over 50 times a day. When I type that, my first reaction is “no way, there’s no possible way I say no more than 50 times a day”, but when I think a little more, it definitely happens sometimes. ...
It blows my mind how many people think they can treat entrepreneurs and other investors poorly and think that it won’t come around to negatively impact them some time in the future. I had two interactions last week with companies around a particular VC investor. I’ve worked with them in the past and had a crummy experience. I have a “fuck me once” rule where I’ll always give someone a second chance, but I’m wary and – if I have a second bad experience – I’m done. ...
I’m psyched that my friends at Spark Capital have launched Start@Spark, their new seed program. In their post Why are we doing this? they explain: “So, this must be a terrible time to fund a start-up company. Correct? Au contraire. This may be the best time in the last 8 years to start a company. While capital is scarce, the tectonic plates continue to shift creating major rifts. The walls are coming down and the barriers to entering new markets are falling along-side. ...
I’m really enjoying writing my print column for Entrepreneur Magazine . It’s a different kind of writing than my blogging and exercises different mental muscles. This month’s article A VC’s Biggest Flaw: Arrogance is out (both on the newsstands and the web). Amy told me this is her favorite one so far as it includes a number of people she’s met: Mr. Know-It-All and several of his cousins. I hope you enjoy reading the articles as much as I enjoy writing them.
I caught the tail end of SXSWi (showed up yesterday and gave a speech sponsored by the Canadian Consulate) and am hanging around today for some night time music entertainment as the music part of SXSW. It’s pretty cool to watch Austin shift from “nerds” (the SXSWi gang) to “hipsters” (the SXSW music gang); while the music scene is not my thing (I’m a nerd), it’s highly entertaining to observe this species in action. ...
As I read the Berkshire Hathaway 2008 Annual Report , a thought kept popping into my mind that had also come up over and over again while reading Bogle’s Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life . “Be an investor, not a speculator.” As a venture capital investor, I have a long term time horizon on my investments. Since I’m investing very early in the life of a company, I’m usually an investor for five or more years. Sometimes I’m an investor for over ten years. I’m rarely an investor for less than a year, although it happens occasionally. ...
Yet again an article in the New York Times bemoaning the demise of venture capital – this one is titled Maybe We Should Call Them Venture Pessimists . *“*Optimism is in short supply”, “the quarterly Silicon Valley Venture Capital Confidence Index has reached its fifth consecutive quarterly low”, “there is understandable concern over the pressures on the VC business model”, and “the venture community should expect substantial structural changes to occur” are some of the snippets. ...