Now that I’m out of hibernation for a while and back in Boulder for a month, I’m doing a bunch of public events. My approach, in general, is fireside chats or AMAs, so that’ll be the rhythm rather than me getting up in front of a crowd and blathering about something for 30 to 45 minutes. While my new book, Give First: The Power of Mentorship, is part of the content (and a giveaway that I’ll be signing at some of the events), I’m planning on staying around, talking to whomever is there, and just enjoying a month of the Boulder and Denver startup communities.

Question: If you had limited experience with graphic design software but wanted to do basic stuff for web design, what software would you use? Leave the answers in the comments or email me. As I play around with Vibe coding, I’ve decided to take a new topic each week. For context, look at my Dinostroids: My Journey into Vibe Coding. Or just go play Dinostroids. This week, I’ve been learning how to modify WordPress themes. My website has a complex theme that is impossible to change without getting under the hood. The Foundry website is also excessively complex for what it is, but they both turn out to be great to learn on.

I had a weird, unsatisfying, and not particularly restful weekend because of Colorado politics and post-exertional malaise. So, in between work, a short run, a long nap, a bunch of online Swedish death cleaning, and lying on the couch responding to endless text messages, I read Carrie Soto Is Back and The Big Gamble (Kevin Kerney Novels Series Book 7). And when I say “read”, imagine me on the coach, with my Kindle in one hand and my iPhone propped up on my leg so I could read what came in and respond when necessary.

It’s pre-order time for Give First: The Power of Mentorship. If you find this post’s topic interesting, help boost my input into the Amazon algorithm by pre-ordering the book. I’ve failed at many things. Anyone with a lot of success has also had plenty of failure. If a successful person denies this, they are lying. Reflecting on my professional failures, some resulted from passively avoiding a situation. These are the ones I regret the most because my behavior is under my control. While I’m comfortable with confrontation, living in a work world of endless conflict and negotiation, it took me a long time to fully acknowledge situations where I was passively avoidant.

“Startup Community Trailblazer” is a fancy title for me, but I’ll take it. I’ve decided to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Congress 2025 in Indianapolis to launch Give First: The Power of Mentorship.

I love to read. As a kid, my idea of a good time was being in the hammock in the backyard of my house in Dallas, Texas, reading a book. My parents supported this, letting me read anything I wanted from their bookshelves (I read The Drifters at much too young an age). I loved buying books, and today, I have an infinite number of unread books on my Kindle. I vary my reading diet and log it all in Goodreads (ignore the stars).

Dinostroids, my first vibe-coded software project, is live. The last time I wrote any meaningful amount of production software was in 1990. At the time, I was running a software consulting company with my partner, Dave Jilk. We’d reached the point where, as we grew, he became responsible for all the software, and I handled all the network integration stuff we had to do for our clients. Every now and then, I’d have to do maintenance on something I had written in the past, but it was pretty minimal.

After I wrote my post on Unhibernating, my long-time, empathetic friend Christopher Schroeder, whom I originally met through Ben Casnocha (that story is discussed in Give First: The Power of Mentorship), sent me a short note asking, “Have you been ok?” I responded with a long email explaining why I decided to hibernate in the summer of 2023 and why this hibernation lasted almost two years. After writing a long email (which I’ve been doing a lot of during my hibernation), I asked Chris if I could post my response to my blog, and he said, “Of course.”

In addition to writing books, I love supporting books written by friends. Amir Hagazi has published his newest book, Scaleup Arabia: Journeys & Lessons from Top Founders & Leaders Driving Growth in MENA & Beyond. The image above shows some of the founders highlighted in the book, and the image below shows some of the companies discussed in the book. While I don’t do book blurbs anymore, I have written forewords for Amir in the past on two of his prior books, Ecosystem Arabia: The Making of a New Economy and Venture Adventure: Startup Fundraising Advice from Top Global Investors, both of which I recommend.