In the article The biggest tech company founders from every state I win the callout for Arkansas. “Arkansas: Brad Feld has bounced around a lot: born in Arkansas, raised in Dallas, then lived in Boston for over a decade before moving to Boulder, Colorado. He’s most known for founding Foundry Group, a prominent venture capital firm that focuses on early stage investment, but also co-founded startup accelerator Techstars.” I was born in Blytheville, Arkansas on an air force base in 1965. My dad was in the Air Force for several years during the Vietnam War after being drafted. Once he finished his service a year later, he moved to Boston to finish out his residency at Mass General Hospital. Then, in 1969, he and my mom, with two kids in tow (me and my younger brother Daniel, who had just been born) moved to Dallas, Texas. My parents knew one person in Dallas when they moved there and they chose Dallas (over Kansas City, which was a near second) as a place they wanted to build their life. My dad’s brother Charlie followed him to Dallas a year later in 1970.

Yesterday’s post titled The Silliness Of Recapping Seed Rounds generated a robust discussion. It also inspired Joanne Wilson to write a post titled Recapping a round?? which is a description of a different situation and a different company, but generated a similar negative response from Joanne. In her case, the new investor insisted that the cap on the notes (for money that had already been spent) be raised so the seed investors would get less ownership than they’d signed up for, regardless of the investment the new investor is making.

Here’s the scenario. A company raises $2m of seed money from angels in a convertible note with a $6m cap. Assuming equity is raised at or above that cap, the total dilution, before the new money, is 33% (equivalent to an equity financing of $2m at a $6m post money valuation. The company spends the $2m building and launching their first product. The first release is underwhelming, but they iterate aggressively, with feedback and support from some of their angel investors. The product gets a lot better. They go out to raise a Series A, but there are no takers. The feedback is “come back when you’ve made more progress with customers.” They are running out of money.

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.

In an effort to buy real estate in burgeoning startup communities around the United States while more deeply engaging in the startup community, my partners and I have bought a house in the Cass Corridor neighborhood in Detroit. Jason Mendelson grew up in Detroit so this is a nice homecoming for him. If you’ve followed my efforts with my Kansas City Fiber House, you’ll know where we are going with this. This time the four of us bought the house together (personally, not with our fund) and are providing it to Techstars teams in the Techstars Mobility program which is based in Detroit.

I’ve been heads down this week on a handful of transactions. As a result, I haven’t been paying much attention to the world around me, but it’s inevitable that some stuff leaks through in random conversations, emails that I get and skim to respond to later, or stuff I notice, even though I’m not looking. While I was just in the shower, I had a handful of random things roll through my head that I realized were creating intellectual dissonance for me. They are the kind of thing that I like to dissect and chew on, and expect I’ll blog deeper about some of them. Whenever I feel intellectual dissonance, it’s usually a leading indicator of something. It’s not necessarily “something bad”, but it’s almost always “something different.”

I’m running another competition for a startup to live for a year for free in my Kansas City FiberHouse. When I bought my house in Kansas City in 2013, I announced my intentions clearly. “I’m not going to be living in it. Instead, I’m going to let entrepreneurs live / work in it. Rent free. As part of helping create the Kansas City startup community. And to learn about the dynamics of Google Fiber. And to have some fun.”

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.

I hope you had a nice 4th of July yesterday. Amy and I hid out all day in Longmont, playing with the dogs, napping, and reading. As a result yesterday was a three book day. One of them was Semi-Organic Growth: Tactics and Strategies Behind Google’s Success by George T. Geis. If you are a Google watcher, aspire to have you company acquired by Google some day, or just want to understand Google’s approach to acquisitions (which Geis calls “semi-organic growth”) this is a must read book that is well worth the money.