I’ve been working on the Startup Visa since I first wrote about it 2009 in my post The Founders Visa Movement. After a decade, it’s clear that our federal government has broadly failed us on this front. In 2015, I announced the Global EIR initiative to try something different. Today, I’m happy to welcome the University of Michigan to the Global EIR network. Applications are now open to become a Global Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Michigan’s Economic Growth Institution (EGI). Interested applicants can learn more about the program, fill out an application form, and reach out to Millie Chu at Global Detroit.

In July 2015, I wrote about New Story asking readers to crowdfund one $6k house for a family in Haiti. At the time, Brett was only a few months into building New Story and had built less than twenty total homes. They were young and inexperienced but had a strong conviction to do things differently as a nonprofit which appealed to me. In the past four years, New Story has funded over 2,200 homes, building 17 communities for over 11,000 people across Mexico, Haiti, El Salvador, and Bolivia. They started out by chasing one crazy idea, and have grown nearly 100x since my original post.

From June 5 to June 8, Techstars Startup Week West Slope will be happening on the western slope in Colorado, with the main event in Grand Junction. I’m doing a Keynote at on Thursday, June 6 from 11:30am – 1:00pm at Colorado Mesa University. I’ll be talking about building startup communities outside Colorado’s front range in a fireside chat / AMA format. Startup communities in Colorado that are outside the front range (Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins) have become something that my partner Seth Levine and I have been very involved in the past few years. Seth’s providing a lot of on the ground leadership, through his work with Startup Colorado and the Greater Colorado Venture Fund. I try to show up or help remotely whenever I can and Amy and I have been writing plenty of checks from our Anchor Point Foundation to support various initiatives.

In December, Amy and I (through our Anchor Point Foundation) committed a matching gift to fund All Colorado First Time DonorsChoose.org Projects. At the time there were 108 projects that fit the profile. Our hope was that our match would fund these projects, encourage more teachers to put their projects up on DonorsChoose.org, and get more new donors involved. We ended up funding 394 projects, helping 40,404 students, 246 schools, and 380 teachers in Colorado.

David Cohen and I are doing a podcast together called Give First. Readers of this blog likely know that this is the mantra of Techstars and the title of an upcoming book of mine that will be published in 2020. While I’ve been interviewed for many podcasts, I’ve never hosted one before. David and I have been massive fans of Harry Stebbing’s 20 Minute VC so we’ve modeled Give First after it. Harry really hit his stride after about 100 episodes so my guess is it’ll take us a while to be in the same zone as he is. It’s good to have something to shoot for!

In the super cool thing category, it’s always fun to see two companies we are investors in easily put together a demonstration of the integration of their products. Oblong is a master of spatially interacting with 3D data on a 2D display. Looking Glass lets you interact with 3D data in a 3D display with their product (the Looking Glass.) Together, you can move and interact with 3D images on either a 3D display or a 2D display.

Last week, Return Path announced it was being acquired by Validity My fellow board member Fred Wilson wrote a great history titled The Long Game and Matt Blumberg wrote a beautiful tribute titled OnlyOnce, Part XX. I’ve been involved in Return Path as an investor since 2001 when Return Path and Veripost merged as part of a funding done by Sutter Hill (Greg Sands), Flatiron Partners (Fred Wilson), and Mobius Venture Capital (me). I wrote the very long story in a post titled Return Path Acquires Netcreations in 2004. This post has a ton of Return Path history in it in case you want to go back in time 20 years. And, if you want to only go back in time 10 years, take a gander at Happy Birthday Return Path which is a post about Return Path’s 10 year anniversary and includes the story of the negotiation between me and Fred to merge Return Path and Veripost.

Recently, Amy and I hosted a conversation with Scott Wasserman, the president of Colorado’s Bell Policy Center. For those not familiar with the Bell, it is a research and advocacy organization focused on economic mobility in Colorado. In his presentation, Scott presented a range of data about four major forces affecting our economy: demographics, public investment, technology, and inequality. As he went through his presentation, it became clear that while Colorado is home to a booming economy that many of us enjoy, there are many others in our state who are being left behind.