Earlier this year we made a seed investment in a new company called Gnip.  Yesterday, Gnip launched their first service – a free centralized callback server that notifies data consumers (such as Plaxo) in real-time when there is new data about their users on various data producing sites (such as Flickr and Digg).  I’ve written […]

Getting up at 3:45am to travel ruins my morning routine that includes jamming through email, web, and blogs.  I’ve had some time to catch up this afternoon (while Amy naps to recover from the early morning silliness) and I’ve got some good stuff for you. I’m Training To Ruin A Marathon: A gem from The […]

And then there were 19.  Symplified has joined the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado.  Symplified was founded last year by Eric Olden, Jonti McLaren, and Darren Platt.  Eric and Jonti were previously the co-founders of Securant which was acquired in 2001 by RSA Security for $140m (if you remember 2001, then you’ll realize that this was […]

I sponsor a roundtable series titled The Silicon Flatirons Roundtable on Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Public Policy.  It is hosted four times a year by The Silicon Flatirons Program at CU Boulder and is modeled after the Union Square Ventures Sessions.   We pick a topic and then get 30 or so smart and diverse thinkers in […]

I’ve loved the phrase “open source hardware” from the first time I heard it from Peter Semmelhack, the CEO of Bug Labs.  It made me think “software” which is exactly what Peter was trying to do.  Bug Labs is starting to emerge after a year of hard work – Fred Wilson has a short post […]

We are moving our offices to Boulder.  As of Monday, our new address will be: 1050 Walnut StreetSuite 210Boulder, CO  80302 Due to the miracle of modern technology, all of our telephone numbers will remain the same. My office has been in Superior, CO since 2000.  We’ve enjoyed being above a liquor store and a […]

Creating companies is hard.  Most fail.  Overnight success is rare (my favorite “overnight success stories” are the ones that take 10+ years, like iRobot or Harmonix.)  While strategy plays a key part in the outcome of an entrepreneurial venture, the fundamentals matter a lot.  Take the following parable that I got from a friend recently. […]

Today, FeedBurner announced that they had been acquired by Google and Google announced that they had acquired FeedBurner.  There’s a nice symmetry to that.  I’m burning with glee for all my friends in Chicago, especially Dick, Steve, Eric, and Matt (aka “the founders.”) A little over two years ago (4/5/05 to be exact) I made […]

Last year, the meme of “you can start a company for minimal capital” made the rounds.  This is still true.  But – it’s not trivial to scale a company for minimal capital (it’s possible, but an exception, not the norm.)  This meme is starting to make the rounds – Heather Green at BusinessWeek just wrote […]