I woke up to two big local Boulder deals.  The first hour of my day (usually 5am – 6am) is “reading time” – online newspaper, catch up on email, blogs – so I always get a good dose of “whatever new happened” first thing in the morning before my run.  M&A activity in Boulder is always a […]

This week has already been active for new startups in Colorado.  On Monday, the news broke that my friends Don Springer and Tim Wolters had closed on a $2.6 million financing led by Appian Ventures for their new company, Collective Intellect.  Tim has blogged some about the fundraising process from an entrepreneur’s perspective – good stuff. Yesterday, […]

I received the following question last week. It’s a good one – very chewy – and my answer is given from my frame of reference (e.g. a managing partner in a large VC fund).  Consequently, I’m not sure that my answer is either generally correct or abstractable to all situations. How’s that for a hedge? The […]

279: Own Your Mistakes: FeedBurner screwed up the other day.  One of the new guys on the publisher team sent out a generic, unsolicited email to about 90 people who aren’t FeedBurner publishers.  While it’s arguable about whether or not it was spam, it was bad form, stupid, and not FeedBurner’s style.  There was some immediate […]

I took a break from Carnegie (which is amazing, but it’s massive – really two books) to gobble down some mental floss yesterday.  Stephen Frey’s new book The Protege is out.  Frey is on my regular rotation of mental floss and The Protege is a sequel to The Chairman. If you are a VC or private equity investor, […]

I had the following conversation recently. Entrepreneur: “Brad, I just got an offer for my company for $15 million from Company X.”Brad: “Awesome.  Who’s Company X – I’ve never heard of them.”Entrepreneur: “It’s a private company funded by Venture Firm Y.”Brad: “Cool – $15 million – is it a cash deal?”Entrepreneur: “No, it’s all stock.”Brad: […]

Jason and I have engaged in a little foreplay with you in our Letter of Intent series.  While you might think the length of time that has passed since my last post is excessive, it’s often the length of time that passes between the first overture and an actual LOI (although there are plenty of situations […]

I recently posted about the signs that a board should consider replacing the CEO.  My partner Heidi Roizen came up with these as her answer to a question posed by Pascal Levensohn for a new paper that he is writing on the “Ten Signs That It’s Time to Make A CEO Change in A Venture […]

I’ve read eight books since my last book review – none were notable enough for me to write about (although What the Dormouse Said came close, but Fred Wilson covered it.)  I just finished Wayne McVicker’s book Starting Something: An Entrepreneur’s Tale of Control, Confrontation & Corporate Culture.  It was fantastic. Wayne was the co-founder of […]