Amazon is setting up Kindle bookshelves for some people, including me. If you want to see some of my favorite books from 2016 that I read on my Kindle, take a look at my Feld Thoughts 2016 Books. I log all the books I read (Kindle or physical) on my Goodreads page. Interestingly, Goodreads is also owned by Amazon. It’ll be fun to see if / how they ultimately integrate all this stuff.

Greg Avery recently wrote a detailed story in the Denver Business Journal of the origin story of Techstars a decade ago. It’s unfortunately paywalled but comes with a video. For all of you who have participated in or supported Techstars to date, thank you!

A month ago Mark Suster (Upfront) and I hosted 75 colleagues for a full day at the California State Prison, Los Angeles County – also known as Lancaster. We did this as part of Defy Ventures, an entrepreneurship, employment, and character development training program for currently and formerly incarcerated men, women, and youth. It was a top 10 peak life experience for me – easily one of the most profound things I’ve experienced to date.

SRS Acquiom and Pledge 1% have teamed up to created EscrowUP by SRS Acquiom. As investors in SRS Acquiom and members of Pledge 1%, we are excited about the creative idea the two organizations have come up with to increase charitable giving as a result of merger transactions. When one company buys another, a portion of the proceeds (usually between 10% and 20% of the deal) goes into an escrow account for a period of time (usually a year or two). This escrow is used to cover any undisclosed or agreed to liabilities that come up for this period of time after the transaction. One of the shareholders, called a shareholder rep, is responsible for managing all the activity on the sellers side. It’s a thankless task and a number of years ago my partner Jason Mendelson helped create SRS Acquiom to address this. Instead of a VC, board member, or founder being the shareholder rep (and doing what can turn into a lot of work for free), you can now outsource this to SRS Acquiom.

If you are in the San Diego area Thursday at the end of the day I’m doing a public event with Techstars and San Diego Sports Innovators from 6pm – 7:30pm called Sports, Startups, and San Diego: An Evening with Brad Feld. It’s free but you need to register here.

One of the podcasts in my regular rotation is Turnpikers. Luke Beatty and Danny Newman – both long time friends – are doing an awesome job interviewing interesting people in the Boulder – Denver startup community. If you don’t know the area, Turnpikers stands for U.S. Route 36 (known locally as “36” or sometimes “Highway 36”). But the locals call it the Boulder Turnpike. So, those of us who travel up and down 36 between Boulder and Denver are known – at least to Luke and Danny – as Turnpikers.

The day after the election, Alex Iskold (Techstars NY Managing Director) wrote a great post titled Dear Founders, I Commit to Double My Support For You and Your Startups. It’s vintage, wonderful Alex along with a series of specific things he’s going to do. Work even more closely with the founders to help them with their financings. Help founders drive up revenue, achieving profitability and independence. Send even more introductions, connect even more people. Answer every single email and every single tweet from a founder. Meet more founders in NYC and around the world and give feedback. Always iterate on my calendar and make more time for the founders. Speak at public events in NYC and around the world about entrepreneurship. Blog more about topics founders care about and want to read about. Publish my (long in the works) book for founders. Today, Alex wrote a post titled Introducing Techstars Weekly Diversity and Inclusion Office Hours for Founders in NYC. Every Tuesday from 5pm – 7pm a group of Techstars employees in NY will meet with any female, minority, LGBTQ, or immigrant founder about anything. Sign up here.

One of my core values is diversity of everything. I’ve been involved deeply in several organizations, such as National Center for Women and Information Technology, that have been focused on increasing gender diversity in computer science and entrepreneurship. More recently, I’ve expanded my lens a lot to include many other dimensions of diversity. The mission of the Techstars Foundation, which is improving diversity in tech entrepreneurship, is an example of that.

My partner Seth sent out an email to our CEO list this morning titled Taking a deep breath after we received several emails from CEOs with questions along the lines of “how should we think about the result of the election / what should we do?” After I saw a few responses to Seth’s note, I asked if he was ok with me republishing it here. I realize that very few of you who read my blog are on our CEO list so I hope it’s helpful to you to see what Seth sent around.