This is a line my friend Jerry Colonna uses when something like the AT&T – Time Warner deal occurs. As time passes, the line has shifted to “We were right – just fifteen years early.” Jerry was Fred Wilson‘s partner at Flatiron Partners. We were all investing in Internet-related stuff at the end of the 1990s. Jerry and Fred had one of the most successful VC funds during this time period until the Internet bubble burst and blew us all up for a while. We made plenty of investments together and I sat on a number of boards with Jerry – we had some big winners and a handful of craters in the ground.

On Tuesday 10/25 from 4pm – 6pm I’ll be hosting a discussion and happy hour with David Cohen where we will discuss what’s next for Techstars in Kansas City. If you are around and interested, or just interested in saying hi, come by and have a drink with us. Register here.

Yesterday Techstars announced the launch of Techstars Kansas City. This is a city-based horizontal accelerator similar to the ones we have in Boulder, Boston, Seattle, Austin, New York City, London and Berlin. Applications open in January 2017 and the program will run in July 2017. I have a long history with Kansas City. I almost grew up in Kansas City, as the two cities my parents looked at when moving from Boston were Kansas City and Dallas (they chose Dallas.) In the mid to late 1990s, I was an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Kauffman Foundation working with Jana Matthews on “learning programs for high growth entrepreneurs.” During this time, Jana and I initiated a deep partnership between the Kauffman Foundation and YEO (the Young Entrepreneurs Organization). I spent about a day a month in Kansas City, during which time I developed a deep respect for the Kauffman Foundation, Ewing Marion Kauffman (Mr. K), and his value system around entrepreneurship and philanthropy.

If you – like me – love science fiction, I encourage you to support the new sci-fi magazine Compelling Science Fiction. The editor, Joe Stech, lives in the Boulder area and has been actively involved in the Boulder/Denver startup community. He’s using Patreon as a funding model, which I’m a big fan of for new and indie writers.

Chris Sacca (Founder and Chairman Lowercase Capital and star of ABC’s Shark Tank) is in Denver on Tuesday 10/25 at Galvanize from 5:00 PM – 8:30 PM to support Hillary Clinton. Chris has been a friend for many years, is a remarkable investor, and a super compelling speaker. While I’ll be in Kansas City for a different event, if you support Hillary, are in Denver, and are an entrepreneur or investor, I encourage you to sign up and attend. Thanks to Jim Deters and Galvanize for hosting.

I’ll be doing a talk on Monday, October 24 – 12 noon PDT at the Kauffman Fellows Reunion VC Summit titled Building the Next Great Ecosystem that is being live streamed. Steve Case is doing a talk on Tuesday, October 25 – 7:30am PDT titled The Third Wave, the Impact on Society, Investors, and Entrepreneurs that is also being live streamed. Sign up for either (or both) of them here.

I’m proud of my friends at Betabrand about a bunch of things, including a fundraiser they recently did called YogAID that generated over $85,000 for the Techstars Foundation. Last week an email hit the Foundry Group EXEC list from Betabrand’s CMO Aaron. I asked him if I could share it because it was full of some enlightening stuff around depression that was prompted by the suicide of a friend of Aaron’s. He said yes. Aaron – thanks for helping eliminate the stigma around depression. 

Sally Spencer-Thomas, CEO of the Carson J Spencer Foundation (which Amy and I support) is having a meetup on 10/26 about Mental Health, Suicide Prevention, and Entrepreneurs. If this topic is important to you, I encourage you to attend.

My partner Lindel Eakman just did a really fun interview with Harry Stebbings on Harry’s 20 Minute VC Podcast. You can listen to it here or subscribe to the 20 Minute VC on iTunes. As a Saturday bonus, two of the other podcasts in my regular rotation are the Reboot Podcast and How I Built This. I listened to the VICE: Suroosh Alvi interview yesterday and it was fantastic. The show notes for Harry’s interview with Lindel follow.