A week ago I had just gotten home after a month in Homer, Alaska. I was totally chilled out – I worked plenty in July but had very little physical human interaction with anyone other than Amy. I’m sitting here in my Boulder condo today thinking about the entrepreneurial tour de force that was the last six days. I think I interacted with more different people each day than I did cumulatively over the previous 30 days in Homer. ...
I attended the second Open Angel Forum in Boulder tonight. Simply put, it was dynamite. This is an intense week for seed stage stuff in Boulder as TechStars Demo Day is tomorrow where 11 new companies are having their coming out party. The Boulder New Tech Meetup had a special double header (Tuesday and Wednesday) where six teams practiced their pitches to a room of 300+ people on Tuesday followed up by the other five on Wednesday. The streets are crawling with angel and early stage investors – local and from other parts of the country – and the vibe feels great as tomorrow is the big day. ...
The second Boulder Open Angel Forum event is happening on August 4th at 7pm . In case you aren’t familiar with the Open Angel Forum, the organization is dedicated to providing entrepreneurs with access to the angel investor community based solely on merit and without any fees. The first Open Angel Forum in Boulder was dynamite. David Cohen, the founder/CEO of TechStars drove the event and is also hosting this one. He has scheduled it the night before the TechStars Boulder 2010 Demo Day with the hope of having some out of town angels that are here for Demo Day attend. ...
In addition to missing the sun up here in Homer today, I miss my dogs. I guess I need to get them on a Skype call later today, kind of like what Todd Vernon did with me earlier today .
There are many things I love about Boulder. One of them is the powerful sense of community that exists. Talking about this is fine, but examples are better. Here’s one: On the first Tuesday of every month is the Boulder New Tech Meetup . It’s one of the largest regular tech meetups in the world and is orchestrated by a bunch of folks, most notably Robert Reich of OneRiot who is the founder and ringleader. Given my travel, I can’t make it regularly but I try to go a couple of times a year. Each time is fascinating – I’ve always learned something, met some interesting folks, and had fun. ...
If you are a fan of my mom’s art (Cecelia Feld ), she’s part of an exhibit at the St. Julien Hotel in Boulder called Splash. The opening is this Wednesday July 7th from 6pm to 8pm. I won’t be there as Amy and I are hiding in Homer, Alaska for the month, but my mom is coming down from Keystone and I know she’d love to see my friends if you are around. It’s a real exhibit opening, so there will be food and wine for anyone that shows up! ...
Another TechStars company has been acquired. Well – part of it has been acquired. Today it was announced that eBay has acquired the RedLaser product from Occipital . The Occipital guys tell the story in their post titled Arrival at the Launchpad . Occipital’s founders – Jeff and Vikas – are the epitome of bootstrap entrepreneurs. Every TechStars class seems to have one and Occipital wins the bootstrapper of TechStars Boulder 2008 award. At the end of the program they had a few chances to raise money but weren’t happy with the valuations so decided to hunker down and just bootstrap things. They reinvented themselves several times until they launched RedLaser which has been a runaway hit (over two million copies sold to date.) As RedLaser took off, they had another set of interesting investment offers but no longer have any need for outside capital. ...
If you are a senior Java developer anywhere in the US and are interested in moving to Boulder, I’d like to hear from you . There was a nice article in Bloomberg Businessweek last week about Why Boulder Is America’s Best Town for Startups. With the combination of the new startup activity over the past few years combined with the rapid growth of a number of medium sized companies and renewed hiring from some of the outposts of major tech companies based here, we’ve clearly entered another cycle in Boulder where talent is tight and demand for senior folks is once again at a high point. ...
Amy and I stayed in downtown Boulder over the weekend. It was pouring rain on Friday afternoon, flawlessly beautiful on Saturday through Sunday morning when we went for a long walk on the Boulder Creek Path, and then it snowed overnight last night. Here’s the view from our window. My iPhone tells me that it’s going to be 70 degrees on Wednesday. Welcome to spring time in Boulder.
After the chaos of some days, it’s a delight to come home, stand outside, and look at my backyard. Today was (another) one of those days.