A Great Graduation Speech For Engineers And Entrepreneurs

My friend Krista Marks (now at Disney – which acquired her first company – Kerpoof) sent me a copy of the graduation speech she gave at the University of South Carolina College of Engineering and Computing on May 8th. Krista graduated 21 years ago and her speech embodies the amazing wisdom she’d gained over the years. I asked her if I could reprint it here – it’s applicable to any engineer or future entrepreneur, not just recent college graduates. Enjoy and be inspired! * ...

June 14, 2011 · 8 min · Brad Feld

A Message To Graduating MBA's

I gave a talk yesterday to a class of soon-to-graduate MBA students at CU Boulder yesterday. It was their last class in the course that had been filled with a bunch of interesting VC and entrepreneurial guest lecturers. We did Q&A for several hours, covered a lot of ground, and had plenty of fun (or at least I did.) At the end, the professor asked if I had any final words of advice to the room full of MBA’s who were about to graduate. I thought for a moment and then said an abbreviated version of the following. ...

April 19, 2011 · 4 min · Brad Feld

Welcome Young College Graduates Into Your Entrepreneurial Community

I feel strongly that the one of the important elements of building a sustainable entrepreneurial community over a long period of time is for the entire existing entrepreneurial community to be extremely welcoming to young college graduates. For the folks with a knee jerk reaction to call me ageist, please note that I said “one of the important elements …” There was a solid article yesterday in the Northern Colorado Business Reporter titled College grads make their own jobs. If you follow this blog, follow TechStars , or have read Do More Faster, you know that I have put a lot of energy into the Boulder entrepreneurial community, but have also spent a lot of time helping other entrepreneurial communities that I invest in (such as Seattle, Boston, and New York.) And, like Caine from Kung Fu , I’ve recently been wandering around the US (next week – Upstate New York ) spreading my views, philosophy, and advice on creating and sustaining entrepreneurial communities. I continue to study and think hard about the dynamics of entrepreneurial communities around the US and believe that there are at least 100 cities in the US that can have strong, significant, healthy, 20 year plus sustainable entrepreneurial communities. ...

January 29, 2011 · 3 min · Brad Feld