One of the things humans are bad at is remembering the past and incorporating the lessons they learned from difficult experiences. I’m sure there’s a philosophical word for this, but I’ve now heard the phrase “this time it is different” so many times that it doesn’t register with me as a valid input. I woke up this morning to Howard Lindzon’s post R.I.P Good Times (Said Sequoia in October, 2008) and Nobody Knows Anything pointing to David Frankel’s tweet: ...
There are two great fictional TV series about technology and the computer industry that each have now had three seasons. The one everyone knows about is Silicon Valley . The lessor known one is Halt and Catch Fire . They are both dynamite but for different reasons. And, after three years and some reflection on my part, HCF decimates Silicon Valley (which is mostly a challenge to my friends who have writing credits .) ...
If you are over 80 years old, you experienced the transition from the non-dial telephone to the dial telephone, which included the magic “finger stop.” If you are 30, imagine what you will be reflecting on 50 years from now.
There is a cliche in the financial world that has been around forever. “Two things drive decisions: Greed and Fear” For the past few years, we’ve been a zone where greed has been dominating. Every now and then a little fear creeps in and then gets squished into the corner by chants of “things are different this time” and “that’s just PTSD from the Internet bubble.” Recently, the fear seems to be sticking around. There are plenty of people trying to kick it away, shake it off, or ignore it. But it lingers. And the smell of it gets stronger. ...
Yesterday we closed our fifth fund, Foundry Venture Capital 2016, L.P. As with all four of our other funds, it’s a $225 million fund. In 2007 we raised our first fund – Foundry Venture Capital 2007 . We subsequently raised a $225 million fund in 2010 , another one in 2013 , and a late stage fund in 2013 . Our 2013 fund was originally raised in 2012, but we didn’t start investing it until 2013 so we renamed it 2013. ...
I hate doing “reflections on the last year” type of stuff so I was delighted to read Fred Wilson’s post this morning titled What Just Happened? It’s his reflection on what happened in our tech world in 2014 and it’s a great summary. Go read it – this post will still be here when you return. Since I don’t really celebrate Christmas, I end up playing around with software a lot over the holidays. This year my friends at FullContact and Mattermark got the brunt of me using their software, finding bugs, making suggestions, and playing around with competitive stuff. I hope they know that I wasn’t trying to ruin their holidays – I just couldn’t help myself. ...
Amy and I recently agreed to support the new Museum of Boulder with a substantial gift that entitles us to sponsor all the bathrooms in the new museum. This highly interactive museum of history, science, and technology of Boulder will be located in the old Masonic Lodge building at the corner of Pine and Broadway. The Boulder History Museum purchased that building last year and is raising money for the renovation of the building and the construction of the new exhibits and facilities. ...
I got asked today for a picture of the four founders of Techstars together (me, David Cohen, David Brown, and Jared Polis.) I did a search and came up with a few, but also stumbled upon this beauty. This is the original promotion video for the first Techstars program, filmed at the end of 2006 and apparently uploaded to Youtube on January 14, 2007. Following are my comments on the video. ...
*“History is written by the victors” – maybe said by Winston Churchill **“History is Written By the Winners” – George Orwell *“To the victor belong the spoils” – New York Senator William L. Marcy Yesterday I wrote a post about my first experience as a venture capitalist . I didn’t try to dramatize anything – I just wrote what I remembered. I got a handful of emails from people involved in some way. ...