Give First: The Power of Mentorship is now available in both physical and Kindle formats. BradTheBookSalesman says, “Don’t wait, buy it today!” And yes, someday it will be available as an audiobook. As a bonus, my long-time friend Andy Sack’s book AI First: The Playbook for a Future-Proof Business and Brand is also launching today. BradTheBookSalesman says, “Buy Andy’s book also! Make it a two-fer.” ...
I learned how to do deals from Len Fassler. Last week, I got an email from Dustin Kloempken , who sent me a few quotes he wrote down from the Berkshire Annual Meeting. One of them jumped out at me. “Turn every page. One important ingredient in the investment field that very few people do. And those people who did read every page aren’t telling you what they learned. You have to read every page.“ ...
Gramercy Park in June 2015 After 89 years on this planet, Len Fassler passed away on Friday. Len was my Yoda. As a paternal figure, he was a close second to my father. I loved him deeply. And I will miss him every day. We were introduced in the spring of 1993 by Jim Galvin, CEO of Allcom, which had just been acquired by Len’s company Sage Alerting Systems. Feld Technologies worked with Allcom whenever we needed a network installed for a client. At the time, the state-of-the-art was a wired 10BaseT ethernet network, so Allcom did the wiring, and we did everything else. After Jim’s company was acquired, Len asked him who else he should talk to in the Boston area. Jim introduced us, and that led to lunch near our office in downtown Boston. ...
It’s the summer of 2001. The NASDAQ peak is in the rear view mirror. Many Internet companies are struggling. I’m sitting at the breakfast table at Len Fassler’s house in Harrison, New York drinking a cup of coffee and chewing on a bagel. Len and I co-founded Interliant (originally Sage Networks) with Steve Maggs and Rajat Bhargava in 1996. We took Interliant public in 1999 on the second attempt (the SEC didn’t clear the filing until a week after the end of the first road show, our first of many misfires with Merrill Lynch, who was our lead banker.) At the peak in the spring of 2000 Interliant hit $55 / share and was worth over $3 billion. By breakfast in the summer of 2001, the stock was trading under $1 / share. ...
I spent the day yesterday at the Disney Accelerator meeting with each of the teams and then had dinner with the CEOs and a lead mentor for each company. While I’m proud of all the Techstars programs, some of what I heard yesterday, especially around mentor engagement in the Disney program was remarkable. Our premise when we started doing branded accelerators with large companies was that we’d get deep mentor involvement from execs at the company we are partnering with. In Disney’s case, the access, exposure, and support of the Disney executives as mentors for the 11 companies in the program has been extraordinary. ...
My mom and dad have a wonderful gift coming to them this week. Yesterday evening I read The Beautiful Bronx 1920-1950 and The Bronx: It Was Only Yesterday, 1935-1965 . Well – I mostly looked at the pictures and read the descriptions of the pictures, as that was the meat of each book, but the intro sections were also very cool. My parents were each born in the Bronx and lived there until they moved to Blytheville, Arkansas in 1965 for a year. Growing up, my brother Daniel and I visited the Bronx periodically, as that’s where our grandparents lived (until my dad’s parents moved to Ft. Lauderdale) and we often heard tales of their time growing up in the Bronx. ...