I love the concept of Binary Stars. Ian (my co-author) and I are using it in our upcoming book The Startup Community Way which should be out in the second half of 2019. Amy gave me a New Yorker article titled Binary Stars: The Friendship That Made Google Huge . It’s the story of the partnership between Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat whose pair programming approach in the early 2000s changed the course of the Google and the Internet. ...
We are excited to announce that Chris Moody is joining Foundry Group as a partner. When we started Foundry Group in 2006, we were very clear that we were not going to build a legacy venture capital firm; one meant to outlive its founders. There would be no generational planning, no transitions to younger partners, and no senior partner hold-outs who would hang onto economics well after they had stopped working. Simply put, when we are done investing, we will drop the mic and shut off the lights. ...
December is a tough time of year for a lot of people. While the holidays are awesome for some, they are really hard for others . I know a lot of people around me who are anxious, upset, stressed, or some other version of “not in a good place.” Some of it is the holidays, some is the end of the year, some is the outcome of the US election, and some is other things. ...
I woke up this morning in Fort Worth, Texas. For the first minute I wasn’t really sure where was I but it eventually snapped into focus. This happens to me periodically when I travel. I’ve got a stretch where I’m on the road a lot. Fortunately, I’ve got amazing partners. I was reflecting on this over a cup of stale coffee this morning. One of our deeply held beliefs at Foundry Group is that all four of us work on, and are responsible, for every company we are investors in. We don’t have silos where there are “Brad companies” or “Ryan companies” or “Seth companies” or “Jason companies.” In about 90% of the companies we are investors in, two of us are actively involved. In about 50%, three of us are actively involved. But in 100% of the cases, we all know what is going on, have relationships with the founders and CEO, and can quickly engage and help wherever and whenever we bring something to the mix. ...
I expect most of you know the fable of the scorpion and the frog , but if you don’t, it goes like this (quoted from Wikipedia): “A scorpion asks a frog to carry him over a river. The frog is afraid of being stung during the trip, but the scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, both would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog agrees and begins carrying the scorpion, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When asked why, the scorpion points out that this is its nature. The fable is used to illustrate the position that no change can be made in the behaviour of the fundamentally vicious.” ...