Thanksgiving is a pensive time for me. The world slows down a little as it gets ready for the mad dash to the end of the year. Four day weekends are rare in the United States and even though the retail world is extremely busy on Friday, my Thanksgiving has a very different tempo as the email slows to a crawl, the calendar becomes empty, and Amy and I generally have a lot of hanging out time. ...
For the next 90 days, Amy and I are matching every gift to the Techstars Foundation on a 1:2 basis up to $100,000 from us. Our overall goal is to raise at least $300,000 for the Techstars Foundation by the end of the summer. If Techstars has touched you in any positive way, I’d request that you consider making a grant to the Techstars Foundation . This request includes anyone who has gone through a Techstars accelerator, done a Startup Weekend, participated in a Startup Week, receives Startup Digest, or has been a mentor or investor in any Techstars company or program. Or anyone else who has been positively motivated or influenced by Techstars in any way. ...
I got a random email from Brett Hagler last Thursday asking me to help his startup New Story . I looked at his web site and quickly told him it wasn’t something we’d be into exploring as an investment. He wrote back immediately, telling me that he wasn’t looking for investment, but had created a non-profit that used crowdfunding to finance and build life-changing houses around the world. Our mission is to create life-changing stories that transform communities. We’re focused on funding 100 homes in 100 days in Leveque, Haiti. ...
Chris Moody, the former CEO of Gnip (now VP Data Strategy at Twitter) is doing a fun fundraising drive for the National Center for Women & Information Technology . For at least $20, you can take a picture with him. 100% of the money goes to NCWIT. He’ll then blog it. Yeah – I know it’s a little silly, but that’s Chris. Delightfully silly and huggable Chris. I contributed $500 to match the first $500 Chris raises for NCWIT. As the chair of NCWIT, I appreciate his, and your, efforts. ...
Yesterday Amy and I contributed $10,000 to the MakerBot Academy campaign which is on a mission to put a MakerBot 3D printer in every school in the United States. We did it via a contribution on Donors Choose , one of our favorite non-profit contribution sites. We specifically finished out the funding for five MakerBots for the following teachers in their classrooms: Mr. Hendry – Yorba Linda High School, Yorba Linda, CA Mrs. Bragdon – Brownsboro Elementary School, Brownsboro, TX Mr. Eiland – Woodlawn High School, Baton Rouge, LA Mr. Condon – Decorah High School, Decorah, IA Mr. Colling – Coronado High School, Scottsdale, AZ Amy and I are planning to give a lot more to this campaign, but we decided to do something tangible right now by finishing off several of the campaigns on Donors Choose. ...
Last week Fred and Joanne Wilson announced that they are helping create a $5m seed fund to invest in computer science education in the NYC public school system . A few weeks ago Fred sent me a note and asked if Amy and I would make a contribution from our foundation. We’d previously contributed to another project Fred and Joanne spearheaded for the Academy of Software Engineering last year. It was easy to say yes for two reasons. ...
Amy and I just underwrote the renovation of Wellesley College’s new Human-Computer Interaction Lab . The picture above is a screen capture of the Wellesley College home page today (called their “Daily Shot” – they change the home page photo every day) with a photo from yesterday when Amy did the ribbon cutting on the HCI Lab. ...
My day started out great. After getting up at 5, having a delightful run at 6, walking Brooks, and then hanging with Amy for four minutes, I got in my car and drove over to Rally Software for their Big 1% Give Back event . The picture to the left is of Ryan Martens, Rally’s founder and CTO, giving Josie Health, the CEO of The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County , a check for $676,000. This check is for The Community Foundation and for the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado (EFCO) and results from a gift of 24,793 shares of common stock from Rally at the time of its first financing that represented approximately 1% of the equity of the company. ...
Today, my partners at Foundry Group and I are contributing $100,000 to the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado (EFCO) to help with the Boulder Flood Relief Effort . This is our second gift to the EFCO – we previously contributed a portion of our carry across all of our funds . The floods in Boulder and the surrounding area the past week have been devastating. I went for a run last night around town just to get a feel for things – the water is still at dangerously high and fast levels in Boulder Creek and the damage near the creek in downtown is visible. I smelled smells that I’ve never smelled in Boulder before and saw water in places it simply didn’t belong. ...
[embedit snippet=”jedimax”] On Sunday I’ll be running the Detroit Marathon with a bunch of friends including my partner Jason Mendelson who is running his first marathon. Becky Cooper, our CFO, and Jill Spruiell (Jason’s EA) are also running their first marathon, as is Andrew Tschesnok, the CEO of Organic Motion. As this is my second marathon in my Random Act of Kindness series, Amy and I are again raising $10,000 for someone on GiveForward. We’ll be matching $5,000 of contributions from this community with a gift from us of $5,000. Our recipient this time in Max Simmons who we refer to as Jedi Max. We don’t know Jedi Max – we just know he’s fighting cancer and is awesome. ...