Sean Wise, a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, has an awesome web interview series called The Naked Entrepreneur Show. Sean is the interviewer for a 45 minute studio show that is entirely produced by students at Ryerson. When I was in Toronto in the fall, I did an episode with him – it’s definitely in the top 10 of the interviews I’ve done. David Cohen, the CEO of TechStars, also did an interview on The Naked Entrepreneur. ...
Over at the TechStars blog today, David Cohen introduced the new Managing Director for TechStars in New York, Eugene Chung . Thirty-five great candidates were interviewed for this position; the only offer we extended was to Eugene. His background includes NY-area investments BuzzFeed and Bedrocket while he was at New Enterprise Associates. Prior to that, he worked at Warbug Pincus and Morgan Stanley. We were looking for deep competence and culture fit with TechStars and we found it with Eugene. ...
If you’re working on a quantified self product or are part of a startup that would benefit from integration with Nike+, you have less than a week left to apply to the Nike+ Accelerator, powered by TechStars (deadline is February 3rd). If accepted, you will receive $20,000 in seed funding and support from TechStars, and mentorship from leaders within TechStars and Nike. The program begins in Portland on March 18th and will be led by Managing Director Dylan Boyd and TechStars is the investor in your company. Nike offers mentors, executives, technology, access to the developer portal, API, and more. ...
This first appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s Accelerator series. A few our entrepreneurial heroes work on more that one company at a time. Steve Jobs (Pixar, Apple), Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX), Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square), and Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, Greylock). And we regularly hear of entrepreneurs who are working at companies that acquired their first company who are now working on new companies while still at their acquirer. It’s takes an extraordinary talented entrepreneur to be able to do this. So, should you try to emulate this? “Mostly” no. ...
Historically, most of my writing has been either on my blogs or the books that I’ve written. Occasionally I’ve written for magazines, like a year-long stretch I did for Entrepreneur a few years ago, and longer form articles of mine appear in different places every now and then. But pretty much everything I write ends up on Feld Thoughts at some point. I’m going to experiment with some different channels this year. The two that I’ve already gotten into a regular, once a week rhythm with are LinkedIn Influencers and the Wall Street Journal Accelerators. I’m putting up a lot more content on the Startup Revolution site and I’ll be adding at least one more channel in the next 30 days. Finally, I’m doing more guest posts, such as the article I wrote for Amazon Money & Markets titled Startups Are Everywhere. ...
I’ve been a huge fan of Xconomy since its debut several years ago. It’s been a refreshing resource for a bunch of startup communities, including Boston (where it started) and Seattle. Over time they’ve added New York, Detroit, San Francisco, and San Diego and are now considering expanding to Boulder / Denver (I encouraged them to combine both as each city is on fire and there’s no reason not to link them together at this point.) ...
The roster at TechStars continues to grow with awesome people. In the past month, TechStars has announced Mark Solon as a general partner, Luke Beatty as managing director for Boulder and Ari Newman as Network Catalyst. I’m proud to claim all three as close colleagues. Mark is a long time friend – we’ve invested in a number of companies together over the years including SendGrid , Orbotix , and Lijit . He’s been involved as a mentor to TechStars since the beginning and his endless positive energy and attitude was a huge inspiration for my Boulder Thesis . When he announced that he wasn’t raising another fund at Highway 12 Ventures , David Cohen started talking to him about taking a more active role with TechStars. Voila! ...
When we started TechStars in 2006, one of our premises was to help build a strong startup community in Boulder. Our experience with TechStars – starting in Boulder, but expanding to Boston, Seattle, and New York – helped us understand not just TechStars’ role and impact on a startup community, but what drives startup communities over the long term. We’ve seen this dramatically accelerator around the world through the Global Accelerator Network and when I wrote Startup Communities: Building a Startup Ecosystem in Your City, much of what I used as the basis for the Boulder Thesis came from my experiences here. ...
This week’s The Founders is awesome. It reminds us that there are real people and real families behind every startup. I’ve experienced this over and over again in my 17 years in Boulder and it’s reflected in both the Startup Communities book that is out and the Startup Life book that Amy and I are in the final copyedit phase of and will be out by January. Take a few minute break from your day to enjoy the lives of some great entrepreneurs in a dynamite startup community that are part of an extended family that I’m proud to be associated with.
During the last few days in Kentucky I was asked some version of the question “how do I get started” a few times. It was usually in the context of “should I write a plan first” or “should I design a full system.” Sometimes it was in the context of “I’m having trouble raising money on my idea.” My answer was some permutation of “just get started, create something, and ship it” which of course could be simplified to “build it.” ...