Test Post — Please Ignore
This is a test post to verify that email subscriptions are working correctly. It will be removed shortly. I’m testing the full pipeline from blog post to RSS feed to Kit automation to subscriber inbox. The goal is to make sure that when a new post goes live on the blog, Kit detects the new RSS entry and sends an email to subscribers with the post content. There are a few things I’m checking with this test. First, does Kit pick up new entries in the RSS feed at sethlevine.com/index.xml? Second, does the email template render correctly with the post title, summary, and link back to the blog? Third, does the email actually arrive in the subscriber’s inbox without landing in spam? …
March 9, 2026· 1 min read
Running My Day From a Terminal Window
Brad Feld built something called CompanyOS. He wrote about it on his blog – the philosophy behind it, the architecture, how it works. I’d encourage you to read those posts for the technical backstory. Brad set me up on it yesterday, and what I want to write about here is what it actually feels like to use it. One day in and I’ve already shifted a surprising amount of my daily business operations into it. It’s been mindblowing. …
February 24, 2026· 6 min read
Why Your Board Meetings Aren’t Working
I’ve sat in hundreds (thousands?) of board meetings over the past two decades – as a board member, as a board observer, invited guest, etc. Some were excellent. Many were not. And the gap between a well-run board meeting and a poorly run one is enormous – not just in terms of the value the board provides, but in the trust it builds (or erodes) between management and the board. …
February 24, 2026· 4 min read
More Capitalists, More Equity: Revisiting Dr. King’s Economic Bill of Rights
My Capital Evolution co-author, Elizabeth MacBride, and I have been reflecting this past week on the words of Dr. Martin Luther King and how they continue to resonate deeply as we face both economic and social challenges. We’re committed to broadening the call to use the tools of Evolved Capitalism that give all Americans, and importantly, the companies they work for, the opportunity to thrive. Below is a piece we wrote in honor of Dr. King’s birthday. …
January 23, 2026· 5 min read
Composition Shop and the Revitalization of Downtown Longmont
Over the past decade, my wife, Greeley, has been restoring buildings along Main Street (and a few adjacent streets) in Longmont, helping lead a transformation in our local downtown. I’m really proud of the work she’s doing and the vision she has for how these projects can lift up downtown Longmont. If that weren’t enough, she also recently opened a bookstore in one of the buildings she remodeled. Composition Shop is truly special. It’s beautiful, warm, and welcoming. In addition to a great selection of books, the shop also sells chocolates (really, really good ones) and stationery. As an added bonus, our dog Timber is the store greeter. …
May 20, 2025· 3 min read
Valuation Policies Are A Mess
Every venture firm reports the “value” of each of its underlying investments. Typically, this is updated quarterly and sent to each of the fund’s investors. The idea is that investors will then have a definitive view of the value of the firm’s investments. Simple, right? But what is the “value” of a private company? Turns out the answer to that question is not so easy to determine, and, as a result, valuation reporting in venture is a mess. …
March 18, 2025· 6 min read
The Future of Venture
Just before the end of the year, Erin Griffith of The New York Times published an article titled “What Is Venture Capital Now Anyway?” It’s a provocative look at the state of venture capital and, as these sorts of things are want to do, very quickly started making the round in venture circles as VCs tried to map how they fit into the landscape that Erin describes – a split in how VC firms are operating: some firms are keeping to a smaller, boutique style while a handful are becoming behemoths, almost unrecognizable as venture firms. There’s very little in between. …
January 24, 2025· 6 min read
Endings and Beginnings
We just made public over on the Foundry blog that our 2022 fund will be our last Foundry fund. I wanted to add a few personal thoughts here. When we started Foundry, we were very open about our intention to eventually wind our operations down rather than try to build a generational firm. Over the course of Foundry, we deliberately structured our work in a way that reflected this goal, keeping our organization small and each of the Foundry partners closer to the portfolio (both the companies each of us was responsible for, but also across the portfolio more broadly). We’ve avoided unnecessary silos and kept our focus externally – on companies and our investors – rather than spending time on firm building. For a minute, we flirted with the idea of Foundry continuing (adding more new partners and creating a platform that would outlast us), but as we discussed it more, we ultimately returned to first principles – we focused on investing and supporting our portfolio and not on creating a platform that would outlive us. This is exactly what we envisioned when we started Foundry in 2006, and today marks the public acknowledgment that, with the 2022 fund, we’re ready to stop adding new funds to the mix. …
January 19, 2024· 5 min read
American Enterprise is In Danger from Recent Court Ruling
This article is cross-posted from The New Builders Dispatch, a publication founded and run by my New Builders co-author, Elizabeth MacBride. A few weeks ago, the American Alliance for Equal Rights won a legal victory in Atlanta when the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked a small venture capital fund, Fearless Fund, from running a grant contest that awards $20,000 grants to small businesses led by women of color. The victory may or may not be temporary (this was a temporary stay, not a full adjudication), but the point has been made – there are those like the Alliance who live in fear of a changing world and far too many who support them. …
November 1, 2023· 5 min read
SVB and The Tyranny of the Commons
Like many of you, I’ve been reflecting on the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank quite a bit this past week, now that the initial panic has faded into a dulled sense of disbelief. Certainly, there were warnings that SVB was in trouble (most notably from Seeking Alpha – in December – asking if SVB was a blow-up risk and, as if time traveling, describing almost exactly what would come to pass just a few months later). Many others have commented on how and why SVB (and soon after Signature, and nearly First Republic Bank and Credit Suisse) imploded. If you’re interested, I think Matt Levine from Bloomberg has the best overviews of what led to the crisis of last Thursday and Friday (see here, here, and here on SVB; here for an overview of what happend with CSFB, and for those paying close attention, here for what, at the time, we thought was an isolated “crypto thing” in the failure of crypto bank Silvergate, but perhaps was a harbinger for the weeks ahead). …
March 19, 2023· 7 min read