Someone asked me this week for some qualitative data on the factors that lead Boulder to emerge over the past 5 or so years as one of the country’s top markets for start-ups. It’s a great question and I know that there are many other cities that are trying to follow Boulder’s example. I thought it was worth posting these thoughts – I’m sure others will have things to add to this. ______________________________________________________________________ The quantitative data are pretty boring – Colorado has stayed very consistent in terms of overall venture investment activity (~ $600M/year putting us clearly in the 2nd tier of venture markets). In fact an increasing percentage of this funding has come from out of state investors (93%…
Archives / October, 2010
There is no “Foundry Group Boulder Signaling Problem”
Forbes published an article yesterday by Maureen Farrell stating that there’s a “signaling problem” for TechStars Boulder companies who don’t raise money from Foundry Group. “… one byproduct of [Foundry Group’s] generosity for any young Boulder company is that, if it hasn’t been funded by The Foundry Group, it must explain why. Otherwise it has a signaling problem, something that happens when a VC invests in an early round but doesn’t show up for later rounds.” And while I’m going to argue (forcefully) here that neither my partners nor I either believe this to be true or even wish for that kind of market power, I should acknowledge that I’ve heard this before. And not just in relation to TechStars…
When is your start-up no longer a start-up?
A few days ago I received an email asking me if I had a “rule of thumb for determining when a start-up can no longer be considered a start-up”. The sender proposed a few potential answers but I thought this one might be a good one to put out there for feedback from readers. His suggestions were: *Two consecutive quarters of positive free cash flow?*Drop pooled benefits company like Administaff for in-house benefits administration?*Anything > C round, seeking to lever w/ mezz debt or file S-1?*Name of company becomes a verb in our lexicon?*Receive gov’t stimulus funding?*Oprah uses your product? For a long time I’ve asked entrepreneurs at what point their company no longer felt like it was a start-up….
Boulder featured on Fox Business News
For a long time my hometown of Boulder, Colorado has been known as a great place to live but more recently Boulder is taking on a reputation as a great place to start a company as well. And the rest of the country is starting to take notice (see BusinessWeek, HuffPo and the NY Times). Today Fox Business News did a few live segments from Boulder highlighting some of the people and institutions that are helping create great entrepreneurs and great companies here. I was fortunate enough to be interviewed live along with Lijit CEO Todd Vernon (Foundry is an investor in Lijit). I have to say it was a little nerve wracking to be doing a live feed (this…
How to teach your child to ride a bicycle
This is totally off topic, but every time I tell people this story they love it and say they’ve never heard of this idea before so I thought I’d post it here. I didn’t make this method up (I can’t remember who told me about it, but living in the cycling capital of the US – Boulder, CO – it could have been any one of a hundred different people). We taught our two daughters how to ride using this method when they were around 4 and will have one more shot at it in the near future with our 3 year old son. The idea behind this method is that kids know how to pedal (they’ve been doing that…