I’ve been throwing this term around for a while and thought it was worth writing about, as I believe that understanding entrepreneurial how density can shape an entrepreneurial ecosystem is very important. But first, a link back to some ideas around entrepreneurial communities in general. My partner Brad literally wrote the book about this (highly recommended if you haven’t read it already). But the very quick summary is that great entrepreneurial communities are build on the basis of a few key tenets (Brad writes about these in much more detail in the book, which – again – you should read) – Startup Communities Take Time. Think 20 years. And they don’t happen overnight (despite what you may have heard about Boulder…
Archives / February, 2016
What the current markets are and are not telling us
In response to a comment to my post earlier this week about the Profit Imperative, I rattled off some ideas about the current state of the markets. I thought it was worth sharing as a full post (I’ve edited and expanded on the original comment). There are clearly headwinds in the markets – I’m not at all suggesting that there aren’t. And we may be in a period of strong negative pricing pressure in both the public and private markets. As you know, markets tend to perpetuate themselves and pendulum. This cycle of overreacting is how business and market cycles seem to work. Without a doubt we’re in an environment of increasing volatility and that volatility alone may spook some investors. Price shifts…
Welcome to Foundry
I send a note to each new company that I work with at Foundry that sets up what I hope will be the key tenants of our working relationship. I thought it might be fun to post it publicly – I think it gives meaningful insight into how all of us at Foundry work with the company in which we have an investment. I’m psyched to be moving forward with our investment! I thought it would be helpful to send a few thoughts on working together – I do this with all of the new companies I work with. It will take a little bit for us to get a natural cadence going but the thoughts below frame my thinking on how…
The Profit Imperative
With the markets crashing around us and the sky once again falling I thought it was time to revisit a few fundamentals and perhaps more importantly share some what what we’re now seeing in the private funding markets. Growing Profitably. Let’s start with what I labeled the Growth Imperative a few months ago in a post, where I pointed out 1) that investors were (over) valuing growth and 2) that when this changed it was going to change quickly (and in a separate post said: “when the growth imperative shifts to a profit focus, companies with high burn and weak operating metrics can get stuck in the lurch.”). It always amazes me how quickly the markets can shift and how…