Will Herman’s post yesterday on the challenges of co-CEO’s reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest. Many businesses run loose and fast in their early days. And lets face it, the kind of people who are drawn to starting companies often aren’t process people – they are creative thinkers. While that’s part of the fun of early stage companies, don’t forget that there’s a side to what you are doing that needs to be properly documented and orderly. It’s not just Mark Zuckerberg who has founder problems – I’ve seen many business partnerships with the best intentions disintegrate, where their founders who were no longer seeing eye to eye, had to work out (or not…
Category
Company Creation
Techstars Beantown!
I’ve been a *huge* fan of Techstars since first meeting David Cohen just over two years ago and have not been bashful about my love of the concept in previous blog posts. For those of you not familiar with the program, Techstars brings together teams of entrepreneurs from across the country to participate in an intensive 3 month summer program to jumpstart their businesses. It’s heavily mentor and experiential driven – the teams work extremely closely with the program’s mentors to advance their businesses and the summer program is filled with guest speakers that cover an array of topics of specific interest to building young businesses. Since launching in 2007 we’ve had 20 companies through the program (of which 12…
start your business now!
While the financial world may seeming to be coming to its end and everyone’s natural instinct may be to baton down the hatches and not do anything to rock the boat too much, I think that now is actually a great time to start a business. Our own experience suggests that many great companies start their lives in down markets and this view informs our belief that as early stage investors we should remain consistent in our investment pace in both good markets and in bad. In fact, I think there are some great natural advantages to starting companies in a time when the markets are down. There’s less competition. For money; for talent; from 10 other people who have…
why do we stray?
A recurring theme in venture circles these last few weeks has been "Back To Basics" with VC pundits boldly prognosticating about the current state of the markets, talking about the infamous Sequoia deck and trying not to make people wince as they lay their claim to how they saw all this coming (I’m not immune to this myself and offered what I hoped was some practical advice in a recent post). All of this gets me thinking, however – why is it that companies got away from "the Basics" in the first place. Every time people think the rules have been rewritten and that somehow "this time will be different" they are wrong. So if we take anything away from…
agile company creation
There is nothing linear about starting and building a business. There are plenty of twists and turns along the way and successful companies are not only are open to change from their original ideas but build systematic processes for checking and rechecking their business assumptions during the early days of their company. The idea really hit me this summer at TechStars, when I began thinking about the idea of company creation as "agile" (akin to the agile development methodology) watching how fluid the most successful TechStars companies were. They were constantly checking and rechecking the assumptions behind their businesses and reacting to what they were learning from prospective customers, early users and mentors. These check-ins were very deliberate and occurred…
Deals
I’m trying to purge the word "deal" from my lexicon – at least as it relates to investments (i.e., companies are not a "deal", it’s an "investment opportunity"; the actual transaction itself is still fair game). I’m amazed how often the term comes up in the venture industry. To me it seems somehow demeaning and way too generic. Entrepreneurs who put their heart and sole into a company don’t need to hear us talk about their companies like they’re a commodity. If you’re a VC reading this, try it for a day and see how often the word comes up . . . and how difficult it is to stop using it…
Leave your ego at the door
My wife took me to kick-boxing class yesterday and if I was to be honest with you, I’d have to admit that I pretty much got my ass handed to me. Kickboxing is HARD. This isn’t athletic club kick-boxing. This is Muay Thai kick-boxing at the local Thai dojo. My wife’s been going for months and is really good (and before you ask – yes, she can clearly kick my ass any time she feels like it). She’s been asking me to go for a while but I’ve resisted. Not because I didn’t think it would be fun (and as it turned out it was even more fun than I thought it would be), but because I didn’t know how…
Foundry Group Joins the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado
Foundry is pleased to announce that we’ve joined the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. EFFCO was created to encourage philanthropy from entrepreneurial companies in Colorado (there are chapters in many other major markets across the country). By encouraging companies to donate a small percentage of their stock (in the form of a warrant that is only exercisable when the company is sold or goes public) EFFCO is both raising funds for local non-profits as well as encouraging companies to foster a culture of philanthropy early on in the life of their company. We’re strong supporters of the mission of EFFCO (in fact Brad was among the founding members of the CO chapter) and are happy to announce that we’ve donated 1%…
Finding your technical founder
I hear a version of this question a lot (like the one below today from Dawn): I talked to a firm that really likes my business plan but thinks I should have a technical co-founder. SIGH Any ideas how I could find a really good tech guy, preferably with some cache??? While not every business needs a technical co-founder, many (most) benefit from some early technical vision that is unlikely to be provided by the business founder. So where do you find these people that can code, help refine your technical vision and check the technical cache box? Here are a couple of ideas. Surf your sandbox. You know people. They know people. If you can’t think of someone who…