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
Money in the Bank vs Burn
With the markets down significantly, financings (at least at the later stages) slowing down, and inflation and interest rates on the rise, perhaps now is a good time to talk about your burn rate. Hopefully, you took advantage of the robust financing markets of the past few years to put some money on your balance sheet. Perhaps you raised at what historically have been very attractive valuations (we certainly have companies in our portfolio that have raised well, well above the historical averages). …
March 17, 2022· 3 min read
Downsides of a white hot economy
A few quick market observations from dicussions I’ve had with portfolio companies over the past few weeks. All relate to just how a white hot economy has some downside effects on certain types of businesses. Certainly some early warning signs – curious if others out there are seeing the same. My take-away is that in many sectors of the economy companies quite literally don’t need more customers. They can’t handle the additional load because they can’t hire fast enough and their supply chains are stretched thin. We’ve seen this in digital advertising for sure (and not just in travel and other segments that might be reacting to the Delta variant). Interestingly we’ve also seen a couple of companies – especially those that work with small businesses – whose message typically is: “We help you find and engage with customers more effectively.” The small businesses they target are pushing back and saying that they need more staff, not more customers. Currently, they’re running one, two, or even three-month waiting lists to provide services to their customers. We’ve all seen signs on restaurants that they’re closed or have reduced hours because of the unavailability of staffing. It’s interesting to consider the ramifications across the economy when many industries are at such capacity. …
September 7, 2021· 2 min read
Making a Better World – Uncharted’s Economic Equality Initiative
Uncharted is about to launch applications for their new Economic Inequality Initiative to support teams working on radical ideas to address economic inequality. I have a long history with the Unreasonable Institute (renamed Uncharted in 2017) and the work they’ve been doing around empowering entrepreneurs from many different backgrounds who are working across the globe on some of our world’s most important problems. Since 2010, they have helped an amazing set of entrepreneurs raise over $250 million, created impact in 96 countries, and benefited 37 million lives around the world. Amazing! …
May 6, 2021· 2 min read
Net Dollar Retention vs. Net Revenue Retention
Net Dollar Retention (NDR) and Net Revenue Retention (NRR) are both important measurements in any business but many companies conflate the two or (more frequently) only report on one. Both are key metrics but for different reasons. Equally important is separating out NRR for your largest customers versus the rest of your customers since often the behavior of large customers is markedly different than average customers. Their effect on a business and can be hidden in aggregate data and a sense of their impact is lost. …
March 4, 2021· 1 min read
The Importance of the Democratization of Capital
The democratization of capital may be messy at times, but it’s much better than the alternative. And it’s long over-due. Robinhood’s actions to restrict trading in GameStop stock, as well as several other issuers, was completely the wrong response to an increasingly active capital class. It’s time to give up this old notion that small investors somehow need to be saved from themselves (as they claimed was the reason they halted trading in GME and other issues *). For years, capital investment has been the sole purview of the wealthy in the United States and elsewhere. We’ve long had a series of laws that restricted people’s abilities to invest in private stocks and at that same time, given fee structures and the general opaqueness of the public markets, it’s generally been the purview of only wealthy Americans. Both of those trends have started to change over the last handful of years – trends we should be encouraging not limiting. …
January 31, 2021· 4 min read