Taking a deep breath
Below is a note I just sent to our CEOs. While I’m dismayed at what happened last night, now isn’t a time to be reactionary. And the US needs a strong and vocal counterbalance to the hate and bigotry we just empowered. For many of you, as well as for us, it was a deeply disappointing night. And it’s easy to wake up today with a sense of fear and foreboding about the future of our country. That’s understandable. And while we share that fear we also continue to share an optimism about the greatness of our country and our future. America is a resilient country and we passionately hope that resilience will temper the hate and vitriol that’s been on display over the past months in this election. …
November 9, 2016· 2 min read
Supporting Cliff Avril and New Story
Earlier this month Seattle Seahawks defensive end Cliff Avril announced that he would support building homes in Haiti – devastated most recently by hurricane Matthew. For every sack Avril gets this season he’s donating $6,000 which is enough to build a home that is both hurricane and earthquake proof. The charity that Avril is doing this through – New Story – is one that my wife and I know well. It is actually a Y-Combinator company (was the first non-profit to go through the Y-Combinator program) and has developed a very impactful (and novel) model for supporting housing development in areas of need. Greeley and I have been supporting it for a few years. And, in case of funny coincidence, it turned out that my partner Brad was also involved as a member of the New Story advisory board. …
October 27, 2016· 2 min read
Shadow Boxing
There’s nothing I value more about what we’ve created at Foundry than the relationship I have with my partners. Brad, Jason, Ryan and I are not just business partners, but best friends. This relationship affects everything that we do at Foundry and I think shows in the way we run our firm and the way we work with the entrepreneurs in the Foundry portfolio. It’s been an interesting transition over the years to get to this point and one that we’re constantly working on (we’ve often used an organizational consultant to help with this; we also spend a day a quarter off site to work on Foundry as a firm, the portfolio and our relationships with each other). We each have different strengths and weaknesses and over the years have done a great job of leveraging those to the betterment of our firm and the portfolio. …
August 31, 2016· 4 min read
New Registration Status at Foundry Group
We have some entertaining news to share with you today. We have recently registered with the SEC and are now considered Registered Investment Advisors. Did we do this so that we can have cooler business cards? No. Did we do this because our back office was lacking in purpose? Heck no. We had to, per the SEC rules. And the reason you ask? Well, we can’t tell you that or we could possibly break some other SEC rules. So for now, just accept that your friendly neighborhood venture capital firm is now subject to a lot of new and stimulating paperwork. …
May 23, 2016· 2 min read
Joining The B Team
For a long time I’ve been fascinated by the intersection between entrepreneurship and social change. When I say that I’m not describing social entrepreneurship (a term I really don’t like; it’s not a subset of entrepreneurship, it’s simply “entrepreneurship”) or impact investing, at least not as they’re commonly understood in the current business lexicon. I really mean two things: The first is the application of entrepreneurial principles and startup techniques to solving critical, basic needs problems around the world (many of the companies I’ve worked with as a founding board member at the Unreasoanble Institute fall into this category, as one example). The second is that all businesses, regardless of the product or service they produce, can work to create positive change in their communities, including with their employees, vendors and partners (The Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado and more recently Pledge 1% are both great examples of organizations helping companies create positive impact in the communities in which they are building their businesses). …
May 19, 2016· 3 min read
Venture Returns by Sector
Readers of this blog know that I love sharing data from Correlation Ventures (they have a pretty extensive database of venture deals and venture outcomes and love to post share trends from time to time) – see two great examples using their data here and here from this blog. A few weeks ago they sent around the chart below which I thought was interesting to share. I’m not surprised at the non-pattern here – as an industry venture is very stochastic. Venture returns are all over the map, really underscoring the need to time diversify venture investing and venture exiting, to the extent to which the latter can be controlled (this graph doesn’t show the date of initial investment, which would be a great new cut at the data – I’ve asked Correlation if they could re-run the analysis that way and will post it if I can get it). Also interesting to note the blip of “Consumer” in 2013 as well as what appears to be a bit of a countercyclical trend in healthcare. Sometimes there are interesting tidbits to be taken from seemingly chaotic data. …
May 9, 2016· 1 min read
Friday Afternoon Inspiration
Short post today from a portfolio company of ours and how they describe their culture and mission. I love it and thought it was a good way to end the week. We all move forward, together We understand that work is an integral part of a challenging life journey. Embracing our journey together enhances everyone’s experience and growth. Practicing empathy, as well as earning and maintaining the respect of our coworkers, are the core principles from which we all move forward together. …
May 6, 2016· 2 min read
The Community Foundation, EFCO and Pledge 1%
Cross posting this article I wrote for The Community Foundation of Colorado. As many of my readers know, I’ve been passionate about the intersection of startups and community for years. And specifically developing a worldwide movement of startups giving back to their local communities from their very founding. I blog a lot about community: entrepreneurial, local, national, international, social, etc. The short takeaway is that a group of people acting together towards a common goal can have a far greater impact than they expect – and certainly more than they would acting alone. I often use a great scene in the movie Office Space to illustrate this point. …
April 12, 2016· 3 min read
The Importance of Robust Angel Ecosystems
Earlier this week I gave the keynote address at the Colorado Angel Capital Summit. While the audience was Colorado focused, the overall message I delivered about the angel ecosystem is very relevant to all entrepreneurial communities. I thought I’d share both the presentation and the key thoughts here. The overall trend around angel investing is a pretty interesting one. I’ve talked about this trend before – specifically the acceleration of angel investing in 2011-2014. I think what we’re really seeing here is market excitement around angel investing leading to a quick surge, followed by (I hope) a more normal and sustained level of activity. The sharp rise in angel activity also coincided with the raise of platforms such as AngelList which more easily allowed investors to find interesting companies and to some extent broadened the geographic reach of angels, extending what had been a more localized activity. If you’ve ever participated in a running or cycling race your heart rate graph probably looked similar – you’re excited at the start of the race and go out a bit strong, only to settle back into the right rhythm. I suspect that’s a bit of what we’re seeing here. …
March 17, 2016· 5 min read
The Power of We
This is not a post about politics, but let me start with something I’ve noticed over the past few weeks in the presidential race, which is Hillary Clinton’s shift from using “I” to using “We” in her speaches. Bernie Sanders has been using plural language for pretty much the entirety of his campaign and it’s been an effective tool for him to make audiences feel that they’re in this with him. On the republican side, Ted Cruz uses this language very effectively (interesting Trump seems to vacillate – sometimes in the same sentence – between the use of I and We). It’s a small shift in language but it has a powerful effect – at the same time enrolling the audience and making the speaker seem more humble. …
March 2, 2016· 2 min read