Gluecon and Alcatel-Lucent team – changing the game at Gluecon 2011
[Cross posted from a piece I put up on the Foundry Group blog earlier today] Our goal for Gluecon has always been to make it *the* gathering place for developers working on the connective technologies that hold the web and IT infrastructure together – from web services to SOA to APIs and cloud computing. Eric Norlin – our partner in Gluecon, Defrag and now Blur – has helped bring together technology leaders for an in depth (and proudly geeky) conversation around the changing landscape of these technologies and the applications they support. …
November 3, 2010· 2 min read
What makes Boulder great
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. …
October 29, 2010· 3 min read
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.” …
October 22, 2010· 5 min read
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? …
October 20, 2010· 2 min read
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 occurred to me about 30 seconds before going on air, before which time I was perfectly calm, after which time I thought my heartbeat might be visible through my shirt). In the end it was super fun and great visibility for Boulder.
October 12, 2010· 1 min read
How to teach your child to ride a bicycle
image 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 just fine with training wheels) – what you really need to work on is balance and the easies way to do that is to take away all the other distractions so they can just focus on that one thing. Once they have that down they’ll be good to go. Both of our girls learned to ride using the method below in a few hours start to finish (where finish = riding around the block for the next hour by themselves). …
October 6, 2010· 4 min read
My RAIN Makers Conference Interview
I spent a couple of days last week out in the Twin Cities at the RAIN Makers Conference. I have to say I was pretty impressed (and surprised) by the strength of the entrepreneurial community in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I’ve known a few of the key guys from that community for a few years through Defrag and Glue but it was great to see how many people are really involved (there were something like 250 people at the conference). I shot an interview with Jeff from Tech[dot]MN that I thought I’d repost here. …
September 28, 2010· 1 min read
Preparing an effective executive summary
Today’s guest post comes from Ted Rosen, a partner at the law firm Fox Rothschild. How to write an effective company “teaser” is one of the most common topics I’m asked about by entrepreneurs and I think Ted has some excellent thoughts on how to prepare a company summary that hits the right points but isn’t so long that you’ll lose your reader’s attention (or make them abandon the summary before reading the important parts). Ted really nails it in the piece below. I’d especially call out “jargon free” and “keeping it simple” – the inverse of which are probably the two most common traits of poorly formed executive summaries. As always, I welcome comments, ideas, suggestions, etc. You can reach Ted directly at trosen@foxrothschild.com. …
September 28, 2010· 5 min read
There Is No VC Seed Investing Signaling Problem
My partner Brad recently wrote a great post entitled “Addressing the VC Seed Investor Signaling Problem“. This, along with several larger funds reaching out to me to ask for advice about starting their own seed investing programs got me thinking about the hype surrounding the VC Seed Investor Signaling Problem. My conclustion: THERE IS NO VC SEED INVESTING SIGNALING PROBLEM As Mark Suster points out in two fantastic posts on the subject (here and here) signals abound in the investment world. And frankly, as signals go, this isn’t a particularly major one. I’m serious. There are a million reasons that an investor group may or may not be able to continue to support an investment, some of which relate to their view of the performance of your business and many of which have nothing to do with it. …
September 16, 2010· 4 min read
My AdExchanger Interview
imageAdExchanger just posed an interview that I did with them that touched on some of our ad-tech investments as well as our overall investment philosophy. I’ve cross posted an unedited version of that interview below. 1. Why get into the venture capital side of the business? Do you ever get the entrepreneurial “itch”? I first got into venture capital about 10 years ago and I love my job. I was running a few business units for a small public company and while I enjoyed the operational side of my job, I was also responsible for M&A and partnerships and had a particular affinity for the transactional side of my job. While I consistently have the entrepreneurial itch, I actually think this makes me better at investing – it reminds me of why I’m in business (to support entrepreneurs who are the real stars of the show). I’ve also co-founded a few companies (including Trada which is a company in the Foundry portfolio that helps advertisers better execute paid search campaigns; I wrote about that experience recently on my blog: https://sethlevine.com/wp/2010/08/trada-from-the-beginning) and I’m very close to many of our portfolio companies at an operational level which helps to satisfy the entrepreneur in me. …
September 10, 2010· 8 min read