This is a cross-post from our Foundry blog entry on our latest investment – in the microblogging company StockTwits. I’ve been working closely with Howard and Soren from the company as well as StockTwits investors Roger Ehrenberg and Tony Conrad as we’ve looked at the investment and worked on the financing. These guys are fantastic! For me it’s the chance to work with this team that’s the most exciting thing about today’s announcement. If you haven’t tried the service I’d encourage you to do so – there are links in the post below to grab the desktop client or directing you to the site. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Today StockTwits announced (release here) that it had raised a $3m Series B financing led by Foundry Group and returning investor True Ventures. For us, StockTwits represents a unique opportunity to leverage the increasingly active conversation taking place on (and off) the Twitter platform around stocks and markets. We’ve witnessed in other investments the power of 3^rd party networks to drive the scale and reach of new businesses and we believe StockTwits represents a huge opportunity to harness the Twitter community’s ongoing conversation around stocks and investing.
If you’ve ever tagged a tweet with the $ tag or tweeted a stock symbol using that tag you’ve participated in the StockTwits conversation. StockTwits uses the familiar Twitter microblogging format (140 characters) and allows users to seamlessly cross-post from and to their Twitter stream. Users can tag their Twitter posts with the $ tag to be picked up in StockTwits, use the StockTwits web interface or download the StockTwits desktop for even greater functionality (we’d highly recommend the desktop client – you can get it here if you don’t already have it). Below is a screenshot of the desktop client to give you a sense of what’s available. This view can be customized to follow specific tickers or topics as they’re mentioned. You can also see StockTwitsTV on the right half of the desktop – look for more programming as we roll out additional content in the coming months on the StockTwits Network.

But can stock advice really be offered in 140 characters or less? The answer is a resounding yes. There is a large and extremely active conversation taking place in StockTwits (to get a sense of it click over to the StockTwits site and watch the dataflow). And large trading organizations are taking notice. The NASDAQ recently released an iPhone application that features StockTwits data (see the screenshot to the left). Look for other StockTwits integrations to be announced soon as the company uses this new round of funding to accelerate its pace of development as well as its work with partners. You’ll also see the company releasing additional features in its desktop client and on its site as well as rolling out new data features and the ability for users to create custom data feeds from the StockTwits datastore.
Of course great investments require great people. And we couldn’t be more excited about working with StockTwits founders Howard Linzdon (whom we’ve known for years) and Soren Macbeth. We’re joining Roger Ehrenberg of IA Capital Partners and Tony Conrad of True Ventures in this investment – two experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists with whom we’re extremely pleased to be teaming up.
Look for more announcements about the company soon.

When it comes to the question of nature vs. nurture for entrepreneurs it’s clear that both are important. While great entrepreneurs are born with at least the seed of that entrepreneurial spirit, it takes some encouraging – as well as plenty of guidance, help and support – to see that seed blossom. I’ve had the great fortune to experience the evolution and transformation of Colorado into a community that I believe is one of the most supportive of entrepreneurs anywhere in the country. In fact, Colorado has always had an entrepreneurial spirit – from before its founding as a state as a frontier territory supporting prospectors and pioneers, through its history of ranching, the oil and gas boom, as a hub for telecommunications start-ups, to its leadership in LOHAS businesses and the burgeoning green-tech field, to Internet and related technologies. Surrounding these business trends has been a Rocky Mountain lifestyle that has attracted entrepreneurs to our state since the 1800’s. These factors, combined with a support structure and philosophy of paying it forward, has turned Colorado into one of the best places in the country to start a business.

Today we’re launching Colorado Entreprenurial by Nature – a grass roots campaign created by a handful of entrepreneurs in our community to show support of that ecosystem. The goal is simple. We’re giving members of our community an easy way of showing their pride in the entrepreneurial community we’re building in our state. We hope that this will help us both encourage entrepreneurship in our community and attract new entrepreneurs to come to Colorado to start their businesses.

Joining is easy. Head to the Colorado Entrepreneurial by Nature website and download the badge (it comes in a number of different colors and sizes). Display it proudly on your company or personal website. We’ve made some stickers up as well which you can fly proudly on your laptop/car/bike/etc. They’ll be showing up around Denver and Boulder at a handful of coffee shops and other places where entrepreneurs congregate.

If you feel the way I do about Colorado – about living here and working here to support entrepreneurship – I hope you’ll join me in the movement.

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art puts on a fantastic (and very fun) art auction every year.  My wife, Greeley, and I have been regulars for several years and always have a great time.

This year Greeley is even more involved as the event chair (putting on an art auction is an incredible amount of work!).  I’m playing a more peripheral role as the stand-in event photographer (the regular event photographer is out of the country, so with the qualification of owning a brand new digital SLR camera – a birthday present from Greeley – the photo duties are falling to me).

Here’s the event flier (see link below).  If you’re around Boulder on October 19th, I’d highly recommend coming by for a great night of art, food and fun.

Download auction_ad2.pdf

I first signed up for FaceBook about 8 months ago, interested in checking out the platform and to playing with the technology. I was happy to find a handful of my geek Boulder friends already there as well as a few colleagues and one or two college buddies. The TechStars guys (most of whom were under 25) were, of course, well established on FB already and happy to point me in the right direction (download this, pull your blog into your news feed, see your contacts this way, etc.).

Over the first few months I noticed some of my VC friends join up as well as more of the Boulder tech crowd. Then I started seeing a few more people from College and finally even some friends from high school ‘friending’ me. I’ve noticed over the last month or so that this trend is accelerating . . . quickly. And it’s not just older tech geeks – it’s anyone and everyone starting to jump on and sign up. While the overwhelming majority of FaceBook users are still college and just post college age (18-24) there’s real growth happening in the 34 and up crowd (FaceBook itself reports that its fastest growing segment is those over 25, but doesn’t break it out more specifically).

What does this all mean? I believe that at the moment, FaceBook is the most important platform on the internet. And while I’m sure that iGoogle and others will give it a run for its money, anyone looking for an audience online can’t ignore the 55 million and growing number of users on FaceBook (still doubling every 6 months). And while there are over 7,000 FaceBook applications, the growing number of older . . . I mean experienced . . . users suggests some different ways that publishers and app developers can and should target this demographic. This has implications for gaming, for recommendation engines, for book and movie advertising and reviews, for conferences, for the guys spamming my inbox incessantly with advertisements for Viagra and for just about anyone else who has a product or service to sell for the 35+ crowd.

The beauty of FaceBook as a platform is how broadly applicable it is to any demographic – the utility is a function of the people you are connected with rather than the application itself. This explains why we’ll see FaceBook usage accelerate, particularly across new demographics.

With thanks to Ross for actually pulling everything together, I’m launching a new look and a new site today. Seth Levine’s VC Adventure is now hosted on my own domain – www.sethlevine.com – and is sporting an updated look. My old TypePad site is still active (although I’m no longer posting there) and in theory (at least until it breaks) is redirecting traffic to my new site (and should be directly specific posts to their respective post here at sethlevine.com). Let me know if you find anything broken or in need of editing/updating/improvement/better design.

Ok. I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of OutsourcingTV.com but apparently it exists and they did an “interview” with Hans Bukow, the CEO of eWork on the recent eWork/ProSavvy merger (see my last blog post). You can check out the interview at the following link:

http://www.outsourcingtv.com/ot/index.jsp?movieid=13688&channel=

I’m in the middle of writing a post on whether blogging means an end to traditional media and, not to steal my thunder, but I think this interview backs up the point I’m going to make – there’s lots of room in the world for niche media (or point media) to exist along side more traditional media sources. Clearly enough people care about the outsourcing market for there to be a website that supports it (and magazines, etc.). While the merger of two companies like eWork and ProSavvy won’t necessarily make it to traditional media (other than perhaps an inch blurb in the business section), it’s clearly important to people who follow the industry and, as this piece shows, warrants further discussion/elaboration.

There are a couple of very key dates in the history of Foundry Group.  The day when Brad, Chris, Jason, Ryan and I actually formed the legal entity that is Foundry . . . the day last fall of the first close on our first fund, Foundry Venture Capital 2007 . . . the day shortly thereafter when we held our final close of that fund . . . and today – the day we’re launching a real web site.  www.foundrygroup.com is now up and running and is much improved from the brochure-ware site we had as a stand-in during fundraising. 

We think it represents our collective personality well with a front page blog, links to ask questions at askthevc.com and easy navigation to find out how to contact us.  Jason has authored our initial blog post – Hello World and we also have a portfolio page that links to 4 of our initial investments.  We’ve talked about Memeo (here and here) and Zynga (here) on our personal blogs in the past, but our investments in Oblong and Lijit are new.  You’ll see us write more about those soon as well as some of the key investment themes we’re concentrating on in the coming weeks.  So check it out; subscribe to our blog; and check back in to see what we’re up to.

Twenty Companies Ranging From Seed Stage to Mezzanine Will Showcase Next Generation Technologies from Various Industries at the 27^th Annual VCIR Winter 2010 Conference

Denver, CO, February 23, 2010 – The Rocky Mountain Venture Capital Association today unveiled its final lineup of growth companies at the 27^th annual Venture Capital in the Rockies (VCIR) 2010 Winter conference. This year’s conference will highlight twenty promising early-growth companies; all based in the Rocky Mountain region and a majority of which are focused on clean technology, a burgeoning industry in the area.

The VCIR Winter 2010 conference will be held at the Park Hyatt in Beaver Creek, Colorado, February 23-25, showcasing early-growth companies from Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

Along with company presentations and ample networking opportunities, Dan Caruso, CEO of Zayo Group, will give this winter’s keynote address. As an active member of the telecommunications and Internet community, Caruso will address the attendees about the virtues of starting a company in the Rocky Mountains.

The conference will also feature a Technology Showcase, an inaugural demonstration of five very early stage technology companies that is designed to feature the next generation of innovation from the region and further VCIR’s legacy of entrepreneurial mentorship.

“The Venture Capital in the Rockies 2010 Winter conference is a premier event for both promising companies and attendees,” said Seth Levine, chairman of VCIR and a managing partner at the Foundry Group, a Boulder, CO-based venture capital firm. “Over the last 10 years we have seen impressive numbers that show the conference being an initiator in the future success of presenting companies.

“That is why the conference has become an annual opportunity to identify great companies from around the Rocky Mountain region,” he continued.

Companies from Colorado represent the majority of presenters and constitute all of the clean technology and new energy companies participating in the conference.

· zettasun manufactures efficient commercial rooftop solar panels using proprietary optical technology to dramatically reduce the cost of solar electricity to be at or below grid costs.

VCIR Launches 20 Promising Companies/Page 2

· Cool Energy is an energy technology company that has developed a 100% clean conversion engine that transforms heat to electrical power for solar-based combined heat and power home applications and for waste heat recovery.

· RavenBrick delivers innovative solar-controlled windows, which reduce energy costs by up to 50 percent.

· BioVantage offers an algae-based, “green” alternative to classical wastewater lagoon aeration significantly reducing costs while helping municipalities to comply with new stringent mandates.

· Eco-Products is the nation’s leading brand of single use food service products made from renewable and recycled resources.

· Ice Energy delivers distributed energy storage and smart grid solutions to leverage higher efficiencies associated with generating and transmitting less expensive off-peak power.

· Pure Energy Solutions is the developer of superior wire-free charging technology and rechargeable battery solutions for consumer electronic devices.

· VanDyne SuperTurbo offers a product that increases horsepower and therefore improves thermal efficiency in vehicles, potentially improving fuel efficiency 36% in gasoline cars and trucks, with no loss of performance.

· Green Garage is a new kind of garage that makes cars gentler on the planet and easier on the wallet. Green Garage aggregates proven, sustainable, energy saving automotive maintenance/repair related products and delivers them through convenient consumer valet and corporate mobile on-site services.

Additional Colorado Representatives

· TruEffect merges the interactivity and reach of the Web, with the precision and effectiveness of direct marketing to deliver increased media performance and unparalleled new insights to global advertisers.

· UniversityParent.com provides college parents with critical campus information and connects parents with local services near campus, such as restaurants, hotels, and storage facilities.

· TopSchool, Inc. is a leading SaaS provider of Student Lifecycle Management (SLM) solutions for higher education, empowers student-centric institutions to drive growth, reduce costs and meet accountability requirements.

· Clementine Arts markets the first full line of natural art supplies for children.  All of the products are made in the USA and are naturally non-toxic, while functioning on par or better than traditional art supplies.

Consumer, Information Technology, Medical, and Imaging Technologies also Represented

· iMemories provides a single Web destination for consumers to digitize, preserve and store their full length home videos and photos online, regardless of the original media format, and share them across multiple consumer platforms, ranging from televisions and mobile phones to popular social networks and blogs.

· Mangia allows sports fans to order food and merchandise (and eventually tickets) using a mobile phone and have it delivered right to a stadium or arena seat.

· DICOM grid is a healthcare information technology that helps hospitals, imaging facilities and physicians manage and distribute radiology health records to meet the needs of the rapidly evolving healthcare industry.

VCIR Launches 20 Promising Companies/Page 3

· Infopia is a leader in SaaS (Software as a Service) eCommerce platform solutions—giving retailers the tools they need to sell effectively online and helping merchants grow their business faster and more effectively than any other technology provider.

· CradlePoint engineers and manufactures wireless 3G/4G broadband routers and software platforms that facilitate secure Internet access via 3G/4G wireless (cellular) broadband networks.

· Firerock Technology develops, licenses, and sells proprietary hardware and software that improve the performance, security, and reliability of Information Technology systems.

The three-day conference is about both new companies and new ideas, as well as giving attendees a chance to network with over 300 investors, CEOs, entrepreneurs, and service professionals.

About VCIR

Venture Capital in the Rockies (VCIR) is the region’s oldest and best attended venture capital conference and will hold its 27^th annual VCIR Winter edition in Beaver Creek, Colorado in 2010. Along with the annual VCIR Fall conference, the two VCIR conferences encompass the premier venture investing conferences in the Rocky Mountain region and among the most respected venture conferences in the country. Creating a dynamic marketplace for ideas and investment, both editions of VCIR invite over companies seeking investment to present to panels of venture investors, as well as an audience of other entrepreneurs, CEOs and professionals servicing the venture community. More information can be found at www.vcirwinter.com

Like you, I’m a pretty busy guy. I’ve always been high energy and (I hope) high velocity. My job requires me to be in many places at one time (and at any one time have a few dozen different things spinning around in my head). It’s tiring and doesn’t always leave time for the kind of balance I look for in my life. There’s always someone else to talk with, some other conference or “it” even to attend; another great idea to look at investing in. But in the last 6 months or so I’ve really hit a different stride that’s allowed me to both feel more productive and more balanced. Given that every one I know struggles with this I thought it would be worth putting a few ideas down on paper in hopes that others will pile in with what’s worked for them.

Gmail: Gmail is simply fantastic. Sitting here it’s hard to even contemplate the number of years I spent in the purgatory known as Outlook/Exchange. It was a strange purgatory – I didn’t really know I was in it, but at the same time always had an uneasy feeling about it. You’re probably already on Gmail (what hipster tech person isn’t?), but just in case – it’s at the top of my list of things I’ve done in the past year that have really impacted my time. Plus Gmail enables a bunch of other productivity enhancing apps (see immediately below for a few of them).

Unsubscribe.com: If you don’t have Unsubscribe.com run, don’t walk, to get the plug-in. It’s free now, which makes the bar to install it even lower (although as I posted previously, I’d gladly pay for this functionality). The key here is to actually use it. And use it often. I’m absolutely relentless about my use of Unsubscribe. I’ve had the same email address for at least a decade and over the years the newsletters and lists have piled up. At some point I tried to unsubscribe myself from them, but it was impossible to stay on top of. Now with a click of the Unsubcribe.com button they’re gone. I’m not joking when I say that I’ve cut back my email traffic by 150 emails A DAY by my relentless (and continued) use of this tool.

SaneBox: Here’s one you may not of heard of. I understand that messing with people’s email is a recipe for disaster. And everyone has their thing in terms of how they like to have their email sorted. For me that wasn’t any of the other email productivity tools I tried and it definitely wasn’t Priority Inbox from Google. SaneBox uses information in my social graph, contacts, calendar and past email behavior to separate out my email into important (in my inbox), deal with later (send to *another folder* to deal with later, possible spam (anything that’s not caught by Postini) and blog comments (there are some other options as well if you want to mess around with it). What I like most about it is that non-important emails never get into my line of sight. And since I have no email self control this turns out to be pretty important for keeping me from getting distracted. I have one inbox for stuff that I need to deal with right away and another (that I can train by the way) for everything else that I can batch process a few times a day. Slick.

Just say no: Not to be a jerk about it but I say “no” more than ever now. It’s too easy to end up with a full schedule and running from meeting to meeting can make for a very unproductive day (and despite this increase in “no’s” I still have plenty of days where I’m doing just that). But I’m ruthless about saying no to scheduled meetings. Instead, I’m pushing people to Community Hours, which is a great, rapid fire way to meet new people; or I’m calling people; or I’m saying “no”. Meeting time is generally reserved for companies in the Foundry portfolio, companies in which we’re thinking of making an investment and little else. It’s really helped me prioritize what’s most important (which is to say companies in the Foundry portfolio and companies in which we’re thinking of making an investment).

Few scheduled calls: See above for step one of this process. Step two is that I try to stay away from scheduled calls. The more on my set schedule, the less flexibility I have to either work in solid blocks of time or to respond to things that come up during the day. I posted a while ago about my need for a call list app. I found one (CallList), which is a bit kluge but generally does the trick (it’s sole purpose is to manage – both online and in an iPhone app – a list of people that I need to call along with some basic notes and information to give me context). I use this app to effectively manage these call backs. This opens up time on my schedule and also allows me to better make use of down time (for example on my drive to the airport, which if you’ve been to DIA you know is a long one from anywhere one actually might want to live in Colorado).

Batch email: All the research suggests that humans do better when they concentrate on one task for a period of time, rather than jumping from task to task. I’m trying to move my behavior from an interrupt driven mode where I am constantly stopping what I am doing to check in on email, to one where I’m batch processing instead. So I work in blocks of time and try to keep my email in the background except when I’m actually working on email (which is still plenty of my day given how much of my job is done over email).

Get out of the office: I wrote an entire chapter on this in Do More Faster and I’m trying to take my own advice to heart. Maybe it’s Boulder. Or maybe I can get away with it more because I’m a VC. Whatever it its, I’m trying to take more walks, hikes and bike rides in lieu of lunch meetings, “coffee” and meetings where I sit in a conference room. I’m not talking every meeting, but a few times a week where instead of sitting around talking, I’m walking and talking. Not only are the meetings more fun, but I find that I stay much sharper for the rest of the day when I get both some time outside and some basic exercise. Obviously these are to be avoided if you need to whiteboard something out or if you need to dial someone else in, but if you think about it you’ll realize that you have plenty of meetings each week that can happen outside of the four walls of your conference room or office.

Don’t worry about Inbox Zero. I was never a great Inbox Zero guy – I use my inbox to keep emails to deal with later too much to get down to fewer than about 5-10 emails at one time. But it used to stress me out that I always had a few things left to do. No longer. I try to get back to people who email me in a reasonable period of time. And I try to respond to most emails (I’ve given up on “all” emails in that last sentence in the last 6 months as well – some emails just don’t deserve to be responded to…). But I’m a lot less stressed about it and as a result I’m a lot more efficient at getting back to people.

Don’t panic! In this world of social media and always being connected, there’s somehow always the sense that you’re missing out on something. And you know what – that’s right. At this very second you’re missing out on something. It’s probably fun too. And there are lots of other cool people involved. But not you. So don’t worry about it and pay attention to what you’re doing now, vs. what you’re not doing. This goes for missing something in your Facebook feed, letting something pass you by on Twitter, etc. If it’s that important someone will repost or retweet it and you’ll see it. Or maybe not. And the world will go on.

This is one of those topics that could go on forever. These are just a few ideas that have worked for me to lessen the load at “work” and make more time for “life.” I’d love your thoughts as well. (and here I’ve focused on the work side of the equation – there’s another entire post that one could write on the life side)

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.

An outgrowth of The Community Foundation’s EFCO initiative – Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado – Pledge 1% is a movement that’s caught fire among community-minded entrepreneurs around the world, helping startups set aside 1% of equity, 1% of employee time to volunteerism, and 1% of product to benefit their local communities. We’ve seen immense success in our Colorado community that can be traced directly back to EFCO and Pledge 1%…and now we’re seeing the movement spread around the globe through the Pledge 1% initiative.If you think about any great startup, they tend to share certain common traits. In particular, once they figure out the formula for success, it’s natural to want to scale that as far and as wide as possible. We’re doing that with Pledge 1%. After a fantastic startup year where we were housed within The Community Foundation, it’s time to spin off Pledge 1% so it can truly scale globally. To accomplish this, we’ve chosen Tides to house the organization and to ensure its continued global growth – even as EFCO continues to operate under the umbrella of The Community Foundation, working as the entry point for Colorado companies inspired to join the movement.

EFCO is tightly connected to The Community Foundation, and I’ve seen firsthand the foundation’s crucial role in providing the foresight, expertise and resources needed to test the premise and scalability of the EFCO model. I’m both impressed and thankful that the foundation recognized the broader potential of EFCO, and galvanized around it alongside some big players – including the Salesforce Foundation, Atlassian, and Rally for Impact.

The Community Foundation provides the kind of nurturing that’s needed to launch and grow innovative ideas – in this case, EFCO’s paving the way for startup companies to give back to their communities has ignited action worldwide. For entrepreneurs passionate about giving back to the communities in which they build their businesses, the potential is endless.

Case in point: via EFCO, the Foundry Group made a gift of $300,000 to Boulder County nonprofits last summer in response to a 62% funding cut from Foothills United Way. This is just one of a number of gifts that Foundry has channeled through the EFCO program. And this is the kind of impact that drives EFCO members: filling the gaps affecting local nonprofits, helping individuals and families who are struggling to make ends meet, and strengthening the very communities that have contributed to our own success. All told, since its founding eight years ago, EFCO – more than 100 members strong – has generated more than $4M for local nonprofits.

It starts with being community-minded, and The Community Foundation has long fostered the notion of giving locally. The success of EFCO and rapid spread of Pledge 1% bear witness to the fact that we can accomplish more together than we do alone – right here at home, and in “local” communities around the world. I invite you to learn more at www.efcolorado.org and www.pledge1percent.org. Join the movement and make an impact!