How to get your company into VCIR
Todd Vernon approached me last week to tell me that his perception – and that of a number of people in the Denver/Boulder community – was that the VCIR company selection process was a complete black box. This was eye opening to me (being involved in the process for years, I thought we had done an ok job letting people know how things work) and as I thought about it I realized that we really haven’t talked a lot about how we find companies for the conference and what the vetting process looks like. …
February 27, 2009· 1 min read
Start your business now! (revisited)
I wrote a post a few weeks ago listing out the reasons that right now is a great time to start a business. A few days ago TechCrunch came out with their TechCrunch 2008 Year in Review (their first paid report). The post that summarized the report had a preview of some of the data they write about and included the following graph that does a great job of showing why the current market can work in your favor. Have at it! …
February 23, 2009· 1 min read
What vs. how
The distinction of “what” a company does vs. “how” it does it has come up recently in a bunch of different contexts and it got me thinking about this idea as a useful distinction for companies to consider as they talk with customers, partners, media, etc. The idea stems from a tendency that companies have to focus not on what they do, but on how they’re doing it. In my experience this tendency is particularly true of technology companies and very prevalent in early stage companies – who in both cases are often heavily weighted towards technologists in their staffing (and therefore thinking). It’s easy to understand how companies fall into this trap. They’ve developed a new bright shiny object (their product, web service, widget, whatever) and are enamored with how they were able to make it work. Rather than simplifying their description of what their BSO does, they talk a lot about how they were able to make it so bright and shiny (after all they’re proud of the fact that they figured out a new way of doing something). That’s great if you’re showing off to other technologists (at least ones you don’t mind sharing your secret sauce with) but can be confusing (and counter-productive) when talking with customers and partners. …
February 23, 2009· 2 min read
Glue just keeps getting better
In case you still haven’t signed up for Glue (see my compelling post on why you should be coming here) let me give you two more reasons: Josh Elman and Bob Frankston. Josh is the “platform guy” at Facebook (and is helping push a greater degree of openness at FB) and Bob is the co-creator of VisiCalc (and will be talking about how he’s thinking about the web as a platform). Both have signed up to give keynotes at the conference (along with David Heinemeier Hanson and Mitch Kapor both of whom I wrote about in my previous post about the conference). …
February 18, 2009· 1 min read
WSJ Venture Capital Blog
I’ve been enjoying Scott Austin’s Venture Capital Dispatch. It’s a great source of information, easy to read and is a great summary of information for those of us who don’t have time to read the Journal every day. Thought it was worth a pointer.
February 18, 2009· 1 min read
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. …
February 17, 2009· 2 min read
Seattle Techstars meetup
My partner Chris Wand and I will be in Seattle tomorrow and are hosting a meetup about Techstars (in case anyone missed the event a few weeks ago that Brad held there). Info can be found at www.techstars.org/meetups.
February 3, 2009· 1 min read
VCIR Featured on Rocky Radar
[cross-post from the VCIR Winter blog] There’s a nice article up on Rocky Radar that highlights VCIR Winter. One of my favorite excerpts is below. Venture Capital in the Rockies was designed by the organizers to cater to a diverse audience. For CEOs, there is plentiful networking time and a chance to experience novel technologies. For venture capitalists there is an occasion to catch up with colleagues and “see some opportunities not on the radar screen of Sand Hill Road.” And for the entrepreneurs there are the eyeballs of over a hundred investors in attendance, as well as the chance to mingle with other companies and service providers. …
February 3, 2009· 1 min read
VCIR Blog
Some of you know that I’m chairing the annual Venture Capital in the Rockies conference this year (now called VCIR Winter). VCIR is put on annually by the Rocky Mountain Venture Capital Association and brings together a national group of venture capitalists for presentations by 22 rocky mountain companies that are currently seeking capital. This year’s conference will be held March 3rd through 5th up at the Hyatt in Beaver Creek (hey – we play to our strengths and the skiing up there is fantastic!). …
February 1, 2009· 1 min read
hiring as a core competency
Most startups spend plenty of time working on things like their product plans, requirements docs, market studies and the like. They are important aspects of running their companies and the kind of things that improve with collaboration and varied input from as well as from the iterative and inclusive process they typically require. You’d expect to find documents related to these sorts of activities on an intranet or company wiki and you’d expect that they’d be included in the occasional board package and discussed with advisors. …
January 29, 2009· 4 min read