Openness
We were talking today at our regular Monday partner lunch about accessibility and openness. At Foundry we strive to be transparent and available – from our various blogs (the Foundry blog; plus each of our personal blogs - Jason, Ryan, Brad as well as this one) to direct email addresses on our website. While in many ways venture capital has been somewhat of a mystery to most people, we’re hoping to provide a little transparency into our daily lives, into the mechanisms we use to evaluate companies and into how VCs think about investing in and growing companies. …
January 27, 2009· 1 min read
Why you should get stuck on "Glue"
At Foundry, we’re trying not just to respond to the conversation, or even to simply be a part of it. We’re looking to help form and shape the conversation around technology areas that we care deeply about. Maybe this sounds cheesy, but it’s absolutely true. My partners and I are technology geeks first and foremost. To that end we’ve been lucky enough to team up with Eric Norlin to work on a few conferences that bring together thought leaders in the technology industry. I’ve written about Defrag several times – a conference that we’ve helped Eric create here in Denver in the past two years that has focused on leveraging technology to better organize, interpret and consume disparate information (thus the name “Defrag”). …
January 14, 2009· 2 min read
start your business now!
While the financial world may seeming to be coming to its end and everyone’s natural instinct may be to baton down the hatches and not do anything to rock the boat too much, I think that now is actually a great time to start a business. Our own experience suggests that many great companies start their lives in down markets and this view informs our belief that as early stage investors we should remain consistent in our investment pace in both good markets and in bad. …
January 9, 2009· 2 min read
AdBurner, FirstDocs and our 2008 investments
First off, happy 2009 to you all! I’m looking forward to a little more frequent blogging this year (if not exactly a resolution for 2009 since I think those are a bit cheesy, at least a goal for the year). A few items of note to start off the blogging year: Today NewsGator, AdMeld, Technorati, Gigya, Medialets and Tremor Media announced AdBurner – a partnership that is designed to optimize the management and monitization of network traffic for large publishers. NewsGator is providing the distribution platform through their widget network and existing publisher relationships and the remaining companies are the key partners for monitizing that traffic – whether that traffic is a diverse media type, on a mobile platform, etc. With NewsGator, AdMeld and Technorati all in the portfolio (NewsGator and Technorati are Mobius portfolio companies, AdMeld is a Foundry Group investment) I’ve been close to the formation of this partnership. There’s clearly a market need here and the companies involved are all clearly top of class – they together have really created a compelling product. …
January 6, 2009· 2 min read
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas – New School Investor Style
Forwarded from my partner Chris Wand. An Investor’s Rendition of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (by Travis Cocke) ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the land Not a banker was lending, not even “Gold-Man” Foreclosures were hung by the courthouse with care In hopes that Hank Paulson soon would be there. The Bankers were nestled all snug in their beds While visions of bonuses danced in their heads. And my teachers in their offices and me in my room Had just settled an argument about the depth of the gloom …
December 18, 2008· 3 min read
meeting overload
The last couple of months have been tuff ones for me. I’ve felt constantly behind (thus the lack of blogging consistency) and most days consisted of running from one meeting to the next (typically 10 minutes behind). This has contributed to my feeling both burned out and feeling that I was letting too many things fall through the cracks. This was evidenced by 1) my inbox growing most days, not shrinking; 2) waking up at 5am to try to work on #1; 3) an over-reliance on multitasking (walking to a meeting, on the phone while responding to email); 4) my wife never being able to reach me during the day; and 5) generally feeling stressed and off-balance. …
December 16, 2008· 3 min read
off-grid
I just returned from a full weeks vacation “off-grid”, by which I mean that I neither checked voicemail or email, took any work related calls, etc. I was reachable, but made it pretty clear that this was for emergencies only. No nightly checks of my email, no popping upstairs for a quick conference call, no calling into the office “just to check in”. Having zero willpower when it comes to this sort of thing I aided my quest to be off-line by leaving the laptop at home and turning off the data feed to my cell phone (I couldn’t imagine resisting the temptation of taking a peek at the hundreds of emails that were piling up if I saw them sitting in my phone cue). Without these interruptions I let my mind run where it wanted to, quickly forgot about the 50 “urgent” things waiting for me upon my return and focused on relaxing and having fun with my family. …
December 3, 2008· 2 min read
Management
It’s a VC cliche that great management trumps a great idea. In this case there’s a lot of truth to the cliche. Over the course of my venture career I’ve been exposed to all combinations of teams and ideas and am constantly reminded of not only the power of great teams, but also of the pitfalls of poor ones. We’ve thought about this a lot at Foundry and have pushed each other hard on investing only in people we’re ecstatic about as entrepreneurs (and resisting the temptation to “fix” management teams that are not A+ or fool ourselves into believing that an outstanding idea is more important than the people who implement it). This last point is often missed on our industry – I think there’s an incorrect belief that a mediocre team can push their way through a great idea. While certainly there are cases where a company manages to a great outcome with a sub-par team, my own experience has been unequivocal. While I’ve had a handful of cases where – with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight – the idea we were pursuing was only fair but where a fantastic management team has managed to guide a company to a good outcome, I’ve had almost no cases where we’ve placed a company in the hands of sub-par managers and reached a happy ending (as I mention above there are some edge cases where mediocre teams manage to a happy place, but to me these are just lucky exceptions). …
November 11, 2008· 2 min read
Killer UI
One of the companies I work with is in need of some first class UI help. Ideally we’d like someone who has a great design aesthetic and who also can code that design in Ruby or PHP. However for the moment we can use someone with the former talent (who can wire frame up their work which we can then get coded) since we’re looking to get our basic prototype up and running. The company is based on Boulder, but the designer doesn’t necessarily have to be local. Email me directly if you’re interested (or know someone who is).
November 11, 2008· 1 min read
Generations
For me the greatest impact of Barak Obama’s historic victory yesterday is the generational shift that it enables. I’m not talking about his generation, although there’s clearly a passing of the baton from the 60’s generation (people born in the 40’s) to the 80’s generation (people born in the 60’s). I’m talking about his kids (and your kids and my kids) generation. About the millions of children who woke up this morning with real possibility – with the realization that there are truly no limitations on their ambitions. …
November 5, 2008· 1 min read