TechStars Seattle will be in Vancouver B.C. this week from May 1-2. They are co-hosting a happy hour with Vancouver Pixel Crafters: Startup Drinks Vancouver, and holding office hours at the Full Stack offices on May 2. Email Linsey Battan...

Program Managers, Linsey Battan (TechStars Seattle) and Maris McEdward (Microsoft Accelerator) are making a trip down to Portland this weekend to meet with Portland entrepreneurs. They are hosting a happy hour on Friday April 26, at 6pm at the Nike...

For those of you who haven't already caught wind about Code Fellows I wanted to post a quick update about what has been going on with the company. The inaugural Rails class is complete! You can read more about the...

We are very excited about being a community sponsor of Seattle Tech Meetup! The mission of Seattle Tech Meetup is to be the key monthly Seattle tech event to attend to have fun and connect into our big and small...

After taking a year off, I've started attending weekly open coffee at Louisa's Cafe again. I missed the ritual and the pleasure of sharing coffee with other entrepreneurs.... What is open coffee? Every week entrepreneurs and investors meet to chat...

It?s that time of year again! I?m thrilled to announce that we have opened applications for our 4th TechStars program here in Seattle! 2012 was a great success for the entrepreneurs and the entire Seattle community and we?re really excited...

The Microsoft Accelerator for Azure kicked off yesterday! I had my first round of office hours with the founders and I have to say this is a super solid class, really excited for the next 3 months. If you haven't...

This is really a personal list of my top mistakes. And unfortunately, it's all too easy of a post to write! My mistakes in order of importance are: Uninteresting titles - Hands down this is one of my more common...

I met with a Seattle native who has recently been accepted to TechStars NY. He was asking what he should do to take advantage of the experience. This particular entrepreneur was very clear about his product direction. I told him...

I recently had coffee with an entrepreneur whose first company did not succeed. He was a bit down in the dumps...understandably. My advice to him was as follows: Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on. And do it...

I've long been interested in schwag. Below are three photos of schwag from a recent event I went to. Uniqueness and food are the winners when it comes to schwag. I'd choose the ping pong balls but you got hand...

The work that Hadi and Ali are doing at Code.org is amazing. The wrote to me today and said" It?s been an exhilarating ride since Code.org launched two weeks ago: Our video reached #1 on YouTube! 12mm views on YouTube...

This Pepsi ad video of Jeff Gordon duping a car salesman had me in hysterics this morning! Totally worth watching http://bit.ly/Wldx4a

You can't walk anywhere in the neighborhood without seeing one of these cars2go. They started appearing about 90 days ago and now they're on almost every block. I'm told that the company is funded by Mercedes and that users can...

We are very excited about being a community sponsor of Seattle Tech Meetup! The mission of Seattle Tech Meetup is to be a monthly event for Seattle that will be known as the key event to attend to have fun...

I've been having having breakfast with Aaron Bird, CEO of Bizible pretty regularly since TechStars. His company raised 1.7MM in capital in November 2012. The company has historically been focused on he calls, "closed loop marketing" for the SMB marketplace....

Did you know -- Apple has single handedly become the largest manufacturer of cameras in the world. The camera in the iPhone and the iPad is (more than) sufficient for most consumer uses of camera and video. Apple didn't set...

I just read about Rob Glazer's father passing away on Facebook. In his Facebook post, he posted a link to this article about the top 5 regrets of the dieing. I think I've posted the link before -- I love...

I had coffee with a friend. It's a trueism. We've all got issues. Best to get a grip on your own before you starting pointing the finger at everyone else. As I've grown into my 40's, I am increasingly aware...

I received a call on Friday from an entrepreneur I've known for a 7 years. He's a few years younger than me and has a company backed by venture capitalists. He's raised approximately 6MM dollars and has been trying to...

Well, it's really just a "hack things" meetup sponsored and organized by one of the great entrepreneurs in Seattle and better human beings :-) Joe Heitzeberg. It's a meetup of Hacker + Startup friends: if you're interested in how connected...

Every year -- except for last year -- for the last 10 years, I've been going skiing with a group of guys from college. This weekend has become one that I look forward to each year -- there's something very...

It's been a whirlwind 2 weeks since the first public launch of Code Fellows on Jan 2, 2013. Last night, we had a great job learning event called "How to get an awesome job at a Seattle startup?" -- the...

This statement doesn't apply to life and interactions with the opposite sex. But I've been pitched two pretty boring ideas by really good entrepreneurs and I thougth that both businesses had the potential of being pretty sexy and attractive. The...

It's interesting. I tell people that I'm happy to put 2012 in the history books. This is my way of stating that I'm happy to be done with having cancer and relieved to return to health. And that's true. I...

I invited the past 3 classes of TechStars Seattle alumni out for cocktails to celebrate the new year tonight. We all went out and had drinks and some appetizers. It was really fun. We had a great turnout. Lots of...

Well -- that seems to be a great question that lots of people are asking and no one has a great answer to....And while I'm not sure if I have a great answer either. I'm pretty excited about the answer...

Each TechStars company now gets $118,000! Every TechStars company now receives an automatic offer of $100,000 convertible note in addition to the traditional $18,000 investment. There was a lot of buzz about the Star Power Fund when it was announced...

It's hard to explain exactly how I am doing. Physically -- post surgery I feel fine. I'm walking about and should be back to normal in a day or two. However, every creek in my body now gets associated for...

This is the post I wrote at the time -- February 7, 2010 I was diagnosed with cancer on Tuesday. Events have been like a slow motion movie on one hand and like a speeding train on the other. I...

I'm speaking on a panel next week as part of the MIT Enterprise forum here in Seattle. The topice of the talk is Venture Funding - It's a New Game. The game has for sure changed, and I think the...

There are 5 fintech companies that I've been paying attention to as I try to figure out the model for Lighter Capital -- actually -- there's many more than that...but for the purpose of this blog post, let's focus on:...

My career as an entrepreneur and as a seed stage equity investor has me look at a company and a team and think about what could go right. It has me dream the possible. While working on refining the boundaries...

One of the topics that is top of mind for me at Lighter Capital is where and how are we going to get customers familiar with revenue based finance broadly and our RevenueLoan product specifically. Once entrepreneurs and small business...

Phew, in case you didn't hear - TechStars demo day happened last week which was both an awesome event with a lot of great people and another great moment for Seattle startups. For me personally, it marks the end of...

TechStars is all about the community. Community-driven, community-supported. So, for the first time ever in Seattle, I'm excited to open a Community Section* at TechStars Demo Day! Come join us November 3rd, 2 - 4:30pm at the Showbox Sodo. The...

Financing is top of mind here at the TechStars offices. Not surprising...10 of 10 teams are raising capital. I'm happy that most of the companies already have commitments and are actively looking for angels/vcs to close out their round. At...

Seattle is brewing. Killer, world class Startups, born and bred in the Pacific Northwest. And im telling you, it's only going to get better. TechStars and Seattle Interactive Conference are on a mission to invigorate the Seattle ecosystem and showcase...

I?ve been joking with the BigDoor folks for a while now about how quiet it is in their new office space. I often come down on Friday afternoons and everyone?s working, heads down?.it?s as quiet as a college library. The...

It's no secret that I'm a bit of a poker fan. I run a regular game and the odd "pickup" game has been know to spontaneously erupt around the TS/FC offices with some regularity. There's lots of reasons for that....

1. Who?s in TechStars Seattle? Usually we test your patience and make you wait for Demo Day (November 3rd), but here?s a sneak peek at some of the companies and what they?re up to? Beamit Mobile - Most convenient and...

Response on Lighter Capital?s ?explosive? promotion has been somewhere between ?that?s totally awesome? and ?that?s totally crazy? ? which is exactly what I had wanted. I want to give some insight to how we came onto this idea, and why...

Somewhat inspired by Rand's SEO talk on Wednesday - I checked out the google analytics on asack.typepad.com (i'm thinking of moving to a wordpress blog, but want to keep linkjuice, ANY ADVICE?) and was shocked to discover that I'm getting...

This has been a crazy week for me - Lighter Capital launched our new site and our explosive capital countdown and Techstars kicked off our second Seattle program. Rand Fishkin from seoMoz gave an awesome talk to the Techstars group...

... and Lighter Capital's new funding promotion. Today Lighter Capital announced that in sync with our new site launch and rebranding, we're starting a countdown until the end of August and we're going to fund at least one EXPLOSIVE company...

We have a new site up at LighterCapital.com, and I think it's a night and day difference. The team's been absolutely incredible getting this up and running, and I'm really excited to have a new look to show to the...

We at Lighter Capital are using technology to disrupt small business lending - I was reminded how ripe banks are for disruption after spending 20+ minutes trying to use our own bank's website to transfer funds to a company we're...