I recently wrote the Foreword for Unshackled, a new book co-authored by Soundarya Basubramani, a writer from India, and Sameer Khedekar, a veteran immigration lawyer. Unshackled breaks down how legal immigration works in America in a way that is friendly, accessible, and human. Its filled with raw stories of high-skilled immigrants who walked uncon...

Alan Arkin is one of my favorite actors. I just saw a note that he passed away yesterday. I expect I'll look like him when I lose my hair since he looks like my dad. And every time I see Alan Arkin, I think of my dad. If you see me driving my Jeep around […] The post RIP Alan Arkin appeared first on Brad Feld.

The Venture Deals course is free and starts on June 20, 2023. This is the fourth time we are running the new version of the course (v2!) that was co-created with Techstars and Kauffman Fellows. If interested, sign up now. I hope to see you in one of the AMAs we will host for anyone who takes the […] The post Venture Deals Summe...

John McPhee's Levels of the Game was published when I was three. I've read many books about tennis, but it's still my favorite, with String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis coming in a close second. Both books share extraordinary writers and a topic I can relate to, given my short but profane junior tennis […] The post Book: Draft No. 4...

I got an email from Matt Blumberg this morning with the above image that said, "We have been blogging for 19 years. I can remember sitting together above Super Liquor futzing with Typepad like it was yesterday." "Super Liquor" is Superior Liquor in Superior, Colorado, which was on the first floor of the building off […] The post 19 Years Ago ...

Startup Snapshot, a data-sharing platform for the entrepreneurial ecosystem, recently released its latest report, The Untold Toll: The Impact of stress on the well-being of startup founders and CEOs. Clearly, the emotional state of founders and entrepreneurs in any period, especially now in this economic environment, is a critical driver of success...

I'm not a sports fan, but wow, this is good. The post It's Not A Failure – It's Steps to Success appeared first on Brad Feld.

Chris Heivly released Build the Fort: The Startup Community Builders Field Guide. I encourage you to get Chris's book if you are a startup community builder or are interested in startup communities. When Ian Hathaway and I started working on The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem, we initially talked to Chris about writing...

After my post about the Founder Mental Health Pledge, I received a note from Kari Palazzari, the Executive Director of Studio Arts Boulder, a local nonprofit that manages a community pottery studio. She lamented that very few members of the Boulder startup community seem to take advantage of their programs. She said, Studio Arts Boulder […] T...

Last week I met a holographic lifeform who calls himself Uncle Rabbit. I now have a new friend, created by Looking Glass, the hologram company out of Brooklyn (were investors, and Im on the board). A hologram + ChatGPT. A robot, but made of software and light instead of atoms. And with a lot more […] The post Do AI Rabbits Dream of Holographi...

If AI's current excitement and hype interests you, I encourage you to join the Rocky Mountain Artificial Intelligence Interest Group (RMAIIG). The monthly Meetup will follow the fascinating and rapidly evolving world of generative AI tools. The RMAIIG community is focused on exploring and discussing the latest developments in AI, particularly tools...

Paul Kedrosky and Eric Norlin of SK Ventures wrote an interesting and important essay titled Society's Technical Debt and Software's Gutenberg Moment. The abstract follows. I encourage you to read the full essay. There is immense hyperbole about recent developments in artificial intelligence, especially Large Language Models like ChatGPT. And there...

On Tuesday, David Cohen (Techstars co-founder/chair) and I did an AMA for Techstars founders about the SVB crisis. The team at Techstars turned it into a podcast for our Give First series. The teaser from the podcast follows: The fall of SVB will go down in history as one of those where were you when […] The post Leading Through Crisis: 96 ho...

Since the middle of last week, there has been extreme stress on founders, startup leaders, and the extended startup community. This stress accelerated on Friday when the FDIC shut down and took over Silicon Valley Bank. By late Friday, anyone who banked with SVB was concerned about well everything. Once it became clear […] The post Founder ...

Research shows that more diverse teams perform better and are more innovative than homogeneous teams. Ive written about this before, and its covered extensively in my book Startup Boards: A Field Guide to Building and Leading an Effective Board of Directors. Weve made this an operating principle at Foundry. We encourage all our portfolio companies ...

Today is International Women's Day. Imagine a gender equal world. A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that's diverse, equitable, and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated. Together we can forge women's equality. Collectively we can all#EmbraceEquity. I've been fortunate to have many incredible women...

GlueCon will occur for the thirteenth time, on May 24th-25th, in Broomfield, Colorado. My Foundry partners and I helped Kim and Eric Norlin create Gluecon in 2009 because we saw the need for a developer-focused event to explore emerging technologies around the cloud and APIs.  The first year that GlueCon occurred, it seemed like near...

There have been many different language translations of Venture Deals since it was first published in 2012. The first German translation of Venture Deals 4e is out, and Florian Kreis did an amazing job. Florian aimed to modify the book as little as possible, even if the relevant passages did not correspond 100% to German […] The post Venture ...

The course is free and starts on March 21, 2022. This is the third time we are running the new version of the course (v2!) that was co-created withTechstarsandKauffman Fellows. If interested, sign up now. I hope to see you there in one of the AMAs we will host for anyone who takes the course. The post Venture Deals Spring 2023 Course appeared first...

Amy and I have been sponsors of the Boulder International Film Festival for a while. We've also been helping fund documentaries and have received several executive producer credits. Two of these films are in the 2023 Boulder International Film Festival on March 2 – 5, 2023. Afghan Dreamers is the story of an all-girls robotics […] The p...

I've co-founded or been an early investor in many things. One of my favorites is the MIT Banana Lounge. I will be hanging out there Tuesday afternoon and doing an AMA from 2pm to 4pm. It began with an email from Zoe Sheill. I met Zoe at PSL when she was an intern the summer […] The post The MIT Banana Lounge appeared first on Brad Feld.

Dave Jilk and I had a long discussion last night, which included some rambling about AI. If you have been following me for a while, you know that in 2010 I stated that the machines have already taken over for us and are patiently waiting for us to feed all human knowledge into them. This […] The post AI and the HyperEncabulator appeared first...

Some day there will be a genre called "startup fiction." I mean, if science fiction, which is a sub-genre of fiction, can have libertarian science fiction and recursive science fiction, surely startup fiction belongs in a sub-genre of a sub-genre of a sub-genre. Please Report Your Bug Here by Josh Reidel is an excellent example […] The post B...

I usually do a few interviews (podcasts?) at the beginning of the year. I avoid all of the end of the prior year "what do you predict for next year" stuff and find that several long-form interviews at the beginning of the year allow me to get out of my head what's going on from […] The post Interviews about Dealing with 2023 appeared first on...

I read two books by Ted Conover over the weekend. Amy gave me the first one as a present. A few years ago, we bought a bunch of land about an hour's drive away from Aspen. I've been spending a lot more time in the middle of nowhere Colorado, especially now that I have a […] The post Book: Ted Conover's Colorado appeared first on Brad Feld....

At the end of 2022, some people started shouting that Crypto was a Ponzi Scheme following earlier declarations by Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Charlie Munger. Others, especially those in the crypto industry, were saying some version of "Well, FTX Might Looking Like a Ponzi Scheme, But Crypto is Legit and Isn't a Ponzi Scheme." […] The post...

When I was in college in the 1980s, David Byrne and the Talking Heads were in regular rotation in my room along with Pink Floyd, except for the one semester where the only thing I listed to was Dark Side of the Moon (ah – the joy of discovering repeat on an early CD player.) […] The post Same As It Ever Was appeared first on Brad Feld.

For those of you older than 40, it sort of felt like 2000. If you are younger than 40, a massive tech bubble just burst. I expect you know that. For the past six months, many VCs have been podcasting, tweeting, publicly writing, … and generally prognosticating about what you should do and what's going […] The post What Just Happened app...

I'm a fan of David Walton and his near-term sci-fi books. In 2015, I read a few of his books, wrote a post titled Awesome Near Term Sci-Fi David Walton, and promptly forgot about him. Eleven days ago, I got the following email from David. Mr. Feld: Since you've enjoyed my books in the […] The post Book: Three Laws Lethal appeared first on Br...

I made my move at mile 22. I'd been trailing my nemesis for a dozen miles. The half-mile cutoff was 2:50, and I rolled through at 2:43, so I had plenty of room to spare, although, by this point, I'd given up on my goal of 5:30. My nemesis was wearing a red shirt. I […] The post NH Marathon (#26): The Ferocious Battle for Not Last Place appear...

Since Matt Levine is so effectively covering anything interesting in the world of the Twitter deal (and all kinds of bizarre, random, and complicated crypto, fraud, debt, and other financial stuff), I think I'll stick with book reviews for the time being. Andy Dunn, who I only know indirectly, wrote an important book titled Burn […] The post ...

Steve Case's new book, The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream, is out. I read it on Sunday, and it is outstanding. If you are interested in understanding how high-tech entrepreneurship has evolved from a primarily coastal phenomenon to one that covers the entire US in […] The post Book...

David Cohen and I have co-hosted the Give First podcast for 71 episodes. I think our host ratio is 80/20 David/Brad, and he's covered everything in 2021 because I was burned out on all things public-facing and needed a break. He figured a good way to get me back in the mix would be to […] The post Talking About Entrepreneurship and Mental Hea...

I got the following email from Barry Schuler this morning. We've known each other for many years, and he's one of my favorite VCs to work with. He described exactly how I feel this morning. The fall is my favorite season of the year. By labor day, I'm ready for summer to end. The stretch […] The post Back to School appeared first on Brad Feld...

There have been many different approaches to ranking VC Firms over the years I've been an entrepreneur and a VC. Each approach I've seen has issues. Most are easily gamed or have statistical bias issues. I got the following note from Roy Bahat at Bloomberg Beta a while ago about a new approach called Founder's […] The post Founder's Choice VC...

Registration for the Venture Deals Fall 2022 course is open. The course is free and starts on September 20, 2022. This is the second time we are running the new version of the course (v2!) that was co-created with Techstars and Kauffman Fellows. If interested, sign up now. I hope to see you there in […] The post Venture Deals Fall 2022 appear...

Registration is open for the 2022 Q4 Leadership Bootcamp, which is happening in Boulder, Colorado, on Nov 10-13, 2022. Regular readers of this blog know about my long-time (back to 1996) friendship with Reboot co-founder and CEO Jerry Colonna. What you may not know is that several years ago, Jerry and his partner Ali Schultz […] The post Rebo...

Of all the business and technology writers out there, including bloggers, I think the best one, at this moment, is Matt Levine. He's the only person currently writing on Planet Earth that I find myself reading every word of everything he writes. For the last few months, he has been mostly writing about three topics: […] The post The Brillianc...

In the last seven months, the venture / entrepreneurial world has gone from "the only thing that matters is massive growth" to "the world is going to end." For perspective, all you need to do is look at a dozen high-flying IPOs from 2020 or 2021 to see that the peak happened just before Thanksgiving. […] The post Navigating Choppy Waters appe...

My partner Ryan shared this with me. It's a 10-minute video showing the evolution from System 0.97 to macOS 13 Ventura. I had an original Macintosh 128K which is now enjoying its retirement at the Media Archaeology Lab. Enjoy! The post The Evolution of Apple macOS appeared first on Brad Feld.

The 2nd Edition of my book Startup Boards: A Field Guide to Building and Leading an Effective Board of Directors launched today. My co-authors, Matt Blumberg, the CEO of Bolster, and Mahendra Ramsinghani, were a joy to work with. While the 1st Edition was a good book, I wasn't particularly proud of it because I […] The post Book: Startup Boar...

Connie Loizos is one of the long-time tech industry writers who I respect. I don't respond to many interview requests these days, but I'll always talk to her. She has a good article todayin TechCrunch titledEmbrace the down round (it's going to be okay, maybe). I like the quote she pulled out of me in […] The post Down Rounds: Deal With Reali...

About a year ago, I decided to take a summer vacation from blogging. I didn't feel like blogging when summer ended, so I extended my blogging vacation indefinitely. I figured I'd wake up one day and feel like blogging again or not. That summer vacation (from blogging) lasted a year. Initially, I was working on […] The post Summer Is Here appe...

This blog has decided to take a summer vacation. I've been blogging regularly since 2005 (typical 15 – 20 posts a month.) I'm going to take a break for a while. Now that The Entrepreneur's Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors is out, I've started working on my next book. I'm trying some different stuff […] The post Summer Vacation ap...

Since releasing my newest book The Entrepreneur's Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors I've been continually getting the questions "Why Philosophy and Entrepreneurship?" and "Why Nietzsche?" Dave and I cover this right off the bat in the book, so I thought I'd toss up an excerpt that addresses the question with part of my own […] The post ...

Matt Blumberg has a new book out titled Startup CXO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Company's Critical Functions and Teams. It's a follow-up to his previous book, Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business. I've been working with Matt since 2000. That year, we merged two companies: Return Path and […] The post Startup CXO: A Fie...

I reread Enough.: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life by John C. Bogle over the weekend. I'd read it in 2012 and it had a huge impact on me. If you aren't familiar with John C. Bogle, he founded The Vanguard Group, is credited with inventing the index fund and is a spectacular writer […] The post Investment vs. Speculation appeared fir...

Last week I was scheduled to do a live interview with Eliot Peper about The Entrepreneurs Weekly Nietzsche. He opted to use Twitter Spaces and diligently tested it out a couple of days beforehand to confirm that it would work. Nevertheless, we immediately ran into difficulties, and after ten minutes, we decided to bail on […] The post Twitter...

CU'sSilicon Flatirons Center Startup Summeris back! Startup Summer provides a fantastic experience for college-age students and interns interested in entrepreneurship and the Front Range emerging company scene. Startup Summer is a free offering that enhances your companys internship program. Your company hires and pays your intern(s). You can hire ...