Brad Feld
I'm one of the managing directors at Foundry Group, a venture capital firm that invests in early stage software / Internet companies throughout the United States. I'm also the co-founder of TechStars, a mentor-driven accelerator.
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Last week, my partners and I in The CISO Group invested as lifetime members in Caffeine Spaces, a new co-working space that opened in the Florida Atlantic University (FAU) R&D Park here in Boca Raton, Florida. Caffeine Spaces is the brainchild of Mark Laymon, who is seeking to build a strong startup community here in South Florida. My friend Brad Feld has spent a good chunk of his time for the last few years advocating for startup communities around the world. His Startup Revolution site is the place to learn about and participate in building startup communities. Brad is the person who started me in blogging 8 or 9 years ago. I have been watching what he has done in Boulder (my previous employer, StillSecure, was based in Boulder and Brad was a board member and Mobius VC was and still is lead investor), with TechStars and with Startup Communities closely for years. I really wanted to see if I could help foster that kind of critical mass of entrepreneurship here in my area.- Like
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Today, the word entrepreneurship is on everyoneâs lips and the idea of creating a start-up community in every city in the world is going mainstream. It used to be thought that start-up communities could exist only in places such as Silicon Valley and Boston, but I have always rejected that notion. Instead, I believe that start-ups can flourish anywhere and that every city needs a start-up community. Every city was once a start-up. Someone moved to a specific place on this planet and decided to start a city. If every city was once a start-up, surely every city can support a vibrant start-up community.I have been involved in starting companies, either as an entrepreneur, angel investor or venture capitalist, since I started my first company in Boston in 1987. When I moved to Boulder in 1995, I did not have any expectation of doing business here, rather I was spending all my time travelling from Boston to New York City to San Francisco and to Seattle where I was investing my own money as an angel investor.
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TeXchange recognized five Dallas-area startups at its May 8 event, which featured startup advocate Brad Feld.- Like
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Brad Feld is a serial entrepreneur, investor and author of Startup Communities. The Dallas native was in town Wednesday as the featured speaker at entrepreneur group TeXchange's signature event, which drew over 200 people. Among the guests were Feld's parents who still live in the area. Feld ...- Like
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A new business can be all consuming with no time for anything else, but it doesn’t have to be like that -
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Halfway through Startup Life, married couple Brad Feld and Amy Batchelor suggest that, “Being in a relationship with an entrepreneur is hard, possibly harder than being an entrepreneur” (p. 78). This hard-learned gem of wisdom is richly conveyed throughout their excellent read. Through their own real-life examples, and those of others, Brad and Amy drive home the message that a founder’s spouse or life partner is the true cofounder, the one without whose support and contributions the startup could be dead or might have never been born to begin with. Startup Life is an invaluable resource not only for showing life partners their likely path ahead, but also for opening the eyes of the founders themselves to the stresses their partners are likely to experience. -
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We had the fantastic opportunity to meet with Brad Feld last Friday in Boulder. The agenda was focused on startup communities and more specifically how we could apply the concepts in his book to the...- Like
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Kansas City Startup Village has been covered by media far and wide, but it has yet to land on a magazine cover. Ben Barreth, creator of the Homes for Hackers program, did just that this week, making it onto the front of Government Technology magazine, a publication focused on information …- Like
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Some entrepreneurs experience at Big Omaha what they once experienced at South by Southwest, an intimate startup conference where lasting deals, partnerships and friendships are made. For founder Silicon Prairie News and the host city, it legitimizes flyover country as a place to build a thriving business.- Like
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It was my first startup. I was 18 and we had just raised our first real financing round – $250,000 from a local angel group. A lot was riding on us, even though the scale seems minuscule in hindsight. We had just upgraded from a basement to an actual office, and we were on top of the world. Numbers were rising and the team was growing, it felt like we were invincible. We were pushing hard, but it didn't feel that way. We were fueled by constant adrenaline from the...
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A U.S. Chamber of Commerce study out this week breaks down what each state in the U.S. is doing to promote small-business growth.- Like
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I have gotten my fill of Brad Feld these days. First I read finished reading his book “Startup Communities” which was excellent. I’d like to see all the great entrepreneurs in New Jersey establish a growing startup community, and am trying to do what I can to lend a hand. I learned a ton of things in the book that I am implementing and thinking about. One of the most striking pieces of advice in the book was the concept of “Give before you Get”.
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Last night Brad Feld presented some ideas from his book Startup Communities at NJ Tech Meetup. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how awesome it was to see one of the most prominent venture capitalists at Stevens Institute of Technology (my alma mater), but I wanted to write a reaction to one of Brad’s answers to an audience question. One of the attendees asked Brad, “In the NJ startup community there are a lot of service providers that attend the events, how can they provide value to the community?” Brad’s answered, “You have to give before you get.” He explained in his own experiences he would give advice and mentorship without any expectation of a return. In the process not only would Brad improve the community by helping others, but also occasionally there would be some return on the help he gave. It was a very aha moment for the audience, and I saw some tweets and comments in the Meetup group about that quote. It came as a surprise to me that the audience found this to be so- Like
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Managing director of the Foundry Group, Brad Feld, speaks at Rokk Miami. More than 300 city leaders, investors and innovators ...- Like
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How do you bring together more than 100 people -- many of them entrepreneurs -- to brainstorm and come up with executable steps to building a startup community? It's OK if the process is a little messy and chaotic, said Brad Feld, who wrote the book on the subject --...- Like
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The five finalists will be announced at The One to Watch event on May 8th from 6:00-8:30PM at The Sixth Floor Museum. The event will feature Brad Feld, managing director of Foundry Group, early-stage investor, entrepreneur and author. The event is open to the public and tickets can be purchased in advance at http://onetowatch.texchange.org/may-event/. The first 150 registrants will receive a complementary copy of Brad's newest book, "Start-up Communities."- Like
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Startup Revolution sticker on a car!
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Startup Tech Guy I assume this isn't your car Brad? Lol that's awesome!
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Brent Weaver How do I get a sticker?
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There has been no shortage of talk both in and out of Los Angeles about the rise of the LA startup ecosystem over the last 12 to 18 months. As someone whoâs been on the ground and deeply embedded i...- Like
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Do you think it;s possible to create start-up communities deliberately? Or do they have to happen organically?- Like
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sandymaxey I'm not certain this is an either/or dynamic. From my experience, every region has some potential, though the contextual dynamics and the process matter, regardless of size. Hence, my applause to your efforts in delineating the key components. I think deliberate creation would have to be lead by entrepreneurs, regardless. An economic development organization deciding to create one would probably not do well. As has happened across a million regions in the past 4yrs. That said, I'm not certain that this happens "organically"- delving below the case study facade, I'm certain you would see the same processes you recommend.
I'm not certain this is anything to worry about, given that only one percent of all econ development dollars goes to entrepreneurial development. Snark
