Podcasts about foundry group

Legendary venture capitalist Brad Feld, co-founder of Foundry Group and Techstars and author of Give First, explains how founders can use resilience, mentorship, long-term thinking, and non-transactional relationships to build stronger startups and startup communities, especially in climate tech and turbulent markets.This podcast was so important when we recorded it last year that I'm republishing it now. Company bio:Foundry Group is a venture capital firm that invests in technology startups and venture funds across the U.S. Techstars is a global startup accelerator and entrepreneurial network built around mentorship, founder development, and the philosophy of “Give First.”Speaker bio:Brad Feld is a legendary venture capitalist, entrepreneur, author, and longtime startup mentor who has spent four decades investing in and advising 4,000+ founders. His book, Give First, explores how non-transactional generosity can strengthen founders, relationships, and startup communities.Seven things entrepreneurs will learn in this episode:Why the best founders treat startup near-death experiences as “type 2 fun” and keep adapting when conditions turn against themWhy “Give First” means helping without negotiating the return upfront, not giving endlessly or ignoring your own needsHow to distinguish mentors, advisors, coaches, and investors, and why confusing those roles creates bad expectationsWhy healthy boundaries make generosity more sustainable for both founders and mentorsHow reputation and relationship capital compound over decades, often producing opportunities you could never have engineered transactionallyWhy failed startups still create valuable learning, talent, and technology that can compound across an entrepreneurial ecosystemWhy climate innovation needs positive-sum founder communities that share knowledge and support each other through shifting markets, politics, and funding cycles--Join our confidential CEO community.Private CEO group for VC/PE-backed climate tech founders navigating capital, strategy, and scale. Capped at 45 CEOs and 45 Mentors (investors and post-exit CEOs), representing $40B in enterprise value or investment capital.→ entrepreneursforimpact.com Join 40,000 professionals who get our free newsletter.Climate tech finance, strategy, leadership. 2-min read.→ entrepreneursforimpact.substack.comLeave a 20-second podcast review.If you found it valuable, be a climate community builder and rate, review, or follow the podcast on Apple and Spotify. It helps push more capital and talent toward scalable climate solutions.

Micah is a VC/PE operations, partnerships, and community consultant who helps build strong startup ecosystems. He has led VC Partnerships at Bolster, Network and Community at Foundry Group, and served as a Techstars Boulder associate. He's passionate about nature, technology, and people.       BECOME AN ULTRA-PERFORMER   Extraordinary success begins with how you think, feel, and act.   In just 5 minutes a day, the Ultra-Performer Accelerator Audio begins rewiring you to see bigger opportunities and take decisive action— to you can grow your business faster, increase profits, and make a bigger impact.     ACCELERATOR AUDIO — Access It Now     Ultra-Performers achieve bigger results, faster.   Whether your next level is $1 million, $10 million, or beyond, the Accelerator Audio is designed to help you think, decide, and operate at a higher level — compressing the time to get there.     ACCELERATOR AUDIO — Access It Now     Join JV Crum III, host of the Conscious Millionaire Show — 2 successful exits, $75+ million in revenue, author, and Ultra-Performance Advisor — every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Micah is a VC/PE operations, partnerships, and community consultant who helps build strong startup ecosystems. He has led VC Partnerships at Bolster, Network and Community at Foundry Group, and served as a Techstars Boulder associate. He's passionate about nature, technology, and people.       BECOME AN ULTRA-PERFORMER   Extraordinary success begins with how you think, feel, and act.   In just 5 minutes a day, the Ultra-Performer Accelerator Audio begins rewiring you to see bigger opportunities and take decisive action— to you can grow your business faster, increase profits, and make a bigger impact.     ACCELERATOR AUDIO — Access It Now     Ultra-Performers achieve bigger results, faster.   Whether your next level is $1 million, $10 million, or beyond, the Accelerator Audio is designed to help you think, decide, and operate at a higher level — compressing the time to get there.     ACCELERATOR AUDIO — Access It Now     Join JV Crum III, host of the Conscious Millionaire Show — 2 successful exits, $75+ million in revenue, author, and Ultra-Performance Advisor — every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

This episode is devoted to one deceptively simple question: How do you stay close to your partner over time through the inevitable exhaustion, misunderstanding, conflict, disappointment, and change?This episode is brought to you by:Eight Sleep Pod Cover 5 with dual-zone temperature control, so each partner sleeps at their perfect temperatureIn this episode: Esther Perel begins with the basics: appreciation, affection, and replacing chronic complaints with clear requests.Brené Brown explains why marriage is never 50/50 and how she and her husband create what Brené calls a “plan of kindness.” Brad Feld describes the monthly “life dinners” that have helped him and his wife review the previous 30 days, talk honestly about the future, and prevent resentments from building upJim Dethmer offers a practical way to distinguish observable facts from the stories we make up about our partners.Sheila Heen explains how humor and genuine curiosity can serve as an interrupt on an argument that is heating up The late Dr. Sue Johnson then walks us through a “Hold Me Tight” conversation—a way of moving beneath anger and defensiveness to the fear, vulnerability, and need for connection underneath.Terry Real then offers a strikingly simple model for repair and introduces the term “normal marital hatred” - as he put it, nobody ever goes up to him and says “What do you mean by that?!”Finally, Diana Chapman describes what it means to let an outdated version of a marriage end so that two people can consciously choose what comes next for their relationship.Timestamps:Intro from Tim: 00:00:00Esther Perel: 00:01:58Brené Brown: 00:08:21Brad Feld: 00:12:02Jim Dethmer: 00:16:51Shelia Heen: 00:23:04Dr. Sue Johnson: 00:29:26Terry Real: 00:40:14Diana Chapman: 00:46:19Short bios:Esther Perel is an internationally renowned psychotherapist, the New York Times bestselling author of Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, and the host of the award-winning podcast Where Should We Begin?Brené Brown is the author of six number-one New York Times bestsellers exploring courage, vulnerability, shame, and resilience; a research professor at the University of Houston; and a professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin.Brad Feld is an early-stage investor and entrepreneur and a co-founder of Foundry Group, Mobius Venture Capital, and Techstars. He writes on entrepreneurship, leadership, mental health, and sustaining a life beyond work.Jim Dethmer is a co-founder of the Conscious Leadership Group and co-author of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, an influential framework for building candid, responsible, high-trust relationships.Sheila Heen is the deputy director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, founder of Triad Consulting Group, and co-author of the New York Times bestsellers Difficult Conversations and Thanks for the Feedback.Dr. Sue Johnson was the pioneering clinical psychologist who created Emotionally Focused Therapy. She was named Psychologist of the Year by the American Psychological Association and appointed to the Order of Canada for her global impact on psychotherapy.Terry Real is an internationally recognized family therapist, a bestselling author, and the creator of Relational Life Therapy. He has spent more than four decades helping couples restore intimacy and connection.Diana Chapman is co-author of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, a cofounder of the Conscious Leadership Group, and founder of the Signal Institute, working with leaders on radical honesty, somatic intelligence, and transformation.*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim's email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim's books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Brad Feld⁠ is a legend in the world of investing, entrepreneurship and mentorship. He is co-founder of the ⁠Foundry Group⁠, Mobius Venture Capital and ⁠Techstars⁠. Brad was an early investor in Harmonix, Zynga, MakerBot, and Fitbit and has written extensively on venture capital investing and entrepreneurship. Brad's latest book, ⁠Give First: The Power of Mentorship⁠, was released earlier this year. Brad joined Robert Glazer on the Elevate Podcast to talk about his approach to giving, leadership and cultivating thriving businesses. Thank you to the sponsors of The Elevate Podcast Shopify: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠shopify.com/elevate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Framer: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠framer.com/elevate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Indeed: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠indeed.com/elevate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ QuickBooks: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠quickbooks.com/billpay⁠ Ethos Life: ⁠ethos.com/elevate⁠ Keeper Security: ⁠keepersecurity.com/ELEVATE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured: Seth Levine of Foundry Eric Byunn of Centana Growth David Ulevitch of Andreessen Horowitz We discuss major conflicts that guests have faced and how they resolved them. The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in founders outside of the Bay Area. We're proud to partner with Ramp, the modern finance automation platform. Book a demo and get $150—no strings attached.   Want to keep up to date with The Full Ratchet? Follow us on social. You can learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our LinkedIn and Twitter.

What role should businesses play in society today?In this episode of the Unlearn Podcast, I sit down with investor, ecosystem builder, and Foundry Group co-founder Seth Levine to explore how capitalism itself may be evolving. Seth's latest book, Capital Evolution, examines a fundamental question: can modern capitalism create broader opportunity, stronger communities, and more inclusive ownership?Our conversation ranges from declining economic mobility and generational uncertainty to the role of values-driven companies and the rise of AI-powered work. We also dive into how leaders can navigate uncertainty—balancing profit, purpose, and technological disruption.Along the way, Seth shares how a single dinner conversation sparked a two-year research journey, interviewing more than 100 leaders, academics, and entrepreneurs to understand where capitalism may be headed next.This conversation also builds on ideas we've explored before on the podcast—particularly with Seth's long-time collaborator Brad Feld. In our earlier discussion on Give First leadership, Brad challenged the idea that success comes from extraction, instead arguing that generosity, long-term thinking, and community building are the real drivers of sustainable impact. Together, these conversations offer a powerful lens on how leadership, capitalism, and value creation are being redefined.If you're thinking about the future of work, leadership in an AI-powered world, or how organizations can create both economic and societal value, this episode will challenge some assumptions.Key TakeawaysCapitalism is already evolving: Many leaders still operate as if we're in a shareholder-first world—but that model has already shifted. Businesses now face growing pressure to balance profit with broader societal impact.Economic mobility is declining: While economies continue to grow in aggregate, fewer people are able to move up financially. This shift is reshaping how younger generations view opportunity and fairness.Values-driven companies are becoming more visible: Organizations like Patagonia, Hobby Lobby, and Chick-fil-A show that companies can operate with clear values. What matters most is transparency—being honest about what the organization stands for.AI is changing how leaders work: Seth describes using AI tools like Claude as an operating system for his daily work—drafting ideas, exploring questions, and accelerating thinking. Leaders who combine human judgment with machine intelligence can dramatically increase their effectiveness.Curiosity and listening are leadership superpowers: One of Seth's biggest lessons from writing the book was the value of listening to perspectives outside his own experience. Engaging with different viewpoints reveals insights leaders often miss.Additional InsightsThe danger of misleading economic averages: Seth describes the “Jeff Bezos walks into a bar” problem—where averages distort reality. Aggregate growth can hide widening inequality and declining mobility.The difference between values and politics in business: Companies should be clear about their values—but that doesn't mean every company needs to take political positions. Transparency builds trust with employees, investors, and customers.Why younger generations feel uncertain: Many are entering a world shaped by rapid technological change, rising costs of living, and shifting job markets. AI both excites and worries people about what work will look like.AI rewards experimentation: The people benefiting most from AI are those who continuously experiment. Treating AI as a collaborator—not just a tool—opens entirely new ways of working.Episode Highlights00:00 – Episode RecapSeth Levine reflects on the changing nature of capitalism and why declining economic mobility, shifting values, and AI-driven disruption are forcing leaders to rethink how businesses create value for society.02:40 – Guest Introduction: Seth LevineBarry introduces Seth Levine, co-founder and partner at Foundry Group, entrepreneur advocate, and author of Capital Evolution, a book exploring how capitalism can evolve to create broader opportunity.05:00 – The Dinner Conversation That Sparked a BookSeth describes the boardroom conversation that sparked the idea behind Capital Evolution—a question about whether investors would accept lower returns in order to live their values.07:53 – Why the Capitalism Debate Is GrowingResearch for the book revealed that roughly half of people under 40 believe capitalism isn't working—prompting a deeper exploration of how the system might evolve.10:33 – Values-Driven Businesses in PracticeExamples like Patagonia and Hobby Lobby show how companies can operate with strong values while still pursuing business success.19:14 – Generational Anxiety About the FutureYounger generations face growing uncertainty about careers, technology disruption, and economic opportunity.23:38 – Learning From Different PerspectivesTravel, conversations, and research helped Seth recognize how limited our understanding can be when we stay within familiar social and professional circles.29:30 – Experimenting With AI at WorkSeth shares how tools like Claude have become part of his daily workflow—helping him explore ideas, draft writing, and accelerate thinking.33:38 – Why AI Feels Exciting AgainAfter decades in venture capital, Levine says experimenting with AI tools has reintroduced a sense of novelty and curiosity into his work.40:51 – The Pattern of Every New TechnologyFrom automobiles to AI, every major technological shift initially sparks fear before becoming normalized.42:07 – A Simple Leadership Habit: Listen MoreSeth encourages leaders to actively seek conversations with people who hold different perspectives—and listen without trying to persuade.45:00 – Closing ReflectionsBarry wraps the conversation, highlighting the importance of curiosity, experimentation, and openness as leaders navigate the evolving relationship between business, society, and technology.FAQsQ1. What is Capital Evolution and why is it important?Capital Evolution describes how capitalism is shifting beyond a shareholder-first model toward creating broader societal value. It's important because businesses are now expected to balance profit with impact, ownership, and community outcomes.Q2. Why is economic mobility declining today?Economic mobility is declining because wealth and opportunity are increasingly concentrated. Even as economies grow overall, fewer people can move up income levels, making it harder for younger generations to improve their financial position.Q3. What role should businesses play in society today?Businesses should generate profit while also contributing to society through clear values, responsible decision-making, and long-term thinking. The most effective companies align economic success with positive societal impact.Q4. How is AI changing leadership and the future of work?AI is transforming leadership by enhancing decision-making and productivity. Leaders who combine human judgment with AI tools can move faster, process more information, and make better strategic decisions.Q5. Why are younger generations questioning capitalism?Younger generations are questioning capitalism due to rising living costs, job uncertainty, and reduced economic mobility. These challenges make traditional systems feel less fair and less effective than in the past.Useful Resources:Seth Levine on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethjlevine/ Foundry Website - https://foundry.vc/ Seth Levine Book: Capital Evolution - https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Evolution-New-American-Economy/dp/1637747780 Unlearn Episode 160 with Brad Feld - https://barryoreilly.com/explore/podcast/give-first-leadership-brad-feld/ Follow the Host:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryoreillyPersonal site: https://barryoreilly.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/barryoreillyauthor/Twitter/X: https://x.com/barryoreillyInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/barryoreilly/

Get 90 Days of Fellow's incredible AI notetaker for free at fellow.ai/cooGuest: Seth LevineBook: Capital EvolutionPodcast: Between Two COOsHost: Michael KoenigWhat we coverWhy Seth wrote Capital Evolution and why nowWhy today's economic shift is structural, not cyclicalHow power has moved from public institutions to businessesWhat companies are being asked to carry that they weren't built forHow AI fits into this broader realignmentEarly signals that companies are adapting well to AIWhat strong executive teams do differently during uncertaintyCommon leadership traps when change happens too fastA real crisis from a portfolio company and what the executive team did wellThe new leadership muscle operators need for the next decadeEpisode Chapters / Timestamps00:00 – Introduction01:40 – Seth's 30-second pitch for Capital Evolution04:05 – Why this shift is structural, not cyclical07:20 – What's broken in the current economic model11:00 – The power shift from government to business15:10 – What leaders are quietly losing18:45 – Where AI fits into this realignment23:30 – What boards see when AI adoption works28:05 – How strong executive teams handle uncertainty33:40 – Leadership traps during rapid change38:10 – A crisis inside a portfolio company44:00 – The new muscle operators must build48:50 – A moment Seth never thought he'd see

Brad Feld is a legend in the world of investing, entrepreneurship and mentorship. He is co-founder of the Foundry Group, Mobius Venture Capital and Techstars. Brad was an early investor in Harmonix, Zynga, MakerBot, and Fitbit and has written extensively on venture capital investing and entrepreneurship. Brad's latest book, Give First: The Power of Mentorship, was released earlier this year. Brad joined Robert Glazer on the Elevate Podcast to talk about his approach to giving, leadership and cultivating thriving businesses. Thank you to the sponsors of The Elevate Podcast Mizzen & Main: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠mizzenandmain.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (Promo Code: elevate20) Shopify: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠shopify.com/elevate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Indeed: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠indeed.com/elevate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Masterclass: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠masterclass.com/elevate⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Northwest Registered Agent: ⁠⁠⁠northwestregisteredagent.com/elevate⁠ Homeserve: ⁠homeserve.com⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  Startups from Funding to Community w/ Daniela Santagelo of Freeway - AZ TRT S06 EP15 (277) 8-17-2025       What We Learned This Week: Freeway - Helping Startups - Talent • Capital • Community Talent Retention & Reinvestment are key to building a Flywheel Phoenix Tech Ecosystem is growing, but not yet mature Always need more VC Funding + Deal Flow Government Partnership as enabler for Tech     Guest: Daniela Santagelo https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielaalpert/ I'm a founder, startup ecosystem builder, and civic innovation partner working at the intersection of tech, talent, and community. Through my work with Freeway Phx, I help cities, startups, and global partners co-create thriving innovation ecosystems, starting in Arizona and building bridges worldwide. I believe that opportunity doesn't just happen. It's designed. That's why I focus on activating communities, cultivating tech talent, and building connective infrastructure that turns vision into velocity. My journey spans founding multiple companies including scaling a venture-backed startup to $33M in funding and helping grow it to a $100M business. I've also spent 15 years in the Moving & Relocation industry, which gave me a unique lens on talent migration patterns and the infrastructure needed to build resilient, people-first startup communities. Like many founders, I've experienced both the highs of scaling and the lows of setback. That reinvention shaped my sharper mission: helping founders grow and give back. ⚡️ I lead Tech Talent Summits that connect employers, educators, and jobseekers

Launching a startup is daunting—especially when you're navigating the journey without guidance or mentorship. Even well-funded ventures struggle, and those that beat the odds are so rare they're dubbed "Unicorns." Our next guest on the Reboot Chronicles Show has helped countless start-ups become successful and redefined what we here at the Reboot Chronicles believe to be key components in rebooting organizations. Brad Feld is a legendary figure in the startup world whose influence runs deep and wide. As co-founder of both the Foundry Group and Techstars, Brad has helped shape the very ecosystem that fuels innovation today. He was an early investor in breakout successes like Zynga and Fitbit, spotting potential long before they became household names. Beyond investing, he's also a prolific author whose books have become essential reading for founders navigating the rocky-road highs and lows of entrepreneurship.Through his success and headline investments, Brad has built a legacy through his philosophy of giving first, radical honesty about mental health, and a pursuit of personal and professional rebooting. Join us for a deep dive into Brad Feld's remarkable journey, as we uncover the stories, insights, and hard-won lessons that can help you—and continue to shape the future of business.

(0:00) Intro(1:36) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel(2:23) Start of interview(3:11) Brad's origin story(4:54) Venture Capital Beginnings(5:39) The Rise of the Internet(8:10) His role in Softbank Technology Ventures and later Mobius Venture Capital. Reference to Heidi Roizen E6, E108 and E116(12:26) Transition to Techstars and Foundry(13:36) Origin and focus of his book Startup Boards. Reference to his blog post: Feld Thoughts. "Boards (and board members) for private companies operate on a bell curve" (some are excellent, some are horrific, and most are average).(15:31) The Evolution of Founder-Friendly Terms(30:06) Effective Board Composition(35:00) Defining a Great Board: the Board as a Team. Reference to Matt Blumberg's Rule of 1s: see E52 (2022)(38:05) "The goal of the board is to get different skill sets around the table" "I think a founder should fight against investors having additional observer seats."(41:13) Why he considers it a red flag when a director claims they're acting out of "fiduciary duty." *Reference to the Startup Litigation Digest(44:50) Governance concerns in the AI Boom(47:37) Books that have greatly influenced his life:Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig (1974)The entire pantheon of Neal Stephenson and William Gibson Science fiction written by female writers (as a category)Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons(50:05) His mentors: Len Fassler and his uncle, Charlie Feld.(51:55) Quotes that he thinks of often or lives his life by: from his Dad: "If you're not standing on the edge, you're taking up too much space.", from Len: "Brad, they can't kill you and they can't eat you. Suit up."(53:00) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that he loves. "I love philanthropically funding bathrooms." Also, the Banana Lounge at MIT.(55:38) The living person he most admires: his wife Amy Batchelor.Brad Feld has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. He co-founded two venture capital firms, Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital, and multiple companies, including Techstars.  You can follow Evan on social media at:X: @evanepsteinLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/__To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/__Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Despite outward success, Brad Feld struggled with depression, exhaustion, and feelings of emptiness. For years, he hid these challenges while relentlessly pushing forward as an entrepreneur. It wasn't until his 40s, after seeking therapy and confronting his mental health, that Brad realized success wasn't just about building companies, but about managing the emotional toll of entrepreneurship. Today, as the co-founder of Techstars and Foundry Group, he leads with a harmonious approach to work and life. In this episode, Brad joins Ilana to share the lessons he learned from early failures, why every successful founder faces ‘near-death moments', and the mental health practices that helped him find joy again. Brad Feld is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Techstars, one of the world's leading startup accelerators. He is also the co-founder of two venture capital firms, Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital. In this episode, Ilana and Brad discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:07) Growing Up in Dallas and Discovering Computers (07:29) MIT Years and Early Startup Failures (14:17) Why Every Startup Faces a Near-Death Experience (16:54) Battling Fear, Shame, and Depression in His Twenties (26:52) Breaking Down at 47 Despite “Having It All” (29:05) Brad's Practical Steps for Rediscovering Joy (41:54) The Random Day Experiment and Birth of Techstars (52:47) Writing Venture Deals, Startup Communities, and Give First (59:26) Coming Out of “Hibernation” to Write His Last Non-Fiction (1:13:39) Work-Life Balance vs. Work-Life Harmony Brad Feld is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Techstars, one of the world's leading startup accelerators. He is also the co-founder of two venture capital firms, Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital. Brad is the author of nine books, including Venture Deals, Startup Communities, and Give First. Through his books, investments, and philosophy of “give first,” Brad has become a mentor to thousands of entrepreneurs navigating the brutal highs and lows of building a business. Connect with Brad:  Brad's Website: feld.com Brad's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bfeld  Resources Mentioned Brad's Book, Give First: The Power of Mentorship: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1646871324  Brad's Book, Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118441540  Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118443616  Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up by Jerry Colonna: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062749536 Leap Academy Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW WAY for professionals to fast-track their careers and leap to bigger opportunities.Check out our free training today at https://bit.ly/leap--free-training

If you're fascinated by the intersection of deep human connection and legendary entrepreneurship, this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different with Brad Feld is a masterclass. Brad Feld, co-founder of Techstars and Foundry Group, unpacks the profound philosophy at the heart of his new book, "Give First: The Power of Mentorship," offering both tactical wisdom and hard-won personal perspective. This is not the typical “give-back” story, but a look at how true mentorship and generosity fuel the careers and lives of those willing to embrace a different approach. You're listening to Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different. We are the real dialogue podcast for people with a different mind. So get your mind in a different place, and hey ho, let's go.   Brad Feld on Mentorship: More Than the “Guru on the Mountaintop” Myth Brad Feld's journey with mentorship began in his youth, encountering influential figures before “mentoring” was even part of the social lexicon. Like many from the 1970s and 1980s, he didn't realize the people shaping his trajectory were mentors, but the relationships he had changed everything. Critically, Feld draws a distinction between mentors and gurus: the former guide, question, and encourage self-discovery; the latter simply impart answers from a higher level. He notes that over time, truly powerful mentorship evolves: “There's a magic trick where mentors become peers." - Brad Feld Real mentoring relationships become two-way streets—everyone learns, everyone grows.   Give First: Non-Transactional Generosity as a Superpower At the heart of his philosophy is a core principle: "Give First" means putting energy into a system without a required transactional expectation of return. This, Feld insists, is not simple altruism nor traditional “pay it forward,” which often feels obligatory or limited to later stages of a career. Instead, giving first is a chosen mindset, accessible at any stage and open to anyone: students, new grads, and seasoned executives alike. A key insight: “Pay it forward is obligatory," Feld explains, "Give First is non-transactional. There's no obligation.” This liberation from expectation creates space for unexpected returns in relationships and opportunities, often arriving from unrelated directions and on unpredictable timelines.   Brad Feld on the Art (and Challenge) of Being Accessible: Random Days and “Assignments” As an influential figure in the startup world, Feld faces a deluge of requests from aspiring entrepreneurs and peers alike. Balancing generosity and boundaries is an evolving practice. His solution was to create “Random Day”: a designated day each month packed with 15-minute meetings open to anyone interested. This provided structure, scale, and protection from being overwhelmed, while also ensuring he could still make a meaningful impact and learn from every encounter. Equally important is Feld's email “assignment” technique. Rather than simply agreeing to every meeting, he requests more specificity from senders, an effortful response that immediately filters for genuine intent. Feld's data is telling: about 50% of people simply never reply to the assignment, allowing him to focus energy on the truly motivated, engaged few. To hear more from Brad Feld and how Giving First is a Superpower, download and listen to this episode. Bio Brad Feld is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and author with more than three decades of experience in investing and building startups. He is a co-founder of Foundry Group, a Boulder-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage technology companies. In addition to his work with Foundry Group, Brad co-founded Techstars, one of the world's most successful startup accelerators, helping thousands of entrepreneurs launch and scale their businesses. He is also deeply involved in fostering entrepreneurial communities worldwide. An avid writer, Brad has authored several books on startups and venture capital.

Legendary VC investor Brad Feld explains why “giving first” (his new book) is the key to building resilient founders, impactful startups, and thriving startup communities—especially in climate tech and turbulent times.

When I ask small business owners what was one of the keys to their success they always say- not money, not connects but having the right mentor- this is why my guest today is particularly important.Brad Feld has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. He co-founded two venture capital firms, Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital, and multiple companies, including Techstars. Brad has written multiple books on entrepreneurship and venture capital, and started blogging in 2004 before VC Twitter existed. He is also an art collector and long-distance runner.His new book is called "Give First: The Power of Mentorship".Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-small-business-radio-show--3306444/support.

What if generosity—not hustle—is your greatest competitive advantage?Brad Feld—co-founder of Foundry Group, Mobius Venture Capital, and startup accelerator Techstars—joins Barry to explore the transformative philosophy of “Give First,” a mindset that's reshaped how founders, investors, and mentors build lasting companies and vibrant startup ecosystems. Brad has spent over three decades cultivating startup communities by putting people before profit and helping others without expecting anything in return.In this episode, he shares the mindset shifts that fueled Techstars' global influence, how mentorship evolves from hierarchy to peer learning, and why sustainable success stems from playing the long game. A conversation full of clarity, candor, and challenge—for anyone rethinking what it means to lead, contribute, and create.Key TakeawaysGenerosity Fuels Growth: Giving without expectation of return builds stronger relationships, ecosystems, and companies.Mentorship is a Two-Way Street: The most impactful mentoring happens when both sides learn, grow, and give.Play the Long Game: Positive-sum, multi-turn thinking creates more meaningful and lasting impact than transactional wins.Know Yourself First: Deep self-awareness—not external success metrics—is the foundation of better leadership.Additional InsightsRedefine Success on Your Own Terms: Society pushes for more—money, power, status—but real fulfillment comes from understanding what truly matters to you.Build a Network of Givers: Shared values transcend geography. A global community built on generosity leads to collective resilience.Let Go of the Need for Control: Great mentors—and leaders—create space for co-creation, not dictation.Disconnect to Reconnect: Time away from constant input helps surface your clearest thinking and truest desires.Episode Highlights:00:00 – Episode RecapBrad Feld reframes mentorship as a shift from a one-way hierarchy to a peer-based relationship.01:48 – Barry Introduces Brad FeldBarry introduces Brad's influential work on startup communities and his philosophy of "Give First."03:12 – Startup Community OriginsBrad shares how the idea of startup communities became a global movement—challenging the belief that tech startups must be in Silicon Valley.12:54 – The Give First PhilosophyBrad explains why generosity, long-term thinking, and non-transactional relationships are foundational to resilient startup ecosystems.21:33 – Mentorship as Mutual GrowthA powerful story with mentor Len Fast reveals how Brad came to see mentorship as co-learning rather than knowledge transfer.27:27 – Knowing YourselfBrad emphasizes how self-awareness and personal growth are essential to leadership, especially in a world driven by reactive norms.34:48 – Creating Space for What MattersA candid discussion on disconnecting from external pressures, valuing inner reflection, and how time off helped Brad refocus on his values.41:47 – Redesigning RelationshipsBrad shares how he and his wife created structure and rules to prioritize their relationship—offering insight into the intersection of discipline and intimacy.45:41 – Final ReflectionsBrad closes with a message on leading through generosity, not transactions—and why playing the long game builds stronger companies and communities.Episode ResourcesBrad Feld on LinkedIn: Brad...

This week Chris speaks with Perry Rosenblum, CEO and co-founder of Motion.io, a cutting-edge client onboarding and collaboration platform for service-based businesses. Previously, Perry founded Brighter Vision, which he successfully bootstrapped and later sold to EverCommerce in 2020. On this episode, Perry provides insights into the ecosystem's evolution, highlighting his frontline exposure at a startup in the Foundry Group's office to the significance of intentional culture building in startups, recounting his lessons learned while scaling Brighter Vision. With a focus on actionable takeaways, Perry underscores the importance of cultivating a defined company culture early on, tapping into attributes like speed to stay competitive in the fast-paced startup world.Listen now on: Amazon Music (Alexa) | Spotify | Apple Podcasts or wherever you get podcasts!Connect with hosts Adam and Chris and the Range VC team on LinkedIn.Check out more about what we're up to at Range.vc.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When Kristian Ranta reflects on his entrepreneurial journey, it's a story filled with grit, resilience, and a profound sense of purpose. From his roots in Finland to founding ventures that span continents, Kristian's experiences offer invaluable lessons for aspiring founders. His latest venture, Meru Health, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Bold Capital Partners, Foundry Group, Freestyle VC, and FMZ Ventures.

Produced by Foundersuite (www.foundersuite.com) and Fundingstack (www.fundingstack.com), "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders and investors who have raised capital. This episode is with Amir Farha of COTU.vc, a VC fund that invests in early-stage startups in the Middle East / MENA region. In this episode, we talk about what he looks for in startup founders, how to find your "champion" LPs and secure an anchor investor, tips for getting to a first close, tips for pitching sovereign wealth funds, the startup scene in the UAE vs. Saudi Arabia vs. Egypt and much more. COTU most recently raised a $54 million inaugural fund to support startups in the Middle East from pre-seed to seed stages. The firm typically invests between $500,000 and $2 million. COTU Ventures' limited partners include Lunate, Mubadala, Dubai Future District Fund, Arab Bank, Bupa KSA, and GPs from VCs, including Foundry Group, Tribe Capital, Stride, and several family offices. Portfolio companies include Huspy and MoneyHash, among others. How I Raised It is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $17 Billion since 2016. Create a free account at www.foundersuite.com. If you are a VC or investment banker, check out our new platform, www.fundingstack.com

Brad Feld (@bfeld), VC at Foundry Group and co-author with Dave Jilk of The Entrepreneur's Weekly Nietzsche, joined Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha to discuss:- Common misconceptions about Nietzsche and why being misunderstood makes him an especially interesting philosopher. - What Nietzsche can teach entrepreneurs deciding whether to pivot or persevere. Brad says that founders should view their entrepreneurial journey not in terms of a single company, but as the next 30-50 years of their life.- Why Brad hates the term “passion” and says it's overused in entrepreneurial circles.- Why to focus more on whether someone's words and actions line up rather than the strength of their beliefs.- The lessons that Brad has for making decisions among groups today given Nietzsche's aphorism that “insanity in individuals is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.”Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Lots of news to discuss with John Ruffolo and Matt Cohen:(00:21) The significant downturn in venture capital, the early reset signs, and the impact of a conservative approach to business and fundraising in 2023, especially in Canada(02:09) The fate of companies that struggled to raise funds in 2023 and the shift towards supporting perceived winners and the inevitable challenges for "B" companies(05:29) Private equity's large market and diverse opportunities(06:48) Foundry Group's shutdown and the lack of structure for succession in VC(09:20) The effectiveness of CEO shakeups and the high-risk nature of founders returning to their companies, questioning such moves.(12:23) AI's explosive growth and why investing in foundational AI technologies is the best approach and the potential for major shifts in enterprise applications and cost reductionsFollow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.ai This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com

On today's news round up, Alex, Mary Ann and Karyne are looking at:Deals of the Week: Rasa's $30 million Series C had our tongues wagging. The startup is building finservice-focused conversational AI tools. Karyne wanted to talk about the latest round at the intersection of AI and crypto, while Alex wanted to riff on Hippo Harvest's $21 million round for indoor robot farming.Venture capital's year of transition: After OpenView called it quits, and Countdown Capital returned funds to LPs it became clear that venture is evolving. New news that Foundry is not going to raise another fund after its current $500 million vehicle added another name to our roster of venture firms that are taking a different direction in the future.YC's new call for startups: Well-known startup accelerator Y Combinator has a new request for startup list. Given the weight that YC carries in startup-land, we had to dig into what it's proposing. Though we're a little skeptical of the near-term impact of spatial computing, the other updates made good sense to our minds.We'll be back on Monday!For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity's Simplecast website.Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more! Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.

Merlin Namuth is our feature interview this week, interviewed by Debbi Blyth. News from Kingdom Wealth Exchange, Lightship Energy, Foundry Group, Coalfire, Ping Identity, Red Canary and a lot more. Support us on Patreon! Fun swag available - all proceeds will directly support the Colorado = Security infrastructure. Come join us on the new Colorado = Security Slack channel to meet old and new friends. Sign up for our mailing list on the main site to receive weekly updates - https://www.colorado-security.com/. If you have any questions or comments, or any organizations or events we should highlight, contact Alex and Robb at info@colorado-security.com This week's news: Join the Colorado = Security Slack channel Colorado Pastor Accused Of Multimillion Dollar Crypto Scheme Everything you need to know about navigating DIA's new security Electric RV maker lands $34M as it prepares to open its Denver-area factory Boulder VC firm Foundry to shutter, not raise additional fund Colorado software Startups to Watch in 2024 Space ISAC and National Cybersecurity Center Announce Next Stage in Relationship Mastering AI Risks: Navigating the NIST AI RMF Core with Coalfire What is Device Trust? How it Works in 2024 Kubernetes security: Safeguarding your container kingdom BSides Boulder 2024: Call for Speakers Job Openings: Pax8 - VP of GRC 1Password - Director, Security Operations Inspirato - Director, Cybersecurity Operations Sage Hospitality Group - Information Security, Manager Newmont - Senior Operational Technology Cybersecurity Analyst U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) - Information Technology Specialist (Information Security) Klaviyo - Senior Security Trust & Compliance Analyst - GRC Analyst Datadog - Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Governance Analyst Salesforce - Security Governance, Risk & Compliance Lead/Manager - Security IEM BofA - Manual Ethical Hacker Upcoming Events: This Week and Next: ISACA Denver - Technical Training: Alteryx Exploration (A Beginner Workshop) - 2/9 ISSA Denver - February Meetings - 2/14 Let's Talk Software Security - Are We Defending Against the Biggest Threats to Software? - 2/14 ISACA Denver - February Joint Chapter Meeting with IIA - 2/15 CSA Colorado - CI/CD Workload Security with Orca - 2/20 ISSA Denver - Privacy SIG - 2/22 ISSA COS - Mini Seminar - 2/24 Colorado = Security Gives Back - Homeless Shelter Service - 2/25 ISSA COS - February Meeting, An Introduction to Zero Trust With Enterprise Linux - 2/27 ISC2 Pikes Peak - February Meeting - 2/28 ISSA COS - Mentoring Mixer and LogWars - 2/29 View our events page for a full list of upcoming events * Thanks to CJ Adams for our intro and exit! If you need any voiceover work, you can contact him here at carrrladams@gmail.com. Check out his other voice work here. * Intro and exit song: "The Language of Blame" by The Agrarians is licensed under CC BY 2.0

In this episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, we dive into the inspiring journey of a true visionary, Dan Shapiro. Raised by parents deeply rooted in academia, Dan's upbringing was steeped in the worlds of communications and computer science. His venture, Glowforge, has attracted funding top-tier investors like DFJ Growth, Foundry Group, Revolution Growth, and True Ventures.

Should you take venture money? "You really need to be up for growing a business, growing it relatively quickly, and finding an exit." — Seth LevineOn this episode of Authentically Successful, Carol interviews Seth, the managing director and co-founder of Foundry Group. The venture capital firm was formed in 2007 and has now grown to 75 employees. You'll hear about Seth's winding journey from majoring in psychology and thinking he would become a professor to working long hours at an investment bank to eventually leading a large company. He talks about the founding of Foundry Group and the world of venture capital. According to Seth, taking venture capital is not always the best course of action for entrepreneurs and they should do their research carefully before taking the plunge.They also discuss Seth's first book called “The New Builders: Face to Face With the True Future of Business” and the surprising facts about entrepreneurism today. BIOSeth Levine is a successful venture capitalist and co-founder of Foundry Group, a venture capital firm based in Boulder, Colorado. In 2007, Seth and his team faced numerous challenges while raising their first fund, and he even considered finding another job to support himself after investing his life savings in the company. However the fund finally came together, and Seth and his team have since experienced great success in the world of venture capitalism.Learn more about Seth Levine and Foundry Group.You can find more information on all our episodes at Vertical Elevation, and you can find Carol on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

When markets are volatile and times are turbulent, being a VC can be a nerve-wracking experience. How should a seasoned board member handle themselves when anxieties are high? In this podcast conversation, Jerry sits down with Aileen Lee from Cowboy Ventures and Brad Feld from Foundry Group to discuss how to be an effective board member in stormy times. This conversation offers much to think about if you're a board member, new VC, or CEO. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! Follow our step by step guides: - How To: Leave a Review on Your Computer: - How To: Leave a Review on Your iPhone: Never miss an episode! Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on all our episode releases.

One of the hardest parts of telling any history, is which innovations are significant enough to warrant mention. Too much, and the history is so vast that it can't be told. Too few, and it's incomplete. Arguably, no history is ever complete. Yet there's a critical path of innovation to get where we are today, and hundreds of smaller innovations that get missed along the way, or are out of scope for this exact story. Children have probably been placing sand into buckets to make sandcastles since the beginning of time. Bricks have survived from round 7500BC in modern-day Turkey where humans made molds to allow clay to dry and bake in the sun until it formed bricks. Bricks that could be stacked. And it wasn't long before molds were used for more. Now we can just print a mold on a 3d printer.   A mold is simply a block with a hollow cavity that allows putting some material in there. People then allow it to set and pull out a shape. Humanity has known how to do this for more than 6,000 years, initially with lost wax casting with statues surviving from the Indus Valley Civilization, stretching between parts of modern day Pakistan and India. That evolved to allow casting in gold and silver and copper and then flourished in the Bronze Age when stone molds were used to cast axes around 3,000 BCE. The Egyptians used plaster to cast molds of the heads of rulers. So molds and then casting were known throughout the time of the earliest written works and so the beginning of civilization. The next few thousand years saw humanity learn to pack more into those molds, to replace objects from nature with those we made synthetically, and ultimately molding and casting did its part on the path to industrialization. As we came out of the industrial revolution, the impact of all these technologies gave us more and more options both in terms of free time as humans to think as well as new modes of thinking. And so in 1868 John Wesley Hyatt invented injection molding, patenting the machine in 1872. And we were able to mass produce not just with metal and glass and clay but with synthetics. And more options came but that whole idea of a mold to avoid manual carving and be able to produce replicas stretched back far into the history of humanity. So here we are on the precipice of yet another world-changing technology becoming ubiquitous. And yet not. 3d printing still feels like a hobbyists journey rather than a mature technology like we see in science fiction shows like Star Trek with their replicators or printing a gun in the Netflix show Lost In Space. In fact the initial idea of 3d printing came from a story called Things Pass By written all the way back in 1945! I have a love-hate relationship with 3D printing. Some jobs just work out great. Others feel very much like personal computers in the hobbyist era - just hacking away until things work. It's usually my fault when things go awry. Just as it was when I wanted to print things out on the dot matrix printer on the Apple II. Maybe I fed the paper crooked or didn't check that there was ink first or sent the print job using the wrong driver. One of the many things that could go wrong.  But those fast prints don't match with the reality of leveling and cleaning nozzles and waiting for them to heat up and pulling filament out of weird places (how did it get there, exactly)! Or printing 10 add-ons for a printer to make it work the way it probably should have out of the box.  Another area where 3d printing is similar to the early days of the personal computer revolution is that there are a few different types of technology in use today. These include color-jet printing (CJP), direct metal printing (DMP), fused deposition modeling (FDM), Laser Additive Manufacturing (LAM, multi-jet printing (MJP), stereolithography (SLA), selective laser melting (SLM), and selective laser sintering (SLS). Each could be better for a given type of print job to be done. Some forms have flourished while others are either their infancy or have been abandoned like extinct languages. Language isolates are languages that don't fit into other families. Many are the last in a branch of a larger language family tree. Others come out of geographically isolated groups. Technology also has isolates. Konrad Zuse built computers in pre-World War II Germany and after that aren't considered to influence other computers. In other words, every technology seems to have a couple of false starts. Hideo Kodama filed the first patent to 3d print in 1980 - but his method of using UV lights to harden material doesn't get commercialized.  Another type of 3d printing includes printers that were inkjets that shot metal alloys onto surfaces. Inkjet printing was invented by Ichiro Endo at Canon in the 1950s, supposedly when he left a hot iron on a pen and ink bubbled out. Thus the “Bubble jet” printer. And Jon Vaught at HP was working on the same idea at about the same time. These were patented and used to print images from computers over the coming decades. Johannes Gottwald patented a printer like this in 1971. Experiments continued through the 1970s when companies like Exxon were trying to improve various prototyping processes. Some of their engineers joined an inventor Robert Howard in the early 1980s to found a company called Howtek and they produced the Pixelmaster, using hot-melt inks to increment the ink jet with solid inks, which then went on to be used by Sanders Prototype, which evolved into a company called Solidscape to market the Modelmaker. And some have been used to print solar cells, living cells, tissue, and even edible birthday cakes. That same technique is available with a number of different solutions but isn't the most widely marketable amongst the types of 3D printers available. SLA There's often a root from which most technology of the day is derived. Charles, or Chuck, Hull coined the term stereolithography, where he could lay down small layers of an object and then cure the object with UV light, much as the dentists do with fillings today. This is made possibly by photopolymers, or plastics that are easily cured by an ultraviolet light. He then invented the stereolithography apparatus, or SLA for short, a machine that printed from the bottom to the top by focusing a laser on photopolymer while in a liquid form to cure the plastic into place. He worked on it in 1983, filed the patent in 1984, and was granted the patent in 1986.  Hull also developed a file format for 3D printing called STL. STL files describe the surface of a three-dimensional object, geometrically using Cartesian coordinates. Describing coordinates and vectors means we can make objects bigger or smaller when we're ready to print them. 3D printers print using layers, or slices. Those can change based on the filament on the head of a modern printer, the size of the liquid being cured, and even the heat of a nozzle. So the STL file gets put into a slicer that then converts the coordinates on the outside to the polygons that are cured. These are polygons in layers, so they may appear striated rather than perfectly curved according to the size of the layers. However, more layers take more time and energy. Such is the evolution of 3D printing. Hull then founded a company called 3D Systems in Valencia California to take his innovation to market. They sold their first printer, the SLA-1 in 1988. New technologies start out big and expensive. And that was the case with 3D Systems. They initially sold to large engineering companies but when solid-state lasers came along in 1996 they were able to provide better systems for cheaper.  Languages also have other branches. Another branch in 3d printing came in 1987, just before the first SLA-1 was sold.  Carl Deckard  and his academic adviser Joe Beaman at the University of Texas worked on a DARPA grant to experiment with creating physical objects with lasers. They formed a company to take their solution to market called DTM and filed a patent for what they called selective laser sintering. This compacts and hardens a material with a heat source without having to liquify it. So a laser, guided by a computer, can move around a material and harden areas to produce a 3D model. Now in addition to SLA we had a second option, with the release of the Sinterstation 2500plus. Then 3D Systems then acquired DTM for $45 million in 2001. FDM After Hull published his findings for SLA and created the STL format, other standards we use today emerged. FDM is short for Fused Deposition Modeling and was created by Scott Crump in 1989. He then started a company with his wife Lisa to take the product to market, taking the company public in 1994. Crump's first patent expired in 2009.  In addition to FDM, there are other formats and techniques. AeroMat made the first 3D printer that could produce metal in 1997. These use a laser additive manufacturing process, where lasers fuse powdered titanium alloys. Some go the opposite direction and create out of bacteria or tissue. That began in 1999, when Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative medicine grew a 3D printed urinary bladder in a lab to be used as a transplant. We now call this bioprinting and can take tissue and lasers to rebuild damaged organs or even create a new organ. Organs are still in their infancy with success trials on smaller animals like rabbits. Another aspect is printing dinner using cell fibers from cows or other animals. There are a number of types of materials used in 3D printing. Most printers today use a continuous feed of one of these filaments, or small coiled fibers of thermoplastics that melt instead of burn when they're heated up. The most common in use today is PLA, or polylactic acid, is a plastic initially created by Wall Carothers of DuPont, the same person that brought us nylon, neoprene, and other plastic derivatives. It typically melts between 200 and 260 degrees Celsius. Printers can also take ABS filament, which is short for acrylonitrile-butadien-styerene. Other filament types include HIPS, PET, CPE, PVA, and their derivative forms.  Filament is fed into a heated extruder assembly that melts the plastic. Once melted, filament extrudes into place through a nozzle as a motor sends the nozzle on a x and y axis per layer.  Once a layer of plastic is finished being delivered to the areas required to make up the desired slice, the motor moves the extruder assembly up or down on a z axis between layers. Filament is just between 1.75 millimeters and 3 millimeters and comes in spools between half a kilogram and two kilograms. These thermoplastics cool very quickly. Once all of the slices are squirted into place, the print is removed from the bed and the nozzle cools off. Filament comes in a number of colors and styles. For example, wood fibers can be added to filament to get a wood-grained finish. Metal can be added to make prints appear metallic and be part metal.  Printing isn't foolproof, though. Filament often gets jammed or the spool gets stuck, usually when something goes wrong. Filament also needs to be stored in a temperature and moisture controlled location or it can cause jobs to fail. Sometimes the software used to slice the .stl file has an incorrect setting, like the wrong size of filament. But in general, 3D printing using the FDM format is pretty straight forward these days. Yet this is technology that should have moved faster in terms of adoption. The past 10 years have seen more progress than the previous ten though. Primarily due to the maker community. Enter the Makers The FDM patent expired in 2009. In 2005, a few years before the FDM patent expired, Dr. Adrian Bowyer started a project to bring inexpensive 3D printers to labs and homes around the world. That project evolved into what we now call the Replicating Rapid Prototyper, or RepRap for short.  RepRap evolved into an open source concept to create self-replicating 3D printers and by 2008, the Darwin printer was the first printer to use RepRap. As a community started to form, more collaborators designed more parts. Some were custom parts to improve the performance of the printer, or replicate the printer to become other printers. Others held the computing mechanisms in place. Some even wrote code to make the printer able to boot off a MicroSD card and then added a network interface so files could be uploaded to the printer wirelessly. There was a rising tide of printers. People were reading about what 3D printers were doing and wanted to get involved. There was also a movement in the maker space, so people wanted to make things themselves. There was a craft to it. Part of that was wanting to share. Whether that was at a maker space or share ideas and plans and code online. Like the RepRap team had done.  One of those maker spaces was NYC Resistor, founded in 2007. Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach Smith from there took some of the work from the RepRap project and had ideas for a few new projects they'd like to start. The first was a site that Zach Smith created called Thingiverse. Bre Pettis joined in and they allowed users to upload .stl files and trade them. It's now the largest site for trading hundreds of thousands of designs to print about anything imaginable. Well, everything except guns. Then comes 2009. The patent for FDM expires and a number of companies respond by launching printers and services. Almost overnight the price for a 3D printer fell from $10,000 to $1,000 and continued to drop. Shapeways had created a company the year before to take files and print them for people. Pettis, Mayer, and Smith from NYC Resistor also founded a company called MakerBot Industries. They'd already made a little bit of a name for themselves with the Thingiverse site. They knew the mind of a maker. And so they decided to make a kit to sell to people that wanted to build their own printers. They sold 3,500 kits in the first couple of years. They had a good brand and knew the people who bought these kinds of devices. So they took venture funding to grow the company. So they raised $10M in funding in 2011 in a round led by the Foundry Group, along with Bezos, RRE, 500 Startups and a few others. They hired and grew fast. Smith left in 2012 and they were getting closer and closer with Stratasys, who if we remember were the original creators of FDM. So Stratasys ended up buying out the company in 2013 for $403M. Sales were disappointing so there was a changeup in leadership, with Pettis leaving and they've become much more about additive manufacturing than a company built to appeal to makers. And yet the opportunity to own that market is still there. This was also an era of Kickstarter campaigns. Plenty of 3D printing companies launched through kickstarter including some to take PLA (a biodegradable filament) and ABS materials to the next level. The ExtrusionBot, the MagicBox, the ProtoPlant, the Protopasta, Mixture, Plybot, Robo3D, Mantis, and so many more.  Meanwhile, 3D printing was in the news. 2011 saw the University of Southhampton design a 3d printed aircraft. Ecologic printing cars, and practically every other car company following suit that they were fabricating prototypes with 3d printers, even full cars that ran. Some on their own, some accidentally when parts are published in .stl files online violating various patents.  Ultimaker was another RepRap company that came out of the early Darwin reviews. Martijn Elserman, Erik de Bruin, and Siert Wijnia who couldn't get the Darwin to work so they designed a new printer and took it to market. After a few iterations, they came up with the Ultimaker 2 and have since been growing and releasing new printers  A few years later, a team of Chinese makers, Jack Chen, Huilin Liu, Jingke Tang, Danjun Ao, and Dr. Shengui Chen took the RepRap designs and started a company to manufacturing (Do It Yourself) kits called Creality. They have maintained the open source manifesto of 3D printing that they inherited from RepRap and developed version after version, even raising over $33M to develop the Ender6 on Kickstarter in 2018, then building a new factory and now have the capacity to ship well over half a million printers a year. The future of 3D Printing We can now buy 3D printing pens, over 170 3D Printer manufacturers including 3D systems, Stratasys, and Ceality but also down-market solutions like Fusion3, Formlabs, Desktop Metal, Prusa, and Voxel8. There's also a RecycleBot concept and additional patents expiring every year.  There is little doubt that at some point, instead of driving to Home Depot to get screws or basic parts, we'll print them. Need a new auger for the snow blower? Just print it. Cover on the weed eater break?  Print it. Need a dracolich mini for the next Dungeons and Dragons game? Print it. Need a new pinky toe. OK, maybe that's a bit far. Or is it? In 2015, Swedish Cellink releases bio-ink made from seaweed and algae, which could be used to print cartilage and later released the INKREDIBLE 3D printer for bio printing. The market in 2020 was valued at $13.78 billion with 2.1 million printers shipped. That's expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 21% for the next few years. But a lot of that is healthcare, automotive, aerospace, and prototyping still. Apple made the personal computer simple and elegant. But no Apple has emerged for 3D printing. Instead it still feels like the Apple II era, where there are 3D printers in a lot of schools and many offer classes on generating files and printing.  3D printers are certainly great for prototypers and additive manufacturing. They're great for hobbyists, which we call makers these days. But there will be a time when there is a printer in most homes, the way we have electricity, televisions, phones, and other critical technologies. But there are a few things that have to happen first, to make the printers easier to use. These include: Every printer needs to automatically level. This is one of the biggest reasons jobs fail and new users become frustrated. More consistent filament. Spools are still all just a little bit different. Printers need sensors in the extruder that detect if a job should be paused because the filament is jammed, humid, or caught. This adds the ability to potentially resume print jobs and waste less filament and time. Automated slicing in the printer microcode that senses the filament and slices. Better system boards (e.g. there's a tool called Klipper that moves the math from the system board on a Creality Ender 3 to a Raspberry Pi). Cameras on the printer should watch jobs and use TinyML to determine if they are going to fail as early as possible to halt printing so it can start over. Most of the consumer solutions don't have great support. Maybe users are limited to calling a place in a foreign country where support hours don't make sense for them or maybe the products are just too much of a hacker/maker/hobbyist solution. There needs to be an option for color printing. This could be a really expensive sprayer or ink like inkjet printers use at first We love to paint minis we make for Dungeons and Dragons but could get amazingly accurate resolutions to create amazing things with automated coloring.  For a real game changer, the RecycleBot concept needs to be merged with the printer. Imagine if we dropped our plastics into a recycling bin that 3D printers of the world used to create filament. This would help reduce the amount of plastics used in the world in general. And when combined with less moving around of cheap plastic goods that could be printed at home, this also means less energy consumed by transporting goods. The 3D printing technology is still a generation or two away from getting truly mass-marketed. Most hobbyists don't necessarily think of building an elegant, easy-to-use solution because they are so experienced it's hard to understand what the barriers of entry are for any old person. But the company who finally manages to crack that nut might just be the next Apple, Microsoft, or Google of the world.

This week Adam speaks with Greg Keller, the CSO and Co-Founder at JumpCloud. As Chief Strategy Officer, Greg was responsible for the inception and launch of the company's award-winning identity and access control platform. Over the course of his career, Greg has helped launch and operate several startups to globally scaling growth companies. In this episode, Greg details his experiences with the evolution of the Front Range startup ecosystem including the emergence of Techstars, Foundry Group, and Denver Startup Week. Plus, Greg shares his biggest lesson, with insight into how to have a clear vision to define your niche.Listen now on: Amazon Music (Alexa) | Spotify | Apple Podcasts JumpCloud - https://jumpcloud.com/Check out more about what we're up to at Range.vc Connect with hosts Adam and Chris and the Range VC team on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/range-ventures/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hunter Somerville is a Partner @ Stepstone, one of the largest secondary buyers, fund investors and players in our ecosystem with over $600BN in capital responsibility and over $100BN AUM. Additionally, Hunter serves on the LP Advisory Boards for Felix Capital, Foundry Group, Imaginary Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Boldstart Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, and more. Prior to StepStone, Hunter was a general partner with Greenspring Associates, a venture capital and growth equity investment firm that merged with StepStone in 2021. Before that, he worked as an associate for Camden Private Capital. In Todays Episode with Hunter Somerville We Discuss: 1. Three Types of Secondaries: What are the three different types of secondaries? What is the current situation with company secondary opportunities today? What is the current landscape for fund secondary opportunities today? What are GP-led restructuring or strip sales? How do they work? 2. LPs Today and Moving Forward Investing in Funds: Will we see a wave of LPs not commit to their existing managers? What is the denominator effect and how does that impact LP deployment into funds? What are the top 3 reasons why LPs will not re-commit to existing managers? Do LPs feel VCs have fairly marked down their venture books in the last 6 months? Does Hunter agree that if you have not returned cash to your LPs when you could have done ijn the last 5 years, then you are most in trouble? Why does Hunter believe we will see more international LPs entering venture than ever before? 3. Liquidity: When Does the Cash Hit: Why was liquidity so bad in 2022? How did that compare to 2021? How does Hunter forecast liquidity environments in 2023? What could drive them? How active were Stepstone in secondary buying over the last few years? Is now the time to be greedy when others are fearful in secondaries? What discount was Hunter seeing both on fund and company side secondaries in 20-22? What is the current level of discount being applied to both company and fund secondaries? 4. AMA with One of the Largest Secondary Buyers: Which LP class will be hurt the most from the last fund cycle? What would Hunter most like to change about the world of venture? What was Hunter's biggest mistake on a company investment? What are the biggest mistakes LPs make when they do direct investing? Why are big-name people entering firms as GPs not always a good sign?

Produced by Foundersuite (www.foundersuite.com), "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders and investors who have raised capital. This episode is with Dan Shapiro of Glowforge (www.glowforge.com), makers of a desktop 3-D laser printer. In this episode, we discuss his experience as a multi-startup founder, why it's a mistake to ask for intros, when to play the "CEO card" with your employees, tips for building investor relationships at events, and much more. Glowforge has raised a total of $70 million since its 2015 founding, including the most recent round, a $43 million Series E led by DFJ Growth. Co- and previous investors include Foundry Group, Revolution Growth, True Ventures, and others. The Company also raised a crowdfunding round of over $29 million. How I Raised It is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $9.7 Billion since 2016. Create a free account at www.foundersuite.com.

My next guest has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Feld Technologies. He is also a co-founder of Techstars is a writer and speaker on the topics of venture capital and entrepreneurship, and co-authored the second edition of Startup Boards. Please welcome Brad Feld. Key Timecodes (00:43) - Show intro and background history. (01:23) -His background investing history (06:41) - What are the red flags about leadership teams (10:34) - How people used to react to his philosophy about the corporate world (14:13) - Deep diving into his business psychology strategies (19:44) - How he scales a company board (26:45) - How he scales his own business (33:47) - What skills does he look for in founders? (37:44) - The importance of a broad skill set and open-minded personalities instead the traditional entrepreneur archetypes (39:53) - Don't be afraid to make mistakes; learn and grow with them! (50:10) - Guest contacts Payback Time Podcast Payback Time is a podcast for investors. The goal of this podcast is to help make investing approachable and easy to understand. We will interview beginner and experienced investors and ask them to share stories on how they got started, what challenges they faced, what mistakes they made, and what strategy works for them today. The overall objective is to provide you with a roadmap that helps you become a better investor.

Brad Feld of Foundry Group and Techstars joins Nate to discuss Stories, Advice, and Leveraging 35 Years of Startup Board Experience. In this episode we cover: How to Build and Leverage a Board from the Beginning Advice for Board Members Avoiding the Most-Common Mistakes And more!

Get ready to explore the ins and outs of scaling a business with our guest on The Shades of Entrepreneurship – none other than Brad Feld, the Co-Founder of Foundry Group. With a journey in entrepreneurship and early-stage investing dating back to 1987, Brad has been a driving force in the startup ecosystem. From venture capital to penning "Startup Boards," he's been instrumental in providing capital, resources, and connections to startups and high-growth companies. Tune in for an insightful conversation with this seasoned entrepreneur!Support The ShowMerch: https://www.theshadesofe.com/shopPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/theshadesofeSocial Media Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theshadesofeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/theshadesofeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/theshadesofe/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theshadesofeYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQotiAmRRUpcUBM6Joqa8XA

Seth Levine is a Co-author of "The New Builders", a book that brings you Face to Face with the true future of business. A long-time venture capitalist, Seth is a co-founder and Managing Director of Foundry Group, a Boulder, CO based venture firm. He's a passionate advocate for entrepreneurship, Seth also spends time as an advisor to venture funds and companies around the world. In this episode we talk about: -How Seth started Foundry? -Reverse Inflation in Venture Capital -All about his book The New Builders -Why e thinks entrepreneurship in the US is in a state of decline and a lot more.. Links mentioned: Get the book: https://thenewbuilders.com/ Seth's blog: https://sethlevine.com/ Foundry Website: https://foundry.vc/ Follow Seth on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sether Follow Seth on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethjlevine/ Full episode blog at https://vc10x.com/the-new-builders

Jaclyn Freeman Hester is a venture capitalist and partner at the Foundry Group. In this episode, Jaclyn talks about how she recruits and funds new talent, her “give first” philosophy, and what entrepreneurs should consider when it comes to VC funding.EPISODE QUOTES:On focusing on the journey (not the outcome)...[00:10:09] I think that's what really helps folks stand out, especially when you're younger, taking a lot of risk and being way more focused on the journey and the curiosity and the learning and who you meet and kind of collecting people along the way versus the lockstep career path.On taking risks…[00:16:57] There's a ton of learning that can be done by joining companies and joining funds, especially early. So, I think it's just important for folks to realize that there is no one way to do this.On being people focused…[00:23:39] I think values alignment, both for hiring and for investing is huge. Because it speaks to, I don't know every single decision that's gonna come up with this company, but if I understand your values and what motivates you and how you think about things and what your philosophy is on lots of different aspects of building a business, then I can have better trust and insight into when things come up, you know, that it's gonna play out in a way that I would like… And so I think having hard conversations around, big questions that you have, and being direct and trying to understand someone else's values and motivations is really important.SHOW LINKS: Guest's Profile: Jaclyn Hester on LinkedIn 

Brad Feld is a successful Veteran Capitalist and founding member of the Foundry Group.  Within the Colorado startup scene, Brad is a bit of a celebrity having been part of some well-known successful companies.   Brad really sees founders and start ups not just investments, but as a community that he supports, sees areas for improvements, mentors and loves.  In this very personal full-length interview, Brad shares his personal Board experiences, what he looks for in Board Director candidates and advice for first time Board members.  He also shares his experiences from his Colorado Trail 2021 days as well lessons learned from the first job he was fired from. 

Brad Feld is an American entrepreneur, author, blogger, and venture capitalist at Foundry Group in Boulder, Colorado. He began financing technology startups in the early 1990s, first as an angel and later as an institutional investor. He has written several books on entrepreneurship and in his latest book he focuses on the construction of effective startup boards.

Connie & Alex go over this week in tech news, and then Connie talks to venture capitalist Brad Feld of Foundry Group about his new book, Startup Boards: A Field Guide to Building and Leading an Effective Board of Directors, and why startup boards are especially important when times are tough.Music: 1. "Inspired" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3918-inspired)2. "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5759-blippy-trance)3. "Dream Catcher" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4650-dream-catcher)4. "Pamgaea" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4193-pamgaea)5. "EDM Detection Mode" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3687-edm-detection-mode)License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

In this episode, Mario and James share answers from three prominent venture capitalists (Brad Feld, Foundry Group, Elizabeth Yin, Hustle Fund VC, and Neal Sáles-Griffin, Techstars Rising Stars Fund) to the question of what they think is more important when making an investment, the team or the idea? And how important is the passion of the entrepreneur for their idea? Some of the answers are not what you think. If you like this episode, please subscribe and tell your ParentPreneur friends about us. Let's go!

In this special episode of our #OpenLP podcast miniseries, Sapphire Partners' Laura Thompson chats with Jaclyn Hester, Partner at Foundry Group, about how LPs pick funds, what good performance looks like and how everything is changing with the shift in today's markets.Laura Thompson invests in technology-focused venture funds domestically and internationally. She is passionate about partnering with established and emerging firms to advance the thinking in the limited partner space. Before joining Sapphire Partners in 2018, Laura worked as part of the investment team at Horsley Bridge Partners, where she helped the team make hundreds of millions of fund commitments.Jaclyn Hester joined Foundry in 2016 and is active across their portfolio of startup companies and venture funds. She helped launch Foundry's partner fund strategy and works closely with partner fund managers, while also spending time on direct investments. Prior to joining Foundry, Jaclyn practiced corporate law at Perkins Coie LLP and earned a JD/MBA from University of Colorado, Boulder.

Learn more about Estated and JoshWe offer quick and easy access to data on 150 million residential and commercial properties nationwide across the US. We've built a database which allows users to search properties across over 3,200 counties in real time. Hundreds of customers have integrated our property data into their businesses to gain deeper insights into their clients.  Estated graduated from Techstars Boulder in 2017, which led to capital partnerships with Foundry Group and Techstars Ventures. Follow Josh on Twitter Follow Estated on Twitter Follow Estated on LinkedIn Check out Estated

There’s a lot of hype around AI—both its capabilities and the extreme predictions of its utility and potential harm to society. Our guest today is using AI to help reduce harm by detecting fraud at scale in the financial sector. Ronan Burke is Co-Founder and CEO of Inscribe, a platform that has a mission to save billions of dollars lost to fraud by onboarding trusted customers faster and finding bad-faith users quicker using AI.About Ronan Burke:Ronan Burke is the Co-Founder of Inscribe.ai, which he founded after graduating from University College in Dublin. He participated in YCS18 and Inscribe is trusted by companies like BlueVine, Petal, Fair, and Ramp, and backed by Y Combinator, Uncork Capital, Crosslink Capital, and Foundry Group.In this episode we discuss:01:37 Ronan’s path to founding Inscribe with his twin brother03:02 How they viewed startups growing up in Ireland04:44 Growing the startup ecosystem in Dublin05:20 The launch of Inscribe08:06 Deciding which brother was CTO and which was CEO09:52 Ronan experience at YC12:54 What fraud means to Inscribe and how the pandemic made their service even more urgently needed16:09 The ROI of Inscribe to onboarding customers and detecting fraud from preexisting customers19:29 The three steps Inscribe uses to validate customers21:54 How Inscribe searches the dark web for templates and other fraudulent activities23:33 How the volume of data helps their ML24:00 What a typical fraud case looks like25:28 The market size for fraud detection26:55 Competition to Inscribe28:00 What the sales process looks like when selling to large FinTechs30:19 Case studies for Inscribe31:53 How their fundraising process went33:23 Plans for the next few years34:20 Plans for a hybrid model workplaceFast FavoritesPodcastTim Ferris ShowNewsletter BlogSimon Taylor FinTech Brain FoodTech GadgetLogiTech Stream CamNew TrendHybrid WorkingBookPrincipalsLife LessonIf you care about something, double down on it.Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com

On June 24th, 2021, Seth Levine joined High Alpha Partner Kristian Andersen for a conversation about his new book, The New Builders, and his career working with startups for 20+ years. Seth Levine is currently involved in venture capital investing as well as operational, transactional, and advisory roles at both public and private companies. He is a Partner and Co-Founder of the Foundry Group.  Seth Levine began his venture capital career at Mobius Venture Capital. Prior to Mobius Venture Capital, Seth Levine joined FirstWorld Communications, which is a restart of a data communications company. He then led the IPO process for FirstWorld's IPO in 2000 and negotiated simultaneous equity investments from Microsoft, SAIC, and Lucent Technologies. In this episode, we revisit Seth's Speaker Series where you'll learn: The catalyst for his latest book, The New Builders  Current and future state of entrepreneurship Stories about new builders making an impact in their local communities

Seth Levine is a founding partner of Foundry Group, one of the largest networks of entrepreneurs and early-stage investors in the country, and a co-founder of Pledge 1%, a global movement that encourages and empowers companies of all sizes and stages to donate 1% of their assets to charity. To purchase The New Builders, visit https://thenewbuilders.com/ Check out Foundry + Pledge 1%: https://www.foundrygroup.com/

On September 29, 2020, Brad Feld, Managing Partner at Foundry Group and High Alpha Managing Partner Scott Dorsey sat down for a discussion on building startup communities as part of High Alpha's monthly Speaker Series. Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures. Brad is also a co-founder of Techstars. Brad is a writer and speaker on the topics of venture capital investing and entrepreneurship. He's written a number of books as part of the Startup Revolution series and writes the blogs Feld Thoughts and Venture Deals. His latest book, “The Startup Community Way,” was released in July 2020. In this episode, we revisit Brad's Speaker Series where you'll learn: The startup ecosystem's growth How to build thriving startup communities The importance of reading and writing outside of your domain His internal commitment to amplifying the voices of the underrepresented

Today we're talking philosophy. And we know you may be thinking, somebody creating an app that entertains people or automates some routine office work can't be compared to the great philosophers or great artists. But there's more of an overlap than you may think. Brad Feld is a co-founder of the Foundry Group, Mobius VC, and Techstars, the famous accelerator. He is also known as the author of a bunch of books, including Venture Deals, Startup Communities, and the most recent, The Entrepreneur's Weekly Nietzsche: A Book For Disruptors.In this episode we'll hear all about Brad's early startup life, “authenticity and vulnerability,” his thoughts on certain entrepreneurship cliches, and mental health in the space.Episode Quotes:How Brad and his co-author got the idea for their latest book:There's so much depth in Nietzsche. And when you start to unwind pieces of it and think about them in whatever the context is, an awful lot of the things, the quotes, stimulate thinking about different aspects of entrepreneurship.And that was really what captured both of us. It's not that, you say, okay, well, Nietzsche's philosophy applies to entrepreneurship and therefore you should do these things. That's not it at all. It's almost the inverse of it. It's - here's a very provocative quote of his. Think about it, ponder it, play around with it. Apply it to your own experience. And there were so many of those that resonated against the backdrop of all the different things that happen in entrepreneurship.Mental health and entrepreneurship:The stigma associated with mental health is incredibly toxic. It is a huge burden on many leaders and significantly inhibits many people's ability to accomplish things and have really successful lives. It's not the mental health challenge, it's the stigma associated with it. Because the mental health challenge is a challenge. Diabetes is a health challenge. You break your arm, you break your arm. If you have bipolar disorder or you have borderline personality disorder, or you have obsessive compulsive disorder, you have chronic anxiety, these are things that you can work on. But if you're in a place where you're afraid to even acknowledge it. Because leaders don't acknowledge those things, leaders don't do that kind of work. It's not my problem, it's your problem. I think most people that think about it for more than a couple of minutes, know many very powerful people that have extraordinary mental health issues.Importance of sleep and self care:There's nothing wrong with working one hundred hours a week. If you work many hours, whatever that many hours is if you are not, then taking care of yourself in the hours you are not working (which by the way includes sleep) but also include what you put into your body, how you spend your time with other people, how you spend your time by yourself. It's not healthily sustainable over a long period of time. Show Links:Guest Profile:Brad Feld on LinkedinBrad Feld on TwitterFoundry Group WebsiteBrad Feld on TEDxBoulderHis work:The Entrepreneur's Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for DisruptorsThe Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial EcosystemStartup Opportunities: Know When to Quit Your Day JobStartup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of DirectorsStartup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your CityVenture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture CapitalistDo More Faster: Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup

Jaclyn Hester is a Partner at Foundry Group, a venture firm that invests in tech companies and early stage venture funds. She helped launch Foundry's partner fund strategy in 2016 and works closely with Foundry's portfolio while also leading new fund investments. Prior to Foundry, Jaclyn was a practicing attorney, advising startups and private equity firms as well as M&A transactions. She also worked closely with her husband and his family on their SaaS startup, Fare Harbor which was acquired by Booking.com. On this episode, Jaclyn's biggest lesson speaks to exactly why Adam and Chris believe the Colorado tech ecosystem is so special and unique. Find out more about what we're up to at Range.vc Connect with Adam and Chris and the Range VC team on LinkedInSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, Jim speaks with Brad Feld, author of the recently published The Entrepreneur's Weekly Nietzsche, as well as co-founder of Foundry Group, a tech-focused venture fund located in Boulder Colorado.  Brad and Jim discuss how Brad accidentally became a venture capitalist, gender and racial equity in the venture world, and setting aside bias as a leader.  They then move onto the advantages of Zoom meetings over old-school IPO roadshows (especially during the fundraising stage) and Brad's experience with philosophy and bringing stoicism to entrepreneurship.

Today's guest is Ali Schultz. Ali is a co-founder, coach, and facilitator at Reboot, a coaching company that provides comprehensive offerings to serve leadership development for individuals, teams, and entire organizations. If you're a tech entrepreneur or venture capitalist, there's a good chance you've heard of Reboot. They've worked with companies like Etsy, Lyft, and Twilio and venture capitalists from firms such as Union Square Ventures, Accel, and the Foundry Group. Ali and her three co-founders started Reboot in 2014 to foster a revolution around work – that work doesn't have to destroy us. Work can be the way that we achieve our fullest self. Prior to co-founding Reboot, Ali worked for more than a dozen years in business as an operator managing projects, teams, and human resources, and developing brands. With a Masters degree in religious studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Ali has studied Transformational NLP at NLP Marin, completed the facilitator program at the Center for Collaborative Awareness, and is a certified EQUUS Experience Facilitator in Equine Facilitated Coaching. Ali seamlessly and deftly weaves together her business acumen with the innate wisdom of the body, the philosophies of the world's wisdom traditions, and the way of the horse to help clients find their voice so that they can find themselves. In this interview, we discuss her early exploration into wisdom and spirituality, her corporate world experience, what it means to be a coach, equine-facilitated coaching, and all things Reboot. Timestamps 00:03:11 Growing up and upbringing in Wisconsin 00:06:36 What sparked her interest in horses 00:09:16 When did her exploration into wisdom, spirituality, soul etc. begin? 00:17:57 How was she able to pursue wisdom and spirituality in her formal education? 00:25:10 First couple of jobs after college in tech startups 00:29:19 Meeting her Reboot co-founder Jerry Colonna 00:32:16 What sparked her interest in coaching? 00:38:28 What is the role of a coach? 00:42:28 Reboot overview and her role 00:43:40 Different services that Reboot provides 00:46:26 Most common challenges leaders come to Reboot with 00:50:56 Work can be the way that we achieve our fullest self 00:55:11 The "hamster wheel" 00:56:36 Success stories through Reboot coaching 01:03:07 Equine facilitated coaching 01:07:24 What would an equine facilitated coaching session look like? 01:11:53 Adjusting to the pandemic 01:13:56 How the pandemic has amplified some of the challenges that companies face 01:17:03 Strategies that are effective in preventing burnout 01:22:03 What she wants to accomplish 5 years from now 01:22:55 Her daily routine 01:24:49 Her driving force 01:26:24 Parting words of wisdom around maintaining well-being as a working professional