SubscribeThe fact that social gaming is big doesn’t surprise anyone who uses Facebook and inevitably sees those annoying invitations from your friends to join the next Zynga-sponsored time suck, but until I saw the numbers, I didn’t realize just how powerful Zynga had become. An article from Vator.tv today wrote the following about Zynga’s relationship [...]
Category: venture capital
University of Colorado Wins VCIC Regionals at USC
This past weekend, the local VCIC MBA team from University of Colorado made its way down to USC to compete in the West Regional VCIC Competition. They did not disappoint. In a thrilling finish, the team from CU triumphed over MBAs from Berkeley, Arizona, SDSU, Texas and edged out UCLA by a point to take [...]
2009 Boulder Regional VCIC
Last week, the Leeds School of Business, and the Deming Center more specifically, hosted the 2009 Mountain Region VCIC competition. Six teams of MBAs came from Univ. of Chicago, Michigan, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Purdue, and Notre Dame. Three local companies, TravelFli, LineRate Systems, and Green Diamond Tire presented their business plans. About a dozen judges including [...]
October Boulder/Denver New Tech Meetup
Mark Soane from Appian Ventures talked about the effects of the current financial crisis might effect the venture market. Basically, they are find now, but as LPs tighten up, things may get a little tougher. Within the companies in their portfolio , they are buttoning down the hatches. That said, funds that have recently been [...]
Bad Idea Generator
In the spirit of creativity, I propose a new kind of web-based generator: the bad idea generator. Related to my post on Smack My Pitch Up, I thought about ways to generate terrible ideas. It’s simple: combine a hot trend or industry with some other industry to get a ridiculous idea. The idea is similar [...]
It’s a Start-Up Town
Last week, The American released a very insightful article on building the Boulder tech community by Ben Casnocha. It does a nice job of encapsulating the exciting goings on in the Boulder tech community. It’s also a glowing account of the positive effects of folks like Brad Feld, Paul Berberian, and Terry Gold. There is [...]
Smack My Pitch Up
Unlike lawyers, entrepreneurs (at least in some instances) are able to laugh at themselves and not take themselves too seriously. My evidence for this finding is a recent event help in the “other” valley called Smack My Pitch Up. It’s billed as a “pitch event where bad ideas are not just expected, but rewarded.” There [...]
It Sucks Wrapping Up Your Venture Fund
Sometimes the hardest part is pulling the plug. Better to let them die than to have the undead in your fund. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to wrap things up. A post from the Dow Jones Venture Wire says it all: “With bubble-era venture funds getting ripe on the vine, more firms are looking to [...]
TechStars Investor Day
TechStars had its 2008 coming out party on Wednesday at the Boulder Theater. Hats off to all the teams, and everyone who worked on the event. TechCrunch has the meat of the matter, but I have my own very brief recap: David Cohen and Brad Feld kicked things off. Gyminee blew us away with how [...]
SBIR – the other white capital
The Law School at CU and Silicon Flatirons specifically hosted the MIT Enterprise Forum SBIR event. There was a live videocast from MIT in Cambridge. Some interesting folks were there including the CEO of VSee (really cool and lightweight video and desktop sharing tool), a guy from Barrett Technology (cool robotics), a guy from SteriCoat [...]
I Love NetNewsWire
A few months ago, I was shopping around for a good RSS reader. I found a great one in NetNewsWire. The user interface is excellent, very intuitive. (Mac users only. The cult has its perqs.) Props to NewsGator for the tool. NetNewsWire does a lot of great stuff, but one of the best is the [...]
The YouTube of Documents
The good, the bad, and the ugly will all be collected together at DocStoc. The California-based company just got another $3.25 million in Series B funding. Word to the wise, be careful using the legal documents.
WWJMD?
One of the highlights of this semester is my class at the business school on feasibility. The class is centered around taking an idea, and digging deeper into whether or not it is worthy of pursuing. Today was the second round of “in the fire” presentations where groups more or less pitch the idea and [...]
Entrepreneur Pitch Day
Today was a special treat in my Venture Capital class at CU. Professors Bernthal and Mendelson lined up four young companies to pitch in front of our class as well as the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic students. The pitches were followed by some tough questions from Jason and Frank Moyes as well as a debriefing about [...]
VC Joke
Q: How many VCs does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: One to screw in the lightbulb and four to blog about it. This one was inspired by the Foundry Group’s new website which includes, yet another blog. That’s on top of the blogs they already write, which I reguarly read, including: www.feld.com/blog, [...]
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