Disqus - Latest Comments for bfeld

Re: Entrepreneur Corner Roundup: Surefire ways to get rejected by an angel investor and clearing up lean startup myths

bfeld — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:57:07 -0000

Minor correction - the post above refers to me as an "angel investor." I'm actually a VC at Foundry Group (www.foundrygroup.com) - I wrote this as a "peer" to my VC colleagues (vs. as an angel investor being critical of VCs.)

Re: Thematic vs Thesis Driven Investing

fredwilson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:55:09 -0000

i used the word thematic because it's been rattling around in my brain for a
few days

but sector bets or trend chasing is a better way to describe what i call
"thematic"

words matter so i take your point

and the small firm where everyone works on the same stuff is a powerful
model as you and I both know

Re: Thematic vs Thesis Driven Investing

bfeld — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:30:03 -0000

I think you are using the word "theme" where you really mean "trend" or "sector". When I first started talking about "themes" in 2006, I don't think I heard the word very much - I remember specifically searching for a word that was different than "sector" since I'd lived through the "big firm sector approach" at Mobius. Now that theme is "trendy", I hear it all the time, which is kind of a meta-trend (to be a "theme-oriented VC").

Another differentiator - which you point out - is whether each partner (or groups of partners) work on different "themes" (sectors/trends) or if everyone works on the same stuff. The power of a small firm is that everyone can work on the same stuff - I'm always amazed when I run into small VC firms (five people or less) that have partners working on different things and subsequently don't get the leverage of a small team.

At the end of the day I know it's just semantics since it's all about the underlying strategy the VC firm has. And - as you know - I like yours a lot!

Re: My 3 Favorite VC Bloggers

tacanderson — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:12:11 -0000

Deal. I'll find an excuse to come to Boulder to redeem that :)

Re: My 3 Favorite VC Bloggers

bfeld — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:43:30 -0000

Hey Tac - thanks for the call out. My mom will be proud! Holler if you are even in Boulder - the beers are on me.

Re: State Of The Blogosphere Interview

bfeld — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:11:46 -0000

Thanks Bijan. I hope we (all three of us) help each other out on many things for a long time to come.

Re: Blog Stars

twitter-7517052 — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:30:27 -0000

thats so howard

Re: The 'We Need To Own' Baloney

fredwilson — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:31:34 -0000

or as bram cohen says somewhere else in this thread, it means you cannot
even bring reason into the discussion

Re: The 'We Need To Own' Baloney

bfeld — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:26:31 -0000

I just caught up on a week of blogs and completely agree with this. The right word is "want", not "need". When a VC says "I need" at the starting point of a discussion, they are lying. Or, they have created what in my mind is an illogical construct, especially if they are an early stage investor.

Re: Blog Stars

ccrystle — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:18:03 -0000

off-topic, I just spent yet another hour on your site digging into 409a and employee options pricing. fun fun. talk about secret codes.

Re: Blog Stars

bfeld — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:58:02 -0000

That's just secret code between us.

Re: Blog Stars

ccrystle — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:57:16 -0000

...yet he lower-cases his name while you cap it...big case, big caps, lower case, small caps...wait, Howard are you hiding stock tips in comments?

Re: Blog Stars

bfeld — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:55:04 -0000

I find Howard to be very self-referential.

Re: Startup Visas

bfeld — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:57:19 -0000

Edward - thanks for the info on E2. I've explored this some and my understanding is that the E2 is a classic case of a "bought" visa - the visa is for the investor that controls the company they are establishing. If my understanding of this is wrong, please tell me.

The idea of modifying the E2 instead of the EB5 is a good one - I'll add that to the list to consider.

I'd be happy to have you involved in the StartupVisa effort along with any links to national experts on policy you think we should be talking to. We do have strong immigration attorney's involved in the effort at this point but are open to more.

Re: Founder Liquidity

bfeld — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:53:43 -0000

What Fred and Mark said.

Re: The Foursquare "Crush"

fredwilson — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 08:59:02 -0000

that is exactly how it played out Brad

Re: The Foursquare "Crush"

bfeld — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 08:57:03 -0000

Yeah, I suppose. But my experience is that there is a natural set point to the price (e.g. maybe I was too low) and give my belief that if the entrepreneur is ONLY focused on price in the early round I'm probably not the right investor for them I'd rather have to deal with this while letting them know me better. And - if it's something amazing, I'll meet whatever the clearing price is anyway without regret.

Re: The Foursquare "Crush"

fredwilson — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 08:54:02 -0000

well one downside is the price gets bid up

Re: The Foursquare "Crush"

bfeld — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 08:49:03 -0000

I so completely agree with this philosophy. It's so hard to see the actual downside of this approach to investing / life in the private company / startup domain.

Re: Is Speculating On What Private Companies Are Worth A Good Idea?

fredwilson — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:48:05 -0000

Yeah, but you can buy beer with a credit card these days

Re: Is Speculating On What Private Companies Are Worth A Good Idea?

bfeld — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:30:52 -0000

A wise man one told me "it's not real money until you can buy beer with it."

Re: Clouded Email Deliverability: Startups Pay Attention!

albert — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:20:05 -0000

That's perfect - will look at their pricing. All the existing services are too expensive for transactional use.

Re: Clouded Email Deliverability: Startups Pay Attention!

isaacsaldana — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:52:37 -0000

Brad, thanks for the mention.

The issue with giving users a whitelisted IP is that they may get blacklisted unintentionally by not handling bounces, spam reports, ISP rate limits, or unsubscribes correctly.

There are even further problems on specific sites such as social networks where users import their contacts to invite other users and these emails don't exist anymore or the ISPs have turned them into SPAM traps. SendGrid exists to solve these problems and we are currently working with cloud providers to give their users a “Planning to send mail? Sign up here.” option. We also allow and encourage our users to integrate with Return Path.

Re: Clouded Email Deliverability: Startups Pay Attention!

bfeld — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:45:18 -0000

Another solution is one of the TechStars Boulder 2009 companies - SendGrid. www.sendgrid.com They are doing "transactional email delivery" for over 150 companies at this point and growing like crazy. Our friends at Return Path (Matt Blumberg and George Bilbrey) have also been awesome mentors for them this summer as part of the TechStars program.

Re: Stocktwits…Working The Social Leverage…Ringing The Closing Bell

bfeld — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:01:57 -0000

Dude - you is the shizzle!