Brad Feld Archives - Serious Startups

4 Must-Read Venture Capitalist Blogs

There’s a lot of noise in the blogosphere, but when it comes to blogging VC’s, founders would do well to pay attention. The great thing about investors who blog is that entrepreneurs can do some initial research before they ever request a meeting. And for those not ready for funding, VC blogs can teach us a lot about the startup atmosphere.

As the content trend grows, more and more VCs blog on a semi-regular basis. Here are some of our favorites:

Brad Feld

Brad Feld is the managing director of the Foundry Group in Boulder, CO. He’s also the author of some of our favorite startup books, including Startup Communities and Do More Faster. As one of the founders of TechStars, he’s a champion of startups and startup ecosystems all over the country. On his blog, Feld talks startup life, startup communities, and the startup scene in Colorado.

Mark Suster

One of the very first articles I read about startups was Entrepreneurshit. The Blog Post on What It’s Really Like. In a world where we often glamorize startups, Suster’s blog is often a refreshing jolt of reality. Startups are hard, but as a 2x founder and partner at Upfront Ventures, he knows it’s not impossible. There’s as much encouragement as tough talk on this blog.

Ben Horowitz

One of the founding partners of Andressen Horowitz, Ben also has plenty of experience as an entrepreneur. His blog is full of wisdom gained from those experiences and discussions of how Andreesen Horowitz operates.

Fred Wilson

As the managing partner at 2 New York VC firms, Flatiron Partners and Union Square Ventures, Fred Wilson has plenty of experience. He’s been in the VC game since 1986, before a lot of current entrepreneurs were out of diapers. His posts are short and sweet, but insightful. My current favorite post is If You Aren’t Technical, Get Technical.

Startup Arkansas Launching Friday March 1st With Scott Case & Brad Feld

Tis the season to launch Startup America Partnership regions. Monday we were in Atlanta for the kickoff of Startup Georgia with Scott Case and So So Def CEO & Founder Jermaine Dupri. Now Case along with Startup Community activist, investor and author Brad Feld are preparing for Startup Arkansas’ big launch on March 1st.

While Startup Bus regions across the country are double checking their busses, and checking their manifests, entrepreneurs throughout Arkansas will come together in Conway for an event called “Think Big Arkansas”.

The event kicks off bright and early at 9:00am with check-in starting at 8:30am. It’s being held at the Hendrix College Student Life & Technology Center.

Think Big Arkansas has a whole day of programming lined up including a startup alley exhibition area, a parade of startup ecosystem startups and partners, several sessions and of course Scott Case and Brad Feld. Case will be speaking at noon during lunch (bring $$ for Food Trucks and guided by Truckily) and Feld will be speaking at 6:30. He’ll also be signing copies of his book “Startup Communities”.

15 startups will be featured during the event in a startup alley, and demoing throughout. Kenny Tomlin from Rockfish and John James from Acumen will be speaking on starting up and the importance of serial entrepreneurship.

It’s not too late to register for this great event, click here.

Boulder Startup Mobiplug Gets $2.7M Series A Putting Home Control In Your iPhone

When a startup lands itself in the Boulder flagship Techstars program and then catches the eye of startup evangelist and venture capitalist Brad Feld it’s typically a recipe for greatness. Just check out how well Orbotix, the creators of the “Sphero Ball” have done since their time at Techstars.

Another recent Techstars Boulder graduate is following in the robotic balls footsteps by landing an impressive Series A round and a top level executive. Mobiplug, a company that brings home monitoring, control and automation to the palm of your hand via an iOS app, just landed the capital it needs to accelerate development. They also landed the leader they need to take the startup to the next level.

Feld’s Foundry Group led the $2.7 million dollar round. TechCrunch reports that Bullet Time Ventures, SK Ventures, Social Leverage, and Clarion Direct Investment, among others, participated in the round as well.

Mobiplug also announced that serial entrepreneur Tim Enwall, most recently CEO of Tendril, is now at the helm at Mobiplug.

Mobiplug consists of a small black box, that serves as a control hub, and an iOS app. Through the combination of the hub and the app, the user/home owner, can control everything from the lights, to the thermostat, electrical outlets, sprinklers and more. This can be done in the home or remotely, providing an extra element of security to the user’s home.

New CEO Enwall said in a statement:

“Getting wirelessly-enabled household items like locks, thermostats, lights, outlets and shades made by different manufacturers and based on different protocols to talk to each other is an enormous problem to solve, which is keeping this market from exploding. We’re fixing that.”

The Foundry Group’s Ryan McIntyre is joining Mobiplug’s board of directors. He also served as Mobiplug’s mentor during the Techstars program.

“I was really impressed by the co-founders and their ability to solve the thorny technical and interoperability problems that are currently holding back the home monitoring and control and Internet of Things (IoT) industry from mass adoption,” McIntyre said in a statement. “And when Tim Enwall decided to join Mobiplug, we felt confident that the addition of his experience and leadership to this already talented core team could really disrupt the market and lead this growing space.”

Linkage:

Source: TechCrunch, DailyCamera

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Have You Tried Brad Feld’s Version Of Hacker News? The hub at Startup Revolution

Have you tried out Brad Feld’s version of Hacker News?

Most everyone in the startup community is familiar with Y-Combinator’s Hacker News. If you’re not, it’s pretty simple, it’s like Reddit but rather than all news it’s just hacker news. Most of the community contributed stories involve hacking, coding, design, development and startups.

One of the problems with Hacker News, for me at least, is that I am only looking for startup news. Hacker News gets a tremendous amount of contributions every day, so it gets to be cumbersome weeding through the stories to find the startup news relevant to me.

After I track down the startup news on Hacker News I just want to get to the story and barely have time to comment, even if I want to.

Brad Feld has introduced a new site similar to Hacker News but all about startups. The site is called The Startup Revolution Hub, actually has a nicer looking UI and is easier to navigate. Best of all I don’t have to weed out general coding and dev posts to get to the startup posts.

The Startup Revolution Hub was launched earlier this month and has already amassed 250 users. It functions like Hacker News and Reddit. A user can post a story, comment a story and move a story up or down by hitting one of the arrow buttons.

Right now the contributions range from startup news stories, startup founders announcing their startups, startup events, and even how to’s that startup founders and entrepreneurs would find useful. For instance we found “How to design infographics”

Community members are also sharing their thoughts, best practices and advice in posts like “Technical Co-Founder Confessions” and “The Hardest Part of Startups: Getting Past Zero”.

If you haven’t signed up for Startup Revolution yet, you may want to. Joining a community early has it’s advantages and I’m sure it’s going to get quite popular, quickly.

Linkage:

Startup Revolution Hub here

Hacker News here

Everywhere Else here