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Wow – I was blown away by the great sketch notes on my Startup Communities talk that Sacha Chua made from my talk in Toronto a few weeks ago.
Sacha completely captured it.
Posted By Brad Feld on November 12th, 2012
Categories: Communities Tags: communities, sketch notes
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As Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur gets closer to it’s publication date (it’s January, but you can pre-order now – hint hint) I’ve been getting increasing number of notes from folks I know about their own experiences. Today’s is from Sandy Grason about her thoughts around her relationship with husband Rich Kwiat. I think all of this stuff is powerful and magical – Sandy, thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts out there in the world.
So, I’ve been reading some of your thoughts on relationships and thinking about your book…. These thoughts woke me up at 3am, whenever something wakes me up at 3am I know I’m supposed to pay attention to it, because I love to sleep, like a lot. Here’s what I believe…
I met Rich Kwiat when we were both 19 years old. I didn’t realize I was falling in love with a serial entrepreneur, I thought I was falling in love with a rock star. I now know the two career paths have quite a bit common. We’ve been together for over 26 years and he’s still my favorite person to hang out with. People constantly ask me what the secret is to our relationship and I never really know what to say. I tell my daughters, find a man that makes you laugh, because if you can laugh even when you’re in a fight, you’ll be okay. No one makes me laugh harder than Rich.
But I think the best information about being in a relationship with an entrepreneur (or a rock star) actually came from a song that Rich wrote many, many years ago. He’s not one to preach “live in the moment” whoo-whoo philosophy and before we had kids he was strictly rock-n-roll, but this song sums up everything you need to know to be happy in a relationship (or in life for that matter). The song is called “This Ordinary Life” and here a few of the lyrics:
Once in a while, through this ordinary life we’ve made on broken dreams, we’ll catch our eyes & still know what’s there between.
Yesterday seems oh so far, I thought I’d reach and touch the stars, I’d never knew I’d share the moon with you.
Once in a while through our daily measure, I’ll get to feel your warm embrace, if what we have is ordinary…. it’s for me.
I made a video for Rich a few years ago for this song. You can see what Rich looked like with hair
Our little girls are now 16 & 14 and Rich is on his 4th or 5th start up, I’ve lost count. We haven’t had the big google sale yet, but we still stay up late talking about all of the incredible possibilities that being a serial entrepreneur brings to life. I’d much rather be in a relationship with a passionate entrepreneur than a punch-the-clock, 9-to-5-er. It’s the roller coaster versus the merry-go-round. (My favorite “Parenthood” reference, some people prefer the Merry-go-round, but it just goes round and around, same everyday… I prefer the roller coaster, it’s scary and exiting and makes you feel so alive.)
Posted By Brad Feld on November 2nd, 2012
Categories: Life Tags: life, relationship
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I got a note the other day from my friend Lesa Mitchell concerning my assertion that you can create startup communities anywhere in the world. Lesa is vice president of Innovation and Networks at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Her responsibilities include identification of programmatic and policy levers that can accelerate innovation and support networks enabling firm growth. I asked her if she could write a quick summary of the experience she had with a handful of Yemen business leaders – it follows.
Recently at the Kauffman Foundation we hosted the US Ambassador to Yemen, Gerald Feierstein, and a group of ten business leaders from Yemen. At the Kauffman Foundation we host 80K visitors a year from all over the world who are either using our facilities for meetings around the topics of education, innovation or entrepreneurship or, are coming to the Foundation specifically to acquire knowledge to replicate in their own communities.
I used this opportunity to talk about Mr. Kauffman’s history as an entrepreneur and mentor which led to the creation of the Kauffman Foundation and how we are using Brad Feld’s “entrepreneurial stack” to translate those lessons to communities around the world. I heard from the entrepreneurs that they wanted to lead, wanted to help other entrepreneurs and would like their government to be supportive but not in the way. I told them that any entrepreneur in the USA would have repeated the exact same message. I heard from Mr. Fathi Hayel Saeed that he was enjoying the sense of community of the entrepreneurs on their trip and was interested in supporting other entrepreneurs when he returned home. Do they want Startup Weekends in Sana’a Yemen – yes. Do they love the idea of running competitions to allow some of their young people to get interested in entrepreneurship – yes.
The lesson; startup communities can start and flourish anywhere in the world. They all need to figure out their own “stack” based on the resources available in their community and they all agree on one thing – entrepreneurs by growing their firms, creating jobs with good wages and helping other entrepreneurs can actually improve the economy.
Posted By Brad Feld on November 1st, 2012
Categories: Communities Tags: communities, kauffman, lesa mitchell, yemen
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I recently received an email from Chris Heivly and Dave Neal who recently spent an hour talking about the Boulder Thesis and what it means for them in RTP/Triangle/Raleigh-Durham. I’ve gotten to know Chris and Dave through a few trips in the past to Durham along with their work at Triangle StartUp Factory, the accelerator they run in Durham. They offered an example of how a feeder – the Durham Chamber of Commerce – has effectively engaged and supported the Durham startup community. The example follows:
When you talk about the role of governments, institutions, and associations as feeders I felt like I wanted some more examples. We have a very unique Chamber of Commerce here in Durham and I think they serve as a good example.
When I first started talking to you and David Cohen in the fall of 2009 about an accelerator here in Durham – you planted the entrepreneur-led, organic/network thesis in my head. I was on a 275 person in a year tour of the area testing the accelerator thesis and one of those meetings was with the head of the Durham Chamber, Casey Steinbacher and a young associate, Adam Klein. They asked to get involved and I pushed hard on the “you can’t control this – you need to support this” thesis. We gave them a task – raise awareness. They bought it big time. They reached out to the entrepreneurial community for thoughts, advice, help and then took off. If anyone would have told me that I would be working with a Chamber of Commerce I would have told them they were crazy. They are true partners in our ecosystem today.
To date, they have spearheaded two contributing efforts that have really helped support & grow the region:
Total costs run less than $5k per Stampede session and most everything was donated for the SMOffice. I find these efforts to be totally supportive of the greater good and consistent with their strengths.
Posted By Brad Feld on October 31st, 2012
Categories: Communities Tags: communities, durham, feeders
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I was in Montreal yesterday hanging out at Founder Fuel and doing a bunch of stuff with Montreal entrepreneurs. One of them, Alistair Croll, sent me an overview from his perspective of what’s going on. It’s reposted here – if you are from Montreal please feel free to add to it in the comments!
In the past few years, the Montreal tech scene flourished. There are plenty of reasons for this—some cultural, some economic, and some the result of hard work by a dedicated core that wants to grow the community. Whatever the case, things are changing fast, with the city pumping out new startups and launching big tech events at a breakneck pace.
Montreal’s a goldilocks city—big enough to have culture and chaos, and small enough that you can actually find it. I’ve lived and worked in a number of tech centers, and for me, the blend of art, tech, and lifestyle makes Montreal feels more like San Francisco than any other city I know.
Geography and infrastructure
Montreal is a city of around 3.8 million people, located on an island in the middle of the St. Lawrence river. Throughout its history, it’s been a gateway. Jacques Cartier first visited the city in the 1500s (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal), and for centuries it was the doorway to the Great Lakes and the center of the continent. Today, however, it’s a different kind of gateway—for technology and design.