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A collection of 37 posts

Tech Company B-Corp Certification Surprise

I found myself down the B-Corp Certification exploration rabbit hole. Now that the certification craze dust has settled a bit (remember a few years ago when everyone wanted to be B-Corp Certified?) we have some industry data around what it all means in practice. Definitions There are two "B

CARMERA

I can finally talk about this product and company! CARMERA is building a marketplace for real-time, in-depth (3D), street-level environment information. Autonomous vehicles and smart city efforts have insatiable appetites for this kind of data, and collecting it is expensive and hard. CARMERA brings it to market in a scalable,

How Did Gnip Get The Twitter Deal?

I get asked this question a surprising number of times, so I'm going to try answering it here in hopes of killing multiple future birds with one stone. The question comes in the "hey, can I pick your brain for thirty minutes" form, and winds up

jud@techstars.com

I'm getting back into the mix. It's been a creative, fun, enlightening, educational, expanding, and relaxing couple of years "off," but I want to re-engage with something operational again; I've joined Techstars [http://www.techstars.com/] as its CTO. I'm

Spending Capital

The Joker burning "his half" of the cash in The Dark Knight.Enough data points now to write this post without giving anyone in my portfolio away, and enough that I feel like I see a pattern. I'm seeing a lot of first-round/seed stage capital

Another Day In Pictures

Another Day In Pictures

Fun day around town with friends and my 1.2f 50mm prime lens. Off to school.Breakfast with Ro Gupta.The man the myth the legend Lloyd Tabb passing through Boulder.David Cohen... "Cincy Baby!" #startupcincyDuer Reeves expounding upon Weather Cloud.Boston marathon and Finance/Accounting ass kicker

Investment Stages

venture capital

Investment Stages

With so much startup investment activity these days, I find myself in regular discussion around valuations, stages of investment (and what those stages mean), and, from the entrepreneur’s perspective, when to engage various forms of investment. I’m a visual thinker, so I pulled some charts together that help

Hiring Your First "Sales Guy"

Knowing when to hire your first sales person is the answer to one of those million dollar questions. We did a great job hiring our first sales person at Gnip (an Enterprise SaaS sales scenario), and this post describes how I think we pulled it off. There were three things

Your Startup's Identity Crisis

Your Startup's Identity Crisis

photo by Hans Richard Pedersen [http://hansrichardpedersen.deviantart.com/]Don't think about the following question; just answer it. Is your startup a Product company, or a Services company? If you answered "kind of both," you answered wrong. Only mature firms can handle both. If you'

When Are You No Longer A Startup?

In the past six hours, the topic of whether or not a company is a startup, or not, has come up a half-dozen times. I've been meaning to post my thoughts on the topic. Gnip [http://gnip.com/] (a social media company [http://gnip.com/]) is a high-growth

Trajectories

My company, Gnip (a social media company) [http://gnip.com/], blew the doors off of 2012 [http://blog.gnip.com/gnip-2012/]. The business grew tremendously, we saw concrete manifestation of an ecosystem we've visualized since the beginning, and the product lit up business after business with the public

Community Anchors: Dojo4

During Tuesday meditation at Dojo4 [http://dojo4.com/] this morning something hit me in the context of "community." A few months ago my daughter had a section in her 2nd grade class wherein they discussed "community." What makes a community? What does a community need to

Startup Life - The Book

The next book, Startup Life [http://startuprev.com/lifebook], in the Startup Revolution [http://www.startuprev.com/] series is coming out in short order (you can pre-order now). My wife and I contributed to this one. Startups are a unique beast when it comes to career paths, and the blend

Hosting A Conference: Big Boulder 2012

Hosting A Conference: Big Boulder 2012

If you've considered putting on a conference at your company, you might glean something from our experience. My company, Gnip (a social media company) [http://gnip.com/], held its first conference this summer (Big Boulder [http://bigboulderconf.com/]). You can also read about it on the Gnip blog

"Startup Communities" by Brad Feld

A "publisher's draft" of Brad's latest book (release date in coming weeks) called "Startup Communities" [http://amzn.to/S1A9AZ] appeared on my desk the other day. I just finished reading it. What an awesome book! Brad [http://www.feld.com/] put to

Daily Camera Building Re-development

If you are responsible for leasing/buying commercial office space for your Boulder-based company, read on. My company, Gnip (a social media company) [http://gnip.com/], recently signed a new lease downtown, so the process is still fresh in my mind. This coming Thursday, July 26th, evening, the Boulder Planning

My First Pitch Deck

While working at a large company back in 2006, my frustration with lacking innovation reached threshold and I a) wanted to do something inspirational again, and b) wanted to finally plant my roots down in Boulder. I blogged about my ultimate leap into the abyss, and finally into my current

What's Your Exit Strategy?

Job candidates still ask this question a lot. I'm experiencing the current wave of it at Gnip [http://www.gnip.com/] where we're doing a lot of hiring [http://gnip.com/careers]. I'm always surprised by the question because it's vestige from

Scaling Me 2

This timely post, that I stole the title from, by Matt Blumberg [http://www.onlyonceblog.com/2012/04/scaling-me] took the words, in a timely manner no less, right out of my mouth. I'm seeking inspiration from Matt (unbeknownst to him) to get some of my "first

Staying Connected: Company Update Emails

Staying Connected: Company Update Emails

About a year ago one of Gnip [http://gnip.com/]'s employees pulled me aside to ask some pointed questions. This person had noticed a few things happen in the office, and let his imagination run wild to the point of believing Gnip was being acquired. In reality, that

Gnip is one (leap) year old!

Yesterday (leap day!) was Gnip's four year anniversary. It's been a wild ride to be sure. It took awhile to find the groove (Bijan Sabet coincidentally just posted on this topic [http://bijansabet.com/post/18548961644/patience-persistence]), but patience and persistence paid off. Here's

David & Goliath; Internet Tech Sector & U.S. Government

By way of the Silicon Flatirons "The Digital Broadband Migration: The Challenges of Internet Law and Governance" [http://www.silicon-flatirons.org/events.php?id=1003] conference last night, I somehow found myself at a reception with a few dozen brains much bigger than mine; thank you Dean Phil

Modern Software Labor Challenges: The Perfect Storm

Many moons ago when I graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in "Computer Science Applications" (the University's attempt at hybridizing Computer Science with a School of Arts theme (Political Science for me); think "double major"), two things were obvious: software engineers

Partnership

I had a great conversation about partnerships with Chris Moody [http://chrismoody.com/] this evening. Chris and I have been working closely together for six months now at Gnip [http://gnip.com/]. As one of our investors put it, "the company is ending the year having completely exceeded any

Lijit Acquisition

Wow. What an illustration of how sticking with a company/team through thick and thin can yield big dividends. With a little time, amazing things can happen. I'm overjoyed with what the Lijit [http://www.lijit.com/] team pulled off. After four years (at least) of various strategies,