Do More Faster

by Brad Feld

  I have two passions: music and building things. When I look back at what has happened in my life, it all comes back to those two things. At age six, my parents got me Legos. At 11, I started playing the clarinet. At 15, I wrote a machine language program for my Apple IIe to play back digital music with six-note polyphony. I painstakingly entered each note from a score of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in machine code. While this was the first time I combined my two passions, I didn’t realize I was doing it, although in retrospect it all makes sense.

  After undergraduate and graduate school at MIT I started Harmonix with my friend Alex Rigopulos. Unlike some entrepreneurs, we didn’t start the company to be entrepreneurs. We started the company because we had a mission: to let anyone in the world experience the joy of making music. Starting a company happened to be the only way we knew to fulfill that mission. Alex was the business guy. I was the tech guy. I got to build software that makes music, just like when I was 15.

  Passion is often an overused word that loses its meaning, especially when attached to marketing statements such as “Your potential. Our passion.” To find your passion is to find those few things in your life that provide emotional satisfaction in and of themselves. Instead of hating your job, like many people do, imagine being able to work on your passion as your job. Now imagine being able to start a company doing the same thing.

  Harmonix had two distinct time periods: 1995 to 2005 (before Guitar Hero), and 2005 to the present. Those first 10 years were long and difficult. We raised about $10 million during that time and had very little revenue. By 2004, we had barely gotten to be a break-even business. I am often asked how I kept going when our prospect for success was so bleak. The answer is simple—I fundamentally loved what I was doing! The doing part gave us enough satisfaction that success in business was not necessary to keep us motivated.

  When Guitar Hero became a hit, we were called an overnight success. It was a really long night—10 years in the making. But our passion for doing what we loved every day made it a great 10 years.

  Harmonix is one of those great “overnight” success stories that give us chills every time we think about it. Eran was a fraternity brother of Brad’s but they didn’t know each other, since they were almost a decade apart in age. When Eran was thinking about starting Harmonix, he recalled that Brad had started a company and reached out to him. Brad was immediately supportive of Eran and Alex and helped put together the first angel financing for the company. The investors in this round were a bunch of Brad’s friends—his first business partner, his father, a friend of his father’s, the two guys who bought Brad’s first company, and a couple of successful angel investors who were investing alongside Brad. Basically, your perfect angel syndicate of entrepreneurs and friends who wanted to support two young entrepreneurs with an amazing vision.

  A decade passed. Brad would periodically get together with Eran and Alex when he was in Boston. Every now and then something came up when they sought out his advice. But most of the angels who invested alongside Brad lost track of the company. Ten years is a long time.

  Suddenly, Guitar Hero became a massive success. It was fun to play the game and talk about being an investor, but it was hard to tell what it meant. One day, MTV acquired Harmonix. When the deal was announced, the angels were stunned, because it was a bigger success than any of them had imagined. Several had actually forgotten they even owned stock in the company and were blown away by the check they got.

  All of this was a result of the efforts of Eran, Alex, and the Harmonix team they put together. As determined entrepreneurs, they probably would have figured out how to get funding if Brad and his gang hadn’t shown up. But they did, and it made it even sweeter for everyone, especially when the angels realized that Eran and Alex were just practicing their passion all along.

  Chapter 78

  Follow Your Heart

  Mark Solon

  Mark is a partner at Techstars. Previously, he cofounded and was managing partner of Highway 12 Ventures and has been investing in and working with startups since 1995. He’s been a Techstars mentor since 2007.

  I met my wife Pam in a coffee shop in Boston’s South End in 1993. Having lived in big cities my whole life (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston), I was smitten with this gal, who grew up in the small town of Boise, Idaho, and had a zest for life like few I’ve ever met. I asked her to marry me as soon as I had saved enough money for a ring. Over the next seven years, we moved from our tiny apartment in the South End to Bunker Hill and then up to Marblehead, where we bought a creaky 150-year-old Victorian near the ocean that needed a ton of work. She was working at a cool startup in the city and I became a partner at a boutique private equity firm. We had a daughter in late 1998 and had another child on the way in early 2000.

  Life seemed like a fairy tale. There was only one problem: I’d lie awake at night and dream about living in Idaho. I wanted to ditch life in the big city with all its trappings for a simpler life in the mountains of Idaho. Yet there we were, parents of a one-year-old and eight months pregnant with our second child. I knew that if I didn’t pull the trigger soon, it would never happen.

  I finally got the nerve, woke Pam on her birthday, and said, “Happy birthday, let’s move to Boise.” She looked at me like I had lost my mind. “What in the world are you going to do in Boise?” she asked. “I have no idea,” I responded, “let’s just move there and we’ll figure it out.” We talked about it all day and by that evening we committed to the idea. Twenty-four hours later, I walked into my office and said I was moving to Idaho. My partner, Leon (who is Russian), asked me where in Massachusetts the town of Idaho was.

  We put our house on the market that week and I flew out to Boise to start some business networking while Pam started winding down our life in Boston. I had no idea what I was going to do career-wise, but as I met with more and more folks from the business community, a pattern emerged: “With your background, why don’t you start a venture fund?”

  I hadn’t really thought of that. I mean, venture funds only existed in places like Boston and Silicon Valley, right? It was then that fate, or what Pam calls “trusting the universe,” started to kick in. Over the next couple of weeks, I met two people who would help solidify my notion to actually start Idaho’s first institutionally backed venture capital fund. First, I met Jim Hawkins, a well-respected and incredibly connected native Idahoan who was about to retire as the director of commerce of Idaho. After a long meeting, he said to me, “With your background and my contacts, let’s start a venture fund.” It was then that I started to seriously consider this as a career option.

  Next, I was introduced to Matt Harris, who was in the process of starting Village Ventures, a unique venture fund designed to support smaller funds in regional markets. By providing back-office support and a strong network of funds to share best practices, Village Ventures was a natural fit as a partner. Over the next year, Jim and I were able to raise a $25 million fund focused on investing in the most promising high-growth companies in the Intermountain West. Phil Reed joined us early on and we had some modest success in our first fund, which allowed us to raise a subsequent $75 million fund in late 2006.

  Even though some people consider Highway 12 Ventures a success, to me it still feels like a startup. I think of our first fund to be our seed money and our second fund to be our Series A round, but I still consider myself as much an entrepreneur as anyone we’ve backed. In fact, I relate more to the entrepreneurs of Techstars than I do to my peers at the big venture capital firms. There’s still a lot of wood to chop, as they say in Idaho, for Highway 12 Ventures, and we’re just scratching the surface of what we can accomplish.

  When I spend time in the Techstars bunker during the summer, I’m completely energized and inspired by the small teams that have dropped everything and moved to Boulder to pursue their dreams. I look at someone like Mark O’Sullivan, who left his family in Canada, and see a little bit of myself. Or Kevin Mann from Graphic.ly, who
has been fighting immigration issues and left his family and friends in the United Kingdom to take advantage of being chosen for Techstars. But the guys I admire most are Nate and Natty from Everlater. Despite having terrific post-collegiate lucrative jobs on Wall Street that could have served as launching pads for even more lucrative careers, these two childhood friends chucked it all and set out on a year-long around-the-world adventure because the universe was calling to them.

  They didn’t view leaving the comfort of high-paying jobs as a risk; for them, the risk was not following their hearts. Much like me a decade earlier, they believed in themselves and knew they would land on their feet when they returned from their adventure.

  Here’s where the real magic happened. Frustrated with the lack of tools to adequately share their wonderful travel experience with friends and family, they hatched a plan to start Everlater upon their return. When they finished their around-the-world adventure, they moved in with their parents, taught themselves to code, and launched an incredibly cool website to help travelers better share their experiences with their friends and family. It’s a fantastic product and they’re well on their way to building a terrific business together.

  The moral of the story is easy to state, but difficult for a lot of people to put into action: when you follow your heart, good things usually happen. We have a very short stay on this spinning orb and I believe life is way too short to be stuck in a career that doesn’t fulfill you. There’s really nothing to risk by starting your own company because we all know fundamentally that you can’t take it with you. I believe with all my heart that you have to trust that the wind knows where it’s going. I guess that’s why I’m such a fan of Techstars: because I believe that all the founders subscribe to that very same notion.

  Mark’s story of following his heart to Boise, Idaho, appeals to us because it’s very similar to how each of us ended up in Boulder, Colorado.

  Brad and his wife, Amy, were trapped in Boston. Amy grew up in Alaska and Brad grew up in Dallas, so Boston wasn’t home to either of them. On cold, gloomy days in Boston they’d talk about moving somewhere else to live, but the inertia of having gone to school in Boston and subsequently building a life and a business there kept them from acting. But they kept talking and whenever they traveled around the United States, which was often, they kept their eyes open for a place to live. They passed through Boulder on a December day in 1993 when it was 60 degrees and sunny and both said to the other, “Remember this.” After Brad sold his first company, he committed to Amy to leave Boston by the time he was 30; two months before his birthday Amy informed him that she was moving to Boulder and he could join her if he wanted to.

  David moved to Boulder because of a pizza dinner. He and his two cofounders were having dinner at Pizzeria Uno in Tempe, Arizona, when they started jotting down cities on a napkin. Each of them was living in a separate city at the time, but they knew they wanted to be together to help them get serious about their startup. Because they intended to sell public safety software nationally, the group decided that they would pick a location that would allow them to get to both coasts with some regularity. But they also wanted to live somewhere that they would personally enjoy. Boulder was the only remaining city on the list after all vetoes were exercised.

  Chapter 79

  Turn Work into Play

  Howard Lindzon

  Howard is managing partner of Social Leverage and is the cofounder of StockTwits. Howard has been a Techstars mentor since 2007.

  I am passionate about the financial markets, so many of my startups—all involved with financial markets—have been fun. I’m also passionate about golf; in fact, I moved to California so that I could play golf more often. In 2006, I started Wallstrip, which was a daily three-minute web videoblog covering one great stock at a time. I invest in trends, and our goal with Wallstrip was to unlock the best stocks that were trending up and think about why. I wanted Wallstrip to do for the stock market what Jon Stewart had done for politics and news.

  I believe magical things can happen when you can invest your energy where your passion lies. Entrepreneurs need an edge. No matter what the startup, the work is endless and will be tedious at times. It helps to know your industry inside out. If you choose an area to work in which you have passion and deep knowledge, you will know more about the opportunities that lie ahead and the products that could lead to profits. The roadblocks you hit will seem solvable. Your daily progress will be easily measured, and you will know when you are on the right track.

  I knew exactly the product that I needed to deliver for Wallstrip to gain attention and an audience. We built it and delivered it every day, we worked like crazy together as a team to do an amazing job, and we created one of the first popular videoblogs. As we gained momentum and visibility, a buyer for the company emerged. When we started Wallstrip, we didn’t build it to sell it, but my best trades have always come from a good investment premise. That is just how it worked.

  In 2008 I cofounded StockTwits because there was still more work to be done changing the way people discuss markets. StockTwits leverages the microblogging platform Twitter to build a lasting community for people who love stocks and markets. Stocktwits is amazingly fun, but it is also incredibly hard work. In fact, I’ve never worked harder in my life. But I’m having a blast.

  About my other passion, golf. It’s taken a hit (no pun intended!) for the past several years, but it still provides me that much-needed release from the total focus of starting a company. I don’t have to play 18 holes and spend the better part of a day to escape; I can go hit a bucket of balls at the driving range for 30 minutes. If I don’t have time for the driving range, I can watch a golf tournament on TV, or flip through a golf magazine. But having a passion in addition to my passion for financial markets provides a work–life balance and renewed energy for the things I find important in life.

  Today Stocktwits has dozens of employees, a huge community of followers, our own microblogging platform, revenue, and an early lead in the way new stock and market discussions take place. The team is having a ton of fun while working incredibly hard to build an important company. And yes, we’re hard at play.

  The greatest entrepreneurs often talk about how much they love what they do. It’s similar to some great athletes who are absolutely joyful when they are at the peak of their game. There’s often a grind that comes with creating any company or practicing over and over again to master a sport. But there’s a magic moment when it all comes together. At that moment, the work is play. And that’s when amazing things often happen.

  Howard Lindzon leads a discussion with the Techstars founders in 2008.

  Source: Photo Courtesy of Bill Erickson.

  Chapter 80

  Don’t Make Yourself Indispensable

  David Cohen

  David is a cofounder and the co-CEO of Techstars.

  When you’re first starting a company, you’re right there in the thick of it, all the time. During that heavy lifting phase, you naturally have to throw yourself into getting your startup off the ground and figuring things out.

  But it can’t go on like that forever. Obviously, your own personal health would take a hit, but it’s also a sign of poor health for your company if it relies on your presence in order to exist.

  So, once you’re a little further along—after you have things figured out and have a good market fit—as the CEO, you need to start thinking about working on the business instead of in the business. If you’ve done a good job working on your business, you should be able to go away for a month or two and still have your business run just fine without you there.

  Now, that doesn’t mean you should run away to Cuba for six weeks right off the bat. But it does mean that you should start out by testing the waters by staying out of the office for a couple of days. Next, actually leave town for a few days—even if you don’t want to, and even if you have important things scheduled. After all, it’s not a true test of your “indispensableness”
if you’re only gone during slow times. During these test periods, remain accessible and see what happens. What do people send you emergency texts about? Did it turn out that there are some things only you know how to do? Was there something only you have the authority to take care of? Figure out what information you need to share with other members of your team to make yourself less indispensable.

  This is all about surrounding yourself with great people and ensuring that they have the ability to handle every aspect of the day-to-day business. I ran this test with Techstars in November of 2015, when I took an entire month off work. I was able to do that because I have a great team and the business was healthy enough to run smoothly for a month without me.

  Refusing to become indispensable doesn’t mean you aren’t important to the company, or that your contribution isn’t valuable. But when it comes to day-to-day operations, if you have to be there in order for things to work, it’s an indication that you’re not building the company the right way. If you get to the point where the company is not completely dependent on you to survive, as a special bonus, you’ll get to focus more on strategy instead of tactics and this in turn will move the needle even more.

  Chapter 81

  Get Out from Behind Your Computer

  Seth Levine

  Seth is a partner at Foundry Group. He has been a Techstars mentor since 2007.

  One generally pictures the world of business primarily taking place in offices—people working diligently behind their desks, either on their computers or on the phone, and taking meetings in conference rooms. Heading out of the office has typically meant traveling to someone else’s office for a meeting or heading to lunch to talk shop. In recent years, I’ve been experimenting with expanding this notion of out-of-office meetings to include some places that, while not typically thought of as business settings, have proven to be both very productive and, as a side benefit, extremely enjoyable.