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TechStars deadline is this Saturday night!

March 30, 2007

You’re probably sick of these reminders by now, but just in case you’re not…

The TechStars application deadline is Saturday night, March 31st at 11:59:59pm MST.

So far, we have about 210 applications from around the country and around the world. It’s very competitive, but there’s still a little time for great technology founders to apply. We’re getting some great last minute applications and are sure to have some really interesting stuff going on in Boulder this summer at TechStars.

If you’re local, and aren’t sure you want to apply yet, then come talk to me at BarCamp tomorrow. I’ll talk you into it.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

BarCamp is tomorrow in Boulder

March 30, 2007

In true last minute style, the BarCamp organizers have come through once again. The venue is now set for the 4th Floor of 1035 Pearl Street in Boulder on Friday night and Saturday morning, thanks to Andrew Hyde.

If you’re not familiar with BarCamp, it’s an un-conference that self-organizes around web and tech topics. On Friday night, starting at 6:30 an initial agenda will be set and posted to the wiki that night. Saturday is the main event where those sessions occur. Usually sessions are added or dropped on the fly based on interest and participation. The big rule of BarCamp: Participate in the discussions. You can read how it all works here.

I’ve been to several of these now, and I learn something every time. I also meet great people. If you get the chance, come on Saturday. You need to sign up, and space is limited in this venue so you may be boxed out if you don’t sign up soon.

BarCamp is still also looking for sponsors (scroll down) for Saturday (coffee, bagels, swag, etc).

I hope to see you there.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

And then there were six

March 26, 2007

Seventy degrees today. I’m wearing shorts. Summer is coming.

Which reminds me, there are just six days left to apply to TechStars.

We have over 175 applications from all over the country (and the world) so far. There will be some very interesting companies in Boulder this summer, that’s for sure. What an amazing chance to learn from the mentors in the program as well as from these other great teams of entrepreneurs.

So get out and enjoy the day. Then tell somebody you know who could benefit from TechStars all about it, and tell them to hurry!

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups | 1 Comment 

Overheard

March 26, 2007

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Denver’s “Hive” co-working facility set to open in April

March 24, 2007

Andrew Luter of BaseCamp Capital bounced the idea of the Hive off me about 4 or 5 months ago. It’s about providing an affordable space for young startups and entrepreneurs to office. I’m using a similar (although shorter term) model for TechStars because there’s a ton of value to be had by being physically around other people in the same boat as you. So when he pitched me on the idea - I immediately loved it, except I wanted to see him do this in Boulder also! Andrew says that’s part of the plan if things go well.

The Hive offers three plans, ranging in price from $129/month to $349/month.

Recently, the Hive and the concept of “co-working” has gotten a fair amount of buzz - not just here but as far away as Europe. Entrepreneurs seem to dig it. Now the Hive is set to open in Denver on April 15th. I’m anxious to find out who takes advantage of it. If you’re a one or two man show, this just might be your perfect setup.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups | 4 Comments 

BarCamp Boulder is March 30/31 (meeting space still needed)

March 23, 2007

Kevin Cawley sent me this note earlier today about BarCamp coming up next weekend. They’re looking for a host company for Saturday 3/31. Read below if you can help or want to attend BarCamp.

Bar Camp is Here and We Need a Space

It’s time for Bar Camp Boulder again – it’s coming Friday and Saturday 3/30 and 3/31! The last event in November was a raging success. The one before that in Denver was awesome too. Bar Camp is an ad hoc gathering of folks who want to share their knowledge and learn from others – you can think of it as an unstructured but very focused and intense day of learning and discovering. You can get more info on Bar Camp here or check out this or video. At the last event in Boulder we had developers, designers, entrepreneurs, writers, bloggers, vloggers, kids, dogs, you name it. Well, no dogs, but we did have some really cute kiddos come by. We had great discussions, fantastic topics, and great presenters. We even played a cool game where you pick names out of a hat and create a business around those names, and of course we had lots of coffee.

This time around we need a space. Please help! Last time we used me.dium’s accessible conference room and that was fantastic but we were busting at the seams. Thanks again Kimbal, David, Robert, et al.

But we need a little more room this time – 50 folks hanging out all day in small space can get a little nasty. Ideally, the space would have fantastic Flatirons views, comfortable couches, foosball tables… but hey, at this point just a space large enough to hold 50 people or so will do. Ideally, we can partition off spaces for breakout groups. Oh, wireless is a big plus and a central downtown location would be great! We will need the space Friday evening and all day Saturday (3/30 and 3/31). Hey, it’s a great place to get some exposure for your business or just a nice way to give back to the community!

If you have any interest in helping us out please send me an email kevinc @ newsgator dot com and we can discuss.

Of you are interested in attending (or sponsoring), you can add your name to the list here.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Rockies Venture Club - Call for Presenters

March 20, 2007

On May 22nd in Denver, the Rockies Venture Club is hosting the annual Colorado Capital Conference. The conference was super last year - I sat on one panel myself and I especially enjoyed Reid Hoffman’s presentation (my coverage of last year is here or visit RVC’s recap if you want an idea of what it’s like).

This year, I’m looking forward to attending to hear Bill Reichert (one of the managing Directors at Guy Kawasaki’s Garage Technology Ventures) speak, and of course to find out what new companies show up on the scene.

If you’d like to attend or present your company at the conference, here’s what you need to know.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Overheard

March 20, 2007

  • Looks like I’m the proud papa of a beautiful new baby meme on widget monetization. It’s my first, you know. Cigars! (Yeah, I know lots of people talked about this before we did Big or Bullshit on it, but nothing is really new these days now is it?)
  • Adam points out yet another #1 (well #1 in “next tier cities” anyway) ranking for our community - bio investment
  • What do angels want? Not much, just “an intelligent, no-holds-barred team working to build an exciting business that makes me smile because it benefits society or improves mankind or revolutionizes an industry, and it just happens to have the potential to throw off a disgusting amount of cash along the way.”
  • More big improvements out of Newsgator (ajax web reader, and Go for Java) as of late. Great stuff.
  • Happy to see OpenCoffee developing here. I’m in too, but I’m still not drinking that crap. OpenIzze?

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups |  

Say “hiya” to the Keiretsu Forum

March 18, 2007

keiretsulogo.gifI had lunch recently with Steve Murchie who is the President of the newly formed Denver chapter of a national angel network called the Keiretsu Forum. There are 9 chapters in the US, whose members have invested more than $70M in a diverse set of real estate, technology, life sciences, and software companies to date. One advantage of a network like this is the ability to syndicate deals between chapters.

“Given that we’re a large and diverse organization, I can’t say that there’s any particular industry or type of deal we prefer. But if I look at our portfolio, I would say that we lean toward serial entrepreneurs and management teams with depth and experience, and a business model that is straightforward. So I haven’t seen many bets on technologies that don’t have a demonstrable path to monetization. We will step forward and help teams fill gaps through hands-on help, contacts and connections, though; we consider that an important value-add.” - Steve Murchie - Denver Chapter President

The first meeting of the Denver chapter of investors is March 27th. If you’d like to present your company, check out the application process or contact Steve Murchie directly. I believe there is no cost to go through the application process but once a company is selected to pitch at a meeting they are required to pay a fee.

<RANT>
I always grimace when I see organizations charging entrepreneurs to pitch to investors, but it seems that most of the angel networks including CTEK still do this to cover their costs. In my mind this cost should somehow be borne by the investors, who are the recipients of the (theoretically valuable) dealflow. If they don’t find value in the dealflow, then something is wrong and the fallback seems to be to charge the entrepreneur. To be fair, Keiretsu and CTEK both have “membership fees” paid by their angel investors that help to defray these costs, but I guess these fees are not enough on their own to cover operations, and thus the “success fees” are an unfortunate fact of life. The solution, obviously, is to charge a higher membership fee and provide enough value to make it worth the money to the investors. It’s just easier to charge the entrepreneurs and it can be intelligently argued that they receive value from the process. That doesn’t mean I have to like it though. As an investor, I prefer to think of much of what I do as giving back and helping my community. I’m willing to bear the actual costs associated with my dealflow (which, by the way, are very close to zero).
</RANT>

One thing that Steve told me about is how Keiretsu seeks to involve VCs in their process and meetings, providing a few complimentary memberships for this purpose. They’re not necessarily there as investors but as coaches to the angels and presenting companies. I think this is a very smart move. More than a few companies have been jacked up by inexperienced angel investors who overvalue the company early on or who don’t set things up correctly when venture investment is a future possibility. Involving a few professional VCs is synergistic for a variety of reasons.

Steve says that the March 27 meeting is close to capacity already, with about 70 investors attending. If you’d like to attend as an investor, contact Steve quickly.

From the sound of things Keiretsu is off to a good start so far in Denver, and it’s nice to know there is another seed stage funding source for the area with the ability to quickly syndicate our best opportunities.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups | 3 Comments 

PocketFuzz rocks SXSW

March 13, 2007

Just got home from a quick two day trip to Austin for SXSW. For me, the panels were so-so. I can’t say I really learned much new by attending them. But I sure did meet a ton of amazing people, which is really the only reason to attend these things in person.

PocketFuzz gangDenver’s own PocketFuzz and TechStars threw THE party of the night at SXSWi on Monday night. At one point around 2am, the line wrapped around the building and down the block. As Andrew Hyde pointed out to me: “if there’s a line, the party’s cool.” I bailed “early” at about 3:15 in the morning, and I’m told the 200 breakfast burritos being delivered right when I left didn’t last long. Sounds like things wound down around 5:30am.

Lots of great people stopped by the party to say hello. It was fun to meet Micki Kremmel (of Mickipedia and community director at Revver) who was hanging with the cool kids as usual. Nick Douglas (Mr. Valleywag) was there hanging out by the house Wii quite a bit. SXSW draws some really interesting folks from around the country - I met dozens more like this. It’s a different kind of web conference - people are there to have fun and to hang out and get to know each other. You can also tell it’s different because the usual webset of 96% while young male geeks was more like 60/40 at SXSW. All in all, it’s a nice change of pace and scenery and makes SXSW unique.

Dennis Crowley of Dodgeball was also at the party and I had to ask. With all this Twittering going on everywhere, did he have to laugh? Lots of people (even me) were calling Twitter “dodgeball simplified”. Dennis is right when he told me that Dodgeball is an application and Twitter is just a microblog. I doubt the Dodgeballers who are getting very specific functionality would jump ship for something like Twitter, which doesn’t really “do” anything. I tried to comment on Fred’s post about how annoying Twitter is in everyday life, but the comment post kept timing out on me. Basically I wanted to tell him that it is totally useless, unless you’re at something like SXSW where it’s good to really be kept up to date where your friends are and what’s happening. I thought it was really cool to know who was sitting in row 8 in the same panel room (especially when I was in row 100).

The party drew a great Colorado contingent - interesting that I had to go to Austin to meet guys like Scott McDaniel of SurveyGizmo, who works about a block from me on Pearl Street. Greg Reinacker of Newsgator popped in for a while, and it was also good to get to know Derek Scruggs a little better.

I also got to meet some great guys who work for the TechCrunch network (thanks Mike for letting them know to look for us there). I went to a few sessions today with Steve Poland, whose Techquila Shots blog I instantly loved when I saw it. Steve has documented 40 startup ideas so far, and he’s on a tear. I think he had one or two in the hour I sat with him. Blake Robinson (of CrunchGear) had literally lost his voice by the time he showed up at the party. We thought about sitting there and emailing each other on our Blackberrys, but we wanted to look cool so instead I just talked and he nodded alot.

Lots more pics of the party over on Flickr. Danny, Austin, and the PocketFuzz guys did a great job with this party. I gotta know who did the paint job on the silver bullet. So sweet.

Written by David Cohen · Filed Under Blog, Startups | 3 Comments 

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