Data-based decision-making is the norm in business — huge companies (e.g., Oracle, Salesforce, Tableau) have been built around the market for managing, measuring and visualizing the data flows in large enterprises. But even mature companies struggle to find enough humans — a.k.a. “Data Scientists” — with the skills to manage these tools and interpret and continue…
My long-time business partner Andy Sack just announced his resignation as Managing Director of Techstars Seattle. Together, we also announced that I’ll be taking on that role as soon as he wraps up the final details on his most recent class. This post shares some of the backstory on how that all came to pass, continue…
Between Techstars and Founders’ Co-op, I spend a lot of time helping early-stage companies raise money. I also hear a ton of pitches myself, and (for reasons that I try hard to be transparent about), my answer to the question “will you invest” is almost always “no”. Since I see both the buy + sell side of the continue…
Garry Tan published a great piece yesterday titled “Travel planning software: the most common bad startup idea“. And while I strongly agree with his (dark) assessment of that category of opportunity and have seen my share of related pitches, there are several other equally bad ones that I see even more often. Inspired by Garry’s continue…
I had a great meeting today with a portfolio company CEO I hadn’t seen in a while. We covered a bunch of ground in the meeting, but the statement that stuck with me the most was how he described the company’s approach to scaling their sales capacity: “We treat sales like a product and invest continue…
A year or so ago I wrote a series of posts sharing some of my lessons learned from my past five years as a “professional” early-stage investor. As some readers (very gently) pointed out, those posts were billed as an update to a pair of Investment Thesis posts I wrote in early 2008, but in continue…
I’ve been spending a ton of time lately on activities that don’t obviously have much to do with my actual “work” — which in its broadest description includes anything and everything needed to help Pacific Northwest founders build big software companies from scratch. Whenever I catch myself wondering why I’m doing something — or better continue…
Startup founders are like sponges. You basically can’t be an entrepreneur if you aren’t relentlessly curious about people, technology, business and culture — constantly remixing those ingredients in your head to find new and better ways of doing things. Because they’re so intellectually agile, founders can learn almost anything if exposed to the right vectors, continue…
A few weeks ago I was invited to speak to a graduate accounting class at the University of Washington. Although most of the students in the class had already accepted offers from one of the Big 5 accounting firms (which mostly work with larger companies), the professor wanted to give them a little exposure to continue…
I’m a firm believer in Brad Feld’s ecosystem model of innovation, and — in addition to my day job as an investor at Founders’ Co-op — also serve as a volunteer board member for the Washington Technology Industry Association and Chair of the City of Seattle’s Economic Development Commission. In both roles, I’m often asked what continue…