A few months ago I was invited to speak to the Bellevue, WA chapter of Rotary International on my favorite topic: how to create a globally competitive early-stage technology ecosystem here in the Pacific Northwest. As I was putting my thoughts together (full deck below + full props to Brad Feld, Fred Wilson, Mark Suster and Marcelo continue…
I spent last Thursday up in Vancouver BC at GrowConf (thanks again to Boris Wertz and Debbie Landa for the kick in the pants) and was incredibly impressed both by the quality of folks who showed up, and by the overall energy of the scene up there. Andy and I created Founders Co-op to help build continue…
TechCrunch’s article on this financing had already hit Techmeme by 10 this morning so pretty much the entire world has already heard the news, but I wanted to take a minute to officially welcome Habit Labs co-founders Jen McCabe and Buster Benson to the Founders Co-op family. We’ve been looking for a way to work continue…
(The quote in the title is from rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot in this Business Insider article) These guys are so good at making noise that I almost feel silly piling on, but since the cat is well out of the bag I wanted to at least confirm the news that Giant Thinkwell is our newest addition continue…
A common question among out-of-town visitors at Founders Co-op is “how do you get a cab around here?” Seattle is a car-centric city with far-flung neighborhoods and few concentrated population centers that can support a New York-style cab culture. As a result, actually getting a cab to show up when you need it is pretty continue…
A few weeks ago Fred Wilson reflected on the tight market for engineering talent: “[T]here is a war for talent, particularly developer talent, going on. Not just in Silicon Valley but also in NYC and many other places around the country.” In chemistry terms, developers are now the limiting reagent for high-growth software firms. The scarcity continue…
If you’ve been following our recent investment activity here at Founders Co-op, you know we love social games (e.g., Big Door, Massively Fun) and developer platforms (e.g., Urban Airship, PHP Fog). Today we’re excited to announce an investment that takes these themes to a whole new level: Zipline Games. The mobile games business is exploding: depending continue…
Mike Arrington got wind of this one last night so we’re making it official as well: we’re delighted to announce that Thinkfuse (TechStars Seattle 2010) is a recent addition to the Founders Co-op family of companies. The company is still in private beta so they aren’t saying much about what they’re up to yet, but continue…
I just finished reading Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From (I know, I’m a little late to the party) and among the many ideas now rattling around in my head is that of the “commonplace book“: a 17th Century habit of maintaing a written personal idea log. As Johnson describes in a related blog continue…
One of Seattle’s best (and least-known) entrepreneurs isn’t in the software business. Dave Lahaie is the President and founder of Evergreen Recycling, a global company that matches industrial waste products from one industry with raw materials supply chains in another. By matching waste outputs with manufacturing inputs, Dave’s company saves millions of tons of material continue…