Top 66 Brad Feld Quotes

In my world, historical revenue is the least interesting thing to consider in an acquisition strategy. The goal is to acquire technology that is on your product roadmap or people that fit culturally within your organization and help you execute on your roadmap faster.

As an investor, I’m always looking for the next great American company. Who will create tomorrow‘s Twitter, Facebook, or Google?

I’m always fascinated by the dedicated monitors in a hospital. Non-standard cables, funny button shapes, odd LED colors, and lots of extra controls.

December used to be very difficult for me. For many years, I fought the transition to the new year, was generally exhausted at the end of the year, and just wanted to hide. I described myself as a ‘cranky Jewish kid who felt left out by Christmas.’

I don’t read newspapers or watch the news on TV, deliberately to avoid the noise.

My wife is a writer. She grew up in Alaska. She told me she was moving to Boulder and that I could come with her if I wanted to. We were married at the time, so I chose to come with her.

What I’m looking for in my interaction is critical thinking on the part of the person pitching to me.

In 2013, when Google announced that Kansas City would be the first city in the country to have Google Fiber, I bought a house in the first neighborhood that was being wired up with Google’s gigabit Internet.

When I was in my mid-20s, running a successful company and clinically depressed, I was afraid to talk to anyone other than my psychiatrist about it. I was ashamed that I was even seeing a psychiatrist.

I’m a venture capitalist. I like to say my job is to help and support entrepreneurs. I can play a leadership role, but my organization can’t be the leader.

I especially love right-now sci-fi: stuff that happens in current time but incorporates a scientific breakthrough that is currently being explored.

‘Sunspring,’ the first known screenplay written by an AI, was produced recently. It is awesome. Awesomely awful. But it’s worth watching all ten minutes of it to get a taste of the gap between a great screenplay and something an AI can currently produce.

I feel like an email cross-dresser – I use a Microsoft product on my Apple product to access my Google product.

I’m a huge believer in the importance of vacations for leaders, entrepreneurs, and everyone else. I work extremely hard – usually 70+ hours a week.

When we raised the first Foundry Group fund in 2007, we took over 100 first meetings. We told our story several hundred times. As part of it was a slide called ‘Strategy.’ I still repeat the elements of that slide regularly, a decade later, as our core strategy has not changed.

That’s the problem with so many organizations around entrepreneurship. They’re driven by metrics that don’t matter.

I’ve been traveling more and feel like I’ve figured out a comfortable way to do it. The biggest shift is that I spend my traveling time ‘in the moment,’ I don’t over-schedule when I’m somewhere and instead focus on longer time with less people. I also give myself plenty of me time on the road.

If you are feeling some December blues, or even depression, don’t fight it. Instead, do something for yourself. Be reflective. Let the emotions exist. And be encouraged that, like me, you can get to a better place, but it can take time.

It’s time to focus on what I care about and not let the noise take over my brain.

At Foundry Group, we always look for companies that we think build magic into their products. Occipital has been one of those companies.

I have trouble sleeping maybe one night a year. On that special night, I get up and read on the couch until I fall asleep.

A lot of times, when I interact with someone for the first time, I don’t want to see the presentation.

While it’s trendy to outsource your accounting to a third party, once you hit a certain size, it’s dangerous.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a strong advocate for diversity across all dimensions.

While I live a busy life, the pace ebbs and flows.

I love near-term sci-fi. I especially love right-now sci-fi: stuff that happens in current time but incorporates a scientific breakthrough that is currently being explored.

My weight fluctuates between 205 and 220, depending on how much I pay attention to it.

Over the years, I’ve been involved in many business crises. I qualify this, since my crises have never involved life and death or the survival of the human race. But they are still crises.

I wonder if, as the tech to deliver content continues to evolve, we will start seeing the one season / 6-8 hour show that ends at a peak moment rather than is cancelled because it sucks.

The first thing that any city that’s trying to create a startup community or an entrepreneurial ecosystem that’s vibrant should do is get rid of the idea that they’re trying to be like Silicon Valley.

For those trying to protect the past, it is a way of retaining power, status, money, a way a life, predictability, comfort, control, and a bunch of other things like that. It is a struggle against the inevitability of change.

My optimism holds that the good guys eventually come out on top.

While I’ve had plenty of ups and downs, dealt with my share of failure, and struggled through emotionally difficult periods, I’m fundamentally an optimist.

I separate the world of startup communities into two constituencies – leaders and feeders. The leaders are entrepreneurs and the feeders everyone else.

When the entrepreneur is obsessed with the product and the company has organized all of its activities around that, it’s very powerful.

Some Sundays, I read it quickly – other Sundays, I savor it. I generally spend most of my time in ‘The New York Times Book Review,’ ‘Sunday Business,’ ‘Sunday Review,’ and ‘The New York Times Magazine.’ I turn all the other pages, only stopping when I find a headline that interests me.

In 2016, you no longer have to be in Silicon Valley to launch a successful startup. Colorado is home to many.

Usually, the first three months post acquisition are up and down. The acquirer and the acquiree are trying to figure out how to interact. The founders of the acquiree are usually tired from the deal process and adjusting to their new reality.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, I was an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Kauffman Foundation working with Jana Matthews on ‘learning programs for high growth entrepreneurs.’

I’m an optimistic person, and I tend to bury my cynicism in what I read and the movies I watch. My optimism holds that the good guys eventually come out on top.

As I continue to believe that innovation and entrepreneurship are the key drivers to our economic future, it’s frustrating to hear such little cogent discussion around it.

In my world, historical revenue is the least interesting thing to consider in an acquisition strategy.

Ever since I learned about the concept of garbage collection in 6.001 at MIT in 1984 while using Scheme on HP Chipmunks, I’ve always thought of dreaming as the same as garbage collection for a computer.

When I struggled with a depressive episode in 2013, I realized that I had a glitch in my thinking about my own motivation. I had separated learning and teaching into different concepts.

I have shifted my mindset in terms of how companies should… focus on building amazing products. If you have amazing products, the marketing of those products is trivial.

Immigrants have historically been an entrepreneurial bunch.

I love dreams.

While the line between stress, deep anxiety, and depression often blurs, most entrepreneurs struggle with broad mental health issues at various points in their lives.

Boulder is a very smart community.

America’s future as the global leader in innovation remains in the balance until our immigration system is fixed. A large portion of a reform package should focus on updating our system to better reflect the business landscape and market realities of the 21st century.

We should explore ways to make us a more amazing species. A more fascinating society. We should embrace our innovations and evolve with them.

If you aren’t going to make your revenue plan, it’s unlikely you’ll make your EBITDA or Net Income plan. You don’t even have to get complicated and look at Gross Margin or more derivative metrics – if you are off in Q1 and have any sort of growth expectations , you are going to miss for the year.

On a daily basis, I pay almost no attention to the macro.

I often get asked how I write so much. As any writer knows, the answer is to write a lot more than you actually publish.

This is something I’ve struggled with a lot: how to relate to the fear in a constructive way. It’s not that you eliminate the fear. We have all the fears. That’s natural; that’s human beings. But how do you deal with the fears, how do you engage with your fears in a way that’s productive?

I’m very comfortable in the U.S. and Europe, but I feel completely out of place in the rest of the world, mostly because I never spent time outside the U.S. and Europe until I was in my 30s.

When I think about the books I’ve written, it probably takes 150,000-200,000 words to get a 50,000 page book. Highlighting something and hitting Cmd-X is second nature.

I would say my whole universe is probably categorized as guerilla marketing. For a long time, I had a line which was, ‘Whenever I hear the word ‘marketing,’ it makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth.’

I watched my parents act as completely equal partners in their relationship, and as a son to a woman I respect immensely, I never thought of gender inequality as a child.

St. Louis is a good example of a vibrant city. Having stayed in a hotel in 2011 overlooking Cardinals stadium when they won the World Series, their fans definitely show up loud and proud.

I’ve been using email since 1983. I started with MH and Rmail, then cc:Mail, then Microsoft Mail, with Compuserve mixed in. Eventually, I ended up using Pine for non-Windows stuff and Outlook for Windows stuff. For a while.

In entrepreneurial circles, it’s clear to me that violence, hatred, and discrimination – or whatever you want to label it – is another category where we need to pay attention to disruption before it changes the world in ways we don’t want it to.

I love using a targeted acquisition approach in conjunction with a business that has a clear strategy and strong organic growth.

Don’t be afraid to have a big vision, but make sure it’s a clear one.

I can’t tell you the number of people who pitched something and have no idea whom they are pitching it to. They don’t know the background of the investor.

There are two great fictional TV series about technology and the computer industry that each have now had three seasons. The one everyone knows about is ‘Silicon Valley.’ The lesser-known one is ‘Halt and Catch Fire.’