Social distancing vs social isolation
I took a poll of the Foundry portfolio this morning to check in on the shift to Work From Home. As of today, about 1/3 of our portfolio companies have implemented a mandatory work from home policy. The vast majority of the rest are recommending people work from home but are not mandating it (meaning they’re not physically closing their offices). Only a couple are still operating with their offices fully operational. …
March 13, 2020· 3 min read
Polar Bears!
Kaktovik lies at the far northern edge of Alaska’s North Slope region, about 640 miles north of Anchorage (and almost 400 north of Fairbanks). Located on Barter Island and due to its location, is mostly cut off from the rest of the world. Everything – fuel, supplies, infrastructure, needs to be brought in either by plane (to a small, gravel, landing strip) or by barge – of which there are between 1 and 3 a season. It’s just about the farthest northern town in America (Utqiagvik, which used to be called Barrow, is slightly north of Kaktovik). During the winter, the sun doesn’t rise for 2 months. Despite this isolation – or perhaps because of it – Kaktovik is considered one of the best places in the world to see Polar Bears. Female bears with their cubs make Kaktovik their summer home (the ever receding polar ice is about 200 miles north) where they wait out the season in anticipation of the ice reforming starting in October so they can venture north to hunt seals. The town is populated primarily by Inupiat, who continue to practice some of their native traditions, including the hunting of whales (they’re allowed up to 3 a year under treaty with the US government). While they use the majority of the whale for food and other purposes, the remains are deposited in a “bone pile” that the bears feed upon. It’s also not uncommon to see a bear in the village itself. …
September 30, 2019· 4 min read
Weighing in on Judge Gorsuch
A number of people have asked me to share my views on Neil Gorsuch in more detail. I’m sure the curiosity stems from the intersection of my personal relationship with Neil and my absolute disdain for President Trump. I am aware given the current political climate that views on this are very polarized. And while a SCOTUS pick will always stir up emotion, the combination of the hyper polarized environment along with the backdrop of Merrick Garland not getting even a hearing for the same seat I know many people who are very angry about the prospects of Trump filling what was Obama’s seat to fill. …
March 22, 2017· 3 min read
There is no middle ground
While I’ve been very vocal on my Twitter feed for months about Trump I haven ‘t put up any long form content here about it. Maybe it has just been easier to shout into the Twittersphere than it was to really sit down and talk about the challenges ahead of us. Maybe I wasn’t ready to put it into a format that exceeded 140 characters. And for some time I had hoped that maybe things would moderate and calm down. …
January 30, 2017· 3 min read
Taking a deep breath
Below is a note I just sent to our CEOs. While I’m dismayed at what happened last night, now isn’t a time to be reactionary. And the US needs a strong and vocal counterbalance to the hate and bigotry we just empowered. For many of you, as well as for us, it was a deeply disappointing night. And it’s easy to wake up today with a sense of fear and foreboding about the future of our country. That’s understandable. And while we share that fear we also continue to share an optimism about the greatness of our country and our future. America is a resilient country and we passionately hope that resilience will temper the hate and vitriol that’s been on display over the past months in this election. …
November 9, 2016· 2 min read
Supporting Cliff Avril and New Story
Earlier this month Seattle Seahawks defensive end Cliff Avril announced that he would support building homes in Haiti – devastated most recently by hurricane Matthew. For every sack Avril gets this season he’s donating $6,000 which is enough to build a home that is both hurricane and earthquake proof. The charity that Avril is doing this through – New Story – is one that my wife and I know well. It is actually a Y-Combinator company (was the first non-profit to go through the Y-Combinator program) and has developed a very impactful (and novel) model for supporting housing development in areas of need. Greeley and I have been supporting it for a few years. And, in case of funny coincidence, it turned out that my partner Brad was also involved as a member of the New Story advisory board. …
October 27, 2016· 2 min read
What the current markets are and are not telling us
In response to a comment to my post earlier this week about the Profit Imperative, I rattled off some ideas about the current state of the markets. I thought it was worth sharing as a full post (I’ve edited and expanded on the original comment). There are clearly headwinds in the markets – I’m not at all suggesting that there aren’t. And we may be in a period of strong negative pricing pressure in both the public and private markets. As you know, markets tend to perpetuate themselves and pendulum. This cycle of overreacting is how business and market cycles seem to work. Without a doubt we’re in an environment of increasing volatility and that volatility alone may spook some investors. Price shifts at the top of the market, starting with the public markets and quickly spreading to the public market investors who had been dipping into the late stage private markets and continuing from there, will and are clearly changing pricing across all stages of private market financings. …
February 17, 2016· 4 min read
This may not be the bubble you’re looking for
At great risk of wading into a debate where there’s no winning, I thought I’d present a few pieces of data that suggest that we’re not exactly in a market bubble right now. Massive caveat here: I’m not trying to predict the stock market. I’m just following my own advice. Plus I agree with my partner Brad, who said recently, “I think everyone will have an opinion and no one will have any real idea,” about what’s going to happen in the stock market (this in an article that appeared after just two days of a down market). But the data are important, so let’s at least pay attention to what’s actually going on. From there you can form your own opinion. …
September 15, 2015· 3 min read
Once bitten but nothing learned …. betting on the Superbowl again
Apparently I didn’t learn from my experience last year. As you may recall, I bet Dan Levitan from Maveron $5,000 that the Broncos would beat the Seahawks in last year’s Superbowl (one of several ultimately losing bets). They failed to do so. In spectacular fashion. (truthfully I didn’t watch past the first play of the 2nd half) And that was just the most public bet I lost (that money went to Seattle Children’s Hospital, so at least I was supporting a good cause). There were others – less expensive but more humiliating. …
January 24, 2015· 1 min read
Ryan Martens on Councilperson Macon Cowles’ Ignorance of the Boulder Startup Community
Like many here in Boulder, I felt that Boulder City Councilperson Macon Cowles’ recent remarks about our startup community were both ignorant and offensive. A group of entrepreneurs posted an OpEd this weekend responding to those remarks in the Daily Camera (it’s worth nothing the diversity of those entrepreneurs vs. Councilperson Cowles’ flatly incorrect characterization of Boulder entrepreneurs). Ryan Martens – a long time Boulder entrepreneur and community activist – felt the same way and asked to borrow this spot to post some of his own thoughts on the diversity of the Boulder entrepreneurial ecosystem as well as the many ways that entrepreneurs in Boulder are giving back to our community. His post follows. …
September 2, 2014· 4 min read