hello everyone marco montemagno here
founder of tech alchemist and today i’m
so happy to have your great guest and
the person that I really appreciated a
lot even if it’s the first time that we
meet here today in chat and his breath
fell hi Brad thanks for joining
America all right so if you don’t know
who bred Feld is well just go and google
it because will be too long but
basically Brett I would say the best
five things that come up in my mind when
I think about you techstars founder
foundry group co founder and author
several books start a business I think
is out right now
probably yeah and also startup life is
coming out in 2013 about life in the
startup world and marathon runner this
is a personal thing
but I I was really enjoying it I think
you’ve all sewn your website your
marathon timing right the the the time
you did and and you also wrote a post
recently about paul ryan and marathon
time and politician do not match so this
is what was also very cool i really like
it big because you have to know and and
III start with the questions but i was
really intrigued by text stars and by
your activity when once i was reading do
more faster which is one book that you
wrote with with dead in cohan the other
founder of TechStars and I discovered
that there is a table tennis
championship for tech stars and I was a
table tennis professional player number
250 in the world and I thought gosh
that’s amazing you know did these guys
that you do is something cool so I was
even more someday you and David need to
play because he is by far the best the
best way that’s cool that’s good so Brad
I have several things that I want to
talk with you today and basically what
when I thought about inviting you I
thought okay we live everyone who is
doing business startups or entrepreneurs
but also freelance and people who want
to do stuff online we have so many
billions of things changing and new
things and so on so I thought we need a
set of rules and who better than the
breath belt can help us to get a set of
rules you know about several topics and
I would like to talk about investing
promotion entrepreneurship so several
topics that I really would like to do to
join us so the first thing is you are
out with this book start a business and
I thought that was amazing the job that
you did in Boulder which is not Silicon
Valley you know from in Europe we think
about Silicon Valley but when when tech
stars came out and Boulder starts to be
an important city for for startups
everyone thought where is Boulder I mean
or something strange you know but you
created a kind of framework I think a
kind of thesis in your last book so I
would like to understand a little bit
better if you can elaborate on this
because I think is interesting is
annalistic view about business and it’s
not only not only your business but how
to build an ecosystem so I would like to
start from here sure so I wrote the
newest book which came out it’s called
startup communities building an
entrepreneurial ecosystem in your city
and it’s built on the premise that you
can build a long-term sustainable
vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem
anywhere in the world so I have been a
long-term believer that pretty much any
city can sustain startup activity in
startup culture that you don’t have to
be in a place like Silicon Valley to be
able to create something significant you
know throughout the United States
there’s a bunch of cities that you
identify with startup activity Boston
New York Seattle and you know bullet was
a good example because there was always
a lot of startup activity in Boulder but
it’s a relatively small place it’s only
a hundred thousand people so you know I
spent the last fifteen years working
with a bunch of other entrepreneurs here
in Boulder doing lots of start-up stuff
and a couple of years
I started reflecting on what had
happened and what had caused us to
create something that’s so magical here
in Boulder and that led to what I’m
calling the boulder thesis which is at
the core of the start of communities
books the have a framework and you know
within the book we explore the framework
in depth but the framework is is very
straightforward it’s four specific
principles and my view is that if you
know if you want to create a long-term
vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem you
have to do the following four principles
the first is that the startup community
has to be led by entrepreneurs so
there’s lots of different people that
contribute to the startup community
activity but the leaders have to be
entrepreneurs the second is that these
entrepreneurs have to take a very
long-term view at least 20 years so the
idea is that you’re committing over a
very long period of time to work on
develop and grow your startup community
if the third is that you have to be
inclusive of anyone who wants to engage
in the startup community in any way so
startup communities to be successful
long-term have to be organisms that grow
and expand over time not ones that where
people are playing a zero-sum game you
have to really anybody who wants to
engage whether they’re another
entrepreneur or somebody moving to town
that wants to work for a startup or
somebody from a large company or
government that wants to engage and help
the startup community you have to be
inclusive of all of that and then the
last is that you have to have a series
of activities and events that engage the
entire entrepreneurial stack what I mean
by that is that if you’re an aspiring
entrepreneur a first-time entrepreneur a
multi-time entrepreneur service provider
like a lawyer accountant a venture
capitalist investor angel investor
university there have to be stuff that
cause all of those different
participants in the entrepreneurial
stack to be able to engage and this is
not cocktail parties and award
ceremonies but it’s real stuff where
you’re doing work on a continual basis
Startup Weekend accelerators like tech
stars monthly new tech meetups weekly
open coffee clubs week-long start
weeks these kinds of activities that
there are substantive that allow people
to work on this notion of startup
together so if you take those four
principles and you look at the startup
communities that have really developed
over time over a long period of time and
have sustained they all have some
combination of those four things front
and center okay do you think I just give
you an example
I’ve been moderating three days ago it
was a huge event in Italy
TechCrunch Europe that was in Italy
thousand three hundred people a lot of
really amazing so it was the ecosystem I
would say mostly Italian what was an
ecosystem and was something impossible
only one year ago or couple of years ago
was something impossible so I would say
that what you doing with tech stars or Y
Combinator and has got a big impact all
over the world so a lot of ecosystems
start to to grow do you think that this
is something that will have a
substantial impact on traditional
business or will be something just
limited to the tech web digital space I
think I think it’s having a profound
impact on business in general in the
book I talked early on about the
difference between hierarchies and
networks and if you think about the
world that we operate in today much of
the industrial era from the early 1900’s
through you know the late 1900s into the
early 2000s were driven off of
hierarchical models government runs off
of a hierarchy there’s a boss you know
the President or the Prime Minister and
there’s a hierarchy below that that
person and there’s sort of line of
control military is a hierarchy it’s
very clear who’s in charge and who’s the
boss who’s the boss of the boss and am
on that control system right so think
about a hierarchy and most big business
works in a hierarchy you have a
president you have vice presidents you
have directors and on and on and on down
the organization started companies
generally function in a network the very
early on entrepreneurs tend to know each
other across companies the startup
community by definition
Network because if you don’t have a
single leader there’s no president of
the bolder startup community there’s no
vice president of membership and vice
president of Education and vice
president of finance there’s just a
bunch of entrepreneurs doing stuff and
there’s this sort of network that that
is intermingled and as a society we’re
getting very used to this idea of a
network your interaction with me as an
example of it you know I don’t know you
you don’t really know me but you have a
lot of information about me
you’ve reached out to me I said
absolutely be happy to you know spend a
little bit of time with you there is no
gatekeeper you didn’t have to apply to
get me on your podcast you on the
videocast you didn’t have to ask
permission so that dynamic I think is
now really radically changing this sort
of notion of hierarchy drifting into
network I think that we’ve also
conditioned ourselves as individuals to
be very comfortable with the notion of a
network if you think about social
networking whether it be Facebook or
LinkedIn or Twitter sort of the linkage
between people is something that the
computers are really enabling in a
different way
crossing time and space you know we’re
in different countries we’re in
different time zones much much easier so
that construct I think is changing the
way we work as a society and on top of
it if you look at job growth and job
creation almost all the new job creation
is coming from startup companies most
big large companies are contracting you
know some of them grow through merger
and acquisition but the real vector of
growth is from startup activity so I
think that Network philosophy and how
that impacts people in companies is
pervasive that’s very interesting but
last week I was watching this Clay
Shirky
TED video about how it is changing also
for politician and ghee table Modell
applied to politicians so I think it’s
very very interesting question about
this topic and then I go to investing
and some but I was very interested and
obviously I still have to get the book
the interesting thing is also the time
frame you say 20 years and this is also
very very interesting for
me I got an interview with Jeff Bezos a
couple of years ago and I remember that
I was shocked when they said okay we we
enter Italy and Amazon open on Italian
market and then I say how can you
compete you know with these leaders that
they have really strong position and
everything and he said well I I will
just wait 20 years I have no problem in
waiting and I thought wow that’s a long
view you know a long vision so time
frame is so important I think it is for
a couple of reasons one is most
companies anyway take a long time to
develop from scratch so you know every
now and then you hear of a company it
has huge success in two or three years
but the vast majority of startups are 10
15 20 year journeys with lots of ups and
downs on top of that if you look at the
normal rhythms of society government
runs in two to four year cycles
university runs in a one year cycle and
and big business runs in a quarterly
cycle startups and startup communities
can’t focus on that short-term cycle
because you’re playing something that is
a very long-term game so I like to say
it’s generational you have to really
commit for an entire generation which is
about 20 years from today and I actually
assert that you really should be
recommitting every year to another 20
years so if you look at Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is not a 10 year old
phenomenon it’s 50 60 70 year old
phenomena and so building a startup
community and having it grow is
something that has to survive the macro
economic cycles has to survive the
cycles of government has to survive the
cycles of the one big company in town as
they grow up and shrink and grow up and
shrink entrepreneurs don’t need to think
about that shorter term cycle they need
to be playing a very long-term game like
the one that Jeff Bezos described and
it’s especially true in the notion of
creating a durable and sustainable
entrepreneurial ecosystem doing this
this process obviously there are a lot
of failures and by the way for the
people watching this video if you
haven’t seen Brad
at TEDx Boulder I think was 2010 couple
of years ago probably that talk I was an
imaginary love was welcome to fail like
welcome to the town of fail and you were
talking about mastering failure and so
on and everyone talked about the
important of the importance of learning
by my faders but actually you fail a lot
during this process well what are your
tips I mean okay you fail buddy it’s
never great you don’t say okay I failed
the feeling is not so good so in your
experience what can you do to do okay
learn and go on you know it sucks to
fail but that’s part of the experience
and so I encourage people to accept the
reality that part of what happens in
your life is lots of failure and part of
what happens in an entrepreneurs journey
is lots of failure and the the great
entrepreneurs know how to learn from the
moment of failure and extract from the
failure new knowledge new experience new
information pick themselves up and go
forward so even if you look at a
successful business from a start-up to
some great success there’s a lot of
failure along the way it’s not the case
that you start here and you end here and
it’s a straight line that’s a line that
looks like this and as long as that line
is sloping up over time you’re okay I
think the other thing I tell people is
not to be embarrassed by failure I’ve
had lots of things that I failed about
I’m public about them you know I learned
from them sometimes I repeat the same
mistake more than once and you know
sometimes you know takes you a couple of
times to get it but but that’s part of
the experience of trying new things and
if you’re ashamed of it if you’re
hesitant about it if you hide it and you
don’t really embrace the forward
progress of what you’re trying to do in
the context to startup communities we
talked about it a lot that we we
encourage people just try stuff and if
it doesn’t work or if nobody shows up or
if you do it and it’s not that
interesting stop didn’t work try
something else don’t well it didn’t
quite work but I think it’s really
to get it right so I’m gonna fix it well
might be but make sure you’re still
committed to that idea because if you’re
not and you’re just trying to struggle
through it to try to get to something
successful unless you believe in it
don’t waste your time on another topic
is obviously investing okay funding and
the VC Ward for people who are not
inside a start-up Ward maybe traditional
business are used to go to the bank ask
for money and they have to give back to
money so for people who is not in a
startup business
just remember the venture capitalists
and angel board is a explosive Ward I
mean I think foundry group just closed a
225 million dollar funding so by the way
congrats brother and so and it’s very
interesting I think also these
crowdfunding or I I see funders club
coming out from Y Combinator
so different different ways of getting
funding for your business so I won’t try
to understand bread who do you invest on
in this moment who you looking for who
would you give your money to I mean what
are the your your guidelines or your
tips to to say okay if I’m looking for
funny if I really need funding probably
those are the rules to follow in your
opinion sure so foundry group has a very
I have three partners the four of us
have a very specific lens that we look
through when we invest in companies
where we are early-stage software
internet investors were focused on
companies with in a sense of themes of
ours so if you go to foundry group comm
slash themes’ you can see the themes if
a company is outside of our themes we
don’t spend time with it if it’s inside
our themes we go very very deep with
both the product and the people and our
determination is whether we want to be
long-term partners with people around
the product or the technology that’s
being created
we also limit ourselves to only
investing in companies in the US and
that’s a function of experience that
I’ve had in 90s where I made
about a half a dozen investments in
Europe and it was just really hard the
geography time and space culture was too
difficult not being local so I really
felt like there was what we could invest
all around the u.s. we were having a
difficult time or would be very
difficult for us to be good at investing
in different geographies and the other
is I said we’re early stage investors so
if a companies raise more than about
three million dollars it’s probably too
late for us we’re not a good target to
invest so we define this sort of
category of things pretty carefully and
what I encourage entrepreneurs to do is
don’t view venture capitalists as a
single archetype there’s lots of
different types of intra capitalists and
what’s important to know is to
understand the strategy that the
particular firm you’re approaching uses
and if what you’re doing doesn’t match
the strategy don’t waste your time
because the chance of you getting
financing from that group is extremely
low look for firms that whose strategy
and the type of things they invest and
match what you’re doing and if you can
get sort of within their box of what
they like to invest and then you have an
interesting conversation I also guess
that is not only the money you know I
mean if I was a US company and I go in
attending tech stars probably I’m
looking for more than money you know
mentorship networks and all this kind of
stuff
well I separate clearly between foundry
group and TechStars so I described what
we look for a foundry group and
TechStars you know we have about a
hundred companies a year go through
different techstars programs in the US
Boston New York Boulder Seattle and San
Antonio and then there’s a number of
other accelerators like tech stores all
around the world that are part of
something called the global accelerator
Network and they’re not owned and
operated by tech stars but they’re
affiliated and they share best practices
in in the context of tech stars those
hundred or so companies a year that go
through tech stars we like to say that
we’re focused on people people people
and then idea and the only reason we
have idea and there is to emphasize how
important the people are and you know
we’re interested in the idea it’s not
that any idea works but we really care
about the people in that context
everyone think
if they have to start a business
everyone I think that the recurrent a
problem that come to me is oh I have a
great idea but I don’t I don’t want to
say my idea I don’t want to tell my idea
otherwise someone will steal or you know
everyone focus on how important an idea
but today if you talk with ambassadors
or if you hear what the experts say
finally people are our most important
asset and resource I guess so innovation
I I heard you talking about Eric von
Hippel your professor at MIT once and
you say that he was teaching to consider
that innovation is created by users and
I fell in love with this mantra and I
thought wow yeah that’s exactly the way
to follow can can you help me can you
help us to understand better for a
business that has to innovate to survive
because do you survive in this era where
every three milliseconds something
change you have to keep on innovating
what what’s your advice I mean what can
you do because you have a business that
has got some kind of vision and
resources so you can change everything
every two seconds otherwise it’s
difficult to to run your business so how
can you adapt in this kind of situation
so so Eric von Hippel you know was about
30 or 40 years ahead of his time because
his notion and the statement that he
made that innovation comes from users
was an idea if he had in the 1970s that
he’s evolved you know over the last 40
years so it’s a really powerful
construct and if you think about
innovation today the vast majority of
innovation does come from users and
constructs like open source software or
constructs like the Lean Startup that
Eric Ries is popularized is really you
know a very clear sense of a feedback
loop that comes from putting your idea
in your innovate
now early getting people involved in
giving you using it and giving you
feedback and then incorporating that
feedback directly into the next
iteration of the product where those
iteration loops are very tight very
short and duration and I think it’s
incredibly important you know it’s the
best way to develop software’s not to
sit in a cave for a year and build a
bunch of stuff and then spring it on the
world but instead constantly be putting
stuff out there and getting feedback
from the people who are using it every
day which will help you understand
better what you should be spending your
time on and I think you know Eric Ries
does an amazing job in in the book the
Lean Startup of helping create a
framework for how to do that and you
know there’s a whole discipline that’s
now been created from that but I think
that that construct is really what Eric
was talking about in the 1970s it wasn’t
that there’s these big R&D labs where
people are sitting working on figuring
out what the users might need now it’s
interesting there’s the counter example
which is that yeah but it doesn’t isn’t
Apple successful because of the
brilliance of you know one man in this
case Steve Jobs who figured out what
everybody wanted and that’s exactly what
they got and I think they’re I think
it’s there’s a lot of subtlety to it
because in fact the brilliance of it was
him both thinking ahead of where
everybody was but also synthesizing as a
user what was needed so if you if you
think about the notion of a user driven
innovation an individual within a
company can be the user right it’s not
just the case that you have to have
somebody outside that’s doing and so
it’s there’s a lot of subtlety to it but
it’s a very powerful construct when you
step back and say okay how can I get
input into what I’m doing to make it
more valuable how can I observe what
people are doing with my product so I
understand what what’s working and
what’s not working right and right Steve
Blank um in that there is a huge
movement I would say now to divulge all
this concepts very very the linkage
between Eric Eric Ries and Steve Blank
is that Eric was Steve student so Steve
came out with this notion of customer
driven development and Eric evolved it
you know it put it to practice and
evolved it and then sort of codified it
and the two of them continue to you know
work going forward in terms of making
this
struck clear and clear both in a formal
sense as well as a practitioners
excellent promotion just five minutes
more breath and I know that you’re super
busy and then I elect to go promotion I
was interested and intrigued in in this
topic because I I really don’t like you
know traditional marketing and I think a
lot of businesses till in 2012 they keep
on doing traditional press release and
marketing the old-fashioned and I heard
you talking about different kind of
marketing and delighting your users I
loved also this price and so I would
like you to give us also maybe some
example of companies you investing so
many companies you know so many startups
so maybe you you could give us some
example of marketing done in the right
way without being without sucking at it
yeah I think a great example is actually
a company called Gannett GN IP the the
CEO of Chris moody were a guest blog
post on Myon felt calm a while ago about
thought leadership as the essential way
to do marketing and I thought it was
really right on the money which is this
notion and it was very insightful
because Chris played it back to me is
the way that I was essentially marketing
a lot of the things that I care about
and he was very much right which is that
instead of creating a message and trying
to shove that message down people’s
throats or creating you know some thing
and then promoting promoting promoting
the better thing to do is just lead with
progressive thinking lead with your
ideas be articulate about what you’re
doing stay on on those and actually do
what the ideas are and link them
together so if you think about startup
communities in the boulder thesis I mean
this has come out of my experience but
it’s very easily applicable if you look
at if as a company they’re very very
clear about what they’re doing is a
business and they’re constantly pushing
the edge intellectually of what’s going
on with real-time social data and how
companies can use and work with it and
they’re not promoting a bunch of stuff
that doesn’t exist in fact they have a
whole bunch of products
they’re not even promoting because what
they’re trying to do is make sure that
the potential customer universe
understands the importance of what they
do and the importance of the relevance
of different aspects of the kinds of
things can it can enable they spend a
lot of time on thought leadership big
boulder which was a conference that can
have had where basically they brought a
bunch of their customers and a bunch of
their partners to Boulder was an
unbelievable experience because instead
of it being a tradeshow for dips
products it was a conversation over 48
hours that engaged about 200 people that
were working hard at this problem and I
think that kind of activity is so much
more valuable and frankly as humans it’s
so much more stimulating there’s only so
much you know buy this do that love this
care about that that any of us can take
but when when it’s a chance to actually
engage in real Fox it’s pretty fun it’s
cool I think organizing event is a cool
way of becoming Thorat etive in your
your topic I was thinking what you were
speaking I was thinking about LeWeb
likely more and now all he sees me but
Indiana he organized the largest event
in Europe so I’m in this way I mean he
created great Network and then he was
building out from a great example I mean
he you know he provides incredible
thought leadership he stimulates the
community to come together and then he
facilitates additional discussion that
drives more thought leadership rather
than hi look at me I have a trade show
for startups in Europe calm okay
whatever you know maybe that would be
interesting but it’s so much more
interesting to be with a bunch of
compelling people that you’re spending
absolutely another example is also Rand
Fishkin and I think you investing in SEO
moats around is a good friend of mine
he’ll so being in Italy and that they
are really a strong community I saw
their organizing this mots conference on
so event can be good and try to apply a
different approach how do you handle
yeah sorry I think I think that’s
another great example I mean Rand Rand
an SEO Moz are intermingled
right Rand spends in
this amount of time running around
helping people understand what it is
that SEO Maz can do but not to sell you
the product but to help you be much more
effective at what you’re doing in the
context of your own you know web
marketing and web development and then
of course SEO Maz is a tool that you can
use for that and but the Maz community
is incredible in terms of information
and connectivity so that’s another
really good example of an entrepreneur
who’s just internalized yeah also this
whiteboard Friday where they explain
every Friday they teach so they do a lot
of Education excellent how about you
bread I mean you have a huge following
on Twitter for instance and you you have
to also promote your books and so on how
do you handle I mean there are so many
things to do and I saw the list of
social media where you are on tones
how can you handle all this what kind of
advice can you give to people or
business who has to handle their online
identity today and every two seconds a
new social network appeared I I think
for you know I’ve been playing around
with it since the mid-2000s you know
2004 2005 when I started blog and I can
remember the exact date but it was in
that in the end of 2004 beginning in
2005 timeframe I am I have always viewed
this as just living what I’m using so I
started doing it because I’m investing
in these technologies and I didn’t
believe I could be a credible investor
in these technologies unless I was
actively using them so I tend to use
them well ahead of when we invest in the
companies and I’m very immersed in the
companies of which the technology we use
and so for me it’s not a concentrated
effort to like I need to go manage my
social media presence I just do what I
do and I do it in a very open way so I
sort of integrated all of these
activities into the work my work my job
is very simple right our investors give
us money and our job is to give them
back a lot more money it sounds very
simple very simple it’s very simple so
as long as the things I’m doing
adding to that the potential of us
generating you know economic returns for
our investors it’s a good use of time
part of that is understanding the
technology engaging in the technology
some of that is promoting the kinds of
stuff we do in the companies we do but I
can do it in this way of thought
leadership that provides authenticity
rather than say hey buy my thing and I’m
sure I default in to buy my thing
sometimes I’m not by any means perfect
and how I do it but I try to I try to
weave it all together so that people see
how it can actually be used in the
context of your life and your art as a
business or an entrepreneur rather than
just pumping out message all the time
excellent last question Brent three
tools that you would kindly recommend to
everyone who has to do some kind of
business online and you say gosh you
need to use at least these three tools
because they are fundamental they are
mandatory to succeed in your in your
business I would say when I think about
the the tools I would break it into
category so one category is I’ve worked
extremely hard to tune how I interact
with messaging namely email and I’ve
come to I’ve always wanted to be a rapid
responder and a complete responder so I
use Gmail and I use a product called yes
where that we are investors in that’s a
Gmail plug-in attending the name yeah
yes we’re yef yes we’re calm as the site
and it does a bunch of things but really
between Gmail and yes were my ability to
automate and manage my email is pretty
dramatic
I’d say that’s one category a company
that I’m particularly excited about
that’s starting to grow very quickly as
a company called Mobile day I do a lot
of conference calls I travel constantly
so I use my cell phone almost all the
time for this stuff and if you’ve ever
done a conference call on a cell phone
where you have to dial in a bunch of
numbers and kind of yeah
explodes you’re driving down the road
and you’re trying to like look up the
number it just sucks
how what mobile day has done is it’s an
app that’s a one click one click into
any conference call so you literally
just use your existing conference call
infrastructure and mobile day whether
you’re the moderator or somebody else is
the moderator doesn’t matter what the
conference call service is it replaces
the calendar for all the conference call
activity so that’s one that’s become
indispensable to me of late
it’s another company that we’re
investors in and then I’d say you know
I’ve always been very heavy around
wordpress and wordpress related stuff
for content creation and what I’ve come
to is I think that there’s a couple of
different approaches to it but figuring
out a single approach and then setting
up your infrastructure so that it’s very
there’s no barrier to you creating
content I think is very important so in
my case I’ve done it with WordPress and
if you go to any of the sites you see a
bunch of similar stuff whether you’re on
ask the VC or felt calm or foundry group
or startup Rev and now with startup
revolution which is the new site startup
Rev calm around the books you’re
starting to see some things like we have
what we’re calling a hub which is from a
company called social engine that if it
works we’ll roll it out to the other
sites right so some of it is
experimenting constantly but within a
framework that’s that’s not changing and
in our case the framework that we chose
was workers those would be the three
approaches great great i really have to
let you go i when you were talking I
would say I have so many things to ask
you Brett I would stay here five hours
but okay we’ll be next time
you also investing in 3d printing that
I’m very curious about but I I so the
prices around two thousand bucks
something like that so it’s not for
consumer but it’s already a good price
that you can do you think 3d printing
will be something that absolutely will
spread or yeah of course you think but
why I mean what’s happening III think
that 3d printers are very analogous to
laser printers in the 1980s so in 1984
if you bought a laser printer
you’ve paid two three thousand dollars
for desktop laser printer and I actually
had one in 2000 and 1994 one of the
early HP LaserJet and if you look at the
evolution of that yeah now you can buy
for 200 bucks a printer that’s a hundred
times better than that one that I could
buy 20 years ago or almost thirty years
ago now you know for 3,000 bucks 3d
printers on the same kind of curve but
it’s going to accelerate much faster so
the idea that you know when I got a
laser printer people said to me why do
you need a laser printer and four years
later end of the 1980s once desktop
publishing had started to become
ubiquitous everybody needs a laser
printer so I think we’re in that same
kind of zone with 3d printing which is
there will be a couple of software
applications that become the Oh
everybody has to have this now I think
we’re very close to it but it’s with it
you know it’s within that narrow time
band let’s say well we have been all
right Brett thank you so much for our
movie check startup communities and
startup life January 2013 I think is
coming out all right thank you so much thanks
founder of tech alchemist and today i’m
so happy to have your great guest and
the person that I really appreciated a
lot even if it’s the first time that we
meet here today in chat and his breath
fell hi Brad thanks for joining
America all right so if you don’t know
who bred Feld is well just go and google
it because will be too long but
basically Brett I would say the best
five things that come up in my mind when
I think about you techstars founder
foundry group co founder and author
several books start a business I think
is out right now
probably yeah and also startup life is
coming out in 2013 about life in the
startup world and marathon runner this
is a personal thing
but I I was really enjoying it I think
you’ve all sewn your website your
marathon timing right the the the time
you did and and you also wrote a post
recently about paul ryan and marathon
time and politician do not match so this
is what was also very cool i really like
it big because you have to know and and
III start with the questions but i was
really intrigued by text stars and by
your activity when once i was reading do
more faster which is one book that you
wrote with with dead in cohan the other
founder of TechStars and I discovered
that there is a table tennis
championship for tech stars and I was a
table tennis professional player number
250 in the world and I thought gosh
that’s amazing you know did these guys
that you do is something cool so I was
even more someday you and David need to
play because he is by far the best the
best way that’s cool that’s good so Brad
I have several things that I want to
talk with you today and basically what
when I thought about inviting you I
thought okay we live everyone who is
doing business startups or entrepreneurs
but also freelance and people who want
to do stuff online we have so many
billions of things changing and new
things and so on so I thought we need a
set of rules and who better than the
breath belt can help us to get a set of
rules you know about several topics and
I would like to talk about investing
promotion entrepreneurship so several
topics that I really would like to do to
join us so the first thing is you are
out with this book start a business and
I thought that was amazing the job that
you did in Boulder which is not Silicon
Valley you know from in Europe we think
about Silicon Valley but when when tech
stars came out and Boulder starts to be
an important city for for startups
everyone thought where is Boulder I mean
or something strange you know but you
created a kind of framework I think a
kind of thesis in your last book so I
would like to understand a little bit
better if you can elaborate on this
because I think is interesting is
annalistic view about business and it’s
not only not only your business but how
to build an ecosystem so I would like to
start from here sure so I wrote the
newest book which came out it’s called
startup communities building an
entrepreneurial ecosystem in your city
and it’s built on the premise that you
can build a long-term sustainable
vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem
anywhere in the world so I have been a
long-term believer that pretty much any
city can sustain startup activity in
startup culture that you don’t have to
be in a place like Silicon Valley to be
able to create something significant you
know throughout the United States
there’s a bunch of cities that you
identify with startup activity Boston
New York Seattle and you know bullet was
a good example because there was always
a lot of startup activity in Boulder but
it’s a relatively small place it’s only
a hundred thousand people so you know I
spent the last fifteen years working
with a bunch of other entrepreneurs here
in Boulder doing lots of start-up stuff
and a couple of years
I started reflecting on what had
happened and what had caused us to
create something that’s so magical here
in Boulder and that led to what I’m
calling the boulder thesis which is at
the core of the start of communities
books the have a framework and you know
within the book we explore the framework
in depth but the framework is is very
straightforward it’s four specific
principles and my view is that if you
know if you want to create a long-term
vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem you
have to do the following four principles
the first is that the startup community
has to be led by entrepreneurs so
there’s lots of different people that
contribute to the startup community
activity but the leaders have to be
entrepreneurs the second is that these
entrepreneurs have to take a very
long-term view at least 20 years so the
idea is that you’re committing over a
very long period of time to work on
develop and grow your startup community
if the third is that you have to be
inclusive of anyone who wants to engage
in the startup community in any way so
startup communities to be successful
long-term have to be organisms that grow
and expand over time not ones that where
people are playing a zero-sum game you
have to really anybody who wants to
engage whether they’re another
entrepreneur or somebody moving to town
that wants to work for a startup or
somebody from a large company or
government that wants to engage and help
the startup community you have to be
inclusive of all of that and then the
last is that you have to have a series
of activities and events that engage the
entire entrepreneurial stack what I mean
by that is that if you’re an aspiring
entrepreneur a first-time entrepreneur a
multi-time entrepreneur service provider
like a lawyer accountant a venture
capitalist investor angel investor
university there have to be stuff that
cause all of those different
participants in the entrepreneurial
stack to be able to engage and this is
not cocktail parties and award
ceremonies but it’s real stuff where
you’re doing work on a continual basis
Startup Weekend accelerators like tech
stars monthly new tech meetups weekly
open coffee clubs week-long start
weeks these kinds of activities that
there are substantive that allow people
to work on this notion of startup
together so if you take those four
principles and you look at the startup
communities that have really developed
over time over a long period of time and
have sustained they all have some
combination of those four things front
and center okay do you think I just give
you an example
I’ve been moderating three days ago it
was a huge event in Italy
TechCrunch Europe that was in Italy
thousand three hundred people a lot of
really amazing so it was the ecosystem I
would say mostly Italian what was an
ecosystem and was something impossible
only one year ago or couple of years ago
was something impossible so I would say
that what you doing with tech stars or Y
Combinator and has got a big impact all
over the world so a lot of ecosystems
start to to grow do you think that this
is something that will have a
substantial impact on traditional
business or will be something just
limited to the tech web digital space I
think I think it’s having a profound
impact on business in general in the
book I talked early on about the
difference between hierarchies and
networks and if you think about the
world that we operate in today much of
the industrial era from the early 1900’s
through you know the late 1900s into the
early 2000s were driven off of
hierarchical models government runs off
of a hierarchy there’s a boss you know
the President or the Prime Minister and
there’s a hierarchy below that that
person and there’s sort of line of
control military is a hierarchy it’s
very clear who’s in charge and who’s the
boss who’s the boss of the boss and am
on that control system right so think
about a hierarchy and most big business
works in a hierarchy you have a
president you have vice presidents you
have directors and on and on and on down
the organization started companies
generally function in a network the very
early on entrepreneurs tend to know each
other across companies the startup
community by definition
Network because if you don’t have a
single leader there’s no president of
the bolder startup community there’s no
vice president of membership and vice
president of Education and vice
president of finance there’s just a
bunch of entrepreneurs doing stuff and
there’s this sort of network that that
is intermingled and as a society we’re
getting very used to this idea of a
network your interaction with me as an
example of it you know I don’t know you
you don’t really know me but you have a
lot of information about me
you’ve reached out to me I said
absolutely be happy to you know spend a
little bit of time with you there is no
gatekeeper you didn’t have to apply to
get me on your podcast you on the
videocast you didn’t have to ask
permission so that dynamic I think is
now really radically changing this sort
of notion of hierarchy drifting into
network I think that we’ve also
conditioned ourselves as individuals to
be very comfortable with the notion of a
network if you think about social
networking whether it be Facebook or
LinkedIn or Twitter sort of the linkage
between people is something that the
computers are really enabling in a
different way
crossing time and space you know we’re
in different countries we’re in
different time zones much much easier so
that construct I think is changing the
way we work as a society and on top of
it if you look at job growth and job
creation almost all the new job creation
is coming from startup companies most
big large companies are contracting you
know some of them grow through merger
and acquisition but the real vector of
growth is from startup activity so I
think that Network philosophy and how
that impacts people in companies is
pervasive that’s very interesting but
last week I was watching this Clay
Shirky
TED video about how it is changing also
for politician and ghee table Modell
applied to politicians so I think it’s
very very interesting question about
this topic and then I go to investing
and some but I was very interested and
obviously I still have to get the book
the interesting thing is also the time
frame you say 20 years and this is also
very very interesting for
me I got an interview with Jeff Bezos a
couple of years ago and I remember that
I was shocked when they said okay we we
enter Italy and Amazon open on Italian
market and then I say how can you
compete you know with these leaders that
they have really strong position and
everything and he said well I I will
just wait 20 years I have no problem in
waiting and I thought wow that’s a long
view you know a long vision so time
frame is so important I think it is for
a couple of reasons one is most
companies anyway take a long time to
develop from scratch so you know every
now and then you hear of a company it
has huge success in two or three years
but the vast majority of startups are 10
15 20 year journeys with lots of ups and
downs on top of that if you look at the
normal rhythms of society government
runs in two to four year cycles
university runs in a one year cycle and
and big business runs in a quarterly
cycle startups and startup communities
can’t focus on that short-term cycle
because you’re playing something that is
a very long-term game so I like to say
it’s generational you have to really
commit for an entire generation which is
about 20 years from today and I actually
assert that you really should be
recommitting every year to another 20
years so if you look at Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is not a 10 year old
phenomenon it’s 50 60 70 year old
phenomena and so building a startup
community and having it grow is
something that has to survive the macro
economic cycles has to survive the
cycles of government has to survive the
cycles of the one big company in town as
they grow up and shrink and grow up and
shrink entrepreneurs don’t need to think
about that shorter term cycle they need
to be playing a very long-term game like
the one that Jeff Bezos described and
it’s especially true in the notion of
creating a durable and sustainable
entrepreneurial ecosystem doing this
this process obviously there are a lot
of failures and by the way for the
people watching this video if you
haven’t seen Brad
at TEDx Boulder I think was 2010 couple
of years ago probably that talk I was an
imaginary love was welcome to fail like
welcome to the town of fail and you were
talking about mastering failure and so
on and everyone talked about the
important of the importance of learning
by my faders but actually you fail a lot
during this process well what are your
tips I mean okay you fail buddy it’s
never great you don’t say okay I failed
the feeling is not so good so in your
experience what can you do to do okay
learn and go on you know it sucks to
fail but that’s part of the experience
and so I encourage people to accept the
reality that part of what happens in
your life is lots of failure and part of
what happens in an entrepreneurs journey
is lots of failure and the the great
entrepreneurs know how to learn from the
moment of failure and extract from the
failure new knowledge new experience new
information pick themselves up and go
forward so even if you look at a
successful business from a start-up to
some great success there’s a lot of
failure along the way it’s not the case
that you start here and you end here and
it’s a straight line that’s a line that
looks like this and as long as that line
is sloping up over time you’re okay I
think the other thing I tell people is
not to be embarrassed by failure I’ve
had lots of things that I failed about
I’m public about them you know I learned
from them sometimes I repeat the same
mistake more than once and you know
sometimes you know takes you a couple of
times to get it but but that’s part of
the experience of trying new things and
if you’re ashamed of it if you’re
hesitant about it if you hide it and you
don’t really embrace the forward
progress of what you’re trying to do in
the context to startup communities we
talked about it a lot that we we
encourage people just try stuff and if
it doesn’t work or if nobody shows up or
if you do it and it’s not that
interesting stop didn’t work try
something else don’t well it didn’t
quite work but I think it’s really
to get it right so I’m gonna fix it well
might be but make sure you’re still
committed to that idea because if you’re
not and you’re just trying to struggle
through it to try to get to something
successful unless you believe in it
don’t waste your time on another topic
is obviously investing okay funding and
the VC Ward for people who are not
inside a start-up Ward maybe traditional
business are used to go to the bank ask
for money and they have to give back to
money so for people who is not in a
startup business
just remember the venture capitalists
and angel board is a explosive Ward I
mean I think foundry group just closed a
225 million dollar funding so by the way
congrats brother and so and it’s very
interesting I think also these
crowdfunding or I I see funders club
coming out from Y Combinator
so different different ways of getting
funding for your business so I won’t try
to understand bread who do you invest on
in this moment who you looking for who
would you give your money to I mean what
are the your your guidelines or your
tips to to say okay if I’m looking for
funny if I really need funding probably
those are the rules to follow in your
opinion sure so foundry group has a very
I have three partners the four of us
have a very specific lens that we look
through when we invest in companies
where we are early-stage software
internet investors were focused on
companies with in a sense of themes of
ours so if you go to foundry group comm
slash themes’ you can see the themes if
a company is outside of our themes we
don’t spend time with it if it’s inside
our themes we go very very deep with
both the product and the people and our
determination is whether we want to be
long-term partners with people around
the product or the technology that’s
being created
we also limit ourselves to only
investing in companies in the US and
that’s a function of experience that
I’ve had in 90s where I made
about a half a dozen investments in
Europe and it was just really hard the
geography time and space culture was too
difficult not being local so I really
felt like there was what we could invest
all around the u.s. we were having a
difficult time or would be very
difficult for us to be good at investing
in different geographies and the other
is I said we’re early stage investors so
if a companies raise more than about
three million dollars it’s probably too
late for us we’re not a good target to
invest so we define this sort of
category of things pretty carefully and
what I encourage entrepreneurs to do is
don’t view venture capitalists as a
single archetype there’s lots of
different types of intra capitalists and
what’s important to know is to
understand the strategy that the
particular firm you’re approaching uses
and if what you’re doing doesn’t match
the strategy don’t waste your time
because the chance of you getting
financing from that group is extremely
low look for firms that whose strategy
and the type of things they invest and
match what you’re doing and if you can
get sort of within their box of what
they like to invest and then you have an
interesting conversation I also guess
that is not only the money you know I
mean if I was a US company and I go in
attending tech stars probably I’m
looking for more than money you know
mentorship networks and all this kind of
stuff
well I separate clearly between foundry
group and TechStars so I described what
we look for a foundry group and
TechStars you know we have about a
hundred companies a year go through
different techstars programs in the US
Boston New York Boulder Seattle and San
Antonio and then there’s a number of
other accelerators like tech stores all
around the world that are part of
something called the global accelerator
Network and they’re not owned and
operated by tech stars but they’re
affiliated and they share best practices
in in the context of tech stars those
hundred or so companies a year that go
through tech stars we like to say that
we’re focused on people people people
and then idea and the only reason we
have idea and there is to emphasize how
important the people are and you know
we’re interested in the idea it’s not
that any idea works but we really care
about the people in that context
everyone think
if they have to start a business
everyone I think that the recurrent a
problem that come to me is oh I have a
great idea but I don’t I don’t want to
say my idea I don’t want to tell my idea
otherwise someone will steal or you know
everyone focus on how important an idea
but today if you talk with ambassadors
or if you hear what the experts say
finally people are our most important
asset and resource I guess so innovation
I I heard you talking about Eric von
Hippel your professor at MIT once and
you say that he was teaching to consider
that innovation is created by users and
I fell in love with this mantra and I
thought wow yeah that’s exactly the way
to follow can can you help me can you
help us to understand better for a
business that has to innovate to survive
because do you survive in this era where
every three milliseconds something
change you have to keep on innovating
what what’s your advice I mean what can
you do because you have a business that
has got some kind of vision and
resources so you can change everything
every two seconds otherwise it’s
difficult to to run your business so how
can you adapt in this kind of situation
so so Eric von Hippel you know was about
30 or 40 years ahead of his time because
his notion and the statement that he
made that innovation comes from users
was an idea if he had in the 1970s that
he’s evolved you know over the last 40
years so it’s a really powerful
construct and if you think about
innovation today the vast majority of
innovation does come from users and
constructs like open source software or
constructs like the Lean Startup that
Eric Ries is popularized is really you
know a very clear sense of a feedback
loop that comes from putting your idea
in your innovate
now early getting people involved in
giving you using it and giving you
feedback and then incorporating that
feedback directly into the next
iteration of the product where those
iteration loops are very tight very
short and duration and I think it’s
incredibly important you know it’s the
best way to develop software’s not to
sit in a cave for a year and build a
bunch of stuff and then spring it on the
world but instead constantly be putting
stuff out there and getting feedback
from the people who are using it every
day which will help you understand
better what you should be spending your
time on and I think you know Eric Ries
does an amazing job in in the book the
Lean Startup of helping create a
framework for how to do that and you
know there’s a whole discipline that’s
now been created from that but I think
that that construct is really what Eric
was talking about in the 1970s it wasn’t
that there’s these big R&D labs where
people are sitting working on figuring
out what the users might need now it’s
interesting there’s the counter example
which is that yeah but it doesn’t isn’t
Apple successful because of the
brilliance of you know one man in this
case Steve Jobs who figured out what
everybody wanted and that’s exactly what
they got and I think they’re I think
it’s there’s a lot of subtlety to it
because in fact the brilliance of it was
him both thinking ahead of where
everybody was but also synthesizing as a
user what was needed so if you if you
think about the notion of a user driven
innovation an individual within a
company can be the user right it’s not
just the case that you have to have
somebody outside that’s doing and so
it’s there’s a lot of subtlety to it but
it’s a very powerful construct when you
step back and say okay how can I get
input into what I’m doing to make it
more valuable how can I observe what
people are doing with my product so I
understand what what’s working and
what’s not working right and right Steve
Blank um in that there is a huge
movement I would say now to divulge all
this concepts very very the linkage
between Eric Eric Ries and Steve Blank
is that Eric was Steve student so Steve
came out with this notion of customer
driven development and Eric evolved it
you know it put it to practice and
evolved it and then sort of codified it
and the two of them continue to you know
work going forward in terms of making
this
struck clear and clear both in a formal
sense as well as a practitioners
excellent promotion just five minutes
more breath and I know that you’re super
busy and then I elect to go promotion I
was interested and intrigued in in this
topic because I I really don’t like you
know traditional marketing and I think a
lot of businesses till in 2012 they keep
on doing traditional press release and
marketing the old-fashioned and I heard
you talking about different kind of
marketing and delighting your users I
loved also this price and so I would
like you to give us also maybe some
example of companies you investing so
many companies you know so many startups
so maybe you you could give us some
example of marketing done in the right
way without being without sucking at it
yeah I think a great example is actually
a company called Gannett GN IP the the
CEO of Chris moody were a guest blog
post on Myon felt calm a while ago about
thought leadership as the essential way
to do marketing and I thought it was
really right on the money which is this
notion and it was very insightful
because Chris played it back to me is
the way that I was essentially marketing
a lot of the things that I care about
and he was very much right which is that
instead of creating a message and trying
to shove that message down people’s
throats or creating you know some thing
and then promoting promoting promoting
the better thing to do is just lead with
progressive thinking lead with your
ideas be articulate about what you’re
doing stay on on those and actually do
what the ideas are and link them
together so if you think about startup
communities in the boulder thesis I mean
this has come out of my experience but
it’s very easily applicable if you look
at if as a company they’re very very
clear about what they’re doing is a
business and they’re constantly pushing
the edge intellectually of what’s going
on with real-time social data and how
companies can use and work with it and
they’re not promoting a bunch of stuff
that doesn’t exist in fact they have a
whole bunch of products
they’re not even promoting because what
they’re trying to do is make sure that
the potential customer universe
understands the importance of what they
do and the importance of the relevance
of different aspects of the kinds of
things can it can enable they spend a
lot of time on thought leadership big
boulder which was a conference that can
have had where basically they brought a
bunch of their customers and a bunch of
their partners to Boulder was an
unbelievable experience because instead
of it being a tradeshow for dips
products it was a conversation over 48
hours that engaged about 200 people that
were working hard at this problem and I
think that kind of activity is so much
more valuable and frankly as humans it’s
so much more stimulating there’s only so
much you know buy this do that love this
care about that that any of us can take
but when when it’s a chance to actually
engage in real Fox it’s pretty fun it’s
cool I think organizing event is a cool
way of becoming Thorat etive in your
your topic I was thinking what you were
speaking I was thinking about LeWeb
likely more and now all he sees me but
Indiana he organized the largest event
in Europe so I’m in this way I mean he
created great Network and then he was
building out from a great example I mean
he you know he provides incredible
thought leadership he stimulates the
community to come together and then he
facilitates additional discussion that
drives more thought leadership rather
than hi look at me I have a trade show
for startups in Europe calm okay
whatever you know maybe that would be
interesting but it’s so much more
interesting to be with a bunch of
compelling people that you’re spending
absolutely another example is also Rand
Fishkin and I think you investing in SEO
moats around is a good friend of mine
he’ll so being in Italy and that they
are really a strong community I saw
their organizing this mots conference on
so event can be good and try to apply a
different approach how do you handle
yeah sorry I think I think that’s
another great example I mean Rand Rand
an SEO Moz are intermingled
right Rand spends in
this amount of time running around
helping people understand what it is
that SEO Maz can do but not to sell you
the product but to help you be much more
effective at what you’re doing in the
context of your own you know web
marketing and web development and then
of course SEO Maz is a tool that you can
use for that and but the Maz community
is incredible in terms of information
and connectivity so that’s another
really good example of an entrepreneur
who’s just internalized yeah also this
whiteboard Friday where they explain
every Friday they teach so they do a lot
of Education excellent how about you
bread I mean you have a huge following
on Twitter for instance and you you have
to also promote your books and so on how
do you handle I mean there are so many
things to do and I saw the list of
social media where you are on tones
how can you handle all this what kind of
advice can you give to people or
business who has to handle their online
identity today and every two seconds a
new social network appeared I I think
for you know I’ve been playing around
with it since the mid-2000s you know
2004 2005 when I started blog and I can
remember the exact date but it was in
that in the end of 2004 beginning in
2005 timeframe I am I have always viewed
this as just living what I’m using so I
started doing it because I’m investing
in these technologies and I didn’t
believe I could be a credible investor
in these technologies unless I was
actively using them so I tend to use
them well ahead of when we invest in the
companies and I’m very immersed in the
companies of which the technology we use
and so for me it’s not a concentrated
effort to like I need to go manage my
social media presence I just do what I
do and I do it in a very open way so I
sort of integrated all of these
activities into the work my work my job
is very simple right our investors give
us money and our job is to give them
back a lot more money it sounds very
simple very simple it’s very simple so
as long as the things I’m doing
adding to that the potential of us
generating you know economic returns for
our investors it’s a good use of time
part of that is understanding the
technology engaging in the technology
some of that is promoting the kinds of
stuff we do in the companies we do but I
can do it in this way of thought
leadership that provides authenticity
rather than say hey buy my thing and I’m
sure I default in to buy my thing
sometimes I’m not by any means perfect
and how I do it but I try to I try to
weave it all together so that people see
how it can actually be used in the
context of your life and your art as a
business or an entrepreneur rather than
just pumping out message all the time
excellent last question Brent three
tools that you would kindly recommend to
everyone who has to do some kind of
business online and you say gosh you
need to use at least these three tools
because they are fundamental they are
mandatory to succeed in your in your
business I would say when I think about
the the tools I would break it into
category so one category is I’ve worked
extremely hard to tune how I interact
with messaging namely email and I’ve
come to I’ve always wanted to be a rapid
responder and a complete responder so I
use Gmail and I use a product called yes
where that we are investors in that’s a
Gmail plug-in attending the name yeah
yes we’re yef yes we’re calm as the site
and it does a bunch of things but really
between Gmail and yes were my ability to
automate and manage my email is pretty
dramatic
I’d say that’s one category a company
that I’m particularly excited about
that’s starting to grow very quickly as
a company called Mobile day I do a lot
of conference calls I travel constantly
so I use my cell phone almost all the
time for this stuff and if you’ve ever
done a conference call on a cell phone
where you have to dial in a bunch of
numbers and kind of yeah
explodes you’re driving down the road
and you’re trying to like look up the
number it just sucks
how what mobile day has done is it’s an
app that’s a one click one click into
any conference call so you literally
just use your existing conference call
infrastructure and mobile day whether
you’re the moderator or somebody else is
the moderator doesn’t matter what the
conference call service is it replaces
the calendar for all the conference call
activity so that’s one that’s become
indispensable to me of late
it’s another company that we’re
investors in and then I’d say you know
I’ve always been very heavy around
wordpress and wordpress related stuff
for content creation and what I’ve come
to is I think that there’s a couple of
different approaches to it but figuring
out a single approach and then setting
up your infrastructure so that it’s very
there’s no barrier to you creating
content I think is very important so in
my case I’ve done it with WordPress and
if you go to any of the sites you see a
bunch of similar stuff whether you’re on
ask the VC or felt calm or foundry group
or startup Rev and now with startup
revolution which is the new site startup
Rev calm around the books you’re
starting to see some things like we have
what we’re calling a hub which is from a
company called social engine that if it
works we’ll roll it out to the other
sites right so some of it is
experimenting constantly but within a
framework that’s that’s not changing and
in our case the framework that we chose
was workers those would be the three
approaches great great i really have to
let you go i when you were talking I
would say I have so many things to ask
you Brett I would stay here five hours
but okay we’ll be next time
you also investing in 3d printing that
I’m very curious about but I I so the
prices around two thousand bucks
something like that so it’s not for
consumer but it’s already a good price
that you can do you think 3d printing
will be something that absolutely will
spread or yeah of course you think but
why I mean what’s happening III think
that 3d printers are very analogous to
laser printers in the 1980s so in 1984
if you bought a laser printer
you’ve paid two three thousand dollars
for desktop laser printer and I actually
had one in 2000 and 1994 one of the
early HP LaserJet and if you look at the
evolution of that yeah now you can buy
for 200 bucks a printer that’s a hundred
times better than that one that I could
buy 20 years ago or almost thirty years
ago now you know for 3,000 bucks 3d
printers on the same kind of curve but
it’s going to accelerate much faster so
the idea that you know when I got a
laser printer people said to me why do
you need a laser printer and four years
later end of the 1980s once desktop
publishing had started to become
ubiquitous everybody needs a laser
printer so I think we’re in that same
kind of zone with 3d printing which is
there will be a couple of software
applications that become the Oh
everybody has to have this now I think
we’re very close to it but it’s with it
you know it’s within that narrow time
band let’s say well we have been all
right Brett thank you so much for our
movie check startup communities and
startup life January 2013 I think is
coming out all right thank you so much thanks
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