Posts tagged Brad Feld
2018 Boulder Startup Week descends upon Boulder
May 12th
Deal or no deal? A lot of 20-somethings come to Boulder during startup week with their dreams and ideas hoping to to be chosen by “angel investors”. They pool their savings and show up here. Sometimes it is the last of their money and their fledgling companies are on their last legs. Most go home without a deal. We have even had some apply for sales jobs here at Boulder Channel 1 so they could buy airfare to get home, or who gave up and wanted a job just to stay in groovy Boulder. Admittedly , we like hiring those kids because they are all highly driven. Hunger makes for good salespersonship.
The Pitch Much of the week attendees will visit Boulder tech companies, startups, agencies to hear pitches by other millennials about how to be successful. They will hear the VCs pitch startups. It is all topped off with new age feel good politics ” community. vision, growth and inclusiveness” That is if you are a millennial and not a nosy journalist of any age. They don’t like to be reviewed or critiqued. Boulder Startup week is well intended with a bit of phony baloney. One example: look at what happened to Facebook, Twitter, Google and the Daily Camera this past month. They all went into upheaval over their hype, perception and reality. Journalism vs money. Privacy vs money. 🙂
Women marriage beer and party on Did we mention beer and partying? There is lots of that too. The crowd is mostly young white male, so there is a shortage of women. The women who do attend have a tendency to work in public relations, advertising, retail, restaurants. Few woman who attend are actually engineers with a tech startup. The complaint is that there are not enough women. One 26 year old women told us she found her husband at a pitch session. He was a 27 year old millionaire who created a few hot aps. They met and a year later got married. She’s happy, he’s happy and her parents are really happy. Her father told us, “thank God she met an engineer.. and not like my other daughter who married a drug addict musician. ” Yup, Boulder Startup Week is a great place to find a husband though they wouldn’t be so gosh as to say it.
Jobs: Some people have told us they come to startup week hoping to find a job, but the chances are nil unless you are an engineer or a coder. PR jobs are a dime a dozen in Boulder so none are available. Many millennial techies think sales is beneath them, but there is a lot of money in sales and everyone is always looking for a good sales rep including us. Much emphasis is put on entrepreneurship but not on being a good employee. One women told us “she grew up in Boulder , went to college ,moved to Denver and could not find any jobs,. She came to Boulder Startup Week but there were no jobs. She was disappointed because they had a jobs table and job fair. But there wre no jobs for a film maker, on camera talent and writer. If you can’t code don’t bother applying.
But what is Boulder startup week really about?? It is about the next investment for Boulder Angel investors and VCs and it is a closed shop. You have to look the part, act the part, talk the part scripted to a Tee and then maybe if you are lucky a pittance will be thrown your way. Most start up ventures fail. Estimates that 8 out of 9 Boulder Startups never make it out of angel stage. That is never publicized. VCs look form a gem inside the disco and they usually find one. This new crop of Boulder business people would have you believe that they invented business investment. They did make it easier to show your stuff, but Boulder has always been a startup business community ever since the gold and silver days of the 1800’s. The next big Boulder investment is bound to be here at this years Boulder Startup week and it will make a bunch of people really very rich… ahh but we don’t talk about that either. lol
ps if you are looking for a job Boulder Channel 1 is hiring sales reps 303 447 8531 720 621 7750
Boulder Startup Week 2013: what we did.
May 18th
First of all we are not exactly a start up. We are more an old school OG Boulder entrepreneurial company. That is to say Brad Feld and David Cohen didn’t invent the entrepreneurial movement here in Boulder. They joined it in the 90s and capitalized on it. Yes they are modern day Gurus, but Boulder has 100’s of gurus. Boulder’s entreperurship started in the late 1800s during the Colorado Gold rush and it never stopped.
So old timer tech entrepreneurs look at Feld , Cohen and Polis with some bemusement. They’ve seen it all before. This new hippy feel good neo communist business start up scene was really started by Moe Segal and the natural foods biz heads of the 1960s and 70’s. One CU business professor scoffed at the notion of Start Ups. ” Most of it is junk” he said. ” One or 2 out of 100 will be swallowed up by the VCs and make it to market but the other 98 will fail. So this is nothing new and Brad Feld is not that special.” he said.
And this is where I’d like to pick up. So what did we at Boulder Channel 1 do during this years Boulder Start Up Week. ?
We kept working that’s what we did. Part of our work was to send out sales reps to various event s to see where there was an opportunity to make some money by selling our services. What?? yep. We were looking for advertising clients, We were not looking for funding an angel or a VC. But we were looking to deal. We were selling. Overtly and not so overtly. We were looking for one $20,000 client for a year. One advertiser who needed banner ads, video, sm, pr, design, a show series, a web site and who wanted consumers from Boulder to buy their goods. We were on the hunt. We set a goal and went after it. That’s what start Up Week Boulder meant to us. No bullshit. No drinking. No fucking around. No chasing millionaires. Just hard work. Sales.
Did we land anyone. Yep we did. Two. we made $40,000 bucks this week off of Boulder Start Up week from two companies who wanted our services….. who needed our service… and who did not want to be dicked around by a bunch of drunks who are playing at business.
There is a lesson here for those of you who want to be serious business people. ( We have been successfully in business since 1975 here in Boulder. Like everyone else who digs this city, it only keeps getting better) We live in Utopia and we don’t take it for granted. We are truly blessed
What do we do to give back to Boulder?? We have been here for a long long time. We are established and have roots. we give cash to 30 different Boulder charities who help feed and clothe people. We produce videos for free for any non profit. We don’t charge non profits. We mentor homeless techies who need a hand up. We mentor kids of impoverished families.
Jann Scott is the CEO of Channel 1 Networks
Robert Reich Interview – Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup
Feb 20th
Jann Scott Interviews Boulder-Denver New Tech Meetup founder Robert Reich and we learn about Robert has created a great place for New Tech companies in Colorado to meet and share their ideas and become apart of the growing community of multimedia in the area and what it means to be a Start Up company and a Small Business.