As I’m about to head down to Austin for Techstars FounderCon (the annual meeting of all Techstars founders), I figured I crank out a few more Mentor Manifesto items this week. Item 5 is “Listen Too.” Pause and ponder for a minute. Do you talk too much? I do – it’s one of my weaknesses. […]

Today’s installment of the Techstars Mentor Manifesto is #4: Be Direct. Tell The Truth, However Hard. Let’s start with “Be Direct.” At some intellectual level, being direct is easy. You just say what is on your mind. You say it in a declarative way. You lead with it and support it with either experience or […]

In today’s installation of the Techstars Mentor Manifesto, we deconstruct #3: Be Authentic – Practice What You Preach. Authenticity has once again become a trendy word. When I started blogging in 2004, it was all about transparency. Fred Wilson led the way and I happily followed. And if you want to really understand transparency, look […]

The second element of the Techstars Mentor Manifesto is Expect nothing in return (you’ll be delighted with what you do get back). It’s extraordinarily simple while being profoundly hard. It’s simple because it’s easy to say “I’m doing this without any expectations.” That felt good, right? You are going to be a good mentor, helping another up […]

Since today is the first day of the new Techstars Boulder program, I figured that it’s time to get rolling Deconstructing The Techstars Mentor Manifesto. My goal with this series of posts is not to get the detail right, but to flesh things out and get your feedback. So please comment on anything and challenge everything […]

I had a great week last week.  Most of the companies I’m an investor in are doing well and are having strong Q2s.  A few, like Zynga, are absolutely killing it (see the Zynga video on CBS News titled SF-Based Startup Thriving, Hiring In Down Economy.) As one might expect, I’ve got a few companies […]

I am delighted to see the addition of several new mentors for the 2008 edition of TechStars including Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC), Matt Mullenweg (Automattic / WordPress.com), Dick Costolo (FeedBurner/Google), Eric Marcouller (MyBlogLog/Yahoo), Jeff Nolan (NewsGator), and Josh Hug (Shelfari).  They join the incredible list of 50+ mentors for 2008 just waiting to help your […]

Ben Casnocha is hard at work at his book titled “My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley”; which Jossey-Bass (part of John Wiley & Sons) is publishing this spring.  I read a draft over Thanksgiving and I predict this book will end up becoming a New York […]

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