Brad Feld

Back to Blog

Seattle Board Day

Aug 10, 2010
Category Investments

I’m on a six week rhythm in Seattle for the three boards I’m on up here – Gist, BigDoor, and Impinj. While I don’t have them perfectly synced up, I’m hopeful that I will in 2011.  In the mean time, today full of BigDoor and Gist.

It was an absurdly beautiful day in Seattle.  When the sun is out, this place shines.  The day started out at the new Founders Co-op office where BigDoor is located.  It’s about 33% full but that’s going to change next week when TechStars Seattle begins and fills out the place.  It’s great space, in a great location (near the new Amazon campus), and is covered with IdeaPaint.

Everything about the BigDoor meeting was great.  It was a tight, focused two hours.  Since we invested about six weeks ago, over 300 companies have signed up to try BigDoor’s system and I expect 10 will be in full production by the end of the month.  If you are looking to add game mechanics to your site, it’s the easiest and fastest way to do it.  They’ve just rolled out a new website that explains it, along with a refreshed / simple pricing model that is free up to 100k API calls / month.  Oh, and they served sushi for lunch which just rocked.

I got a ride across town to Gist where we spent most of our time on the August and September product rhythms (Gist is now on a monthly product focus – everyone in the company focuses on one specific area of the product and the next two months are filled with goodness.)  Gist has also refreshed their site – if you haven’t ever tried it or haven’t looked at it in a while, go give it a shot – it’s grown up nicely.

I’m off to LA for an Oblong board meeting tomorrow and lunch by their amazing in house chef followed by an appearance with Mark Suster on This Week in Venture Capital live at 2pm PST followed by some LaunchPad LA stuff that Mark has pulled together.

All of these companies are doing well so its a fun action packed two days on the east coast.  And yes, I’m way over stimulated after a month in Homer with just Amy.