So I presented yesterday at Boulder Start Up Week on a panel on micro-financing. It wasn’t a huge audience, but it was certainly a hungry one.

About a third were active entrepreneurs running business and looking for additional financing for expansion and growth. Two thirds were entrepreneurs in the conceptual stage looking for financing to get businesses off the ground.

Before the panel, I thought mostly about what I might teach, or about what could I say that would be helpful to that kind of audience. While my brief presentation went well, I have to say that I came away learning much more than taught.

1) We’ve been very conservative about external financing, both equity and debt.

Listening to others there, and talking to others afterwards, I realized how much more aggressive, and in some cases effective, other entrepreneurs are in pursuing funding. Continue reading »

Over the last ten years, Boulder CO has become a hot spot for start ups. Not quite Silicon Valley, but a place that boasts dozens of promising tech start ups, a lot of great venture capital funds, and a branch of the high profile start up incubator, Tech Stars.

Next week is a part-promotion, part-celebration event called Start Up Week.

From the organizers:

Each May, we throw a 5-day event that showcases the unique startup culture of Boulder. No registration required. You’ll find meetups, coffee shop pow-wows, the largest Ignite in the world, parties, drinks, food, hikes, bike rides, sun, and good people.

I’ll be speaking at a panel on micro-financing for start ups. Continue reading »

Being a introvert and the head of a company is challenging.

The company founders and CEO’s I’ve always admired the most are those who are also thought leaders and compelling public faces for the their companies. The ones who do this best are extroverts. They thrive going to events, blogging, and connecting with others in the industry via social media.

As a hard-core introvert, even the thought of such activities triggers pain. As a result, my personal website has long been a “holding page” with little content, and my social media accounts are, eh, neglected.

I’ve always rationalized this by saying and believing that a person should focus on their strengths. I’m a very good systemic thinker who can identify opportunities and figure out how to arrange elements – including people and resources – to take advantage of those opportunities. I’m good at building business systems around opportunities. That’s what I’d consider my strength zone. And it’s admittedly a valuable and useful talent. Continue reading »