To Boulder and Beyond…

What a difference a week makes…On the bus right now riding to Denver airport after another exhausting and exhilarating Boulder trip.

I’m getting better at the travel itself — finding little tricks and habits to reduce stress and increase productivity on the road. I recently added tethering to my phone plan, so I be fully online anytime anyplace. It’s a beautiful thing when it works — but apparently this week AT&T’s data network crapped it’s shorts; I’ve basically been offline when outside of my little “offices”. Frustrating to have to lose productive time like that, especially when the whole purpose of these Boulder trips is to Get Shi% Done.

16 hour days every day this week — the team is getting it done! Had some great conversations with amazing investors and potential partners; putting the pieces into place to take our company to the next level. I love interacting with all these smart, experienced, and forward-thinking pros. They’re all building something, and going out of their way to help other entrepreneurs, the ecosystem, and Boulder/Colorado. Almost everyone I’m talking to thinks 5-10 years out and inspires me to try to do great things.

And things are definitely rolling along now with Funding Launchpad… first customer is live! More in the pipeline. Our 2012 strategy is working, our 2013-14 strategy is rock solid, and on the plane out here I came up with a great way to get tens of thousands more investors to engage with our platform. We’re also surrounding ourselves with a great network of vendor partners and potential Board members — already they’ve provided fantastic guidance on our strategies and tactics.

It’s been an uphill battle to get here… but I can’t imagine ever returning to cubicle life! The wife will want me to take the whole weekend off, of corse; how do I explain that relaxing doesn’t relax me? (At some point I’ll get the company to the stage where I’m not feeling constant existential dread, right?)

We helped put on a great crowdfunding conference in Boulder this week. I gave a 25 minute talk on platforms; was fairly well received even though I started working on it at 6am the day of the conference… never enough hours in the day. Was awesome to see my team kicking ass this week. Everyone is focused on driving forward every day, and there were several times where most would have said “eh, this can wait until tomorrow” but every time the team stepped up and said “let’s get this updated and sent out before we go” — only makes me more committed than ever to up my own game in some way every week.

I’ve gotten to enjoy doing talks and especially panels and Q&A sessions. Investor conversations too — now very comfortable, especially when I can turn it into a conversation instead of a “pitch”. Fundraising certainly is time consuming, though; will be a welcome day when I can put fundraising on hold and get back to growing the business.

On Wednesday night a reporter from Inc. magazine had dinner with me and two co-founders. He’s doing a deep dive into the whole CF industry; but it sounds likely that we’ll be mentioned extensively in a feature article in a few months. Oh, apparently I’m quoted in yesterday’s Denver Post too — Woo hoo!

Yesterday was demo day for TechStars Boulder; very bummed to have missed the event (conflicted with our CF conference) but at least I got to catch up with the two teams I know (MobiPlug and Ubooly) at the after party. Super stoked to see what they do next!

So: all I need to do is finish this fundraising round, assemble a board of directors, build out the team, establish dozens of deep partnerships including one fundamental tie-up, get 1,000,000 investors on the site, and establish Funding Launchpad as a reliable, robust, friendly, trustworthy, and effective platform for raising money and finding good investments.

All right — the first quarter break is over… Game on.

Quite a day! — Exhilarating and draining at the same time. I think I got a little taste of what life is like for a professional speaker… well, what it’s like being a professional speaker when you’re not really a natural-born speaker.

Had the privilege this morning of following David Cohen in the “Conversation over Lunch” series at PivotGuild. Great conversation about Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding with about 35 creative folks. Had a great time riffing with Alyson Miller about the pros and cons, opportunities and limitations of Crowdsourcing. I love working with great people!

No slides, just a few notes and some really engaging conversation with the group. I believe they got something out of it, and I have to admit I enjoyed myself as well.

Then in the evening I was on the Startup Meetup ”First Wednesday Funding Talk!” schedule. Main purpose being to update some folks about the upcoming Crowdfunding exemption (via the JOBS act).

The event started with a fantastic walkthrough by Twoology, who I have no doubt you’ll be hearing about in the near future. Keeping relationships healthy? Way better than finding new relationships… seriously, though, great presentation and really engaging project.

Then I got up there and proceeded to drop some knowledge with a side order of what-the-hell-am-i-doing-up-here — actually that’s a bit harsh…, in all honesty it went very well. Just still a bit of a perfectionist I guess. I won’t be completely satisfied until I can picture Steve Jobs smiling down on me at the end of a presentation.

Anyway.

Point is that I love working with the community here, sharing knowledge, and doing whatever is in my power to make great things happen.

We’ve got some exciting stuff in the works, and look forward to helping lots of companies raise the money they need to do insanely awesome stuff.

I’m thankful to be part of an entrepreneurial community as awesome as the Boulder/Denver scene… Namaste.

Monday — Met with Wells Fargo and talked about how they can help us grow… then did some business at the Absinthe House in downtime Boulder (with 4 new dental fillings; there was some slurring).

Tuesday — Met with 2 different kickass local entrepreneurs; compared notes on our projects, and got some great ideas for moving some things along. Got grilled by a very smart potential client; they asked all the right questions — now we just need to up our game and deliver the goods.

Wednesday — Talked partnership opportunities with some guys that are starting their own incubator, then had beers with another kickass local entrepreneur who may be one of our first client companies.

Thursday — “Conversation over lunch” event with David Cohen over at PivotGuild, then was interviewed (online talk radio) by Larry Nelson over at http://w3w3.com/.

Gotta love entrepreneurship; gotta love this town.

I thought I’d share the email I just sent out to various folks that have asked to be kept in the loop on Vim Funding’s progress.

If you would like to be added to this monthly update please let me know! The more the merrier.

(Also: I promise to start updating this blog more frequently with all the fun and painful stuff that starting a company entails.)

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	https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/cfunding

So first of all — wow, public speaking is still sometimes a challenge for me. I thought I was over this by now…

I just got back from doing a presentation in front of about 50 people over at the DaVinci Institute. Suffice it to say it was not my best performance. I was delivering a 20-minute version of a 45 minute talk that I’ve done a couple of times now… for some reason, in shortening it up I feel like I omitted all the juicy bits, and was just delivering generalities.

In general, if I know what I want to say (and I have a clue what I’m talking about) then I’m not terribly nervous in front of a crowd. For some reason, today was different — maybe I didn’t really know what I wanted to communicate after all. Hmm. There were a lot of smart people in the audience too, which may have added to the sudden case of the nerves that hit me when it was my turn to talk.

In the end, I think I managed to convey some interesting information, but it was not terribly well presented. Still, let’s call it a net win in that some people learned some things, and I didn’t burst into flames on stage.

But back to the point in the post title…

Despite my lackluster performance on stage today, the underlying topic was one that entrepreneurs just can’t resist — finding money for your startup. These folks are so passionate about their ideas (some of which are awesome, and some of which I don’t think have much of a chance) that they’re willing to listen to some schmuck from out of town babble on for 20 minutes and they actually take notes. And then come up afterwards to talk, in the hopes that I can help them land that magical round.

I wish I could help them all land the money they deserve (whether that be zero or a somewhat larger number). I hope I can at least help a couple of them, at this point.

But the thought I kept rolling around on the way home was just how devoted these folks are to giving birth to their company; that they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make things happen. Even if that means listening to someone like me.

Humbling, really. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to talk tonight, and I will strive next time to deliver a performance worthy of their passion.