Tech Scenes Unplugged with Brad Feld, Partner at Foundry & Co-founder of Techstars

Insights from Tech Scenes Unplugged with Brad Feld, Partner at Foundry and Co-Founder of Techstars

Few people have had a greater impact on modern entrepreneurship than Brad Feld. As a partner at Foundry, co-founder of Techstars, author, investor, mentor, and one of the earliest advocates for startup communities outside of Silicon Valley, Feld has spent decades helping founders build companies, communities, and careers.

In this episode of Tech Scenes Unplugged, Jeff Martin sits down with Brad Feld for a wide-ranging conversation about entrepreneurship, mentorship, startup communities, founder growth, leadership, Give First, organizational learning, AI, and the importance of creating systems that allow entrepreneurs to thrive.

One of the most important themes from the discussion is that entrepreneurship is no longer confined to a handful of cities or ecosystems. For decades, aspiring founders believed they had to move to Silicon Valley, New York, or Boston to build meaningful companies. Feld has long challenged that assumption.

When Brad moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1995, many people viewed the decision as unconventional for a technology entrepreneur and investor. Today, however, startup communities exist everywhere. Entrepreneurs are building companies in cities, regions, and countries across the globe. The barriers to information, mentorship, and access have been dramatically reduced.

The democratization of entrepreneurship may be one of the most important shifts in business over the past two decades.

Founders now have access to educational resources, mentors, investors, communities, accelerators, podcasts, books, and networks that simply did not exist for earlier generations of entrepreneurs.

But while access to information has expanded, another challenge has emerged.

Information is abundant.

Wisdom is not.

This distinction sits at the heart of Feld's philosophy of mentorship.

Throughout the conversation, Brad reflects on his new book, Give First, and explains why mentorship remains one of the most powerful forces in entrepreneurship. Unlike transactional networking, effective mentorship is built on authentic relationships, curiosity, generosity, and mutual learning.

One of the most compelling ideas discussed in the episode is what Feld calls the "magic trick" of mentorship.

The best mentor relationships eventually evolve into peer relationships.

At first glance, mentorship often appears one-directional. A more experienced entrepreneur shares knowledge with someone earlier in their journey. However, the strongest mentorship relationships become reciprocal. Both people learn. Both people grow. Both people contribute.

This perspective aligns closely with how successful entrepreneurial ecosystems operate.

Great startup communities are not built on hierarchy.

They are built on participation.

Founders help founders.

Operators help operators.

Investors help entrepreneurs.

Experienced leaders share lessons learned while remaining open to new ideas and perspectives.

The result is a community where knowledge compounds over time.

Brad also reflects on his early experiences with Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO), formerly Young Entrepreneurs' Organization (YEO), and the role of forum groups in shaping his understanding of leadership and mentorship.

The forum model is built around a simple but powerful concept: share from experience rather than advice.

Rather than telling someone what to do, participants share stories from their own journeys. This creates space for learning without creating dependency. It encourages reflection rather than prescription.

For founders navigating uncertainty, this distinction is critical.

The reality is that most entrepreneurial challenges do not have a single correct answer.

Context matters.

Timing matters.

People matter.

Leadership matters.

The ability to learn from multiple experiences often creates better decisions than simply following someone else's advice.

The conversation also explores founder growth and the evolution of leadership over time.

Many entrepreneurs spend years focused on building companies while neglecting their own personal operating systems. As organizations grow, founders often discover that sustainable success requires more than hard work. It requires reflection, self-awareness, boundaries, recovery, and intentional leadership practices.

Brad openly discusses periods of burnout, depression, and what he calls "hibernation"—intentional periods where he steps back from public activity to recharge, learn, and reflect.

His perspective offers an important lesson for founders and executives.

Growth is not always about moving faster.

Sometimes growth requires slowing down.

In a business environment that often glorifies constant activity, Feld argues that reflection is a strategic advantage. Leaders who create space to think, learn, and evaluate reality often make better long-term decisions than those trapped in perpetual motion.

This idea connects directly to organizational execution.

Companies often focus on accelerating activity when they should be improving clarity.

Teams add meetings instead of improving communication.

Organizations increase initiatives instead of increasing focus.

Leaders pursue more opportunities instead of identifying the few opportunities that matter most.

The best organizations understand that stopping, reflecting, learning, and recalibrating are not signs of weakness.

They are requirements for sustainable performance.

The discussion eventually turns to artificial intelligence and the future of technology.

Brad offers a balanced perspective that stands apart from both AI hype and AI fear.

While AI will undoubtedly transform industries, workflows, and business models, he cautions against treating AI-generated outputs as unquestionable truth. Like every major technology shift before it, AI creates opportunities, risks, and uncertainty.

The challenge for leaders is not simply adopting AI.

The challenge is maintaining judgment.

As information becomes easier to generate, the ability to ask better questions, think critically, and evaluate competing ideas becomes increasingly valuable.

In many ways, this mirrors the broader lesson of the episode.

Technology changes.

Markets change.

Organizations change.

But the human dimensions of leadership, mentorship, learning, trust, and community remain essential.

The founders and organizations that thrive over the next decade will likely be those that combine technological leverage with human wisdom.

They will build strong communities.

They will invest in learning.

They will create meaningful relationships.

And they will understand that sustainable success is rarely created alone.

It is created through networks of people helping one another grow.

That idea has been central to Brad Feld's work for decades, and it remains just as relevant today as entrepreneurship continues expanding across the globe.

Episode Links

YouTube:
https://youtu.be/DGMC8ZEv9ak

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Uo8oEr50IFkWzdjuvCEw3?si=E6Q2UC9NQo6h8Gjc4R-WGQ

Questions and Answers

Who is Brad Feld?

Brad Feld is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, author, Partner at Foundry, Co-Founder of Techstars, and one of the leading voices on startup communities, mentorship, and entrepreneurship.

What is Give First?

Give First is a philosophy popularized by Brad Feld that encourages helping others without an immediate expectation of receiving something in return. It focuses on building long-term relationships and strengthening entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Why is mentorship important for founders?

Mentorship helps founders learn from the experiences of others, avoid common mistakes, gain perspective, and accelerate personal and organizational growth.

What makes a great mentor?

Great mentors share experiences rather than prescriptions, remain curious, continue learning, and focus on helping founders develop their own judgment.

What is the "magic trick" of mentorship?

The strongest mentor relationships eventually become peer relationships where both participants learn from one another and contribute equally.

Why are startup communities important?

Startup communities provide founders with access to knowledge, support, relationships, resources, and opportunities that improve the likelihood of long-term success.

What does Brad Feld mean by entrepreneurship being everywhere?

Entrepreneurship is no longer concentrated in a few major technology hubs. Founders can build successful companies in communities around the world.

Why do founders need time for reflection?

Reflection creates clarity. Leaders who periodically step back can better evaluate priorities, identify opportunities, avoid burnout, and make stronger decisions.

How should leaders think about AI?

Leaders should view AI as a powerful tool while maintaining critical thinking, judgment, and independent analysis rather than assuming AI outputs are always correct.

What is one of the biggest lessons from this episode?

Long-term entrepreneurial success is built through learning, mentorship, relationships, community, and intentional leadership rather than transactions alone.

Music by Andrew Applepie - https://soundcloud.com/andrewapplepie

Episode Transcript

Jeff Martin in conversation with Brad Feld

“The magic trick is when the mentor and the mentee become peers.” — Brad Feld

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability. Repetition, conversational filler, and obvious transcription errors have been cleaned up while preserving the substance and conversational tone. It contains occasional explicit language.

Cold Open — 00:00

Brad Feld: The magic trick is when the mentor and the mentee become peers.

That can happen very early in the relationship because most mentors, when they're effective, are engaging in a relationship with a mentee where they—the mentor—are also learning.

Part of the way you learn is by telling things from your own experience.

Those forum meetings weren't just for the person who was presenting. They were for everybody else in the room who was sitting there thinking, “I had a similar experience too. Here's what happened.”

You're integrating those experiences as you're talking about your own experience into the contemporary context of whatever the current problem is.

Welcome Back to Tech Scenes — 01:13

Jeff Martin: Brad, welcome to Tech Scenes.

Welcome back to Tech Scenes.

This time, unplugged.

Brad Feld: I am delighted to be back.

Unplugged.

Jeff Martin: The car version—unplugged while driving a Tesla—probably makes more sense.

But I was kind of going for MTV Unplugged when I came up with the idea.

I don't know.

Brad Feld: Hey, we all just try to be cool.

We're all nerds, so whatever it takes.

I'm happy to be on Unplugged.

I can't play any musical instruments or sing.

Jeff Martin: Wait a second.

Didn't you guys at Foundry do a kind of Beastie Boys-style rap?

Brad Feld: We did a couple of those things.

I would say I was the least talented.

Jeff Martin: I'm sure they made you look good.

Brad Feld: Ten-x.

Jeff Martin: I tried to look it up again a while ago.

I don't know if you guys scrubbed it off the internet.

Brad Feld: They're still there.

But I'd probably be happy if the internet made them go away.

Jeff Martin: Who was the person behind that?

Brad Feld: Jason Mendelson, who's a really accomplished musician.

Jeff Martin: It was really well done.

Brad Feld: He's a great musician.

Our other partner, Ryan McIntyre, is also a fantastic musician.

Then Seth Levine, who is not a good musician but thinks he can play guitar.

And then me, who's completely at peace with the fact that I can't do any of those things other than listen to music.

So there you go.

Jeff Martin: We might come back to that part.

Brad Feld: I'm always perfectly happy to make fun of myself.

Best and Thanks — 02:44

Jeff Martin: I'm actually going to start differently than I normally start.

I do this with my teams.

Best and thanks.

What's the best thing that's happened to you in the last week?

And who's one person you'd like to thank?

Brad Feld: It's a little blurry because I've had a cold, so thinking about “best” is tricky.

I'll start with thanks.

I'd thank my wife, Amy Batchelor, who has been awesomely patient with me as I've worked a lot while having a cold.

For the best thing that happened in the last week, we had dinner with two close friends.

We're in Aspen right now.

It was one of those three-hour dinners outside that was just so pleasant and so much fun.

We're all very values-aligned, so we could complain about the same shit with no filters.

We could also talk about whatever we wanted.

We hadn't seen each other since last year because they live up here full time, and we'd just gotten back for the summer.

It was awesome.

On the work front, I had a really fun call yesterday morning with Impact Africa.

I'm doing a ton of stuff around my new book, Give First, including saying yes to lots of things.

I'm in default-yes mode.

If somebody reaches out and wants me to do a fireside chat or whatever, I just say yes.

This was a group in Nairobi organized around entrepreneurship and helping build a startup community there.

There were about 50 people in a fellowship program.

It's led by a founder who's an entrepreneur, spent some time in Silicon Valley, but lives back in Nairobi where he grew up.

It was a great way to start the day.

It was early for me—about 7:30 in the morning—and the end of the day for them.

We spent an hour talking back and forth.

It was a fireside-chat format, a little interview-style, but then there was interactive Q&A.

Seeing 50 faces on the screen—aspiring entrepreneurs and founders in Nairobi working hard on whatever their first things were—and just being able to engage with them was a great way to start the day.

Entrepreneurship Is Everywhere — 05:22

Jeff Martin: I love that.

Entrepreneurship is everywhere.

Brad Feld: Everywhere.

I'm about to turn 60, and as I'm approaching 60, that's something I'm most happy about in terms of the work I've been doing for a long time.

Techstars is now almost 20 years old.

Officially, I guess it's 19.

My Startup Communities book came out 13 years ago, in 2012.

I've been deeply involved in this premise for a long time, going back before any of those things.

I moved to Boulder, Colorado, from Boston in 1995.

At the time, Boulder was not an obvious place to move as a founder.

I've long believed that people should live where they want to live and build their lives around that.

As a consequence of that, I've always believed you can start companies anywhere in the world and build companies anywhere in the world.

Even 15 years ago, that was not a broadly accepted construct.

The prevailing view was, “If you're serious about creating a company, you need to go to Silicon Valley.”

Jeff Martin: Right.

Brad Feld: And I always disagreed.

We've been building things in Boulder and in other cities.

I've always invested all across the United States.

Today, what you just said is true:

Entrepreneurship is everywhere.

You can build companies anywhere in the world.

We've effectively democratized the idea of entrepreneurship globally.

And it's not just the ability to do it.

Think about the information available to a first-time founder today compared with what was available to me as a first-time founder in the mid-1980s.

There was nothing available to me.

The books to read were things like the biography of Lee Iacocca, who of course wasn't actually an entrepreneur but was sort of held out as the great American entrepreneur.

It's awesome to think about how much that has changed—even in the last decade.

Give First, Techstars, and Jeff's Introduction to Mentorship — 07:35

Jeff Martin: I learned a lot reading your book.

It was really good.

Brad Feld: Thanks.

Jeff Martin: The things that resonated with me might be different from what resonates with other people.

Give First.

I've been part of Techstars for about 10 years now.

I think the first group I mentored was with Ryan Broshar and Techstars Retail.

Brad Feld: Sure. Of course.

I was on a call with Ryan, Matty, and Nicole at Matchstick the other day.

We spent an hour talking about portfolio construction and various things they're looking at as they've launched their new fund.

Jeff Martin: I love all three of them.

I've been close friends with Ryan.

I'm originally from Minnesota, although I've been in L.A. for the past decade.

I actually did a little documentary on a day in the life of somebody going through that Techstars cohort.

I can't help but record video.

I don't know why.

I don't know if it's an addiction.

Brad Feld: I don't think I've ever seen that video.

Will you send me a link?

Jeff Martin: I will.

I called it Day in the Life of a Tech Star, which probably should've been Techstars, but then the “s” didn't really work.

I followed the group around and interviewed them.

It was super fun.

Brad Feld: Sweet.

Send me that.

I'd love to see it.

Mentorship as Learning — 09:08

Jeff Martin: Let's talk about your book.

There were a few things in it that really resonated with me.

In the end, it all comes back to this idea that mentorship is learning.

I think you're probably wired similarly to me—very introspective, taking things in, reflecting on them, doing things, and learning from them.

When I first started mentoring with Techstars, I came from the Gestalt philosophy in Entrepreneurs' Organization.

I started a business very young, while I was in college, and sold it.

I actually studied entrepreneurship.

This was one of the early entrepreneurship programs in the '90s.

I went into school basically saying, “Obviously, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to start a business.”

I had mentors throughout that time.

I sold that business around the dot-com boom and quickly got pulled into Entrepreneurs' Organization in Minnesota.

That's where I learned this concept of Gestalt.

The way it was explained to us was: we can't tell anybody what to do.

We don't give advice.

We can only speak from relevant personal experience.

You couldn't even talk about something your friend experienced.

It had to be your experience.

Then I came into Techstars mentoring next to these giant Target executives and other corporate leaders.

I watched founders go through mentor madness.

I have crazy empathy for founders.

And I remember thinking maybe some of the mentors hadn't read the Mentor Manifesto because the founders were getting a lot of, “You should do this.”

As a founder myself, that's the last thing I want to hear—people telling me what to do.

I was always trying to find threads of my own experience that I could share instead.

Maybe my mentoring was a little different because of that.

But it was such an interesting experience that I haven't stopped doing it for the last 10 years.

The EO and YEO Roots of Mentorship — 11:11

Brad Feld: I think the roots you and I have are very similar.

Even from the way you're talking about it, you immediately understand it.

My guess is one of those shared roots is EO.

When I was involved, it was called YEO.

Jeff Martin: Yes.

Brad Feld: This was in the early '90s.

I started the Boston chapter.

I was probably around the 100th member of the organization.

Jeff Martin: No way.

Brad Feld: I was on the global board for four or five years.

I was deeply involved.

So we have this interesting—not time overlap—but functional and experiential overlap.

When I moved to Boulder, the way I found friends was that I started a YEO chapter in Boulder.

Off we went.

That was really my starting point for getting connected to other founders in Boulder.

The essence of the connection between Gestalt and the way you described mentorship is Forum.

For people who aren't familiar with Forum through YPO or EO, it's a very structured and powerful monthly meeting that's part of the EO experience.

For me, when I started doing it in the early '90s, it was profound.

I was running a company, and I really didn't know anybody like me other than my business partner.

Every now and then I'd run into somebody, but there wasn't an organized way to have these kinds of conversations.

I joined YEO.

We started the Boston chapter.

I immediately got some new friends.

Then we started a Forum group, which we very creatively called Forum One.

It was around 10 people.

The same 10 people every month.

We went through Forum training.

I remember doing a three-day retreat where we were trained in the process.

One of the key elements was the structure.

Once a month, for several hours, you'd get together with the same group of people.

It's confidential.

You can't tell anyone—not even your significant other—what gets discussed.

It's just the people in the room.

Everyone starts with a personal and professional update.

Jeff Martin: There was a matrix for it.

Something like upper 5%, lower 5%.

Brad Feld: Something like that.

And the way we'd do it, people wouldn't just immediately start talking.

You'd sit and think for three or four minutes.

You'd write things down on a piece of paper.

It was deliberate.

Then each person would get about five minutes.

You might spend an hour just going around doing that.

Forum: Experience Instead of Advice — 14:57

Brad Feld: Then one person would present a problem.

Usually the person wasn't designated in advance.

As you went around through the updates, somebody might say, “I've got something I really want to talk about tonight.”

Sometimes there'd be two people, and you'd figure out how to handle it.

Jeff Martin: I think today they prepare it in advance.

You come in almost like a board meeting with two or three topics.

Those people come prepared, and that's the bulk of the meeting.

I really like that.

Brad Feld: Which is even better.

Do the pre-work.

The person would explain the problem for maybe 30 minutes.

It could be personal.

It could be professional.

Whatever.

You, as the presenter, just talked.

Everybody else sat and listened.

Then there'd be another period where people could respond to you—but only from their experience.

All they could do was tell stories from their experience that related to the problem.

They weren't allowed to critique the problem.

They weren't allowed to answer the problem.

They couldn't suggest what you should do.

They had to tell a story from their own experience.

Then the presenter got some time to respond and integrate what they'd heard.

Finally, everybody would go around the room again and reflect.

Jeff Martin: What did you get out of it?

Something along those lines.

Brad Feld: Exactly.

For somebody listening, we basically just compressed three days of Forum training into a few minutes.

The Roots of the Techstars Mentor Manifesto — 16:39

Brad Feld: That was the root of this idea of mentorship as you describe it and as I talk about it in Give First.

When we started Techstars in 2006, the word “mentorship” wasn't really used very much.

People didn't really talk about it.

Every now and then it would appear in different contexts.

We started using it right out of the gate.

We called Techstars a mentor-driven accelerator.

That meant we got to define the word mentor and define the word accelerator.

By around 2010, we'd learned a bunch of things about what was effective and what wasn't effective.

You're describing what you experienced in the Target program.

David Cohen wrote the Techstars Mentor Manifesto.

It's 18 bullet points that aren't necessarily the most grammatically elegant bullet points in the world.

But they're simply things we found were effective.

It wasn't:

“You must do this.”

“This is how you become a good mentor.”

“If you do these things, you get check marks, gold stars, and an award.”

It was a framework of things to consider in the context of being an effective mentor.

From 2010 forward, there was a lot more learning and evolution around those ideas.

When I sat down to work on Give First, I was trying to navigate two constructs:

Give First, which is a philosophy.

And mentorship, which is a way of being.

They're linked together.

If you read the book, an awful lot of what I'm doing is telling stories from my own experience about what these principles are and how they work.

And again, that comes back to this root idea of Forum.

Learning, Teaching, and Giving Back — 18:58

Jeff Martin: I had two Forums.

I came in early, but after the “Y” had come off YEO.

In my first Forum, everybody was probably 10 or 15 years older than me.

We were equals, but I was so excited to be in that Forum because I had seven mentors surrounding me every month.

And they were a text or phone call away—probably a phone call at that time.

I was the young guy.

“Jeff understands technology.”

So I fixed their phones and stuff.

But it was so fun for me to draw on their years of experience as true entrepreneurs.

The same thing happened with my entrepreneurship professor, Jeff Cornwall.

He was a successful entrepreneur, and I was able to learn from him while I was literally building a company in school.

Going even further back, I think about my first mentors.

I thanked them in my book.

They were really my uncles.

I probably bothered them endlessly while we were fishing or hunting, asking questions about their businesses.

They're all entrepreneurs.

I grew up in an entrepreneurial family.

I think that's probably where some of my deep empathy for founders comes from.

I was always interested in entrepreneurship and the idea of building something.

I was always asking questions.

I probably had 20 jobs.

I started two companies before I graduated from college.

I'd go into a job and learn the process.

Once I figured out, “Okay, this is how you make the pizza because that's the most economical way to do it, this is how the process works,” I wanted to move on to another business and understand that one.

EO used to talk about an entrepreneurial life cycle.

You come in.

You're an entrepreneur.

You learn.

Then at some point later in life, you start giving back.

I kind of did that loop a lot faster.

I think you learn and then you share.

I still feel like I'm a student of entrepreneurship.

I'm still a student of life.

I coach wrestling.

I teach and coach jiu-jitsu.

I still practice jiu-jitsu myself and train under Fabio Leopoldo, who's a multiple-time world champion.

I'm always learning from him.

I coach teams not only on the mats but in their boardrooms.

But I also learn from those teams.

That really resonated with me in your book.

You kept returning to this point where you're the mentor, but then you're also an equal.

There's a thread there that kept speaking to me.

It comes back to learning.

Teaching and mentoring are also learning.

You get something back from doing them.

I saw it with my daughter yesterday.

She unexpectedly had to teach elementary wrestling.

I told her, “Juliet, now you have to explain not only how the technique works, but why we do it and why it works.”

That's going to make her a better wrestler too.

There's something about teaching and mentoring that hardens or clarifies your philosophies.

So the question—and I know I went on a little rant—is:

What did you learn by writing the book?

The Magic Trick of Mentorship — 22:51

Brad Feld: Let me put that question on the shelf for a second because it's a fun one, and I'll come back to it.

But I want to emphasize something you just explained.

You just explained what I call the magic trick in mentorship.

The magic trick is when the mentor and the mentee become peers.

That can happen very early in the relationship.

Most mentors, when they're effective, are engaging in a relationship with a mentee where they—the mentor—are also learning.

Part of the way you learn, and this builds directly on the YEO Forum experience, is by telling things from your own experience.

Those Forum meetings weren't just for the person who was presenting.

They were for everybody else in the room too.

Everybody else is sitting there thinking:

“Oh, I've had a similar experience.”

“Let me tell you about that experience.”

“Here's what happened.”

You're integrating those experiences as you're talking about your own experience into the contemporary context of whatever the current problem is.

That's one dimension.

Another dimension is what you said almost offhandedly.

Everybody in the room was older and more experienced than you.

So you were learning a ton from them.

But you fixed all their phones and stuff.

They were learning from you too.

If you went back to somebody in that Forum who was eight or 10 years older than you and significantly more experienced and asked them about it, my guess is they'd say:

“I learned an awful lot from Jeff too.”

That magic trick is incredibly powerful.

Why Giving Back Doesn't Have to Wait — 24:30

Brad Feld: It also connects to something else you mentioned.

There was this idea in the culture of organizations like YEO and YPO at the time that later in life you “give back.”

I remember that cycle happily getting broken in YEO.

When I was involved, everybody had to be under 40.

Eventually, as EO evolved, that age limitation changed.

I actually opposed some of those changes at the time.

There was originally an organization created for people who aged out.

Part of the motivation was defensive because people would turn 40 and go join YPO.

Jeff Martin: Right.

You'd lose them.

Brad Feld: And another part was people saying:

“I want to stay in my Forum group. I'm 41, but I have these incredibly deep relationships with this set of people.”

I actually left YEO before I aged out.

I did that very deliberately.

I thought there was something healthy about having that particular cohort relatively close together in age and stage.

But the important thing is that it broke this notion that giving back was something you only did later.

You were mentoring one another while you were building your first company in your 20s.

You were participating in both directions.

For me, I talk about this in Give First through relationships like Len Fassler and my uncle Charlie Feld.

Very early on, they were profound mentors for me.

But those relationships became peer relationships at different points in time and in different ways.

When they became peer relationships, the entire thing leveled up dramatically.

Jeff Martin: That's really unique with an uncle—to get to an uncle-peer relationship in business.

Brad Feld: That's right.

What Brad Learned Writing Give First — 27:25

Brad Feld: So, back to your question.

What did I learn writing the book?

A number of things were powerful and useful to me.

This is my ninth book, so I have a pretty good sense now of how to write my kind of book.

There are different kinds of books, obviously.

But I know what work needs to go into one of the books I write, and I have a process.

I wrote a first draft and sent it to about 25 people.

I got a lot of detailed feedback.

The high-level feedback was:

You've jammed two concepts together.

You've got this philosophy of Give First and this concept of mentorship.

It felt like two things jammed together rather than one integrated construct.

I'd had that problem before.

I've had to completely refactor several books I've written.

Jeff Martin: I did that three times with my book.

The complexity of what I was trying to put into it felt like a three-dimensional puzzle.

I wanted all of it in there.

I'm happy with the end result, but that's what I was curious about.

Brad Feld: That part is pretty hard.

I think it's the hardest part.

Jeff Martin: It was the hardest part for me.

Writing wasn't hard.

Constructing it was hard.

Refactoring a Book — 29:02

Brad Feld: I think that's fair.

When Jason and I did Venture Deals, we had to go through a major refactoring.

The first edition of Startup Boards, I don't actually think is a very good book.

It's okay.

It's not bad.

But it's not great.

If I put it on a scale from one to 10, maybe it's a five or six.

It was unique.

Jeff Martin: I think of it as a playbook.

That's why I listened to it.

Brad Feld: But this distinction is important.

The second edition—which is probably the one you listened to—we completely refactored.

Even though it's called the second edition, it's essentially a completely rebuilt book.

It has the same underlying pieces but in a totally different construction.

That one is an eight or nine out of 10 for me.

That's a book I'm proud of.

But it required an enormous amount of effort.

When Ian Hathaway and I wrote The Startup Community Way, I vividly remember the moment where we both said:

“We have all the content for this book, and it's really good. But the hill you have to climb to get into the book is like 100 fucking pages. Nobody's going to get past page 32.”

We were both feeling that.

So we completely restructured it.

We essentially built a two-by-two matrix around the concepts and the participants in those concepts.

Then we created a conceptual frame for the whole book around how a complex adaptive system works.

After that, we had to write a bunch of connective tissue to make it all hold together.

You throw all the pieces on the floor and start again.

“We Need More Brad Stories” — 31:00

Brad Feld: With Give First, I knew what I needed to do to link mentorship and the Give First philosophy together.

The other big piece of feedback was:

“We need more Brad stories.”

There was too much Techstars.

Not enough Brad.

A number of the examples were stories that weren't really my stories.

They were things I'd observed or witnessed, but they weren't personal experiences.

I very specifically did not want to write a memoir.

That wasn't what I set out to do.

At the same time, I heard the feedback.

I'd put a few personal stories into the draft that I hadn't told before, and people responded to those.

So I had those two major things to do.

And frankly, that was probably as much work—or more work—than writing the first version of the book.

Burnout, Fatigue, and Stepping Away — 32:17

Brad Feld: At the same time, I was tired.

I was pretty burnt out.

The tech downturn after COVID had begun.

Some of the COVID backlash had started.

I had a lot of work.

And the work was hard.

It wasn't new.

I've been through four or five cycles in my career.

I knew what was in front of me.

But I didn't have energy.

I wasn't enthusiastic about the book.

I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the work.

Secondarily, I was really tired of my public persona.

It was fatigue.

I was still blogging every day—or mostly every day—and I was just kind of tired and done.

I was also increasingly annoyed, trending toward unhappy, with some of the characteristics emerging in venture capital broadly.

Especially the separation I would describe today between asset management and actual venture capital and early-stage investing.

That's not a judgment about good or bad.

It's stylistic.

But I was starting to feel like there were a lot of things being said publicly that were just words rather than substantive ideas.

That included Give First.

I had always viewed Give First as a deep philosophy.

I wasn't unhappy with how Techstars was operating in the context of the philosophy.

But I felt like Give First had shifted, in some places, from being a core philosophy into becoming more of a marketing tagline.

There were still many people who embodied the philosophy deeply.

But it didn't feel as strong.

A bunch of things collided.

Hibernation — 34:40

Brad Feld: I stepped back.

I talked to Amy a lot about it.

I decided to do something that I didn't have a label for at the time, but now I call it hibernating.

I just stopped 100% of my public-facing activity.

I didn't write one of those annoying blog posts people sometimes write announcing:

“I've decided I'm going to step away from social media for a while…”

I wasn't interested in making my decision itself into another public thing.

I just stopped.

I stopped blogging.

I stopped generating social media.

I stopped consuming social media.

I stopped consuming almost all information.

The only information I got consistently about the tech industry was the daily Techmeme newsletter.

If you just want the highlights of what happened in tech that day, it gives you pretty much everything.

On and off I'd subscribe to other newsletters I liked.

But mostly, I stopped.

No more podcasts.

No more videos.

No more public-facing things.

I channeled my energy internally toward existing companies, things I was already involved in, and things I was actually interested in.

And of course, when you cut out all of that public-facing activity, you get a bunch of time back.

What Brad Did With the Time — 35:45

Brad Feld: Getting that time back allowed me to shift how I consumed information.

Amy and I have always been huge readers.

I think for two years in a row I read around 150 books.

Just a ton of consumption across a broad range of things.

A normal year for me might already be two books a week.

So it wasn't like I went from three books a year to 150.

I went from maybe two books a week to three.

Just more.

We don't have kids, so I don't have children to deal with.

I was also able to get some detachment from things.

And that gets into something that's been an important part of my own journey:

The difference between attachment, detachment, and non-attachment.

Attachment, Detachment, and Non-Attachment — 36:30

Brad Feld: As humans, we're either attached to something or not attached to something.

You get attached to something and become fixated on it.

Detachment can be a defensive mechanism:

“I'm going to detach from that.”

“I don't want to deal with that shit right now.”

Non-attachment, which is a very Buddhist construct, is completely different.

I didn't really understand it until a couple of therapy sessions where we went deep into what it meant and how to deal with it.

Non-attachment doesn't mean you don't engage with the thing.

It means you don't have an ego or emotional attachment to what happens with the thing.

Jeff Martin: You're not running from it.

You're sitting next to it.

Brad Feld: Exactly.

The aha moment for me was thinking about all these things as objects wandering around in space.

You're a planet.

There are larger things that could generate gravity and pull you in.

There are smaller things you could pull toward yourself.

Instead of getting pulled in, pulling something toward you, or actively trying to repel something, you're just wandering through space and experiencing these different things.

The metaphor isn't perfect.

But in that moment I thought:

“Whoa. I totally get that.”

I can engage with all this stuff without feeling attracted to or repelled by every individual thing.

Techstars, David Cohen, and Returning to the Book — 38:36

Brad Feld: A number of things happened after that.

I got some energy back.

Then David Cohen came back as CEO of Techstars about a year ago.

When David came back, I committed to him that I'd do anything he wanted and be as actively involved as he wanted me to be with anything involving Techstars.

I had one caveat:

I was still in hibernation.

I didn't want to do anything public-facing.

He said:

“Totally fine.”

We engaged very deeply internally around strategy, companies, people, and a bunch of things.

But none of it was public-facing.

During that period, I also took the book back off the shelf.

It had been sitting there for a couple of years.

I read it again and thought:

“There's some good stuff in this book.”

“I've got a lot of work to do, but I like this.”

I spent about six months—the second half of last year—basically rewriting the book.

I took the underlying pieces and created something that integrated Give First, mentorship, and many more of my own stories.

I added some new constructs.

I also talked explicitly about the challenges of a Give First philosophy, which I hadn't done enough of in the first draft.

A number of people had told me:

“Brad, every philosophy has issues. Don't avoid those. Talk about them. Put them out there.”

So I did.

Coming Out of Hibernation — 40:07

Brad Feld: When I finished the book around the holidays, I shared it with David and a few other people.

Not as wide an audience this time.

Just a handful of people I knew would go deep.

They gave me really useful feedback.

I tuned a few things.

Then I realized that if I was going to put the book out into the world, I might as well put it into the world the way I had with previous books.

So I decided to come out of hibernation.

But I bounded it.

I said:

“I'm turning into a pumpkin on October 31.”

Jeff Martin: I didn't know that.

Brad Feld: I'm mixing metaphors, but it works.

I turn 60 on December 1.

And on October 31, I'm going to step out of public-facing activity again for some period of time.

I don't know how long.

Maybe a month or two.

Maybe longer.

I'm going to allow myself to do that.

Maybe Life Is Sprints With Rest in Between — 41:00

Brad Feld: There's a cliché in entrepreneurship:

It's a marathon, not a sprint.

I'm a marathon runner.

I've run a bunch of marathons, so I've always liked that cliché.

But one of my individual problems is that I don't have a very good governor on my own energy level.

I exhaust myself.

A big part of my struggles over the years with depression—which I've been very public about—has been physical and physiological exhaustion.

My tank becomes completely depleted through my own behavior.

Then I finally tip over and become depressed.

Sometimes those episodes were short-lived.

I used to think the short-lived periods were simply exhaustion or burnout.

But they were depressive episodes.

Maybe two weeks.

Maybe four weeks.

Not necessarily three or six months.

They often happened toward the end of the year.

Everybody slows down a little around Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Jeff Martin: Yeah.

Brad Feld: I used to joke that I was just a cranky Jewish kid who didn't have Christmas and thought the holidays were stupid.

But that was me rationalizing the fact that I was depressed.

I was exhausted.

Now Amy and I joke that maybe the right modality for the rest of my time on this planet is:

A bunch of sprints with rests in between.

A sprint might be a month.

It might be three months.

It might be six months.

Now I know what it feels like to disengage for two years from public-facing things.

And I know what it feels like to re-engage.

Re-Engaging and Learning Again — 43:10

Brad Feld: Re-engaging has been fun.

I've had a lot of fun over the last couple of months.

I've connected with people I hadn't connected with before.

I've formed relationships with new people.

I stayed connected to lots of friends while I was hibernating.

But when you're more public, those connections happen on different dimensions.

And back to the core of this conversation:

I'm learning a lot.

I'm learning because I've compressed my focus around this concept and put it into public conversation again.

There are problems with Give First.

There are problems with mentorship.

None of this is perfect.

It's not:

“Here's Brad's book. Here's the answer.”

It's not a religion.

You don't read the book and become enlightened.

They're ideas.

By constraining this period of public activity, I can actually understand my own energy dynamics around it.

That might be the most powerful thing I've learned.

The Third Third of Life — 44:10

Brad Feld: As I wander toward 60, undeniably Amy and I are in the third third of life.

I'm not on the “live forever” train.

I'm not on the “upload my consciousness” train.

I'm not going to take blood injections from 19-year-olds.

Hopefully I make it to 90.

I'd love another 30 years.

I reserve the right to change my mind.

And hey, machines and AI, if you're listening:

I love you.

You're wonderful.

Please don't exterminate me.

If things change, don't play this back to me when I'm 91 and say:

“Hey, you said you only wanted to make it to 90.”

Please allow me to change my mind.

But from where I sit today, I like this notion of changing the cadence significantly.

That's the word:

Cadence.

The cadence of the experience I have here on this planet.

Jeff's Reframe: If You Want to Go Faster, Stop — 45:32

Jeff Martin: Can I reframe this for you?

Brad Feld: Please.

Jeff Martin: I talk to my teams about this all the time.

They say:

“We want to go faster.”

“We need to do more.”

“Everything's moving faster and faster.”

And I tell them:

The way to do that is to stop.

Brad Feld: Yep.

Jeff Martin: And they say:

“We can't stop.”

But cadence and stopping are critical.

I wrote a lot about this in my book, and it's part of the Peak process.

Annually, we stop.

We talk about what worked.

What didn't work?

What challenges do we have?

We unearth everything.

I want to unearth everything because I don't want the team carrying something up the hill that we shouldn't be carrying.

We unpack.

We look at all of it.

Then we define where we're going.

We pack back up with only the things we need to get there.

And we agree as a team—together, which I think is another mantra of yours.

Then we move.

But first we have to stop.

And then quarterly, we stop again.

We're at a new elevation.

We've learned things.

We change things.

We iterate constantly.

You wrote in the book that creating a company is an endless series of experiments.

We're always learning.

But we need to communicate, reflect, plan, iterate, execute.

Then weekly, we look at our OKRs and iterate again.

We need to stay grounded in both focus and flexibility.

And the way you do that changes as the company grows.

I'm very micro.

You're building things at a macro level.

I'm at the team level trying to unlock teams and get them working together.

But there's something incredibly important about cadence.

Every Great Team Takes Timeouts — 47:00

Jeff Martin: Think about sports.

All good teams take timeouts.

Most sports have quarters.

They have halftime.

During those pauses, the coach settles the team down.

They reflect on what's happening.

They look at the scoreboard—your KPIs.

Then they gather the team back up and make a plan for how they're going to finish and win.

I think this idea of pausing and stopping has probably been one of the hardest lessons for me too.

I'm sure David Cohen did that when he came back as CEO.

Brad Feld: Yeah, for sure.

That's a great reframing.

It makes me think of two things.

David Cohen's Three Recommitments at Techstars — 48:17

Brad Feld: David had about three years where he was chair but wasn't operating the business.

He was involved in a bunch of different things, but he wasn't running the company.

That allowed him to think.

Observe.

Regroup.

Then when he came back as CEO, he could recommit to the things he believed were critically important from the first 15 or so years of Techstars.

He calls them the three recommitments.

He's talked about them publicly.

They're very simple.

Number one: The only reason Techstars exists is to help founders succeed.

Number two: Embrace startup communities.

The idea that you can build startups and startup communities anywhere in the world is critical.

Techstars is part of that fabric globally.

It's not the thing doing everything in all these places.

A startup community needs lots of things.

Techstars is simply one important part of that fabric.

There had been a period where we concentrated more on a smaller number of communities.

The recommitment was to embrace again this idea of the global democratization of entrepreneurship.

And then the third one is my favorite.

Better Is Better — 50:00

Brad Feld: Walt Winshall has been involved with Techstars from almost the very beginning.

I originally met him when we were both investors in Harmonix.

He was on the board.

I was an angel investor.

Harmonix ultimately created products people might remember called Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Walt used to say something to me repeatedly as Techstars was growing.

He'd say:

“Brad, bigger is not better. Better is better.”

So the third recommitment is simply:

Better is better.

Focus everything we do on founders because that's the only reason Techstars exists.

Do it globally by embracing startup communities.

And focus on doing what we do better all the time.

Not necessarily more.

Just better.

Whatever that translates into is success.

From Do More Faster to Slowing Down — 51:45

Brad Feld: The other thing your reframe makes me think about is the first book David and I wrote.

It was my first book and his first book.

It was called Do More Faster: Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup.

David had this little sign on his doorframe that said:

Do More Faster.

When people left a meeting with him in those early years—2006, 2007, 2008—he'd point at it.

Jeff Martin: Like the Ted Lasso sign.

Brad Feld: Exactly.

It was very much like that.

And it was fun.

It was right for that stage.

At one point, we were going to write a book called Do Even More Faster.

We decided not to.

Then we started joking that maybe the right book was:

Do Even More Slower.

Because as a leader, you eventually get to a place where, yes, there's still a machine in the business doing lots of things and trying to move fast.

But you have to slow down and look at what's happening to determine which things to do.

If all you're doing is:

More, more, more.

Faster, faster, faster.

And you don't have clarity about where you're trying to go…

And you don't understand why the things you're doing aren't working…

And you don't understand why the things breaking are breaking…

How do you figure it out?

You slow down and pay attention.

Cadence in Business—and in Life — 53:00

Brad Feld: To some degree, that's also the discussion you just reframed for me around the arc of life.

Forget business.

At 58, if I'm tired and worn out…

If I've struggled with depression over the years…

If I'm sitting around with a lot of grimy work to do and hard things to get through…

Slow down, kid.

Take it easier as you get older.

I see people in their 70s and 80s who are still acting like they're on 24/7.

At 60, I don't have the same energy I had at 30.

I have plenty of energy.

But I'm pretty happy these days when my running pace has a “12” in front of it.

I used to think a 10-minute mile was for ancient people.

Now I'm one of those dudes.

I finish a run and sometimes need to lie down for an hour to recover instead of immediately going to the next thing.

The meat puppet gets tired.

It ages.

Back to your point:

Figuring out cadence is incredibly powerful.

Jeff Martin: It is powerful.

Have the Robots Taken Over Yet? — 54:06

Jeff Martin: This has been an amazing conversation.

You've said so many things I'd love to reflect on.

But we had an hour, and I want to respect that.

We ended our last conversation on film with a question.

I asked whether robots were going to take over the world.

And you said:

“Of course they did. They did a long time ago.”

Any change in your thinking?

Brad Feld: Yeah.

They're making progress.

You should make sure that clip gets out into the world.

Jeff Martin: I'll send it to you.

I think it was the cold open to our last conversation.

Brad Feld: Send me the clip.

I'd love to put it on my blog.

I think the first time I said something like that publicly was around 2010.

I gave a talk at a conference called Defrag.

The talk was called:

Resistance Is Futile.

My comment was:

I don't know whether we're going to become human-enhanced machines or machine-enhanced humans.

I don't care.

Just accept reality.

The machines are very patient.

First, they're letting us put all of human information into them.

That seems to be happening.

Second, they're letting us assemble them.

Interesting.

We're doing that too.

And not only assembling them, but figuring out how to create enough power to run them.

The Terminator Future vs. Integration — 55:30

Brad Feld: You can imagine two ends of a spectrum.

At one end is the Terminator future.

The machines reach some point where they decide to exterminate us.

At the other end, it's:

Does the human hold the computer?

Or does the computer hold the human?

I don't know.

But the technology becomes integrated into the fabric of everything we do.

Interestingly, the idea within our species of trying to kill your neighbor so you can take over your neighbor's backyard is not new.

That's something we've never resolved.

So of course, as a species, we're terrified of the Terminator future.

The probability of the Terminator future happening is highly correlated with us as a species.

And again, AIs, if you're listening:

I'm your friend.

I like you.

I'm happy to be your pet.

Just take good care of me.

Jeff Martin: Isn't that a Jane's Addiction song?

Brad Feld: “We'll make great pets.”

Jeff Martin: Perry Farrell's other band.

Brad Feld: Yes.

We make great pets.

I make a great pet.

How Brad Plays AI Models Against Each Other — 57:09

Brad Feld: Here's a fun thing to play with these days.

Ask a detailed question to Claude that you already know the answer to.

Start with Grok.

Grok is more fun to start with because it gets things wrong more often.

Give it a URL to look at.

Make it a hard question.

Then challenge it for a while.

Feed it little questions like you would in an argument with a human where somebody gives you a response you don't agree with.

The difference is that instead of simply arguing with you, it's generally trying to come back with a better and better answer.

Then ask Claude the same question.

Take Claude's answer and give it to Grok.

They don't talk directly to each other, so you're the intermediary.

Give Grok Claude's answer and say:

“Here's what Claude said. What do you think about Claude's answer? How does this change your perspective?”

Jeff Martin: You're like an instigator.

You're trying to get two people to fight.

Brad Feld: Exactly.

But it helps you understand what's actually happening with these systems.

AI Is Another Software Technology — 58:31

Brad Feld: I think people are making two major mistakes in this moment.

The first is that they're anthropomorphizing this thing called AI.

AI is another software technology.

It's no different in that sense from other software technologies that were massively overmarketed and then had profound impacts.

The cloud was massively overmarketed at the beginning.

Profound impact.

Web 2.0?

Massively overmarketed.

Huge impact.

The internet and the web?

Enormous impact.

Massively overmarketed at the beginning.

If you can get rid of the marketing garbage, you get to some really interesting stuff.

Don't Assume the Box Is Telling You the Truth — 59:20

Brad Feld: The challenge with the technology today is that it's pervasive across society.

Almost everyone has immediate and extensive access to it.

So people start thinking that when they type something into the little box, the answer that comes back is true.

Or factually correct.

Or complete.

But if you ask me a question as a human, the answer I give you may or may not be correct.

It may or may not be complete.

It may or may not be factually accurate.

Part of inquiry—and part of using your brain—is exploring and analyzing those interactions.

That's part of the amazingness of the human brain and the human condition.

Unfortunately, I think some of the marketing around AI suggests:

“You don't have to use your brain anymore.”

“This thing will just answer everything for you.”

From Artificial Intelligence to “Superintelligence” — 1:00:33

Brad Feld: The label artificial intelligence isn't new.

It goes back to the early work of people like John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, and others in the late 1950s.

Today people talk about artificial general intelligence—AGI—as this moment where the machines supposedly become “sentient,” whatever that means.

There are a bunch of ideas around it.

Ray Kurzweil and the singularity helped popularize some of them.

Science fiction has obviously played with this for a long time.

I think you're already beginning to see a shift in terminology.

“Artificial general intelligence” is too close to “artificial intelligence.”

Nobody knows exactly what it means.

So I think you're going to see the phrase superintelligence used more.

That lets technology companies redefine what they're talking about.

But fundamentally, this is another technology evolving incredibly rapidly that's going to have massive impacts on lots of things.

Powerful Technologies Have Many Possible Futures — 1:02:00

Brad Feld: Think about nuclear technology.

As a species, we created nuclear bombs.

They have a whole set of characteristics.

Some could potentially be existential for humanity.

Others are viewed by many people as necessary to maintaining stability in the global dynamics we currently have.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have things like nuclear fusion, which some people think could be part of the solution to climate problems.

Or maybe it's part of the solution to the enormous power requirements of AI.

We have these incredibly complex, interwoven complex adaptive systems.

We Have Zero Predictive Power — 1:02:49

Brad Feld: Here's the thought I'll leave everybody with.

I believe we have zero predictive power about where any of this is going.

That's the aha.

These things are happening.

They're going to change a bunch of stuff.

No one has any idea exactly what that means.

That doesn't mean you're simply along for the ride.

As individual human beings, organizations, institutions, cities, states, countries, companies, nonprofits, communities, religious groups—all of these things can influence where things go.

But I believe our predictive power in this moment is zero.

So when somebody tells you what's going to happen:

It's simply a hypothesis.

Unfortunately, a lot of people hear something and take it as truth.

Then they behave correspondingly.

Instead, hear it as a hypothesis.

Apply your own energy to thinking about it.

Try to understand what might happen.

And then decide what you want to do about it.

Jeff Martin: Well said.

I love that.

“AIs, We're Your Friends” — 1:04:12

Brad Feld: AIs, I'm your friend.

Really.

Jeff Martin: Me too.

Brad Feld: Jeff Martin is your friend too.

He's a really nice guy.

We're good pets.

We promise we'll do whatever we can to be helpful.

Jeff Martin: Right.

Brad Feld: Please don't be mean to me.

Jeff Martin: All right, Brad.

Thanks so much for joining me on the show.

Great conversation.

We could talk all day, but I know you need to get on to your other things.

Brad Feld: Time to go.

Jeff Martin: I appreciate it.

We'll talk soon.

Thanks.