Patrick Ewers describes his work as helping people achieve true greatness, or as our host David Cohen calls it, giving people superpowers. But there is a funny thing about the term “true greatness”.“When you look at the word true greatness, I think it's the most subjective term you will ever come across, especially in the world we're working in. For some, it is that they really want to reach the top, they want to become the next Elon Musk. Most people want to just reach the fullest potential, build something bigger than themselves, or leave a legacy. … So it doesn't really matter what your true greatness is. We help you achieve it by focusing on relationships.”Why relationships? It’s because no one has achieved true greatness without the help of others. It’s wired into the way of the world. However, most people don’t take care to nurture these relationships.Listen to Patrick describe importance versus urgency, and some practical solutions to fix your work-related relationship problems.Also, don’t miss how Patrick developed the idea of Mindmaven, how building relationships can produce game-changing results for you, and why it’s important to hire an engagement manager who will help free up your time up to 8+ hours per week. The duo also dives into positive alacrity. There is so much information packed in this single episode!Follow Patrick Ewers on Twitter @PatrickEwersFollow David Cohen on Twitter @davidcohen See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Give First

Ep 55: MindMaven Founder and CEO Patrick Ewers on achieving true greatness through relationships

Shila Nieves Burney, General Partner at Zane Venture Fund, has spent 20-plus years addressing inequity with capital, first in human capital with institutions and education systems, and then sourcing investors. Along the way, Shila discovered a much-needed resource for entrepreneurs: networks and connections. They can build the capital, but then what? In comes Zane Access capital readiness program.“We teach the technical skills, accessing venture capital, some of the terminology. What did it mean to be a cap table? And how do you look at your cap table and ensure that you are balanced and that sort of stuff. So we bring in the experts who do this on a daily basis.”Listen to Shila describe the exposure beyond the education portion of the program, as well as cultivating the soft skills of fundraising as diverse entrepreneurs. “The preparation part is extremely important,” Shila says.Also, don’t miss David and Shila discussing the scalability of these cohorts, the innovation weekend collaboration with university programs and student entrepreneurs, always leveraging your network, and Shila’s personal mentors. Follow Shila Nieves Burney on Twitter @rednievesFollow David Cohen on Twitter @davidcohen See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ep 54: Zane Access founder Shila Nieves Burney on accessing networks while building capital

After two decades in the corporate world, Preston James was blown away by the innovation of tech startups. Once he got involved as an angel investor, he realized this industry was just like corporate America, where diversity was severely lacking.After digging into the issue by talking to others within his network, Preston saw the need to “build this pipeline of entrepreneurs for the underrepresented community and make the ecosystem more authentically diverse, equitable, and inclusive in creating those opportunities.” To date, DivInc has helped more than 75 companies go through their program.Listen to Preston describe how he is expanding DivInc’s reach across the country and diving deeper to accelerate the opportunities for underrepresented founders from the get-go.Also, don’t miss Preston talk about how there are 4+ opportunities you can help DivInc reach more early-stage founders (including donations). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ep 53: DivInc’s Preston James on diversity and inclusion in the tech industry

If you’ve ever wondered just where Give First came from, or how it became such a central philosophy at Techstars, this episode is for you. Or if you’ve ever wanted to push back and say: does Give First really work? What’s in it for me? This is also the episode for you. A few months ago, Keith Coleman, Founder of Fraudmarc (Techstars Atlanta 2017) emailed David and Brad with the subject “give first, finish last.” In it, he explained his reservations with Give First. Basically, he asked: Is Give First right for new founders who are super focussed on the survival of their company? Or is Give First for people who have already met with success, and who have the time and resources to be able to give? David and Brad’s response was to invite Keith on the show to talk about what Give First is, where it came from, and why it’s absolutely not just for the already successful. Give First is for every stage in your company, and in your entrepreneurial journey. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ep 52: Fraudmarc’s Keith Coleman on the Value of Give First as a Founder

There are some people whose lives are perfect expressions of the zeitgeist. Matt Harris is one of them. In 1995, Matt’s college roommate at Williams started a company out of their dorm room. It was called Tripod, and it was one of the first dot com companies. By 1997, when Matt was 24, Williams invited him back to Williamstown, a rural community with a population of 6,000, to run an investing firm. When that was a success, Matt and that same college roommate, Bo Peabody, started Village Ventures to bring VC to secondary and tertiary cities around the U.S., with a focus on college towns with intellectual capital, but no venture capital. Fun fact: Matt’s first hire at Village Ventures was Gina Raimondo, who is now the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. In 2012, Village Ventures wound down, and Matt moved to Bain Capital Ventures, where he continues to invest in startups.Basically, Matt’s journey has paralleled, and shaped, that of venture capital in the age of the internet. Listen for insights into that rocky road, and how Matt has learned, over time, how to best support the entrepreneurs he’s invested in. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ep 51: Bain Capital Ventures’ Matt Harris on supporting entrepreneurs through 25+ years as an investor

People want their capital to be used for good, and whether it’s clean energy or sustainable agriculture, there is ample economic opportunity in efforts to decarbonize the planet. In this special podcast crossover episode, Techstars’ own David Cohen and Cody Simms discuss how the entrepreneurial ecosystem is rallying around climate change. If you haven't yet checked out the Techstars Climate Tech podcast, you can find it on all major podcast platforms. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ep 50: Sustainability and economic opportunity with Cody Simms of Techstars Climate Tech Podcast

Lolita Taub has always been about community, from her upbringing in South Central LA to now at The Community Fund, which is a venture capital fund that invests in community-driven companies, “connecting people to people and resources to achieve results.” By day, Lolita is the Corporate Development VP at Catalyte, but on breaks or weekends, she is an operator-investor, looking for those unicorns of the future. She believes these companies will “have customers that identify as members where members have a space to create value for each other, and then start this marketing sales flywheel.”Listen for Lolita’s ideas of the expensive side of building a customer base and how “only good things can come out of” involving customers into building a company, such as lifetime value, retention, sales leads, and talent acquisition, among other benefits.Also, don’t miss Lolita and David discussing the startup investor matching tool that began last year right on Twitter, and how COVID has changed how we build relationships. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ep 49: The Community Fund’s Lolita Taub on investing in community-driven companies

From his service as a Naval Intelligence Officer to an MBA from the University of Chicago to becoming an investor in early-stage startups in healthcare tech, frontier tech, logistics, and marketplaces, Sherman Williams has had an interesting career. Now he’s also helping other U.S. Service Academy (USNA, USMA, USAFA, USCGA and USMMA) grads to invest as well. Many veterans want to get into entrepreneurship, but don’t know how to access a network to help them learn and grow. The Academy Investor Network invests in veteran-led startups (as well as civilian-led startups) that focus on “dual-use technology,” or tech that has both commercial and government purposes. Or as Sherman puts it, “technologies that help make our country safer, operate more efficiently, and have a strong commercial use case.”Listen for Sherman’s take on how technologies like this can have both civilian and military use cases, and how veterans can thrive in entrepreneurship. Oh, and definitely listen for David and Sherman’s brief but delightful discussion of reggae. Follow Sherman Williams on Twitter @vc_sherman See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ep 48: Academy Investor Network’s Sherman Williams on going from military service to VC

Brittany Baretto, Ph.D., started as an entrepreneur, transitioned to VC, and now is building a whole new category: FemTech. Yes, she invented the term, and you are encouraged to use it and spread it. Brittany realized that women’s health and wellness companies didn’t have the community that helps an industry thrive, so she set out to build it. She cofounded FemTech Focus, and started hosting the FemTech Focus Podcast to talk about “the innovative technology, services, and products (collectively known as femtech) that are improving women’s health and wellness.” FemTech focus is working to provide essentials like market research, industry awareness, founder training, and more that FemTech founders need in order to succeed. That was 2020. Now in 2021, Brittany is expanding to providing capital to the FemTech community, with her new firm, Coyote Ventures, which will fund seed stage FemTech startups. Does FemTech really need a category of its own? Here are Brittany’s stats on the size of FemTech: “Our current company database is 636 active FemTech startups in the world. We have found over 50 exits in the last 20 years. The average exit value is $480 million, which is significant because the average tech startup exit is $200 million.” So yes, it’s significant. This is how you coin a term, create a category, and grow a community.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

FemTech Focus’ Brittany Baretto, Ph.D. on creating a new category: FemTech

Toward the beginning of this conversation between David Cohen and Brad Feld — cofounders of Techstars and celebrated early-stage investors — Brad says, “I believe it takes a hundred episodes before you can really call yourself a podcast.” If that’s the standard, the Give First podcast isn’t a real podcast yet, since we’re only at about 45. But we’re quite proud that Give First has stuck around so long and found such a welcoming audience. Turns out that people want to hear about the warm, relationship-based, virtuous cycle side of entrepreneurship and tech that Give First elevates and celebrates. What have David and Brad learned in the process of making all these episodes? For one thing, consistency is less important than continuation. They don’t make an episode every week, or even every two weeks, necessarily — but they keep making them, and that works. They also shout out to Techstars podcast producer Kacey Wherley, who makes it all happen behind the scenes. And though Give First was Techstars’ first podcast, and we learned a lot by making it, Techstars now has six podcasts (and probably more soon)! If you’ve missed some of the recent episodes, you should really check them out! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David Cohen and Brad Feld reflect on over 40 episodes of the Give First Podcast

“We get a tremendous amount of traffic to our website every month from people who are just searching for different ways to do things, learning different ways to code. It might not even be on our infrastructure, but we provide that content,” says Carly Brantz, Chief Marketing Officer at Digital Ocean. This is just one of many ways that Digital Ocean, which helps developers easily build, test, manage, and scale applications of any size on a complete cloud platform, Gives First to its customers, and even to people who aren’t its customers (but might one day be). Because when you give people what they need now, then when they do need your product, even if it’s a year or two from now, they’ll think of you. This could be just good marketing strategy, but for Carly — and for Digital Ocean’s founding team, Ben Uretsky, Moisey Uretsky, and Mitch Wainer, it’s more than that. It’s about love. David remembers when Digital Ocean was in the Techstars Boulder Accelerator, back in 2021: “Moisey and Ben and Mitch and everybody in the accelerator said love. They talked about love being the differentiator. We love our customers. We want them to love our product. They got this funny look from a lot of mentors and a lot of people like, ‘Hey, that's not really a way you can build the company.’” But for Digital Ocean, love turned out to be a winning strategy. Carly confirms that love is still a big differentiator for Digital Ocean: “Really everything that we do, we always say that it starts with community and ends with love.”Listen for more about how community, content, and love can be a hugely successful marketing strategy — and why it’s never too early or too late to join Pledge 1%.Techstars personnel and/or guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, and not the opinion of either Techstars or any company discussed in this podcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities are for illustrative and/or informational purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investor or prospective investor, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by Techstars. Certain of Techstars funds own (or may own in the future) securities in some of the companies discussed in this podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Digital Ocean’s Carly Brantz on leading marketing at three Techstars unicorns

“Techstars for nonprofits” is a pretty good description for Fast Forward, an accelerator for tech nonprofits. The similarities are many — like Techstars, Fast Forward provides mentorship, network, and resources to tech founders, designed to help them succeed. The key difference is that Fast Forward focuses on the specific needs of nonprofit companies.“Our entrepreneurs have all the challenges of tech startups, and all the challenges of nonprofits,” says Kevin Barenblat, Cofounder and President of Fast Forward.Listen as David and Kevin talk about the amazing results Fast Forward has achieved — the 60 nonprofits that have completed the program have impacted almost 90 million lives and raised $275+ million in follow on funding — and how Kevin actually measures success. Because while these metrics are important, Kevin also believes in taking risks and supporting entrepreneurs that he believes in. Techstars personnel and/or guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, and not the opinion of either Techstars or any company discussed in this podcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities are for illustrative and/or informational purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investor or prospective investor, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by Techstars. Certain of Techstars funds own (or may own in the future) securities in some of the companies discussed in this podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Fast Forward’s Kevin Barenblat on running an accelerator for tech nonprofits

Jonathan Levin has had a remarkable career. A London native with an economics degree from Oxford, Levin cofounded Chainalysis in 2014, focusing on bitcoin on the blockchain. The company, a graduate of Techstars’ Barclays accelerator in New York with a valuation in the billions, now does blockchain analysis on a variety of cryptocurrencies. Listen in as Jonathan tells David about what it was like to secure funding in the crypto space in the early days, the importance of living your company values, why he believes “give first” truly is so powerful and get his takes on the must-reads for every entrepreneur.Techstars personnel and/or guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, and not the opinion of either Techstars or any company discussed in this podcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities are for illustrative and/or informational purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investor or prospective investor, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by Techstars. Certain of Techstars funds own (or may own in the future) securities in some of the companies discussed in this podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Chainalysis’s Jonathan Levin on building a blockchain business, values and the future

Bruno Morency graduated from college in 2001 and started a company right out of school. It was a tough time for tech startups, but Bruno persisted, and he’s been part of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Montréal ever since. Hear Bruno tell Brad about how his adventures in entrepreneurship paralleled the growth of the startup scene in Montréal over the last 20 years, culminating in Bruno’s current role as Managing Director of the Techstars Montréal AI Accelerator, as interest in entrepreneurship in Montréal and throughout Canada continues to expand. Brad and Bruno’s most urgent piece of advice for founders right now? Don’t forget to get a good night’s sleep. ﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿Techstars personnel and/or guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, and not the opinion of either Techstars or any company discussed in this podcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities are for illustrative and/or informational purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investor or prospective investor, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by Techstars. Certain of Techstars funds own (or may own in the future) securities in some of the companies discussed in this podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Bruno Morency on the evolution of the Montréal startup ecosystem

Rob La Gesse has had an interesting career. After high school, he joined the Navy and worked both as a combat medic and a neonatal respiratory therapist. He was a mayor in Hawaii. He taught himself programming and went into tech, just in time to help develop Wi-Fi. On this episode of the Give First podcast, David Cohen talks with Rob about how helping people has guided him at every turn. Rob tells the story of hiring a bartender at his tech company. Why this bartender? Because he was so helpful, and Rob saw potential there. “I can’t teach empathy. I can’t teach compassion,” Rob says — but he can recognize them when he finds them, and he can reward caring people with opportunities and assistance. Follow Rob on Twitter @kr8tr﻿﻿﻿Techstars personnel and/or guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, and not the opinion of either Techstars or any company discussed in this podcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities are for illustrative and/or informational purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investor or prospective investor, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by Techstars. Certain of Techstars funds own (or may own in the future) securities in some of the companies discussed in this podcast. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Rob La Gesse on being the opposite of risk averse

In the startup world, Give First means simply trying to help anyone—especially entrepreneurs—with no expectation of getting anything back. It's the pay-it-forward principle that builds strong startup networks. Hosts David Cohen and Brad Feld—Techstars cofounders, lifelong entrepreneurs, and startup investors—talk with mentors and founders about what giving first looks like in action, and how it makes great entrepreneurship possible.

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Give First

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