Day 33 of 100

It was the biggest check I have ever held that was made out to me.

I had just sold my company and I was walking down the street with the check in my pocket. It was late 2007 on a brisk fall day in Denver, Colorado and the street was packed with people.

“What should I buy?” I thought to myself. “A nice office chair,” I answered. I was tired of sitting on Office Depot $80 chairs that anyone who has ever started a company has bought too many of. You know the ones. High backed black chairs with plastic arms and wheels and they leaned to the side after about a week of sitting on them.

“Yes, an office chair is the ticket.”

It was a lot of fun when we first went over to the acquirer. We were no longer resourced constrained and our revenue was a new source for the company. I was tasked with growing that revenue stream quickly, and I did, achieving my earn out in nine months rather than years. The revenue stream helped the acquirer be acquired, and I am pretty sure most everyone involved was happy.

After nine months I knew I had to go. I wanted to start a company so met with my friend Danny Newman who introduced me to David Cohen who was writing a blog called Colorado Startups and was an active angel investor.

I wrote David an email outlining my idea, which was so genius no one has ever done it and it involved cameras and phones before there were cameras in phones. I confidently sent the email assured that David would want to invest and away I would go.

The response I got was two sentences: “I don’t know shit about pets, but I am doing this thing called Techstars you should come check it out.”

I have mentored at Techstars every year since 2007, and in 2009 moved from being a mentor to a CEO of a Techstars company, which we built and landed in 2014. The experience of mentorship got me interested in coaching, which I also started doing 14 years later.

I owe a lot to David and that email. And yes Danny, you too.