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100facesof.me

Day 91 of 100

Black-and-white close-up portrait of a bearded man in a plaid flannel shirt, gazing directly at the camera with a steady expression.
Day 91 / 100 Weight 316.1 A bit lonely Sony A7R5 28mm f/2.8 1/250 ISO 100

“I don’t know anything about pets.”

When I sold Current Wisdom in 2007 I found myself at the acquirer without much to do. I mean I had a team and clients to manage, but there was little in the day to day.

And, as a startup founder, I started to think again about building a company.

To be fair, I am pretty sure the acquirer knew I was going to be there for a short period of time before I left to start something again. I think most acquirers assume the founder is a short timer.

I had recently got a puppy that was hell on wheels. Taylor was pure energy and love, and wanted to say hi to everyone by licking them in the mouth. And she was athletic. Could jump a six foot fence. Few people were tall enough to avoid her hello lick.

I had a trainer, and we worked on it. But nothing seemed to work. I wanted to show the trainer the few minutes leading up to the leaping and a few minutes post, but cameras didn’t have phones at that time, let alone video recorders.

An idea was born. I sketched out the product, and started to do light customer discovery. I met up with my friend Danny who suggested I email David Cohen, an angel investor in Boulder, CO. I had raised money and gotten meetings off of emails in the past, so I sent David an email with my idea, and what the market looked like.

“I don’t know shit about pets, but I started this thing called Techstars, you should come check it out.” Was his single sentence reply.

I learned that Techstars was a mentor-driven startup accelerator that ran in the summers out of a decommissioned workout gym. David graciously asked me to be a mentor. (I asked to be a junior mentor because, well, it was funny.) And I started working with companies.

Now it’s 2023, and I have worked with hundreds if not a thousand companies since. Techstars has exploded to be one of (if not the largest) early stage investor in the world. And every year I mentor companies from all over the US. I even joined one in 2009, but that’s a story for another picture.

Who knew that a simple email would start me down a path of my life’s mission of working with founders and helping them navigate the startup journey?