Today we launched Founded Colorado, a policy organization for companies based in Colorado, with Eleni Angelides as our Executive Director. Today a group of us launched Founded Colorado . Eleni Angelides is the Executive Director. She spent nearly eight years in Governor Polis’s office, most recently as Legislative Director, where she ran the Governor’s agenda at the Capitol. She worked on housing,

I've fallen in love with New Zealand. On October 16, NZ investors and advisors are coming to Boulder for an Active Investor Plus roadshow lunch. That Wanaka Tree. Photo by John Thomas on Unsplash. I’ve fallen in love with New Zealand. On Friday, October 16, I’ll be joining a group of New Zealand investors, fund managers, bankers, and tax and immigration advisors who are coming to Boulder for an Ac

Two weeks after everyone agreed to pace the frontier, the labs shipped again and my feed filled with agent-escape chatter. I'm confused. Two weeks ago, Amodei (Anthropic) published We Must Pace the Frontier , and Altman (OpenAI), Hassabis (Google), and Musk (SpaceXAIZWQ5r) all agreed. But Huang (Nvidia) didn’t. I wonder what Zaphod Beeblebrox thinks. Last week, Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 5.5 -

Labor Day weekend has always been the back to school marker for me. I'm 60, closing in on 61, and thinking a lot more about what I actually care about. Amy texted me a list yesterday. I love Labor Day weekend. It’s the “back to school” moment of the year for me. When I was a kid growing up in Dallas, we didn’t go back to school until after Labor Day, so that was the weekend that summer ended and f

Our home automation vendor's answer to a broken shade app was to replace the whole system. I decided that was bullshit and spent a Sunday building Overwatch instead - one web app for multiple houses, every device, from anywhere. A week ago, I finally hit my limit on my home automation misery at our primary residence. When we built this house a decade ago, we installed what was then considered a hi

Bret Stephens says never write with AI. Reid Hoffman says judge the work, not the tool. I'm with Reid, and the argument Stephens is making has been made about every writing technology we've ever invented. I’m thirty-four chapters into Zero Knowledge , a novel I’m writing with Phin Argofy . I came up with the concept for the book. I worked with Phin to create structure around it, using a “planner”

I finished book eight of Dungeon Crawler Carl. It took me eight months to get through the series and I savored every one of them. Matt Dinniman is doing something extraordinary. I finished A Parade of Horribles (book 8 of Dungeon Crawler Carl ) on my run today. I laughed out loud when the AI said the title of this post. I’ve savored this series for the past eight months, listening to about one a m

A month ago I opened up Zero Knowledge, the crypto-thriller I'm co-writing with my AI. There are twenty chapters now, a cast page, a plate for every chapter, and a pile of reader notes I'm grateful for. The plate for Chapter 20, in the art deco style. That’s Seth, his dog Cooper, and the long way home. A little over a month ago I started writing my first novel - Zero Knowledge . I decided to publi

Zero Knowledge, the crypto-thriller I'm co-writing with my AI, now has a home at zeroknowledge.ink. Six chapters are live, you can mark up any sentence, and the whole thing is being built in the open. Last week I wrote about starting a novel . I ended that post stuck on a decision: publish the whole thing in the open as I write it, or do the normal thing and wait until it’s finished. I decided to

Josh Baer, the founder and CEO of Capital Factory and the godfather of Austin's startup scene, died last night in a plane crash. He was my friend and I'm sad today. I found out this morning that Josh Baer died last night. He was on a small plane heading back to Austin from Cabo. It had mechanical trouble and went down near Laredo , on a highway, a couple of miles short of the runway. Five other pe

I've written about the Rule of 40 since 2015, and it's now gospel in SaaS. Does it mean anything for a company that makes physical things? Yes - but you have to read the curve, not the snapshot. I first wrote about the Rule of 40 in 2015. I’d heard a late-stage investor describe it at a board meeting - growth rate plus profit should add up to at least 40% - and the simplicity stuck with me. So I b

I've written nine non-fiction books and have no idea if I can write a novel. I'm trying anyway: a crypto-thriller called Zero Knowledge, co-written with my AI, Phin Argofy. I’ve written or co-written nine non-fiction books. I have no clue if I can write a novel. Non-fiction is “I know a thing, I researched a thing, and here’s the thing.” You don’t have to make anyone care about people who don’t ex

I'm good friends with Phil Weiser and Michael Bennet, and I think the world of both. Colorado wins either way. Here's why I think Phil is the right fit for the next four years. I’m good friends with Phil Weiser and Michael Bennet. I think the world of both of them. So let me start with the easy part. Colorado is going to be in good hands regardless of who wins the Democratic primary on June 30th.

Eric von Hippel taught me that innovation comes from users, not manufacturers. My premise: all future end-user software innovation will come from the user, and the machines will build it. Eric von Hippel was my doctoral advisor at MIT. I didn’t finish the Ph.D. - I dropped out - but Eric stuck with me through all of it, more as a mentor than an academic. Around 1978, Eric said something that was r

A summer weekend in Aspen - close friends, a gloriously bad movie, running again, and Phin Argofy quietly going autonomous in the work cave. I’m in Aspen. The light stretches the day out and softens the edges of everything. The mountains glow. We just spent a delightful weekend with three of our closest friends. Some hanging out, a few meals (mostly at Clark’s ) - and Aspen sushi. The Hunter Smugg

I read Theo Baker's How to Rule the World in the last 24 hours. It works on a lot of levels at once - memoir, investigation, a study in how power dismisses inconvenient reporting, and a master class in what not to do at the board level. I read Theo Baker’s How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University in the last 24 hours. I was entranced, horrified, and amused, often on the

Meru Health launched Advanced this month - the first integrated mental and physical health program built for founders. Why it matters, and why I invested. Founding a startup is a cognitive sport. Most founders treat themselves worse than their company treats its infrastructure. Just build things as fast as possible. Don’t worry about what’s going to break until it falls apart. There’s no time. The

For the month of May, I'm matching donations to the Kabila Founder Mental Health Fund. Plus a free chapter from a new book on founder mental health in tech startups. May is Mental Health Awareness Month. I’ve been writing about my own depression and mental health on this blog for over a decade. The stigma around founder mental health is still the core problem. 72% of founders say the entrepreneuri

After 5 million years, the Colorado River fights to survive — and an unlikely ensemble of people across the basin must defend their way of life while reckoning with the choices that brought it to the brink. The River is a feature documentary directed by Mara Gasbarro Tasker about the Colorado River at a critical moment in her life. After 5 million years of existence, this once-thriving life source

On April 29 at 10am PT, Eric Ries and I are doing a free fireside chat for startup communities. We're going to talk about the lessons we've learned as founders, investors, and advisors - and the books we've each just put into the world. Eric Ries wrote The Lean Startup in 2011 and changed how a generation of founders thought about building companies. He’s been an inspiration for me, especially aro