Why Bother Writing a Book?

Thisisgoingtobebig.com 4/21 5:32A Charlie O'Donnell

I mean… She’s the one killing all these people, right? Everyplace she shows up, someone dies. It's a question I got a lot before Founder Unfriendly came out and became the #1 Bestselling Business Entrepreneurship book on Amazon, and honestly,...

Give First, Build Right with Eric Ries

Feld Thoughts 4/20 8:51A

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 around writing about entrepreneurship. Eric has a new book coming out on May 26 called...

Raising Capital for Consumer Products: How to Get the Green If You’re Not a Bear

Thisisgoingtobebig.com 4/17 3:02A Charlie O'Donnell

If you're a consumer founder who's gotten passed on by investor after investor, you've probably been told some version of "You're a little too early for us"—or you've assumed that most VCs just don't...

Venture Capital Has a Starting Line Problem

Thisisgoingtobebig.com 4/9 1:01A Charlie O'Donnell

What most people don’t know is that the game engine for Nintendo’s Excitebike (1984) was used to power Super Mario Bros. a year later. I backed a micro-mobility company about six or seven years ago....

Nothing New to See Here

Feld Thoughts 3/27 7:25A

A founder I ve been emailing with sent me something that made me laugh. Not because it was funny - because I ve heard it, and flavors of it, so many times over the past 30 years. “I committed to Cursor and went heads down for about 4 months. Our...

Probable Versus Possible: Managing Expectations as a Startup CFO

Thisisgoingtobebig.com 3/18 10:11A Charlie O'Donnell

You’re sitting in a board meeting watching your CEO paint a picture of the next 18 months, and everything they’re saying is… … not impossible, but.. . But you know the assumptions underneath it. And you’re about to have to present the model...

My Social Graph is Broken So I Have No Idea Who My Friends Are

Thisisgoingtobebig.com 3/12 5:54A Charlie O'Donnell

In 2010, Facebook launched Places. It was their answer to Foursquare. It failed almost immediately—not because the feature was bad. The graph was wrong. When people built their Foursquare networks,...

Migrating Feld Thoughts from WordPress to Hugo

Feld Thoughts 3/8 7:30A

I ve been blogging (first on TypePad, but shortly after on WordPress) since 2004. That s 22 years of posts - 5,530 of them - plus books, films, running logs, and events. WordPress served me well for a long time. Every few years I’d spend money on...

Proud Uncle Alert – Sabrina Feld

Feld Thoughts 2/27 4:09A Brad Feld

My brother Daniel sent an email to the family last Wednesday with the subject line Proud Dad alert! His daughter Sabrina had just built and launched a portfolio website from scratch. She didn t use...

Are They Still Teaching Air Guitar? Thinking About University Entreprenuership in the Age of AI

Thisisgoingtobebig.com 2/19 7:50A Charlie O'Donnell

Sixteen years ago, I wrote that, “ Business plan competitions are the air guitar championships of the startup world. ” I meant that you can mimic all the movements of a startup without any of the real risk-taking or building. My criticism then...

Venture Deals Spring 2026 Course

Feld Thoughts 2/18 5:17A Brad Feld

Registration for the Spring 2026 Venture Deals course is open. The course kicks off on March 2nd and, as always, is free. Since we revamped the course in 2022, over 32,000 people have enrolled. This...

Adventures in Claude

Feld Thoughts 2/16 5:44A Brad Feld

My obsession with Claude Code continues. Amy is now referring to Claude as my other best friend. I realized my Claude posts were taking over this blog. Since I ve been playing around with a bunch of...

Sell, Mortimer! Sell! Why Early Founder and Employee Liquidity Creates Better Alignment

Thisisgoingtobebig.com 2/9 2:25A Charlie O'Donnell

There’s been a pretty common belief in the venture and startup world that is changing: If an employee wants to sell shares, they’re probably thinking about leaving. If a founder takes some money off the table, they’re losing faith or they’re going...