Quotes from Brad Feld

While I live a busy life, the pace ebbs and flows.

When I think about the books I've written, it probably takes 150,000-200,000 words to get a 50,000 page book. Highlighting something and hitting Cmd-X is second nature.

A rite of passage in America when you turn 50 and have good health insurance is a colonoscopy.

My weight fluctuates between 205 and 220, depending on how much I pay attention to it.

I wish more LPs would blog to help VCs and entrepreneurs understand them better.

Some Sundays, I read it quickly - other Sundays, I savor it. I generally spend most of my time in 'The New York Times Book Review,' 'Sunday Business,' 'Sunday Review,' and 'The New York Times Magazine.' I turn all the other pages, only stopping when I find a headline that interests me.

I know a lot of companies that have a very well defined post-acquisition process. However, many of them don't take into consideration the dynamics and personalities of the acquiree. Instead, they assume that everyone will happily be assimilated.

I think 'Shoe Dog' by Phil Knight is the best memoir I've ever read by a business person.

My wife is a writer. She grew up in Alaska. She told me she was moving to Boulder and that I could come with her if I wanted to. We were married at the time, so I chose to come with her.

Lots of entrepreneurs don't want to be hassled by a board of directors early on. The entrepreneurs want to control the company, don't want to be responsible to a board, or don't want to waste time communicating with board members. This is a classic error of thinking about the early stage board incorrectly.

I watched my parents act as completely equal partners in their relationship, and as a son to a woman I respect immensely, I never thought of gender inequality as a child.

What I'm looking for in my interaction is critical thinking on the part of the person pitching to me.

I can't tell you the number of people who pitched something and have no idea whom they are pitching it to. They don't know the background of the investor.

While I'd like to be able to simply do all of my financings with a handshake or, possibly, on a napkin written in crayon, I also wish I had a herd of unicorns surrounded by rainbows, a balanced U.S. government budget, and agreement on how to address the debt ceiling issue.

Over the years, I've been involved in many business crises. I qualify this, since my crises have never involved life and death or the survival of the human race. But they are still crises.

I no longer really ever like to be pitched. Instead, I prefer to engage in a relationship as part of learning the other person.

I was afraid people wouldn't take me seriously, or would stop respecting me, if I talked about how bad I was feeling. The only people I talked openly about it with was my business partner, Dave Jilk, and my girlfriend - now wife - Amy Batchelor. They were amazingly supportive, but even then, I was deeply ashamed about my weaknesses.

On a daily basis, I pay almost no attention to the macro.

While we should certainly be investing in our own STEM education, we should take advantage of the thousands of international students who come here to study and are ready to fill these gaps immediately upon graduation.

The pitch should be very clear about what you are doing, why you are doing it, and why I should care. If you can cover those things quickly and precisely, it's easy for me to decide whether I want to spend more time with you or not.

A lot of times, when I interact with someone for the first time, I don't want to see the presentation.

I love using a targeted acquisition approach in conjunction with a business that has a clear strategy and strong organic growth.

Governments spend all their time trying to get big companies to relocate their headquarters, and they end up subsidizing the move with tax breaks. And companies that relocate their headquarters are often not meaningful job creators.

When I struggled with a depressive episode in 2013, I realized that I had a glitch in my thinking about my own motivation. I had separated learning and teaching into different concepts.