Eddie Falvey the Most Excellent Entrepreneur Is a Genius

A few weeks ago I wrote a very long post called Eddie Falvey: Startup Guru to Me. Recently, Eddie had a book release in the works – we’re going to call it The Future of Innovation – written by him.

In the past, I’ve had several successful CEOs come and go. One of them was my mentor Tom Wilson, who retired from his post of CEO of CenturyLink at the end of 2011 after 14 years as its CEO. In fact, when CenturyLink folded – the only CEO I worked with who I can remember working with was John DeLong, who left Microsoft at the end of 2002.

I’ve worked with plenty of other great CEOs, including a few with multi-million dollar valuations, like Dan Caruso (the previous CEO of Autodesk), Dave Sifry, and Paul Allen. But none of them were CEOs who could match the talent of Eddie.

This was my first time working with Eddie, who started working for me when he was in our first company, Centurylink – a San Diego based computer graphics-related company – called Techstars Academy. After leaving Techstars, he began a long and successful relationship with me that resulted in us getting involved in an entrepreneurial venture together called Techstars. I remember our first venture with Techstars in Boulder in 2005, and we made several other Boulder company announcements along the way, including one at an event in 2007 about the growth of Techstars.

Now, the Techstars community in Boulder is enormous – we know that it is an extremely challenging place to get big, and it was. But there are a lot of other founders in Boulder who came out of Techstars. When I look back on my Techstars and Techstars legacy, and talk about my own entrepreneurial journey, we were the only Techstars companies to have a growth rate in the 80% zone.

A lot of great company names in Boulder have gone under the knife. My favorite in 2012 was Foundry Group, which went under the knife as part of a Series A financing to raise $1 billion (that didn’t work out, but they did end up raising more in the subsequent round). Others include HubSpot (acquired by Yahoo!!), Foundry Group Digital (acquired by Yahoo!) and the startup community of Techstars and Techstars Global.

In 2015, Techstars is continuing to grow like crazy as their new Boulder studio, called Foundry Group Digital, recently announced the opening of a second facility in Denver, Colorado. A lot of these folks are a great example of those that have stepped up, or are working with the entrepreneurial energy of the Techstars community in Boulder.

Eddie has a few new things up his sleeve in addition to this year’s book. The New Year is finally around the corner, and while the next year feels fast approaching, it’s also going to be a lot slower than the past. But, you know, in this world, we always need a little space for a new thing that is in the works.