About 10 years ago my partners and I at TriStar Web received a letter in the mail telling us about a new company that was going to do a "roll up" in the web hosting industry. They had come across our company and wanted to know if we were interested in selling. I will spare you all a long but funny story, but about 45 days later we closed on the sale of our business to Sage Networks which eventually became Interliant.  The founders of the company had asked me to work with them on their roll up strategy (we were only the 2nd or 3rd company they had bought).  The founders of that company were Brad Feld, Rajat Bhargava, Len Fassler and Steve Maggs.  Well what a long, strange trip that was - 27 acquisitions in about 2 and half years, IPO, dot com bubble and all the rest. 

Since then and as a result of it, Raj has become one of my closest friends in the world and we work together day by day, shoulder to shoulder building StillSecure into the company we dream of.  Over the same period of time I have been honored to have forged a great friendship with Brad Feld, his wife, his parents, his brother and his family, as well as meeting many of Brad's network of friends and acquaintances.  Along the way I have also learned a ton about business from both of these guys, as we have wrestled through good times and bad times, succeeding some times and failing others, but learning all the time.  Brad is the person responsible for getting me into blogging and podcasting and I love just talking technology and market stuff with him.  It has been a great time working with Brad (he is on StillSecure's BoD) over these years, but it has been even a better time being friends with him. I often vent to Brad whether I am frustrated with business, pleasure or life in general and he always provides a steady ear and sage advice.

For those of you you who don't know Brad, he has been "somewhat" successful in the VC business. Months ago Brad started to begin the next chapter in what he wants to be when he grows up, by building a VC business and fund based in the Boulder area and not as a satellite of a Silicon Valley business.  Brad along with some Mobius folks - Ryan McIntyre, Seth Levine, Jason Mendelson, and Chris Wand - have put together a Boulder based VC called the Foundry Group. Yesterday Brad publicly announced that Foundry Group had closed its first fund - a $225m fund for early stage start ups based in the US.  I hope to have Brad on the podcast soon to discuss the exciting new stuff Foundry Group is involved in.  I was up at their offices in Boulder a few weeks ago meeting Brad for dinner (actually just finger food and salad) and said hello to everyone.  You can feel the energy there and it is a good thing.

Anyway, I am sure Brad and Co will do fine and we will be hearing all about great new companies that Foundry Group is investing in.  But I wanted to take a moment and wish my friend Brad a hearty Mazel Tov on the new (ad)venture!