How #GiveFirst Changed My Trajectory

From one event in college that promised free pizza and beer to a career in Startups, VC, community, and connection.

PSA: Brad Feld has a new book, Give First: The Power of Mentorship, it’s available on kindle and paperback and inspired this post.

I can trace most of my professional journey (and frankly, a good chunk of the last decade of my life) to two things: a startup event with free food/beer and a powerful idea I didn’t know at a time, called Give First.

It started my senior year of college at CU-Boulder. I showed up at a New Tech Boulder event at Silicon Flatirons, mostly because I was a hungry, thirsty college student – I was also hungry for an internship that summer – and they promised free pizza and beer. I figured I’d linger near the food table, maybe meet a few people, and maybe even find a summer internship. What I didn’t know was that I’d walk into a room that would set the entire arc of my professional life in motion.

That’s where I met Julie Penner, who had just started as a program manager for something called Techstars. I nodded like I’d heard of it (I hadn’t), and we connected for coffee shortly after. A few weeks later, I became her first associate for the Techstars Boulder 2014 program. Julie took a change on me and it rippled in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

From there, it snowballed:

Techstars led me to Foundry Group, working closely with Seth Levine and around Brad Feld
Foundry led me to community involvement via Pledge1% CO (+ Global), B Corp and B Local Colorado it also led me to Bolster, founded by Foundry Group alumni
Bolster led me to further startup community work (Colorado Startups) and eventually starting my own fractional consulting practice
and the Colorado startup community and network has been the throughline the whole way.

But before all that, there was an email.

Junior year of college, I cold-emailed Brad Feld offering a lot if information he didn’t ask for (attaching an itinerary to a startup trip I was taking in Israel) and asked; if I could get a free copy of his new book Startup Life (reminder – hungry, thirsty college kid), if he’d be interested in going on a walk with me. While it may have taken a week or so, Brad replied. No, we didn’t go for a walk, but that was the start to my GiveFirst journey before I even knew the phrase or philosophy.

The way Brad responded (thoughtfully, completely, and with no strings attached) modeled something I’ve now come to see as a core philosophy in the Colorado and startup community: Give First.

I didn’t know it then, but that’s what he was doing. And it stuck. I learned how the business world could work – or at least how I wanted it to work – through Brad, through Seth Levine, through people like Jaclyn Hester, who, funny enough, denied me from Startup Summer that same year I met Julie while she was the Executive director of Startup Summer as part of Startup Colorado. I like to joke that her “rejection” sent me on the path to Techstars instead and eventually to working with her at Foundry.

I now introduce myself in group settings as a community instigator (a term I can also credit to Brad). Whether it’s hosting Startup Ski Days or Hikes, Happy Hours, instigating at Boulder or Denver Startup Week, everything I do to build community comes from this same place: someone (many people) gave first to me, and I want to do the same.

My driving force isn’t to create or host events, but to provide evergreen opportunities and resources (like the Colorado Startups Community Calendar) for the community that can change the trajectory for:

the next hungry, thirsty college student looking for an internship
the newcomer who just moved to Colorado or popping their head back out post covid or heads-down time
the career switcher entering tech from government, nonprofits, or corporate life
anyone from any background interested in jumping into the Startup world

I have deep topophilia (love of place) for Colorado. I’ve called it home for 15 years and plan to for many more. The connections, serendipity, and generosity I’ve found here changed my trajectory. And I owe so much of that to Give First.

Full circle here (and wrapping up, I promise) – last week, I had the pleasure of hosting a #GiveFirst fireside chat with Brad and Julie at Boulder New Tech (yep, that same event I first met Julie at). Brad talked about his Give First origin story as a teenager being in (board) rooms he didn’t belong in, thoughts about his evolution with the philosophy and the proliferation of it as a mantra through Techstars and beyond. Julie has boomeranged back into leading the event after helping run it a decade+ ago. Brad was out of hibernation, talking about his 9th book, Give First, which I did get a free copy of (thanks to Dave Mayer at Technical Integrity and Ryan St. Pierre at Boulder Codes) and walked him back to his car after the event. Some poetry in that a decade+ later…

If you’re curious about the philosophy that shaped so much of me and this community, I highly recommend Brad’s new book, Give First: The Power of Mentorship. It’s now out and available on kindle and paperback.

It’s not just a slogan – it’s a philosophy and North Star for me, and maybe you too!

#GiveFirst