Venture Capitalist Brad Feld: Be Optimistic!

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Brad Feld is an entrepreneur and a popular blogger. He is also the author of The Startup Series of books such as Startup Life. But Brad is best known for being a unique type of technology Venture Capitalist who has invested in more than 200 different companies throughout his career. And so I was very excited to have Feld on my Singularity 1-on-1 podcast, where my hidden agenda was to ask him more non-traditional questions than the ones he usually gets asked.

During our 1 hour conversation with Brad Feld, we covered a variety of interesting topics such as his take on the technological singularity and merging of man and machine; the chances of a terminator type of a future; death, mind uploading, and indefinite life-extension; the preconditions for and the future of venture investing; the origins of Feld’s interest in AI and robotics; whether AI companies have a competitive advantage or not; the companies he is most excited about; Brad’s take on Bitcoin; popular misconceptions about Venture Capitalists and his aspirations to be a Yoda-like type of an investor; capitalism and technological unemployment…

My favorite quote that I will take away from this interview with Brad Feld is:

Be optimistic! As we look forward into the future, if we are optimistic and try lots of things, and recognize lots of things will fail, lots of things will be messy, lots of things will be uncomfortable, lots of things will generate fear and there will be lots of mistakes. But I think if we stay fundamentally optimistic and approach technological innovation and the movement of all this stuff through society in a positive way, I think we’ll end up in a much more positive way, we’ll have much more positive outcomes. 

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Who is Brad Feld?

Brad Feld has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures. Brad is also a co-founder of TechStars.

In addition to his investing efforts, Brad has been active with several non-profit organizations and currently is chair of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, co-chair of Startup Colorado, and on the board of UP Global. Brad is a nationally recognized speaker on the topics of venture capital investing and entrepreneurship and writes the widely read blogs Feld Thoughts, Startup Revolution, and Ask the VC.

Brad holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brad is also an avid art collector and long-distance runner. He has completed 23 marathons as part of his mission to finish a marathon in each of the 50 states.