The NSF announced the launch of the I-Corps program in July as a way to increase the level of commercialization of cutting edge research they fund on behalf of the country.  In the weeks following the launch, the teaching team of Steve Blank, Jon Feiber and myself interviewed nearly 80 teams from the top universities around the country.  Each team consisted of a professor, or Principal Investigator (PI), who had already been awarded an NSF grant, an Entrepreneurial Lead (EL), typically a graduate student, and a business mentor who would act as leverage to the teaching team when they were back on their home turf.

The first three days of I-Corps were 10-hour days on campus at Stanford, where we walked through all the components of a business model using Alexander Osterwalder’s “Business Model Canvas” as the basis.  We talked about distribution, customers, pricing, revenue, sourcing, IP, how to pivot – everything one may need to understand in order to forge a path from the lab to a viable company.  One of the most important things that happened during the intensive days at Stanford came from Steve Blank’s mantra about getting out of the building and talking to customers.  Most of the participants had never made cold calls before and had spent little time outside of their labs – talking to people who might buy their potential product was a foreign and somewhat daunting exercise. Through a combination of tough love and a little peer pressure, we got them out of the building and talking to customers. Over the course of the eight-week program, the teams made contact with over 2,000 potential customers – over 100 in just the first three days.  In the end, most found talking to customers to be one of the more rewarding aspects of the program.

I was surprised to see the speed and intensity with which the teams got engaged with the curriculum; their thirst for knowledge was awe-inspiring. It is a credit to the NSF – they have invested in an amazing group of technologies and scientists.

NSF and True

True and I got involved with I-Corps because of the tremendous respect I have for the work the NSF team does on behalf of the country and because of what Steve Blank has done for entrepreneurs all over the world.  Thanks to their efforts, the world of science and innovation is a better place and our country is stronger because of them. We took 67 people from around the country – who until then had no idea how to commercialize technology and create a company – and got them energized, educated and motivated to now go out and create a profitable enterprise.  Of course, there were a few teams who did not get a viable company together during the program.  An equally valuable lesson is realizing that the company you are attempting to build is just not worth the time and effort.

Innovation and company formation is a key driver of the US economy, and one that True Ventures strives for every day.  As True looks forward to our second True University this summer, we will again have Steve Blank and Alexander Osterwalder talking to our portfolio and bringing their innovative ideas to bear. With programs like True University and I-Corps, we strive to give people the tools and resources to create more and better companies, create jobs and feed that spark of innovation in the country. I’m excited to see the next iteration of the I-Corps program and to witness the lasting impact of this experiment.

There are far too many launches, firsts, awards, and newsworthy items to mention here across our portfolio, and we are incredibly proud of the huge innovations our Founders are pursuing.  Innovation is alive and well in the True portfolio.  2011 was a also year of triumphs and defeats for many in the True family, but fortunately our teams “treat(ed) those two imposters just the same” (Kipling), and persevered to pursue their vision for a better tomorrow for their employees and customers.  We are exceptionally proud of the Founders and their teams for their hard work and ceaseless creativity in 2011.  It has been a remarkable year.

The True family grew in size to total more than 1,700 employees.  And, the broader team we always consider as we make decisions as a team are the families around these employees – the spouses, children, and parents of the Founders and teams in the True portfolio.  Taking this into account means our ecosystem grew to well over 5,000 this year.

We have been working hard to innovate at True as well.  We were recognized as one of the 10 most active VC firms in the U.S. in 2011 for investing a total of $65.57 million in 33 early-stage, high-growth companies – the brilliant Founders and teams we believe have the power to transform our economy.  We started True to make the world a better place for entrepreneurs and to have a deep and lasting impact on the lives of Founders and their families.  Staying true to our values of collaboration and lifelong learning, True held our very first True University, a two-day “startup school” to help develop the talent within each company.  We also launched our mentorship program into beta at year-end.  We are excited to lead the market in new and valuable opportunities for our Founders.

We look forward to building on last year’s momentum to make an even bigger impact in 2012.

2011 was a year of vision, inspiration, and nose-to-the-grindstone hard work.  True is a startup just like all of our portfolio companies, and we could not be successful without the generosity, creativity, and support of many.  In 2005, we envisioned a better future for venture capital, and this meant that we had to build an entirely new set of products and services for our customers, and do so with a completely new attitude and approach to our business.  We have been able to get where we are because of the incredible support and creativity of our Founders and their teams, the power and vision of our investors, and the steadfast belief of everyone on the True team that our mission of empowering the creative Founder is a noble calling.

Thank you to all our investors, Founders, mentors, friends, and others who joined in our cause this year.  We are honored by your support, and we share all of our success with you.

Happy New Year!

You know it when you see it, and Daniel was exactly the kind of Founder we strive to work with at True.   When I met Tom, Michael, and the rest of the Three Rings team, it became clear to me that Daniel was a gifted leader who was paying attention to the important things:  creativity, culture, and people.   Daniel had assembled an incredibly talented and creative team and was building a remarkable culture that was distinctly different than others in his market.

And oh what a market!   When we invested in 2007, flash gaming was the present and perceived-to-be future, MMOs and 2.5D worlds were the rage, and we were all looking for the next Second Life platform for rich immersive gaming.  Miniclip was huge, Facebook had just opened up their platform to developers, and the first iPhone had just been released (but the App Store was still more than a year away).

A few short years later and the entire gaming market has been redefined by Facebook and Zynga.  Free to play flash gaming is no longer the front lines of gaming innovation, and the big are getting bigger due to viral restrictions that Facebook enacted in 2009.   The social gaming industry is following the path of other platforms and is increasingly a “big gun” game, in which startups need a $10 million to $20 million war chest just to begin competing with user acquisition.  This means that startups need to compete in extremely creative ways.  At True, we have been fortunate to have significant success in gaming with three acquisitions in the space with Zynga’s acquisition of XPD in May 2010,  Playdom’s (Disney) acquisition of Hive7 in June 2010, and now SEGA’s acquisition of Three Rings last week.

Social gaming has been good for True as a sector, but it is clear to me that this is among the most challenging markets for an entrepreneur to navigate.  This is what makes Daniel’s success even more remarkable.

Daniel and his crew started Three Rings in 2001.  This exit marks ten years in business for the company.  . ..  Ten years.  . . 10(!).

We talk a lot these days in the valley about building companies for the long-term:  Daniel, Tom, Michael, and the entire Three Rings team did it.

Over the past ten years, Three Rings built a culture of excellence around brilliant product creativity, intense loyalty and care for employees, and industry leadership.   I had the privilege of watching Daniel and his team consistently put these values to work over the past several years.  Daniel took huge product risks.  Not all of them worked out, but all were big leaps and none were “safe.”  He avoided the herd and emphasized raw creativity, design, and innovation at every turn.   Even as the market moved towards faster, simpler “copy-cat” mechanics, Daniel pushed the team to come up with truly different types of experiences.  The OOO team measured everything, looked objectively at usage data, and incorporated it seamlessly in a creative endeavor.   Daniel placed enormous responsibility and autonomy on his team and cared deeply for their overall happiness.  At a time when turnover in the social gaming market was enormous, our team at OOO was virtually un-poachable.

It was not always an easy path.  While ups and downs are experienced by any startup, very few Founders have the sheer depth of determination that Daniel and his team demonstrated at every turn of our journey.  The increasing cash requirements and fluctuations of the social gaming markets wiped out many of our competitors.  Many others were “acqu-hired” and their products shelved.

When easier, faster shortcuts were offered to the company over the years, Daniel chose to do the right thing by his employees, his products and customers, and investors.  This made me immensely proud to be a part of the team, for many times doing the right thing meant going down a much harder path.

People love Three Rings because it is authentic and real.  This is a different kind of company, and Daniel truly is a man of integrity and of his word.   We all have much to learn from him and his crew.

This is a brilliant move for SEGA, and I congratulate them on identifying such a gem in this industry.

Three Rings marks True’s seventh exit in 2011, and, once again, I find myself sad that my daily work with Daniel, Tom, Michael, Bob, and the entire Three Rings team now must come to an end.  Three Rings was a career high for me.

On the other hand, we are building True for the long term as well, and great entrepreneurs start many companies in a lifetime.  True is designed to support the entire span of an entrepreneur’s career, so I now find myself mostly excited for my next journey with Daniel and his Crew (whenever that may be).

I can’t wait for us all to set sail again.

True has long hoped to see more broad-based global entrepreneurship, and we’ve been wondering for a long time when the markets of Europe and specifically London would become attractive places for large scale Seed and Series A investing.  Each year, we discuss the global True opportunity at our Stinson Beach retreat, and, as is our custom, we rely heavily on the thoughts and advice of those we trust the most:  the Founders in the True portfolio.  In the case of London, this means we talk about it a lot with Mash Patel, Harry Thompson, and Phil Goffin of Kurtosys, based in London.

We keep an eye on global markets because we are increasingly confident that entrepreneurship is democratizing and spreading across the world.   The small business is the solution, not just to America’s economic problems but also to the world’s .  In last week’s NY Times, William Deresiewicz discusses the generation of entrepreneurs emerging and points out that, “the small business is the idealized social form of our time.”  Closer to the UK, in Sunday’s Independent, Richard Branson argues that the UK needs “a nation of young entrepreneurs,” in order to combat the UK’s economic challenges.

We are eager to see if there are ways for us at True to hasten this trend, because our mission is to make the world a better place for entrepreneurs and to have deep and lasting impact on the lives of our Founders and their co-workers.  The True portfolio now employs over 1,500 people worldwide, and, while this is an important and impressive start, it is only a start.  Our vision is to empower global entrepreneurship, and we believe our approach could and should work anywhere.

After my time in London, it’s clear that many of the same drivers of success in the US entrepreneurial market are at work in London.  Increasing capital efficiency is driving down the costs to start a company, which means risks are lower to start, and smaller amounts of capital can have an enormous impact.   Successful innovators of our time like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, and many others have shown the world the power of the creative founder, and these examples are spread instantly across the globe via Facebook and Twitter, then down to our pockets to our Android and iOS devices.  Many of us use Skype and Spotify throughout our days, which reminds us that the region can and will spawn internet-scale companies.  The digital globe is instantly connected, and this means that inspiration, best ideas, and collaborative thought can spread.  It means we may be at a tipping point for global entrepreneurship.

London has several specific strengths going for it that I saw in abundance this week:  it is an inherently global city,  and the entrepreneurs with whom I met had global ambitions.  Many of the ideas were targeting emerging users in Africa and Brazil, and these Founders are thinking of the worldwide trends from the start.  Though we have some of this consciousness in the US, the global view feels omnipresent in the London entrepreneur scene.  It’s reinforced by the city’s historic role in Europe, as well as by the deeply multicultural population.  The Internet is a global medium, and we will soon see more cross border platforms emerge.  London’s global perspective could give it an edge.

At the micro level, I was struck by an observation made by Andrew Cleland of Comcast Ventures on our Saturday panel.  He described how much harder it is in the UK to be an entrepreneur.  This, he said, means that only the most determined entrepreneurs go for it.  I can’t believe I missed this, and I absolutely love what this means:  the boldest and most daring entrepreneurs persevere despite risks of all kinds.  Perhaps the fact that this was a more difficult climate historically means that it is breeding more resourceful, tenacious, and creative entrepreneurs.  I hope this is true.

Then there were the entrepreneurs I saw on Friday at Tech City’s “pitch day.”  I listen to pitches for a living, and I was really impressed with the quality of teams, the clear and concise thinking, and most of all the passion that I saw in eyes of entrepreneurs on Friday at the Tech City Entrepreneur Festival.  The Founders on stage were every bit as talented and driven as any I’ve seen.

This week also demonstrated that London is blessed with government understanding and support of entrepreneurship. During my visit the Minister of State for Universities and Science, David Willetts, spoke about Prime Minister Cameron’s commitment to startup formation and their early success with Tech City (600 companies started – truly impressive!).   Andrew Levi, the Managing Director for the Business Group of the UKTI, was omnipresent at the week’s events, which lent an important and firm confidence to the mission of Tech City.  My host Eric van der Kleij, the CEO of the Tech City’s Investment Organization, assembled an incredibly impressive list of international entrepreneurs, investors, and executives for the week.

The talent and energy behind Tech City is substantial, and I applaud the leadership for their vision, because innovation and technology are the only way I see to save the world’s economies.  As I’ve written many times, venture capital and entrepreneurship matter because they change lives and create jobs on a grand scale.  Consider the oft cited Kaufman Foundation statistic that nearly all net new job creation in the US since the seventies has come from small businesses or that the most valuable company on the planet (Apple) was started by a bold entrepreneur and some venture capital or that venture capital investment accounts for 0.02% of US investment but almost 20% of US GDP (NVCA).  There is no bigger economic bang for the buck than the powerful combination of venture capital and entrepreneurship.

But it’s not always a smooth path, and, along the way to build things, we make lots of mistakes.  In London, there was a lot of discussion around the region’s cultural comfort with risk taking and acceptance of failure.  A clear understanding of risk and the embrace failure as part of the creative process is a key reason for Silicon Valley’s (and True’s) success.  By openly sharing our losses and disappointments, we all grow stronger.  Europe is historically perceived to be less accepting of business failures, so hopefully this new generation of bold and daring European entrepreneurs can be supported and propelled by an ecosystem that celebrates creativity and passion but also embraces risk and failure.

I’m encouraged about the London entrepreneurial scene because I saw an authentic sense of camaraderie during these events, most distinctly at Friday’s evening award ceremonies.  It seems as if the important aspects of a good ecosystem are forming.  At True, we believe that fortune favors the connected entrepreneur.  Open collaboration and peer support make for better decisions, stronger cultures, and more successful companies and founders.   A rich and supportive ecosystem makes it easier for entrepreneurs and employees to take the risk necessary to do great things.

Tech City has the raw ingredients to be such an ecosystem.  It’s now in the hands of all participants to openly collaborate and help one another succeed.

It’s a tall order, I realize, but in the many meetings I was a part of last week, I saw with my own eyes that this ecosystem is forming in London.  It was exciting to witness.

Trippy taps into the travel experiences of your social graph to let you get tips from the people who know your personal details, allowing them to jump right in with relevant suggestions. Trippy makes it just as easy for friends to then share suggestions with Facebook-style comments, one-click recommendations and an intuitive auto-complete tool, helping you choose hotels, activities, restaurants, and more. Your itinerary and map are automatically updated as you plan, and Trippy lets you check rates and book as well. Your friends can then travel along with you through Trippy’s mobile app, which allows you to share photos and messages as you enjoy their recommendations.  It’s a full circle social travel experience that takes you from inspiration to execution. A simple idea, but one we believe is very powerful and yet to be delivered on the web.

We’re equally thrilled to be joined by Sequoia Capital, SV Angel and some of the web’s most talented entrepreneurs and investors: Rob Solomon, Tim Ferriss, Brian Lee, Gil Ebaz, Brandee Barker, Chase Jarvis, Randi Zuckerberg, Jason Mraz, and Rachel Zoe.  That’s an excellent syndicate, perfectly balanced to provide insight from both a tech and travel perspective.

Thank you JR  and team for your faith and confidence in True. Congrats on your round, and congrats also on building a phenomenal syndicate of investors. We are really honored to be a part of the Trippy team and look forward to the adventure ahead.

Kicksend is the simplest way to send and share files online.  Users can simply log-in to their account on the web, mobile, or desktop application and then, using the drag and drop interface, can easily share files to others in real-time.

At True, we consider our best source of new deals to be Founders within the True Family and this investment is a great example of this belief at work.

We were originally introduced to Kicksend Founders Brendan and Pradeep by True Founders Jack Abraham of Milo and Hiten Shah of KISSmetrics.

Pradeep has previously worked for Hiten at KISSmterics as a consultant after the team had started to work on Kicksend.  As Pradeep and Brendan continued to work on Kicksend, Hiten continued to be a good resource and joined as an advisor to the company.

Similarly, Pradeep and Brendan met Jack Abraham through his Milo co-founder John Evans who hadoverlapped with Pradeep at a previous job.  Jack assisted the team with product and eventually committed to be the first angel investor into the round.

With Jack and Hiten both excited about the opportunity, we spent a bunch of time with Pradeep and Brendan discussing what they wanted to work on and committed to their roundjust after Y-Combinator Demo Day.

Our team loves the product and we’re super excited about the opportunity to work with Pradeep,Brendan, and the rest of the Kicksend team.

Congratulation Brendan and Pradeep! Thank you for your confidence in True and welcome to the Family!

TEC serves multiple purposes: first of all, we at True believe we have not only an opportunity, but even more so a responsibility, to help educate and inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. What better time to kick start this process than while they are still in school? Some TEC participants come to us having already started companies of their own and others go on to either found or work at startups after graduation. No matter their background, students find that the combination of working with their companies and the weekly TEC curriculum provides unique and rich exposure to many aspects of startup operations that simply cannot be found many other places. The impact of this exposure is profound. As one program participant told us, “This program was one of the best experiences ever. I’ll probably look back in a few years and realize that this was one of those turning points in my life. TEC validated the entrepreneur in me—and now I’m yearning for more.”

The work done by students in TEC also has a clear and substantial benefit for companies in our portfolio. As we look for more ways to make the lives of our founders easier and support the growth of their businesses, matching them up with talented young people helps them move more quickly and devote extra resources to existing projects or new initiatives. Said one founder, “We had an awesome experience with TEC and our intern. He actually wrote his own code and launched a product for us!”

June 2012 may be eight months away, but we are accepting applications now through January 31 in hopes of reaching out to and attracting the best possible candidates. Admission is on a rolling basis so students are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. More information about the program, including all application requirements, can be found at www.trueventures.com/TEC. We encourage all interested students to apply or contact us at TEC [at] trueventures [dot] com with any questions.

Having gone through this decision I feel comfortable giving a few pieces of advice.

1.  Never optimize for salary straight out of college

Salary the only completely quantifiable and comparable part of a job offer— a dollar is the same everywhere.  Just because it’s the most straightforward to measure doesn’t mean it’s the most important.  In fact, I’d argue that salary is the least important variable, and here’s why: you aren’t used to having money yet.  Coming out of college, you already know how to live frugally and generally have very little financial responsibility outside of food, rent, and potentially loans to pay off.

Making more money than all of your friends is a great way to falsely convince yourself that you’ve chosen the right job, but in reality it’s only an indication of how much you value a large salary.  Sit down and figure out how much you’ll be paying in rent, food, and reasonable living expenses, and you’ll probably realize you can live very comfortably off of a salary much lower than anything you’re being offered.  Any dollar above that baseline just goes into your savings account, and while saving money is really important, it shouldn’t be the deciding factor straight out of college.

2.  Optimize for learning

Walking into a large company means walking into a lot of established process, even in companies that pride themselves on being lean.  The way code is reviewed, meetings are scheduled, employees are recruited and interviewed… all of this exists before you walk in the front door.

While learning another company’s established process can teach you about best practices, the best learning happens when you’re faced with a problem and you come up with a solution so it never happens again.  It makes you explore every option and see how each one works in reality.

You’ll learn lessons that you can apply at any other job, but you’ll learn them much faster in a smaller company that doesn’t dictate the rules of the game to you.  No matter how much a company promises you’ll get complete freedom, no one can escape process, and convincing an HR department to change their recruiting techniques is a lot harder than changing the way you personally recruit employees.

3.  Do it while you can

I can’t explain how excited I am to be part of a fast-moving four-person startup. The thrill of hiring our first employee, of seeing our first users, and of going into work every day caring so much about our product may be immeasurable, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

There will come a day when I’m risk averse, but that day isn’t today.  To recent college grads: go small.  You won’t regret it for a second.

This post was written by a recent college grad who is now a founder of a high-tech startup.

As evidenced on my GoodReads “currently-reading” list, I am on Chapter 7 of The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, which is a great read for those of you searching for a new book.  One of her resolutions there-in is to “learn how to do something new.”  Learning to do new things is not only an excellent way to boost happiness but also improves plasticity in the brain and strengthens neuronal connections.

Today, the True Team has gathered together to learn how to code.  Toni led the charge with coding instruction by Adam of Marakana .  Some of us already know how – John Burke, for instance, started his career as a software programmer at BMI Software, and Toni Schneider began his career as a software engineer at Crystal River Engineering.  Others on our team, however, are not so comfortable with the curly brackets and the DOM.  Our first foray into code was of course just for beginners, but it felt good to learn the basics of HTML and javascript and write our very own first program (a contact manager, probably not quite a minimally viable product as it could only hold 3 contacts).

Aside from the satisfaction of mastering the unknown, we invest in technology, and it is important to understand it.  Not just in a high-level overview way, but in a roll up your sleeves and immerse yourself fashion.  Not that I plan to start personally evaluating code anytime soon, but I would like to be able to speak the language.  I also have a much greater and well informed appreciation for what those engineers are doing all night fueled by caffeine and bathed in the blue glow of the screen.

Plus, we are always down for some good team bonding!

This acquisition is a tremendous outcome for Co-Founders Ryan Carver, Bryan Mason, Greg Veen, Jeff Veen, their team and investors. Bringing Typekit under the Adobe umbrella is a natural fit and a great opportunity for the company to further scale their vision of beautifying the entire web. It is a very smart acquisition for Adobe to make, and they are acquiring a superb team and product with a rapidly growing customer base.   Personally, I could not be more thrilled for the team.

Typekit is built around web standards with a focus on providing designers and developers a subscription-based library of hosted, high-quality fonts to use on their websites. Hence, this is the team making your web experience just a bit more beautiful. They have grown incredibly fast, counting over 500,000 customers including some of the most iconic sites/ hosted platforms on the web today: WordPress, The New York Times, Conde Nast, Twitter, and many others—so that anyone with a website can use real fonts. Today, high expectations around beautiful design are the norm, but the Typekit gang was clearly ahead of the curve.

A little history.  I first met Bryan and Jeff when Adaptive Path helped us conceive and design Sphere in 2005. These guys were talented partners and made a huge impact on our success. Our collaboration gave us a foundation to stay in touch and, in addition to serving on their board, both became key advisers to Ryan, Tim and I when we co-founded about.me. Turning back the clock just a bit, in 2008, they ventured on their own, kick starting a few ideas until they eventually focused their attention on making web fonts universally available across the web. It took a few months and some convincing, but in the end they chose True to lead a seed round investment.  We were joined by some of the most respected Founders and investors on the web including Evan Williams (Twitter), Matt Mullenweg (Automattic/ WordPress), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Chris Sacca (Lowerbase Capital), Josh Felser & Dave Samuel (Freestyle Capital) and SV Angel.  I then joined the board after leading a Series A investment in May 2010.

Since then, the Typekit founders have become part of the True social fabric and substantial contributors to our platform. They have generously advised portfolio companies (about.me, KISSmetrics to name only a few), participated in Founder Camps, True University and their example has impacted so many Founders/ companies in our ecosystem.

Thank you Ryan, Bryan, Greg, Jeff and the Typekit Team for inspiring us all in so many fundamental ways. It has been a privilege to watch your vision for a beautiful web come together so nicely and it’s been an honor to be a small part of your team. But most importantly you taught us all that Helvetica isn’t as cool as Bleeding Cowboys.