Brad Feld has been run by simple principles for decades. It’s about giving it without expecting anything in return. This philosophy goes beyond traditional wage thinking, he says. It’s about helping others. If so, knowing that only meaningful connections and opportunities will emerge organically over time.
The entrepreneur and VC, who began investing in angels in the 1990s, became prominent through his candid blog Feld Thinking, pulling back the curtains of the secretory venture industry of the time, sparking countless debates across Silicon Valley. After co-founding both Techstars and venture company Foundry Group, which supported hundreds of companies for over 18 years as an investor, for decades before deciding to halt new funding in early 20244, Feld has distilled his approach to business and life into his latest book, Give First.
TechCrunch spoke with Feld last week about mentorship, boundaries and why vulnerability are the most important leadership skills.
You have been thinking about this “first” concept for over a decade. What ultimately made you push yourself to write a book now?
This was my ninth book and I ended up writing non-fiction. I’m interested in exploring science fiction writing. Maybe this is my last book and the intersection of things I really want to capture these ideas sat me about three years ago.
This concept appeared in 2012 in the book “Startup Communities” as a paragraph called “Give Get You Get.” The idea was that if you really want to move the startup community, you need people who are willing to put their energy into it without paying upfront what comes back. It’s not altruism – they’ll get something, but they don’t know when, who, at what time, or in what way.
You once looked everywhere, and then you came back. What got you back after taking a two-year break from your public life?
I decided I didn’t want anything to be made public. I was tired and burned out. I focused on my behind the scenes work [my wife] Amy and I were always together because we weren’t distracted by anything else. That’s really satisfying.
When David Cohen returned as CEO of Techstars a year ago, I told him he was engaged just because he wanted, but I didn’t feel it was public yet. Working with him on strategy made me go very deep into it. I took it too [book draft] It came off the shelf and looked at it and thought, “This is pretty good.”
This book is about mentorship in many different forms. We will also talk about the importance of setting boundaries to avoid burnout. There is a reason for the saying, “Good deeds are not punished.” How should mentors protect themselves, still generously giving?
There are many in the book. I was very open about mental health struggles to help me fight these issues…and there is no absolute answer to the question. One challenge when you’re willing to donate energy without being a transaction is that there are people who can’t do it, or are extractors.
Adam Grant describes this spectrum in “Give and Take,” explaining the gifter on one end, the taker on the other, and the trader in the middle. Most of our world is truly taker traders. In the short term, takers can do very well, but in the long term, people on the end of the gifter are much more successful if success is not measured simply as power and money.
We will emphasize the importance of saying “I don’t know” when mentoring. Why is it so important?
It is very harmful when experienced people stand up themselves as having successful people have the answer to everything. The magic of entrepreneurship is what we make many hypotheses, test them quickly, and learn mostly when they fail.
We are in an environment where people cannot present things as hypotheses. They present them as claims. The blur of opinions and facts is confusing. The best mentors provide data and hypotheses rather than assertions about what you should do.
One of [my] The mentor manifest phrase is “guide, do not control.” Sometimes you know the answer, but for anyone who is a great manager, the best way to get a commitment is to let people commit themselves.
There is a lot of opinion shopping that takes place behind the scenes. How should founders navigate conflicting advice from multiple mentors?
When I receive feedback about my first draft [of the book] From 25 people I got absolutely contradictory information. The more mentors can give feedback from their own experiences, the more useful it will be. Instead of saying, “Here’s what you should do,” they said, “Here’s the experience I had, and here’s what I did.”
Mentor’s Whiplash is no big deal if the mentees listen to it like that. Get multiple data points from multiple experiences. You’re rarely “choose your own adventure” and integrate what’s meaningful in your context, make decisions, tell your mentor, and have them commit and support you.
At what point is someone ready to be a mentor?
Here are the magic tricks of mentorship: What mentor learns from mentors as much as mentors learn from mentors, and the best mentor relationship becomes peer relationship. This means that essentially anyone can be a mentor at any time.
Some of the people I learned most are at the beginning of their careers – people still in college run their first company. When we first started working together in 1994, my friend Rajat Bhargava was 21 years old. The amount we have learned from each other since then is unrealistic.
There are very successful and experienced people who are terrible mentors, and early on people have little experience as extraordinary mentors. Your ability to be effective as a mentor has nothing to do with your success or experience. That’s the way it exists.
How does this philosophy apply to a time like this, where we see massive layoffs in technology, the chaos from all AI…
Currently, there is almost zero predictive power associated with what everyone is saying. We are separated from understanding what actually happens. The huge and extreme declarations people make have the lowest predictive power I have ever seen.
We live in loud, harsh spaces, and we hope that this kind of thing is timeless. My goal in this book is not to say that people have done it right. It’s about inspiring people to think differently about some things, or reinforcing what they’re adding to what they’re already thinking.
You still manage your funds and assets dating back almost 20 years ago. Do you have any final thoughts on a setback from the traditional venture model?
Amy and I always say that: we will all die. I don’t know when that day is. What are you going to do with your precious life? The number of people associated with nails in the 70s and 80s… if it gives you meaning, great. But for many people, the answer [to the question of whether or not to do that] It’s not yes.
