Give First

Today, Sherri Hammons is CTO of The Nature Conservancy, but as she admits, “I took the nontraditional path to CTO land.” This path included eight years as a professional singer before she went back to college and got a degree in software engineering—and went on to work for companies big and small, as well as being CTO for the state of Colorado. She’s done for-profit, non-profit, and government—and...

Rebecca Lovell plays, as Brad Feld says, “a very important role in the center of gravity for the Seattle startup community.” Currently Director at Create33, a resource center for tech entrepreneurs, Rebecca teaches entrepreneurship at the University of Washington and has held a number of roles in Seattle city government, from Startup Advocate to Acting Director of the Office of Economic Developmen...

With six full episodes of the Give First podcast under their belts, David Cohen and Brad Feld reflect on their recent interviews and duty as podcast hosts. They also have nothing but praise for guests so far: Wendy Lea , Paul Berberian , Troy Henikoff , Mary Grove , T.A. McCann , and Kesha Cash .    In this episode, David and Brad talk to each other about what they learned from each gues...

Kesha Cash founded Impact America Fund in 2013 with a goal of investing in software and tech enabled companies that have a positive benefit on underserved communities in America. In 2018, she was named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business .  She went to Columbia Business School knowing that she wanted to start a fund that invested in diverse entrepreneurs who were commit...

David Cohen was super excited when he realized that T.A. McCann —founder and CEO of Senosis (acquired by Google), Gist (acquired by Blackberry) and Rival IQ, a leader in marketing analytics, as well as Managing Director of Pioneer Square Labs—was the same guy he was reading about in The Proving Ground: The Inside Story of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race. T.A. tells tales of his sailing adventures—i...

Mary Grove is passionate about community-driven change, and this theme has guided her entire career. She joined Google when it had only 2,000 employees, and by the time she left it was up to around 75,000. Over 14 years, she went from working on the IPO deal team to starting Google for Startups.  Google for Startups very first partner was Startup Weekend, which Mary helped to spread from a fe...

How does a startup ecosystem grow? #GiveFirst is one essential element. Troy Henikoff, Managing Director of MATH Ventures and Co-founder of Excelerate Labs, which became Techstars Chicago, remembers the early days of Chicago’s startup ecosystem, and how #GiveFirst helped it grow. One of the difficult things about describing the impact of #GiveFirst is that, over time, there are so many effects. Tr...

Have you ever been mobbed in Times Square, like a rock star? Paul Berberian, CEO of Sphero, the company that makes BB8, at one time the number one toy in the world, has. Paul talks about how mentoring and Give First were essential to Sphero getting the BB8 gig. He loves mentoring as well, and describes the experience of being a mentor and having a positive experience on someone’s life as “addictiv...

Wendy Lea is a longtime entrepreneur and investor, as well as a board member and mentor at Techstars. With David and Brad, she digs into some of her own first mentoring experiences and reflects on a time when a mentor changed her life.  Wendy was early in her career, and had just been offered a promotion that would cause a lot of change in her life, and she was hesitating. Her mentor told her...

What exactly is Give First? David Cohen and Brad Feld explore what this philosophy of living means to them. In the startup world, Give First means simply trying to help anyone, especially entrepreneurs, without any expectation of getting anything back.  When a network of people—such as a global community of entrepreneurs—live in a Give First way, each is helpful whenever they can be. This builds a...