Brad Feld handed me the reins of EFCO at the beginning of 2009. When Brad and I co-founded EFCO, Brad said he’d be CEO for two years and then it would be my turn to guide the 100% volunteer board to the next level. In reflection, it has been a great year that focused mainly on expanding our team for expansion in 2010 and 2011. We did three things of note in 2009:
Before I reflect on the accomplishments of 2009, I want to really thank Brad for his great work as CEO over the past two years. If you do not know Brad, he has many gifts, one of which is ability to reshape and re-conceive version 2 of the things he is passionate about. Shaping a culture of giving in the next generation of business and community leaders is certainly one of those areas of passion for Brad.
In 2006, Brad came to me wanting to help reshape a program that Mike Platt, Rally’s lawyer from Cooley and a good friend, and I created in 2003 at the Community Foundation Serving Boulder County. This 1% club as we called it, was centered on donating 1% of equity of start-ups to your local community. This early giving model was based on an overall concept being promoted by Salesforce.com. What Brad did was help reshape the 1% Club into version 2 by simplifying the model and getting affiliated with an International effort know as the Entrepreneurs’ Foundation.
Grew our Board
We started in 2007, with five companies and volunteer board of 7. In 2009, we thanked Kyle Leffkoff, Tim Connor and JB Holston for their board service and welcomed Kirk Holland, Seth Levine, Frank Amaroso, Tom Keller and Ken Fugate onto the board. Chris Barge from the Community Foundation also stepped up to help our efforts. If it was not for these volunteers we would not be recruiting or coordinating great volunteering events. Thank you folks!
Grew the Membership
In 2009, we added 6 new companies to our membership including:
- Ping Gadget – see blog post on Ping Gadget joining EFCO
- miRagen Therapeutics – see blog post on miRagen joining EFCO
- DataVail – lead by Mike Jones
- Ignighter – TechStars graduate lead by Adam Sachs
- Gnip lead by Eric Marcoullier and Jud Valeski
- Next Big Sound – a TechStars graduate lead by Alex White, David Hoffman and Samir Rayani
There are couple of things to note about this group of recruits. Ignighter and Next Big Sound continue to add to the constant flow of companies from the TechStars program and miRagen represents our first bio-tech industry member. These members provide early equity to EFCO, but they also provide volunteers for local community efforts like iVolunteer day.
Contact me or other board members to find out more about EFCO and how to join.