It’s always interesting looking back at the random events that affect your life. When you allow yourself to be open to randomness, things tend to happen that you would never expect and couldn’t possibly predict.
Derek Scruggs interviews all kinds of interesting people with intriguing stories of randomness for his Semi-Random Walks Podcast, where he also features little-known but excellent music from around the world.
Since we’re both part of the entrepreneurial community in Boulder, I’ve known Derek for a while and our paths have crossed several times. He’s currently CTO of Avenir International, a provider of telecom software for hospitals.
I interviewed Derek back in 2007 when he was kind enough to share his thoughts on failure.
Now he has interviewed me. You can listen to the podcast to learn all about:
- The only job interview I ever had in my life
- How that job led to the first business I started
- How I met David Brown
- The way the timing of the Windows 95 release impacted my life
- How a watermelon and a broken down car helped me decide to live in Boulder
- How David and I built a successful company without knowing what a venture capitalist or an angel investor was
- My “graceful failure,” which was a great learning experience
- My random intersection with Sam Altman long before we were both running accelerators
- How I became an angel investor by acting like an angel investor
- The time Brad Feld and I went to the White House and told the government not to fund accelerators
- The origins, development and future of Techstars
…and much, much more.
You can listen to the full interview on Derek’s site. He really does an awesome job with all of his podcasts, so be sure to check out some other stories of randomness while you’re at it.
