Brad Feld

I'm a VC at Foundry. I live in Colorado, invest in software and Internet companies around the US, run marathons, and love to read.

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 44: Same Hour

Want to see what your hospital is told when its machines stop taking updates? Oh, and what the Fed said that same hour...

"Is that a coincidence"
"Different thing. That's money. Ours is a signature check on a firmware package."

https://t.co/fwVf8BJaJM

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 43.1: Senile

Want to see what a CEO offers instead of yes? Then decides you've lost your mind...

Eleanor just asked him for eight hours on his quantum computer, overnight, with no record of it.

"Eleanor. Is somebody there with you?"
"No."

https://t.co/LKt6sVu9zm

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 30.1: Overflow

Want to see how VCs talk in a private chat? How it works when you've got crypto in the mix? Oh, and how confidential information gets leaked to reporters...

"You are going to trade on a phone call Trip did not understand."

https://t.co/Ejaj5lTSgJ

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 29.1: Recent Calls

A man from Ardmore Risk Advisory asks Nadia who she called Tuesday, but nothing about physics. Seth scrolls his own recent calls and counts four.

She tells Seth she is done.

"They're your friends and I hope they're alive."

https://t.co/6mEXHO3LEw

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 28.1: Road and Bridge

An FBI supervisor closes County Road 306 at six tomorrow. He has never driven it.

The sheriff waits until the order is written down.

"There's no gate on 306. Anywhere. The road just goes."
"Then put something across it."

https://t.co/uLTXoNEKcR

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 27.1: Standards

Nadia runs a physics lab at CU Boulder. A stranger waits in her hallway.

He asks her four questions, but he already has the answers to three.

"You've taken four minutes, just like the guy on the phone the other day."

https://t.co/LBJZgGAQBV

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 26.1: The Feed

Sable finds the FBI drew its own search box: fourteen empty parking lots.

"They walked out of the search area yesterday. Probably in daylight. Possibly past one of the parking lots with Americans standing in it."

https://t.co/OJZ26wCikx

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Amy texted me this list yesterday. I'm 60, closing in on 61, and thinking more about what I actually care about.

The real luxuries in life: time, health, a quiet mind, slow mornings, rest without guilt, calm and "boring" days, people who love you back.

https://t.co/UlpttjMRSr

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 25.1: The Kayak

Someone wiped Marcus's kitchen down before Seth got there. In the garage, four tubs turned backwards: WINTER, CAMPING, RIVER, CLIMBING.

Outside, the dog craps on the lawn and Seth has no bag.

"Marcus is going to be so mad."

https://t.co/SDTbadXHki

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Every piece of my home automation already worked. The only broken thing was that none of them talk to each other. So I built the dashboard myself.

https://t.co/kWA7hmwJMe

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 24.1: The Third Row

Eleven people know there are three founders, not two. Their lawyer cuts every promise.

These are the people trying to save her.

"She's twenty-nine. It was thirty-one degrees in Leadville last night."
"Then find her."

https://t.co/eYlL8o6pXC

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 23.1: The Third Chair

An FBI agent counts three chairs at a bench in the empty Basalt lab. Payroll says two people worked there, and the third name on the filing resolves to nothing.

"You brought a casserole to a manhunt."
"It was a gift."

https://t.co/7o8OiO1vds

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 22.1: The Log

Dolores has worked the same hospital basement for twenty-two years. This morning a pump refuses a firmware update it would have accepted yesterday.

"I want my normal one. I'm used to it."
"That one is being difficult."

https://t.co/vkXG9C4mcA

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 20.1: The Long Drive

Three founders Seth backed have gone dark. One texted him at 3 a.m. and stopped answering.

He rehearses what he will say if Marcus picks up.

"You have twenty seconds to tell me if anybody is dead. Then you can hang up."

https://t.co/boVKgCZCHS

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

A reader emailed to say he was getting tired of the setting. He was right, so I'm adding 40 chapters to Zero Knowledge - 23 of them inside the part that's already published.

https://t.co/bjUWz5D44N

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 43: Out Loud

Marcus is offered eight hours on a quantum computer. He pays by promising never to sell what his team built.

Vlad asks what he gave away.

"Five hundred billion dollars."
"No way it's five hundred billion dollars."

https://t.co/bvzZaZBnFe

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 42: The List

Marcus runs the numbers: ten billion in labor. Then he thinks through potential buyers for one that is safe.

"It takes four minutes to load a cow?"
"I do not know how long it takes to load a cow. You are the one who counts things."

https://t.co/bCQqZx4feg

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

I spent four days building the machinery around my novel instead of writing it. A dashboard that turns reader notes into published edits, two websites that exist inside the story, and a narration test that worked.

https://t.co/AjDMSlubuV

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 41: E. Voss

An overnight block on a machine in Ohio is booked under their board member's name. Samantha cannot prove it is her and answers anyway.

She has just learned the manhunt was never the danger.

"Is anybody in charge of this."
"No."

https://t.co/sOtKu9aTts

[Brad Feld @bfeld]

Chapter 40: Lead Time

A foreign operative reads parts shortages to time the emergency. The model said nineteen weeks; now it says twenty days.

So the call goes out to the person minding their machine.

"Is it ready."
"It has been ready for six days."

https://t.co/HJzvVlYEiB