The Magic of our Friend’s The Feld’s...In Life and in Business

Ellen and I had the pleasure of spending the last week at the Keystone home of Brad and Amy Feld. We were guests of theirs last year in Tuscany as well. I had been coming off three hard weeks of sales in New York City and they offered us heir home to unwind instead of the resort down the road.

It worked. We hiked, we slept, we ate, we watched movies and we laughed.

Brad and Amy are super generous people. Just this week I witnessed two ‘Random Acts of Kindness’. Brad started this recently when he met Ethan of ‘Give Forward‘ at Lindzonpalooza. For every marathon Brad runs he donates $5,000 randomly to a person on GiveForward fighting for their life. This week, we learned together that Justin is now Cancer Free. At dinner the other night, Brad saw a birthday cake whiz by. He grabbed the waiter and paid for their dinner and asked not to be singled out. Loved watching it happen.

I met Brad through an intro from Fred Wilson in 2006.

I was starting Wallstrip and had chased Fred down to invest in the idea. He did. Fred gave me a short list of friends to call and pitch as well, I wished I kept the piece of paper. My first call was to Brad’s cellphone. He answered, heard the pitch and committed. Next was Roger Ehrenberg…committed. Alan Warms…committed. Fred’s lawyer Jay Rand…committed. My last call was to Mark Pinkus (now $ZNGA CEO) who listened to the short pitch and quickly said:

This is the dumbest idea I have ever heard. If I was doing it…..than I would outsource editing…. NO. And, by the way, tell Fred Wilson to stop giving out my cell phone number.

In the end, Mark invested.

Brad’s firm Foundry has since invested in Stocktwits as well and we have co-invested in many startups.

Thank you Brad and Amy for making magic happen all around you.