Tonight in Minneapolis, we're honored to have Seth Levine, a partner at top VC firm Foundry Group in Boulder, CO, speaking to a gathering of entrepreneurs and others who support Minnesota's early-stage 
technology and Internet firms. His talk will be based on a popular book written by his colleague, Brad Feld, which was published in late 2012: Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City. Seth, Brad, and their other partners have been actively speaking on this topic in cities around the U.S. and beyond. They are highly in demand to impart their knowledge about the success they've had in Boulder, turning it into one of the most vibrant and successful ecosystems for technology startups. (Brad was also the cofounder of TechStars, the leading accelerator program that had its start in Boulder in 2007.)
I've known Seth since 2007, when I began attending two annual conferences that Foundry Group helped start and nurture, both held in the Denver area — first Defrag, which began that year, and then a sister conference called Glue that began in 2009. I've attended both events every year since then. (Here's a post I did after the first Glue 
conference in 2009, which included audio interviews of both Seth and Brad.)
Ever since I began attending these events (which are both organized by a guy with Minnesota connections, Eric Norlin), I've been encouraging Brad or Seth to come to the Twin Cities sometime to speak. When I learned that Seth earned his undergraduate degree at Macalester College in St. Paul, I was really fired up to get him here, thinking his connections with college friends, etc might help my chances. But, alas, trying to align his schedule with local tech startup events, which are often not announced very far ahead, became a challenge. (The one time I know of that Seth did speak in Minnesota was at an annual Rain Source Capital angel investor conference a few years ago in Bloomington, but that was just a quick in-and-out stop here — and, of all the luck, I had to be out of town that day!)
So, what finally got Seth to town to speak to our local entrepreneurs and founders? The one thing I knew would make the difference: his first investment in a MInnesota tech startup! That was LeadPages, which announced a few months ago a $5 million Series A round, which Foundry Group led, with participation by Arthur Ventures of Fargo and Minneapolis. So, when he and I chatted by phone at that time, I knew he'd be coming to town periodically for board meetings — and that indeed is what brought him here today. Thankfully, Clay Collins, LeadPages founder and CEO, was able to help organize the event tonight, with assistance from TechMN, and invite 100 lucky attendees to snap up tickets, which happened very quickly. So, it's a sold-out event, and I am now really looking forward to the local startup crowd getting to meet Seth! If I can, I'll do a brief video interview of Seth tonight and post it here tomorrow as an update.
I'm very glad to see the "bridge-building" between Boulder and Minneapolis continue!
UPDATE 2/10/14: Well, at the event, I chose not to shoot an interview of Seth, so as to not take his time away from talking to entrepreneurs. But here's a series of edited videos of the entire talk, which TechMN just posted yesterday.
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