Brad Feld
@bfeld
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.
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Chapter 49: The Small Kind
Want to see what happens when every camera on the road is looking for your plate? And what else that same fix can forge...
"The truck is still stolen. The cameras are not going to say so."
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Chapter 47.1: Thursday
Want to see what happens when someone famous calls you at 2am with a favor you can't check? Oh, and what it costs to tell a friend you gave her name away...
"Then stop answering your phone. I mean that. Thank you for picking up."
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Chapter 47: Rented
Want to see how you buy a truck with no name, no card, no phone? How you talk a stranger into it without one true word? But he wants a name...
"Our truck is at the campground. It will not start."
"Which site."
"There is no truck."
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Chapter 46: Use
Want to see how fast your safest friend becomes the thing that gets you caught? Oh, and what it takes to do the thing you swore you never would...
"So people with weapons are going to walk toward us in the dark. On purpose."
"Yes."
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Chapter 45: The Outlet
Want to know how much power you can steal from a sleeping stranger's truck before you kill his battery? How little an hour of it buys you? Oh, and here comes the camp dog...
"We could take another twenty. He is asleep."
"Now."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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.
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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."
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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.
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."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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.
