Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado

BOULDER, Colo., December 10, 2007 – The developers of Fuser.com, an innovative online tool that enables Internet users to consolidate their e-mail and social networking accounts into a single online inbox, announced its plans to give back to Colorado’s local entrepreneurial community through the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado (EFCO).

Founded by four of Colorado’s own entrepreneurial success stories - Tendril, Rally Software, Collective Intellect and Me.dium – EFCO encourages Colorado start-ups to give back to their local business communities through equity donations. By pledging to donate one percent of Fuser’s overall equity to EFCO’s endowment fund, the company aims to help other Colorado-based start-ups reach their own level of success. Through EFCO’s endowment fund, Fuser has chosen to support The Community Foundation serving Boulder County and The Denver Foundation through the company’s donation.

“Colorado has long been hailed by entrepreneurs as a community that passionately supports innovative ideas and strong leaders,” said Jeff Herman, president of Fuser. “We greatly appreciate the support we’ve received from the local business community and are excited to repay some of that support in a way that will benefit our start-up peers.”

Founded in 2006, Fuser is the vision of Jared Polis, a renowned Colorado-based consumer Internet and e-commerce entrepreneur, who developed the idea for Fuser after finding himself frustrated with the amount of time he spent checking his multiple e-mail and social networking accounts.

Fuser.com enables Internet users to consolidate their e-mail and social networking accounts into a single online inbox. By providing a secure virtual command center for their Internet communications – including Yahoo! ^®, Gmail^®, MySpace^®, Facebook^®, non-web e-mail accounts and many more – Fuser.com helps Internet users simplify their digital communications and make the most of their online time.

After a successful debut in late September, Fuser.com recently released a revised version of the tool. The latest version offers users improved speed and performance, as well as support for Earthlink, .Mac and Juno e-mail accounts.

For more information about Fuser or to sign up for a free Fuser.com account, visit www.fuser.com.

About Fuser

Got more than one e-mail address and/or social networking account? Simplify your online life with Fuser.com, a free online tool that allows you to check all your e-mail and social networking accounts at one place. You no longer need to waste time with multiple Web sites and logins to communicate with your friends, family and colleagues. Fuser.com relieves the pressure of juggling multiple accounts by providing an easy, secure way to stay on top of your digital communications. To learn more about how Fuser.com can change your digital life, go to www.fuser.com and sign up today.

###

©2007, Confluence Commons, Inc. (d/b/a Fuser). All rights reserved. Fuser and the Fuser character, Fusie, are trademarks of Fuser. All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.

BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Boulder-based Gold Systems has teamed with the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado (EFCO) to support philanthropic efforts throughout the community.

EFCO allows companies to donate a small fraction of equity, which is donated to Boulder’s Community Foundation during initial stages of liquidity. Start-ups are fully focused on operations and growth of their businesses. While they may want to directly support charities, they are not in a financial position to do so. Through EFCO, entrepreneurs can focus on building their business without abandoning their philanthropic goals.

“Gold Systems has been involved in philanthropic activities in the Boulder community since our inception,” said Terry Gold, CEO of voice technology integrator Gold Systems. “EFCO provides a unique and crucial service to the Boulder Community and businesses. It’s typically not the lack of philanthropic spirit among new entrepreneurs but a lack of resources and direction that prevents outreach among start-ups. EFCO provides direction and support without monopolizing capital during this critical phase.”

Not just for start-ups, Gold Systems’ involvement represents a glowing review for EFCO from an established company. Gold Systems is one of many companies that are joining forces to set an example for start-ups throughout Colorado’s Front Range. Donations from EFCO to The Community Foundation are channeled through various non-profits throughout Colorado. Supporting an established philanthropic foundation allows EFCO to focus on rounding up and supporting entrepreneurs and their philanthropic wishes.

“Supporting various local initiatives through The Community Foundation, EFCO allows entrepreneurs to support a range of causes ranging from education to the environment,” said Brad Feld, Foundry Group managing director and one of the founding trustees of EFCO. “When a company such as Gold Systems makes an equity donation, they’re truly making an investment in our community.”

The Community Foundation’s primary goal is to offer grants to various non-profits. Understanding needs of the community and allocating assets appropriately, a member of EFCO merely selects a cause, and the Community Foundation takes care of the rest.

EFCO is aligned with the Entrepreneurs Foundation, an organization formed in 1988 with affiliates in Silicon Valley, Austin, Southern California, New England, Dallas, Portland, Atlanta, Hawaii and Israel.

About Gold Systems

Through its award-winning products and services, Gold Systems helps its customers identify where productivity can be improved with voice-driven solutions. The company’s unified communications implementation services, as well as its self-service speech recognition solutions, allow businesses to improve productivity and profitability. Gold Systems is a top-tier partner to leading speech and messaging vendors, including Microsoft, Avaya and Nuance. Since 1991, Gold Systems software has automated more than 1 billion telephone calls around the world.

More information about Gold Systems can be found at www.goldsys.com or by calling 303-447-2774 and saying “information.”

The Salesforce.com Foundation is one of the leading lights in entrepreneurial corporate philanthropy. Recently, they published a set of pages on their website called Share The Model. If you are interested in integrating philanthropy into your company, this is a super place to get some ideas and guidance on how to do it.

Boulder, Colorado- October 3, 2007- ClickCaster Inc., a provider of world class IPTV & Media Middleware Platforms announces its support in EFCO, the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado.

The company has pledged to donate one percent of its overall equity to EFCO, a program targeted at angel and VC backed companies based in Colorado. The organization is focused on creating an endowment that let's young companies, through the gift of their equity, give back to the communities we live and work in.

"We learned about EFCO several months ago and decided on the spot to participate as soon as it made sense" says ClickCaster's CEO, Scott Converse. "Being part of the local community and giving back to the different institutions, organizations and entities that make Colorado such a great place to start a company is something every young company should consider doing".

ClickCaster is joining a growing group of Colorado based early stage companies in helping to build a permanent endowment to provide community grants for arts, civic involvement, education, the environment, and health and human services. Upon a liquidity event, the cash or stock that has been given by participating companies will be distributed to the appropriate Community Foundations.

About ClickCaster Inc.
ClickCaster Inc. was incorporated in Sept. of 2006. ClickCaster's technology has matured into a premier media middleware platforms with the ability to handle virtually any media type available today. With an emphasis on IPTV, ClickCaster and it's partners provide server and client device products and services to meet the most demanding needs of our customers. ClickCaster was founded by Scott Converse. He brings his expertise from companies such as Apple Computer, Paramount Pictures, Motorola and MCI to create the best media delivery platform products in our targeted markets available today. www.clickcaster.com/about

About Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado:
Four companies - Tendril, Rally Software, Collective Intellect and Me.dium - are the founding grantors for the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. The founding trustees are Brad Feld (Foundry Group), Kyle Lefkoff (Boulder Ventures), Tim Connor (Sequel Venture Partners), Ryan Martens (Rally Software), Bill Roberts (Hogan & Hartson), and Michael Platt (Cooley Godward Kronish). In addition, the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado has formed an alliance with the Entrepreneurs Foundation, an organization formed in 1988 with affiliates in Silicon Valley, Austin, Southern California, New England, Dallas, Portland, Atlanta, Hawaii and Israel. www.efcolorado.org

BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Solidware Technologies®, Inc., a provider of a software quality engineering and audit platform, has announced today its participation in a new philanthropic program designed to endow Colorado through investment by angel and venture-backed companies.

Called The Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, the program encourages early stage companies to donate equity, thereby allowing the foundation to participate in the growth of the company. Upon a liquidity event, the cash or stock that has been given by the companies will be distributed allowing the appropriate Community Foundations to respond to the community’s greatest needs and opportunities, now and in the future.

“Solidware is excited to be a part of this program,” says Sue Kunz, Solidware CEO. “We've made our home here because of the lifestyle Colorado affords us, and we want to ensure that this lifestyle can continue for future generations.”

With support from Solidware Technologies and others, including TechStars, Rally Software, Me.dium and NewsGator, The Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado is building a permanent endowment that will provide grants for education, the arts, civic involvement, the environment, and health and human services. “Solidware has received much support from the community, so donating equity in our company ensures the cycle of giving stays alive,” says Kunz.

About Solidware

Solidware Technologies®, Inc. (www.solidw.com) delivers software solutions for rapidly identifying risk in code, focusing its customers on what’s objective and actionable. Solidware has developed a software quality engineering platform, SWaudit™, which automates code audits to support proactive decision-making and risk mitigation, and is ideal for continuously assessing in-house software readiness, performing M&A due diligence, assuring software quality, and evaluating code, whether outsourced, open source, reused, or acquired.

SWaudit enables improved quality and predictability while saving time and cost and managing risk across all levels of organizations. Solidware deploys software-as-a-service (SaaS) hosted solutions as well as subscription-based on premise solutions for its customers.

Giving Back to Colorado's Entrepreneurial Community Starts Early at Lijit.

Louisville, CO (PRWeb) October 1, 2007 -- Lijit Networks, Inc., a company that provides revolutionary search tools and statistics for blog publishers, has pledged to donate one percent of its overall equity to the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, a philanthropic program targeted at angel- and venture capital-backed companies based in Colorado. The program's mission is to help Colorado entrepreneurs contribute to the long term health and sustainability of Colorado early in the creation of their companies.

The Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado is unique in that it encourages philanthropic activity in the very early stages of a company's formation, instead of waiting to undertake those activities once an organization has become successful. "Our one percent pledge allows us to share our future success with the community that has been so critical to our success to date," remarks Lijit's CEO, Todd Vernon. "Our employees and investors are proud to participate in this program, which will help foster a culture of giving within our young organization." Lijit joins TechStars, along with the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado founding member companies, in helping to build a permanent endowment to provide community grants for arts, civic involvement, education, the environment, and health and human services. Upon a liquidity event, the cash or stock that has been given by participating companies will be distributed to the appropriate Community Foundations.

About Lijit Networks, Inc.:
Lijit Networks, Inc. was incorporated in June 2006. The Lijit service was developed to search people, their content, and connections in order to deliver search results with unprecedented relevance. The company is led by Todd Vernon, CEO. Vernon, a founder and former CTO of Raindance Communications, brings to the team his management experience in the high-tech sector and enthusiasm for leading-edge web technologies. Stan James, founder and CTO of Lijit, brings years of research in social trust and a portfolio of intellectual property in the space. www.lijit.com

About Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado:
Four companies - Tendril, Rally Software, Collective Intellect and Me.dium - are the founding grantors for the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. The founding trustees are Brad Feld (Foundry Group), Kyle Lefkoff (Boulder Ventures), Tim Connor (Sequel Venture Partners), Ryan Martens (Rally Software), Bill Roberts (Hogan & Hartson), and Michael Platt (Cooley Godward Kronish). In addition, the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado has formed an alliance with the Entrepreneurs Foundation, an organization formed in 1988 with affiliates in Silicon Valley, Austin, Southern California, New England, Dallas, Portland, Atlanta, Hawaii and Israel. www.efcolorado.org

From: Ryan Martens (Rally Software)
To: Suzanne DiBianca, Sue McGilpin (Salesforce Foundation)

Suzanne and Sue,

Thank you for your continued support of our 1% Fund activities in Colorado. The generous donation of The Business of Changing the World and Compassionate Capitalism: How Corporations Can Make Doing Good an Integral Part of Doing Well have enhanced our efforts of solicit new members for The Entrepreneur's Foundation of Colorado. We have personally delivered these books to the CEO and founders of a number of local companies.

For Founders of young companies, these books are absolutely critical in story telling the path to changing the world with each new company. We continue to be inspired by the Salesforce Foundation and the impact it has on improving communities and peoples' quality of life.

For all the board members at the Entrepreneur's Foundation of Colorado, thank you very much and have a great Foundation day at Dreamforce '07.

On Friday Mike Platt (a founding partner of Cooley in Colorado and a Founding Trustees of EF Colorado) and I gave a lunch presentation about the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado to the staff at Silicon Valley Bank’s Colorado office. SVB and Cooley are in the same building so a handful of Cooley partners joined in.

Scott Bergquist – the Division Manager of this region for SVB – coordinated the meeting. His comments summarized things nicely.

“Gentlemen – thank you both very much for spending the time with the group. With lots of young folks in the audience, I believe the message resonated well beyond the specifics of EFCO – e.g. philanthropy feels good and dollars amounts don’t matter, so get started. Thanks for broadening the thinking of our team and we will evangelize the program at every opportunity.”

Scott – thanks to you and everyone at SVB Colorado for your support of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. And thanks for making sure I had a special veggie potato for lunch.

Good article by Mike Cote in Coloradobiz on EFCo titled Startups put stock in Colorado.

The Entrepreneurs Foundation has started an Environment Campaign to make simple changes within your company to become more green, as well as encourage employees to be more green both at work and at home. There are easy things we can do to help preserve our planet and mitigate the damage our footprint has on the world.

Follow these three easy steps:

1. Go to EF’s website to find a comprehensive list with easy tips and resources on how to address three of our most relevant environmental issues: CO2 emissions, air pollution, and global warming; preservation of our open space and coastal regions; waste reduction

2. Distribute fliers to employees and hang posters around your office to raise awareness amongst your employees. EF will provide you with the needed materials in the next few weeks (sponsored by EF member company, LoopNet).

3. Contact your EF representative, Joni Podolsky or Jeff Rangel, to help you in your efforts to become a greener company.

You’ll receive more information in the coming weeks. In the meantime, follow step number 1 and check out the EF website to learn how simple actions by your company and employees can help make our planet more green.

The Entrepreneurs Foundation is a set of affiliated organizations throughout the US and Israel. The Colorado Entrepreneurs Foundation is the newest affiliate and we are off to a great start.

The performance and accomplishments of all of the affiliates are impressive. Highlights from 2006 include:\

• 80 new companies created their corporate foundation through EF; taking the total number of companies to over 450 companies engaged worldwide.
• Over $3,700,000 in direct community benefit was generated by EF member companies. This includes cash contributions from companies and employees, in-kind contributions of services, products and volunteer hours.
• EF’s annual member program for public companies and firms expanded to 34 companies.
• Over 80 additional new venture capitalists agreed to support EF; expanding EF’s VC network to 250+ people.
• 17 EF companies had liquidity events.
• EF was awarded the American Red Cross of Humanitarian Award for the EF network contributions to support relief efforts of the 2005 Hurricanes.
• Yadin Kaufmann, Tmura’s Founder and Chairman, and Founding Partner at Veritas Venture Partners, received the Israel Hi Tech Award for 2006 from the Israel Venture Association, in recognition of his contribution to the community via Tmura (EF Israel).
• EF launched two additional affiliates in Sacramento, CA and Boulder, CO
• EF affiliates influences 11,000 employees leasing to 13,680 volunteer hours back into the community.

BOULDER, Colo., March 28 /PRNewswire/ -- TechStars, the entrepreneurial program that will jump-start 10 new companies in Boulder this summer, has pledged to donate 1% of its overall equity to the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado (EFCO).

With the deadline for applications approaching on March 31, the entrepreneur teams will be selected from the best ideas submitted by nearly 300 new company founders, all vying for up to $15,000 in seed capital, access to national industry experts, and the chance to pitch their ideas to investors in August.

The for-profit TechStars takes a 5% equity stake in each of the 10 start-up companies, and will donate 1% of those shares to the non-profit EFCO.

"We're vested in the success of these companies," said David Cohen, TechStars executive director. "TechStars' and EFCO's mutual goals are to instill the value of giving back, and to engage companies early on to become part of Colorado's entrepreneurial ecosystem."

"Profits and philanthropy should work hand in hand, and be part of every business model," said Brad Feld, Foundry Group managing director and one of the founding trustees of EFCO. "Our investment approach with TechStars reflects this ethic."

TechStars was founded by several of the region's most prominent entrepreneurs: David Cohen, David Brown, Brad Feld and Jared Polis. The winning applicants will have access to everything from office space to technical, operational, financial, marketing, sales and legal advice from the best entrepreneurial minds in the country.

Sponsors and supporters include CTEK Angels, Cooley Godward Kronish, ViaWest, Metzger Associates, the University of Colorado and Denver University.

For more information, visit http://www.techstars.org and http://www.efcolorado.org

Tim Wolters, founder / CTO of Collective Intellect (one of founding member companies of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado) has a post up on his Beyond Dante website describing why he’s excited about the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado.

Larry Orr – a General Partner at Trinity Ventures and an Enterpreneurs Foundation board member – discusses his views on the value of the Entrepreneurs Foundation.

Techrockies (a web site for high technology news and information for the Rocky Mountain Region) has an interview up with Brad Feld regarding the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. It’s a good overview on the goals of the program.