So true. I lived in Boulder for a year (last year), the hypocrisy is ridiculous. Save the earth, one range rover at a time. Let's raise taxes, because I can afford it and I don't work. Shop local, at our new SuperWholeFoods. Couldn't take it, moved back to Denver. I'm a yuppie too. I'm not poor. But I don't pretend to actually care about buying local. I'm going to buy from whomever has the best price/ quality/ value local or not. I love John Mackey and I love how he's a hardcore, atlas-shrugged-reading libertarian. Maybe all this new corporatism in Boulder will make it a bit less liberal, a bit more libertarian. Welcome Trader Joe's! Wish you would have setup shop down here in Denver.

John I agree with you about not being passionate about the "stickers". I'm also not passionate about t-shirts all that much. Which is okay, because this is akin to being passionate abou the "what". You also have a "how" and a "why" (the most important). Have you seen this TED talk? http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_le...

Basically what you're saying is you are passionate about the "why" of helping others, and helping yourself, build a great business. And I think stickers (your "what") do that too. So your product and your purpose are aligned, which is great.

I believe more entrepreneurs need to think about their why. It's the first step to realizing your passion and being able to communicate it. And if you understand your purpose, you're less likely to want to sell out in the first place.

Wow, great article! Thanks!!

I'm a huge fan of Whole Foods and especially John Mackey. It's awesome you got to meet him and ask a question, that's on my bucket list!

One thing I respect most about you Bill is the fact your role models and the companies you follow in the spirit of building greatness are all over the map. While you've mostly focused on tech companies yourself, your inspiration comes from every corner of the business world. This is something I think more tech CEOs and leaders need to learn, especially in the "startup" scene. Too many people are too focused on the latest greatest within their industry and don't look outside their industry to find the great ideas and great leaders to follow.

Going on these "growth" trips are a great way to cull this knowledge into your brain. Once again, you've picked trips from all walks of entrepreneurship, which is why you're so qualified to build great companies.

Let's keep evangelizing this throughout Colorado and get more of these tech-nerds to realize Warren Buffet and John Mackey are probably better role models than Mark Zuckerberg or Drew Houston!

Great post! We do the same thing when someone new registers on our site. They get a "welcome" email right away, and then the next day an automatic email from "rachel" who is their account rep, introducing herself and asking if there's anything she can help with.

But we dont' currently do the same thing for purchases -- I love the PosterBrain example, we'll have to implement something like this.

It's amazing the replies we get to that "rachel" e-mail though, just showing the human touch really differentiates yourself from the pack!

Would love to have a guest post from you sometime for our blog, this content is awesome!

Good luck Josh - we'll miss you back here in Colorado - excited for you and I'll take you up on that extra bedroom sometime!

Eric when you say "if it's happiness you are trying to buy"... I have to ask, what else do people try to buy besides happiness? I can't think of anything.

Reminds me of Gary Vaynerchuk's quote "legacy is greater than currency".

Bill, I love your viewpoint! So often you are the voice of reason in a room full of kool-aid drinkers.

These six entrepreneurs are smart for consulting with you. It's so valuable to surround yourself with people of differing viewpoints, different jobs, different social circles, different ages, etc. In the Boulder Bubble, you're one of the few people I know who truly thinks different and lives your life by your own rules, clearly thought through from the ground-up based around your own DNA and what actually makes *you* happy.

Buying into the American "dream" as an entrepreneur is BS. The "dream" was fabricated to motivate the 9-5'ers living in the burbs. Someone who busts their ass for years to build a business worth millions should really think about what's going to make *them* happy and really think about why a company would buy you in the first place. The only reason someone buys something is because they think they can make a profit long-term. That means they'd be paying a discount because they are taking the risk. If you're great at running your company and love to run it, why would the 3rd party buyer be able to make a higher return than you could yourself?

If you're a first time entrepreneur and want to diversify, you could always sell a minority stake for cash. I think the Wordpress guys did this, same with 37signals? That makes more sense to me than selling the whole pie.

Another interesting thing to look at is all the entrepreneurs that have "cashed out". What are they doing now? Almost zero of them are sitting on a beach sipping margaritas. Most entrepreneurs are not wired this way. Most of these guys are back at it, trying to create that creative platform they sold years ago. If you've got something great, why sell it and try to create it all over again? I agree- money is not the end-all be-all.

Regardless, it's awesome you were able to ask the right questions and influence half of the entrepreneurs into not selling. Your contributions to the community are so important and under-appreciated.

Chris - this is great. I lived in Denver for 8 years before moving to Boulder, and felt how you felt in Denver. Very isolated, not a lot of like-minded people doing startups, etc. Then I slowly started attending Boulder tech events, became good friends with a few people from the first class of TechStars, and eventually ended up moving to Boulder last year. It's been awesome ever sense. I've become a bigger part of the community and feel a part of something, even though we recently got rid of our office and started working from home! Boulder is a great place.

The only issue I have with Boulder, as a 26 year old, is the "age gap" - there's hardly any post-college young professionals here. Everyone is either still in college, or 30-something married with young kids. I suspect this is because Boulder is insanely expensive, and doesn't have a lot of employers that hire young people right out of college. This makes it very hard to meet "normal" friends outside the Tech/ TechStars bubble. And if you're a young tech founder with a significant other, she probably doesn't love Boulder because it will be hard for her to meet like-minded friends here (as compared to larger cities/ more "normal" cities). When you go out for drinks on the weekend, for example, it's kindof depressing to be the only person (or couple) aged 25-30 in the entire place. The tech scene is the one exception to this, but there's really only a handful of 20-something tech people in town, especially compared to larger cities like Denver, Seattle, Chicago, Austin, SF, Boston, etc. If we could solve this problem Boulder would be perfect!

Thanks for sharing. Great story.