The co-founder of Foundry Group and Techstars shares insights from his new book ‘Give First’ about how his philosophy of enlightened self-interest eventually leads to wild returns.

In 2012, when I was writing Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City, the concept of Give First wove its way into many ideas in the book. At the time, I referred to it as “Give Before You Get,” which I described as:

One of my deeply held beliefs to the secret of success in life is to give before you get. In this approach, I am always willing to try to be helpful to anyone, without having a clear expectation of what is in it for me. If, over time, the relationship is one way (e.g., I’m giving, but getting nothing), I’ll often back off on my level of give because this belief doesn’t underlie a fundamentally altruistic approach. However, by investing time and energy up front without a specifically defined outcome, I have found that, over time, the rewards that come back to me exceed my wildest expectations.

A few decades ago, a group of founders worked hard to incorporate this Give Before You Get philosophy into the Boulder startup community. You rarely hear the words, “What’s in it for me?” around Boulder; instead, it’s, “How can I be helpful?” While we were figuring it out as we went along, by the time Startup Communities came out, Give Before You Get was a foundational behavioral characteristic of the startup community in Boulder.

Techstars started in Boulder in 2006 and was one of the organizations amplifying the concept. From the beginning, Techstars incorporated mentors and mentorship deeply into the program, and we referred to Techstars as a “mentor-driven accelerator.”

We defined a vital attribute of a Techstars mentor as someone willing to contribute time and energy to a mentee without expecting anything specific in return. David Cohen talks about this idea constantly and leads by example, not just with Techstars companies but also with many other companies where he’s not an investor. Programs like Techstars Startup Weekend help founders at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey get involved in startups and their startup community. If you ask Techstars mentors why they participate, many say, “Someone once helped me when I was a young founder; I want to give back.”

But giving back is not enough. In 2011, Will Herman, a close friend (we made our first angel investment together back in 1994) and mentor at Techstars from the beginning, had a long discussion with Katie Rae, then the managing director of Techstars Boston. Katie asked Will why he mentored. Will doesn’t remember his response, but Katie said, “Oh, you want to give back.” Will said, “No, that’s not right. To give back, you had to receive first.” He then explained that he had never had an entrepreneurial mentor and wanted to make the path easier for others. Will’s explanation was one of the earliest distinctions I remember between “giving back” and “giving first.”

In 2013, after I published Startup Communities, Adam Grant published Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success. I didn’t know Adam then, but I connected to him through a friend and talked to him about my Give Before You Get idea. It was a delightful moment of simpatico for me as Adam got it and had done extensive research validating the concept before I even knew it was an idea.

One day in 2014, I noticed that my friends at Techstars had started tagging things on Twitter that were examples of Give Before You Get with #GiveFirst. Gregg Cochran, the Techstars Director of Implementation, spoke about the idea at a Techstars NYC mentor event, where several mentors started tweeting #GiveFirst. Gregg told David about it, who said, “Let’s put it everywhere!”

So they did. And “Give First” was born.

Brad Feld is a partner and co-founder of Foundry. He has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur for over 35 years, since founding his first company, Feld Technologies, in college. Brad is also a co-founder of Techstars and, with his wife Amy Batchelor, runs the Anchor Point Foundation.

Brad has written several books on entrepreneurship and venture capital and started blogging in 2004 before VC Twitter existed. He holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.