RIP Josh Baer

I found out this morning that Josh Baer died last night. He was on a small plane heading back to Austin from Cabo. It had mechanical trouble and went down near Laredo, on a highway, a couple of miles short of the runway. Five other people on board survived. Josh did not. He was 50. I’ve been sad all morning. One way I deal with being sad is to hide in my computer, which is mostly what I’ve been doing today. Many people in the startup world knew Josh as the founder and CEO of Capital Factory, the center of gravity for entrepreneurship in Austin and, really, all of Texas. The local press is calling him the godfather of Austin’s startup scene. He earned this reputation, one founder at a time, for more than two decades. Some time in 2007, before Capital Factory was Capital Factory, Josh came to Boulder for a day, we sat down for a couple of hours, and I told him everything we were doing with this new thing called Techstars. When Techstars later opened an accelerator in Austin, it ran out…