Brad Feld, describing his first interactions with two guys in the incubator TechStars as an example of passion in a start-up founder:

At that moment, Sphero was born. And I knew that if Adam and Ian could make any progress over the next 10 weeks creating a robotic ball controlled by a smartphone, I wanted to invest in these two amazing guys. Their passion and obsession around the idea of a robotic ball you control with a smartphone was awesome.

For one, it is articles like this that give me a lift when I am feeling down.  Second, it is articles like this that, if I was raising a round of funding, keeps Brad Feld at the top of my list (along with Fred Wilson). It feels like the start-up world is too cynical, most of the time. We are working on some unknown future and yet, when looking at the still-forming business, all we analyze is the guessed-at numbers and market opportunities.

I’ve spent my entire career so far trying to change the way we work with numbers. After all, our world is very different today — with always connected computers in our pockets — than how it was in 1979. And let’s face it, there have been far more tough days then good ones in the past 15 years. Sometimes it feels like all I have is passion.