Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

I spent my days meeting companies, figuring out what areas of the market interested me and trying to get a sense for how VCs thought about fair valuations. I started showing my partners more deals that I found interesting and doing loads of analysis on the future of markets I thought were ripe for disruption. The market had tanked.

Marketing 305

Marketing Venture Capital Funding Technical Review 305

socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2016

The funding came from PeakSpan Capital, along with SK Ventures and SAP SE. MindTouch, which was founded by Steve Bjorg and Aaron Fulkerson back in 2005, said the funding will go to increase its integration with software such as Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle, and grow its marketing, business development, sales, and engineering teams.

Custom 100

Custom Customer Software Services 100

socalTECH

JULY 18, 2013

Thanks to that activity, a new, venture investor has moved into town, Core Innovation Capital (www.corevc.com) , to specifically take advantage of those opportunities. However, although New York may be the financial capital of the world it is a little out in the weeds. Tell us about Core Capital and the types of investments you make?

Capital 183

Capital Startup Los Angeles Invest 183

socalTECH

DECEMBER 12, 2012

The round came from CEC Capital, Tsing Capital, and Presidio Ventures, along with prior investors Mission Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The company said the funds will go to bring its first products to market and to accelerate commercialization of its technology.

Technology 153

Technology Draper Mission Ventures Capital 153

socalTECH

APRIL 22, 2013

FastSpring , the fast growing Santa Barbara-based e-commerce payment services provider headed by Dan Engel, said today it has scored a funding round from Pylon Capital, a Los Angeles-based investment firm. The investment is the first, outside investment in the company since it was founded in 2005. READ MORE>>.

Funding 153

Funding Santa Barbara Commerce Acquisition 153

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

In my previous post, The VC Ice Age is Thawing (for now) I wrote about the reasons why the VC market came to a screeching halt in September 2008 and remained largely shut until at least April 2009. There are now signs the VC market has gathered pace meaning it’s a great time to be fund raising. This is one book-end of the cycle.

Venture Capital 255

Venture Capital Marketing Startup Social Network 255

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 14, 2010

If you want to raise venture capital more easily the advice could be quite practical and counter-intuitive. Many companies that are raising B or C venture capital rounds right now raised their initial money in 2005-2008. They often have “dead&# or “tired&# investors who have stranded capital. It is 2010.

Venture Capital 289

Venture Capital Capital Startup Pricing 289

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 30, 2021

I was reading an old article written by marketing guru Seth Godin a while back where he mentions that “it takes about six years of hard work to become an overnight success”. But add another five years, and Google had made it, going public in 2004 with a market capitalization of $23B. He later changed the name to Facebook.

Yahoo 127

Yahoo IBM IBM Startup 127

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

by Michael Woolf that is worth any startup founder reading to get a sense of perspective on the reality warp that is startup world during a frothy market such as 1997-1999, 2005-2007 or 2012-2014. There are many times when being overly capitalized before you’re ready is a negative. We want a strong balance sheet (um, ok.

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2015

Let me take you back just 10 years ago to 2005 in Silicon Valley where I returned after 11 years of living in Europe. I began asking around who the likely investors were for such a market. At the time almost nobody had heard of the following funds: FirstRound Capital, TrueVentures, Floodgate and SoftTech.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Startup Invest Cloud Computing 150

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 20, 2008

Irvine-based WebVisible announced today that it has acquired Pasadena-based Adapt Technologies, a developer of search engine marketing tools. WebVisible is a provider of local online advertising services, which helps small and midsize businesses place search engine marketing. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Technology 124

Technology Redpoint Pasadena Advertising 124

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 17, 2010

At VT KnowledgeWorks we screen prospective clients for their Market opportunity, for the Magic that they offer to their prospective customers, and for the Moxie displayed by the start-up team. Paul Graham built the mold at Y Combinator , which he founded back in 2005. Relationships , I said back then. And I stand by that assertion.

Incubator 80

Incubator Mentor Capital Startup 80

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

He left traditional media at the top of his game to be the founding CEO of Next New Networks, one of the first digital video startups, backed by Spark Capital and bought by YouTube in 2011. The obvious slight he made that went largely unnoticed was the lack of Latino representation and it’s a big freaking market gap that is set to explode.

Media 269

Media Content Course Technical Review 269

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 14, 2015

One of the points I tried to make is that as venture capital investors as an industry we seem to have a healthy disdain for public market investors. The truth is that the brutal reality of public markets is that they self correct much more quickly than our shitty little private equity illiquid corner of the universe.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Slides Capital Funding 150

socalTECH

DECEMBER 30, 2016

In 2016, our Santa Monica office more than doubled market share of early-stage companies. Rob Freelen is Silicon Valley Bank's Los Angeles Market Manager, where he leads a team of bankers working with a thriving team of early-stage technology companies. What's the biggest news from you or your‏ firm this year? He earned a B.A.

Santa Monica 124

Santa Monica Southern California Venture Capital SoCalTech 124

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

They have seen one side of a market where many of us have seen the ebb and flow multiple times. Still, market amnesia by ordinarily rational actors always surprises me. I believe a bubble occurs when a market is willing to pay greater than intrinsic value for an asset class. I spoke about a lot of things during the keynote.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2017

And while many of the people bringing you the great applications and infrastructure you now rely on are benevolent, there is of course an inbuilt incentive for these companies to use their scale advantages to continue to dominate the markets they’re in, making it harder for upstarts to compete. It’s Hobbesian economics 101.

Course 280

Course Startup Framework Marketing 280

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2019

I was reading an old article written by marketing guru Seth Godin a while back where he mentions that “it takes about six years of hard work to become an overnight success”. But add another five years, and Google had made it, going public in 2004 with a market capitalization of $23B. He later changed the name to Facebook.

Startup 111

Startup Yahoo IBM IBM 111

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

But knowing the right people and knowing a market only works well for angel investors in bullish tech markets in which IPO’s happen quickly (97-99) or where larger companies are actively scooping up little tiny companies at sub $50 million valuations to drive innovation (05-08, 10-?). Obviously I agree.

Invest 284

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 284

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 4, 2016

In 2005, Alan McCann created a graphic representation of the Method: Note that Allan changed the title of the risks from technology-execution-market-production to investment-marketing-execution-development. As for listed elements, a medical device startup might replace “marketing risk” with “FDA approvals risk.”.

Startup 120

Startup Examples Metrics Marketing 120

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

But knowing the right people and knowing a market only works well for angel investors in bullish tech markets in which IPO’s happen quickly (97-99) or where larger companies are actively scooping up little tiny companies at sub $50 million valuations to drive innovation (05-08, 10-?). Obviously I agree.

Invest 152

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 152

socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2009

Los Angeles-based United Sample, which operates online survey and sampling services for the market research industry, announced today that it has raised $3M in a Series B funding round. Tags: survey sample united online venture capital. The round was led by Greycroft Partners, and also included prior investor DFJ Frontier. READ MORE>>.

Sample 113

Sample Venture Capital Sales Research 113

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2012

This was 2005 when I had no exits under my belt, no blogs … nobody was looking. And over the past few years I had been egging him on from LA to get Cooley to take our market more seriously. I told him that our market was absolutely booming and was worthy of a commensurate investment. He was a mensch. Invest they have.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Startup Los Angeles GRP Partners 299

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

As I’ve highlighted I believe we’re in a unique period similar to 2005-08 where the biggest tech firms of Silicon Valley (and some media companies) are scooping up small software companies as “talent acquisitions&# versus accretive revenue / profit generators. Total disruption on the funding market? I doubt it.

Invest 283

Invest Angel Startup Marketing 283

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

"Authentic" is dead - A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , May 3, 2010 It's time to retire the following phrases. Draw Your Ideas - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 16, 2010 I saw Jack Dorsey give this talk at The 99% Conference last month. Enjoyed this post? Putting customers first. Tesla is not.

Startup 248

Startup Venture Capital Conference Social Media 248

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 22, 2010

This week I was preparing for my weekly This Week in Venture Capital web show and was researching some of the deals that were announced for the week. Aside from attacking yet another market segment all I could think about is, “Why enter the web conferencing market. Isn’t WebEx already dead man walking? billion).

Screening 266

Screening Screencast Web Yammer 266

socalTECH

JANUARY 19, 2009

Southern California's venture capital numbers for Q4 slipped, as did numbers nationally, according to numbers released over the weekend by Dow Jones VentureSource. According to the report, Southern California's venture capital totals slipped for the first time since 2003, down more than 18 percent annually, to $3.2 billion in deals.

Southern California 100

Southern California SoCal Orange County Venture Capital 100

socalTECH

APRIL 7, 2011

Todd is now Chief Operating Officer of Marmol Radziner (www.marmol-radziner.com), an architecture and construction company, which recently installed a eco-friendly mobile home park project in Santa Monica which was focused on applying clean and eco-friendly technologies to the pre-fab building market. It's been around for about 20 years.

Santa Monica 190

Santa Monica Venture Capital Anthem Design 190

socalTECH

APRIL 5, 2017

And, even more impressively, it's now seeing more than $100M in annual revenues--without ever having taken any institutional or venture capital. We spoke with CEO Bryan Cheung to learn more about LifeRay, and how it grew from a church basement and open source to $100M+ in revenues, without ever taking outside capital. What is LifeRay?

Diamond Bar 169

Diamond Bar Custom Customer Organization 169

socalTECH

JUNE 13, 2019

When I got to LA after I graduated from college in 2005, I pursued it full time, and we quickly grew that company to over $5M in revenues a year, without any kind of funding. I saw that, if you build a good product that customers love, that people love to use, how you need to market it, how you need to run that project, and so forth.

Startup 124

Startup Content Demand Netflix 124

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

It’s always fun chatting with Jason because he’s knowledgeable about the market, quick on topics and pushes me to talk more about VC / entrepreneur issues. Next Wednesday we’ll have Dana Settle of Greycroft Partners, a New York / LA early-stage venture capital fund. They also avoid Reg D. Rumored to be appox.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Startup Advertising Redpoint 285

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 17, 2012

Topics of discussion will be Saas, Cloud, Mobile, Gaming, Social Markets, what surprises are coming for 2013, creating value with your company, hiring problem solvers, and building sensible businesses. In 1991, Marks and a partner transformed ailing video game giant Activision into a $14B market cap video game industry leader.

Startup 110

Startup Activision Santa Monica SaaS 110

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

awards dinner on Thursday night I started reflected on what it would take to “change the trajectory&# for Seattle or for any regional market, really. Who’s going to help you with improving your marketing / positioning to become a clear platform category leader like Twilio? Who can get help get access to their capital?

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

socalTECH

DECEMBER 14, 2012

Atif Siddiqi: We've been operating in the college space since 2005. Plus, what made it interesting, is with the market we're serving, we're trying to focus on metropolitan areas with a high density of schools. First Round Capital just relocated there, and there is a lot of stuff happening on the university level.

Startup 219

Startup Design Demand USC 219

socalTECH

DECEMBER 21, 2017

For today's interview, we spoke with Richard Sussman , who is leading up investments for a new venture capital firm in town, NordicEye (www.nordiceye.com), which just saw a big exit in one of its very first investments, Los Angeles-based Weblife. We also want to see some market penetration. Richard Sussman: That's a great question.

Southern California 133

Southern California Startup Venture Capital Invest 133

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Lately I’ve been having to say things I thought I’d never have to remind people, like, “getting to positive gross margin in several territories is a very low bar to claim success” or “profitable excluding marketing costs” is not actually a real thing. Market Size. MakeSpace provides physical storage.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

socalTECH

APRIL 22, 2010

Last week, Irvine-based Teridian Semiconductor (www.teridiansemiconductor.com), a developer of semiconductors for the electric metering and electricity measurement market, was acquired by Maxim Semiconductor. Jerry Fitch: The business management team at Golden Gate Capital bought Teridian in 2005.

Equity 124

Equity San Diego Startup Activity 124