SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 4, 2009

Last month we Launched Los Angeles Tech and in the announcement we provide the Hot List for the first half of January 2009. This hot list is based on various social signals of what people are writing about, reading, bookmarking, searching, etc. Top for January 16, 2009 - January 31, 2009 Posts Are You Selling Online Yet?

Layoffs 159

Layoffs Woodland Hills Southern California Orange County 159

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

I would argue that the shut-down of September 2009 was equally severe yet there are signs that this “VC Ice Age” has begun to thaw. But any entrepreneurs raising capital should keep in mind that this opening of the markets could possibly be temporary. Why did the VC markets freeze so quickly? Short answer – yes.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

No VC will be so naive as not to see straight through it. When I first became a VC, seed rounds were typically $500k – $1.5 There weren’t a lot of seed funds in 2007 so this was often done by angels, funding consortia or sometimes early-stage funds that existed then (First Round Capital, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, etc.).

Seed Funding 399

Seed Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 399

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2012

I had this ethical dilemma pop up on one of the first deals I even did as a VC. ” I was learning which VCs I wanted to work with, what stage & check size I wanted to commit do and what teams would be a good fit for me. .” The call from a fellow VC to “look harder” made me decide to request a site visit.

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Writing 356

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

VC's love to talk about their successes. Yet most VC's bury their failures under six feet of denial. In the startup world, the former happens when a VC makes a bad investment, and the latter occurs when they miss a great opportunity. As noted in What Does VC Traction Really Mean? , What’s The Worst Mistake? > -jeff.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

But VC is like congress. In the original version of his post, Andy writes. “This essay is dedicated to the great VC’s on my board who I am lucky to work with: Sameer Gandhi from Accel, Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed, and Kirsten Green from Forerunner. . Their data looks at tech VCs. Because they know him or her.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

In a world where the economy only heads in one direction (read: 2009-2014) most investors & entrepreneurs forget to pay attention to gross burn. ” Stay lean and only raise a big round if you DO find product / market fit and which point you want to loosen the belt quickly and raise the capital to do so. .”

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

This is where VC comes in and why it’s needed in the industry no matter how much populist sentiment exists against the VC industry. In the latter cases many companies (Flickr, Delicious, Blogger, Writely in 05-08 and lately Invite Media, Aardvark, Dodgeball, etc.) got picked up early without raising a lot of VC.

Invest 284

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

And that was evident on today’s Angel vs. VC panel. There are real changes in the venture capital industry and it would have been fun to talk about them. The VC industry is segmenting – I have spoken about this many times before. So in the past we needed VC to really get a startup going.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

VC funding. We love capital efficiency until we love land grabs until we abhor over funding until we get huge payouts and ring the bell for more funding until we attract every non-VC on the planet to invest in startups until it crashes and we start the cycle all over again none the wiser. why do I write p.s.’s sometimes?

Funding 150

Funding Venture Capital Startup Marketing 150

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. We haven’t hit that wall yet for three reasons: 1) not enough elapsed time, 2) the VC market is frenzied now, too and 3) we haven’t seen a market downturn since the volume picked up.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

This is a post I’ve been dying to write for 18 months. OK, that sounds like an interesting business, but nothing to write a freakin’ blog post about? Gogii came in my office in 2009 with three of the most talented founders I had seen. Mostly, I love writing. But the product is called textPlus, not textFree.

Gogii 310

Gogii Invest Blogging Startup 310

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 10, 2009

If you search for her (as of July 10, 2009 at 5:45pm) you will get no result and the text, “did you mean Amanda Choong?&#. Third is Bryan Hale, a former colleague from Salesforce.com and former VC from DFJ. And write a short bio about yourself. Be patient – it will appear. First is Amanda Coolong of TechZulu.

Tips 216

Tips Social Media Social Network Santa Monica 216

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

But they weren’t there in 2009 when you were up late nights shitting yourself whether you really were smart for pursuing this idea. That was back when VCs weren’t so quick to respond to emails. I hope to offer experiences from being an entrepreneur and being a VC.&#. I started by writing 3-4 times / week.

Startup 391

Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

It’s why the first company I ever invested in as a VC – Invoca – just announced a $20 million funding by Accel Partners. Only naive people believe that but for inexperienced entrepreneurs you can be fooled into the narrative by the press who sometimes write stories without the actual data. PHONE CALLS.

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

This is where VC comes in and why it’s needed in the industry no matter how much populist sentiment exists agains the industry. In the latter case many companies (Flickr, Delicious, Blogger, Writely, etc.) got picked up early without raising a lot of VC. Do you have solid VC relationships?

Invest 152

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 152

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series Pitching a VC. Quick caveats: having fewer investors (3-5) is better than many investors (10-15) and PLEASE make sure you hire a great lawyer who has experience in doing start-ups to avoid pitfalls that will make VC harder down the line. They might be as hard as raising VC.

Angel 291

Angel Funding Venture Capital Startup 291

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

Having street smarts with no inspirational ability to build teams can yield a great small business but will be difficult to scale into a large VC-backed business. So we as VCs search for entrepreneurs/founders who have the whole package or as much of it as possible. In the book they profile how VC worked in the early days (60s / 70s).

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital CTO Hire 293

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

Photo by Scott Clark for Upfront Ventures (no, Evan is not standing on a box) Last year marked the 25th anniversary for Upfront Ventures and what a year it was. 2021 saw phenomenal returns for our industry and it topped off more than a decade of unprecedented VC growth.

Startup 408

Startup Venture Capital Writing Invest 408

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2010

We held a 90-minute demo session where 150 of LA’s VC’s and senior technology executives watched the LPLA V2 group present in small groups of 12-15 each. The VC’s & executives were then asked to make “commitments&# (in writing) to 3-5 of the companies that they felt they could make some sort of contribution to.

Company 276

Company Companies Startup Southern California 276

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write this post since September of last year when Brad Feld first wrote about the The Founders Visa Movement. I commented briefly on his blog and made a mental note to write a blog post. At the time he granted me permission to write about his story. Felipe grew up in Brazil. Crazy, huh?

Technical Review 282

Technical Review Startup High Tech Software Review 282

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

I spoke a lot about the need for “personal branding” which I plan to write about soon. So then when I wanted to go into venture capital, they said, “You can’t do that, you need to be in EIR.” So when I got into venture capital, I thought, “Well, what can I do that’s different?”

Startup 337

Startup Entrepreneur Ideas Venture Capital 337

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

We had a special edition of This Week in Venture Capital this week shooting out of the Next New Networks offices in New York. Our guest was Mo Koyfman of Spark Capital. Topics we discussed in the first 45 minutes of the video include: What is VC like in NY? We discussed NY vs. Silicon Valley and NY vs. Boston. Pandora.

Venture Capital 217

Venture Capital Capital Metrics Competition 217

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. I’d link to it but it’s behind a paywall.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Startup Advertising Redpoint 285

socalTECH

JULY 13, 2009

So we think we're the right size for the market in 2009. What's your thoughts on the local venture market? We have a regional focus here, and the market is underserved in venture capital, yet it's the second largest metropolis and DMA in the country. We'll even write a half a million check. That as unhealthy.

GRP Partners 157

GRP Partners Southern California Santa Barbara Rustic Canyon 157

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 10, 2010

Want to take a year pursuing your dream to write a screenplay, travel through Asia, run a triathlon or start your own fashion line? Next post: two “4-Hour Workweek&# like hacks I started in 2009 to try and take back control of my life that are saving me hours. If not now, then when?

Startup 295

Startup Email Technical Review Course 295

SoCal CTO

MARCH 22, 2007

I am in the middle of writing up some of my thoughts on this and will post about it and let you know. Mobile Internet Apple Facebook ► 2009 (32) ► December (3) Startup Software Developers Startup Software Development – Do Your Homework Be. And, I dont like to copy and paste.

Blogging 150

Blogging CTO Coach CTO Hire Southern California 150

socalTECH

JULY 20, 2011

We thought it was a real opportunity to bring in some taste-maker editors, who could write specifically for that audience, and break news. So, I tried to figure out what I could do with my skill set, in engineering, investment banking, and operations, and figured out I could do venture capital. Why the new funding round now?

News 173

News Entertainment Startup Bertelsmann 173

Frank Addante

MAY 20, 2007

► 2009 (3) ► May (1) A Tour of the Rubicon Project Headquarters ► April (1) "Pay it Forward" Event for Students & Aspiring Ent. ► August (3) Venture Capital - What's the rush? ► October (1) New Video! . I'm 30, now will you take me seriously? Zondigo, Inc.

Entrepreneur 40

Entrepreneur Blogging Startup Venture Capital 40

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2017

It’s why I try to write about and be available to people who suffer from depression. It’s why I try to be open about how stressful being a founder really was and how stressful being a VC is even for an obviously “privileged class” and how physically unhealthy being a founder was to me.

Carson 286

Carson Email Writing Startup 286

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

.” I applaud all efforts by people to take on this issue and especially be Adeo who – let’s be honest – was really the first champion of trying to make the VC world more transparent by launching TheFunded, which didn’t exactly endear him to VCs initially. They’ll get priced soon enough by a VC.”

Startup 354

Startup Pricing Equity Venture Capital 354

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

What is the True Sentiment of VCs? I recently survey more than 150 VC friends from all stages and geographies what they thought about the market by asking “Which of the following statements best describes your mood heading into 2016?” But not a VC or Bill Gurley or myself would have spooked it 2 years ago.

Startup 150

Startup Company Companies Venture Capital 150

Frank Addante

JANUARY 23, 2007

► 2009 (3) ► May (1) A Tour of the Rubicon Project Headquarters ► April (1) "Pay it Forward" Event for Students & Aspiring Ent. ► August (3) Venture Capital - What's the rush? There are a lot of people out there who can "write code", but very few good engineers. Zondigo, Inc.

Outsource Development 40

Outsource Development Develop Development Product 40

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

Pricing models, the freemium myth and why you may not be charging enough for your product - Seth Levine's VC Adventure , August 12, 2010 I’ve been pulled into a number of product and pricing meetings recently (for reasons unknown I’ve become the Foundry pricing and productization guy). Dec 26, 2009). clearly didn’t cause this.”

Startup 191

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Hire 191

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

I was saying that I was happy it was all out in the open because I felt at least everybody could now understand the issues & opportunities from the perspectives of angels, entrepreneurs and VCs. Let’s be clear: AngelList doesn’t scare a single VC I know. But it’s not cutting VCs out. It is additive.

Startup 292

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Summary 292

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. But I didn’t write it for you; I wrote it for myself. How to Take Down Facebook -- Hint: It Ain't Twitter. but: Something is Still Missing.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2009

So with the metoric rise of Twitter now forecast at 45 million as of August 3rd, 2009 (and rising fast), has Twitter Killed the Blogger Star? Bill Gurley , a well known VC from Benchmark Capital, seemed to have a 2-year hiatus from blogging and has now picked up the pace. Now we could all sleep more. Or could we? So what gives?

Blogging 219

Blogging Venture Capital Startup Social Media 219