Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2010

One of things I’ve loved the most about doing now 11 weeks of This Week in VC is a chance to have an hour-long recorded conversation with investors. And in my interviews with many VCs I feel that people can watch these and get to know the VC’s as human beings a bit better. So how did Mike get into VC?

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Venture Capital Blogging Startup Fandango 230

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2010

I recently wrote a piece for Mashable on how to create a company blog. Since it’s already written (and since I promised not to republish on my blog other than a summary) if you’re interested please have a read over there. Summary notes and then I’ll extend: Should you blog? What should you blog about?

Blogging 286

Blogging Startup Writing Summary 286

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2010

I’m often asked by people, “how do I get into VC?&# Well, I know 3-4 VC jobs that are publicly available. If you worked for firms like McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Goldman Sachs, Google and the like you’re probably more likely to rise to the top of the stack. Often these jobs aren’t even publicized.&#.

Venture Capital 290

Venture Capital Technical Review GRP Partners Email 290

InfoChachkie

MAY 22, 2012

The steps outlined below represent an ideal approach to raising capital from sophisticated investors. You might be at Step 2 with one VC and Step 3 with another. VCs collude all the time, it is only fair that entrepreneurs compare notes every now and again as well.”. Subscribe to their blog. The keyword here is authentic.

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Venture Capital Capital Research Customer 236

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2011

Venture capitalists, or VCs, are the folks with millions upon millions of dollars to invest in companies such as theirs. This includes the folks that funded Google and Yahoo and Netflix and Ebay, and many of the great recent companies which were able to start and grow to massive scale in just a short period of time.

Venture Capital 93

Venture Capital Capital Invest Entrepreneur 93

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

When I was new at Venture Capital I was trying to figure out the business. As a VC you want to feel like you have “proprietary sources” of deal flow. I tapped my friends at big tech companies (Salesforce, Google, Oracle). It was a fun period for me because everything was new and I was curious. What stage?

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Venture Capital Startup Pricing Invest 347

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I was reading Chris Dixon’s blog tonight. I came across this blog post about getting a computer science degree as the best degree for getting into venture capital or working at a VC-backed start up. I just completed an exercise where I went out to hire a new associate for my VC firm, GRP Partners.

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Startup Venture Capital Study Course 337

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

This was really a fun week at TWiVC because we decided to have an entrepreneur come and talk about raising capital rather than having a VC come on. In particular I tried to do most of the “entrepreneur advice on VC” up front so that if you don’t want to watch our views on the deals you don’t have to. They sponsor TWiVC.

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Venture Capital Startup Design S3 214

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Kathy Sierra at Business of Software 2009 - Business of Software Blog , May 4, 2010 "In the old days, getting customers was easy. 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. You could just outspend. Tesla is not. Stay Tuned.

Startup 248

Startup Venture Capital Conference Social Media 248

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 12, 2010

In the VC & Private Equity world there’s a small number, too, with one of the most respected being PEHub. I always wanted to have Dan on This Week in VC with Dan Primack ( to see video click link ) because he’s blunt, honest, opinionated and well informed. Question: Some people are saying traditional VC is dead.

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Venture Capital Slides Seed Funding Google 232

Xconomy

FEBRUARY 25, 2019

Section 32, the venture capital fund based in San Diego’s Cardiff-by-the-Sea community, has raised nearly $200 million for its second fund. A document filed with securities regulators Friday shed light on comments made the previous week to Xconomy by Section 32 founder Bill Maris, who started the firm in 2017. Maris on Feb.

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Venture Capital Funding Capital San Diego 85

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

But VC is like congress. “I don’t know the exact math, but I hear it again and again: the top 2% of firms generate 98% of the returns in venture capital.” As you can see from the chart their data suggests there are about $25 billion of VC distributions per year in the US. Their data looks at tech VCs.

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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

I must have pitched 40-50 VCs over the years. As I talked about on many occasions when I was an entrepreneur – and blogged publicly about - I learned a lot about my business and myself in these meetings. I realized it was part of the process because it’s such a high-volume activity being a VC. Possibly more.

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Venture Capital Blogging Conference Google 292

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

She hasn’t raised any venture capital. It represents the great majority of entrepreneurship and eschews the fairytale rags-to-VC-riches stories we so often read about in the press. So Tracy began keeping a blog about … (what else?) She did her first tech startup after the age of 30. That may soon change.

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Startup Entrepreneur SEO Venture Capital 363

Xconomy

AUGUST 30, 2018

Mountain View, CA-based Diffbot gleans unstructured data scattered across websites, ads, blog posts, videos, and other public online assets to create a knowledge repository that can be mined by companies for their specific purposes.

Web 75

Web Google Blogging Resource 75

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2012

But honestly there are times when being a VC can feel like that, too. And speaking of coaching, if you haven’t read Googled by Ken Auletta you should. And in it he profiles the work of Coach Campbell who was once on the boards of both Google & Apple. VENTURE CAPITAL. It’s a great read.

Startup 363

Startup Venture Capital Coach Press 363

Xconomy

AUGUST 11, 2017

The Palo Alto, CA-based program, a spinoff of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, has been a gateway into the venture capital industry for women and other under-represented groups for nearly two decades.

Mentor 76

Mentor Venture Capital Screening Education 76

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

In fact 61% of all mobile searches where a customer contacts a business it is via a phone call (source: Google). It’s why the first company I ever invested in as a VC – Invoca – just announced a $20 million funding by Accel Partners. Google knows it. The quote comes from Google. THE FULL STORY.

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Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

Xconomy

JUNE 23, 2016

Google Fiber plans to acquire Webpass in a deal that trims the ranks of independent Internet service providers—an industry already maligned for its lack of competition—but ultimately could boost consumer access to high-speed Internet. Six-year-old Google Fiber has had its own set of challenges.

Google 45

Google San Diego Resource Blogging 45

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2009

Handling PR with VCs. This is part of my series on How to Raise VC but could equally be filed under Startup Advice more generally. Just notice how many VC emails you get after your TechCrunch article or after you were on stage at TC50. In your VC pitch your PR page should take no longer than 30 seconds – Wait.

Venture Capital 291

Venture Capital Press News Startup 291

Xconomy

APRIL 23, 2019

We’ll tackle big trends, challenges, and opportunities in areas like venture capital, software, genomics, digital medicine, education, and diversity. We’ll tackle big trends, challenges, and opportunities in areas like venture capital, software, genomics, digital medicine, education, and diversity.

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Venture Capital Google Conference Education 90

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Put simply – if you invested early in Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Plus, many VC rounds traditionally didn’t guarantee angels prorata rights unless they were “major investors” which often means they wrote large checks in the angel round. ” Some do, some don’t.

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Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

What I *SHOULD HAVE* considered was that I was in college in a time when there were no digital cameras and I’m very thankful for that or I likely wouldn’t be writing this blog post today. My job as a VC isn’t to beat myself up or any other partner up for the one deal we didn’t do. That’s a benefit for us as a local VC.

Snapchat 214

Snapchat Invest Technical Review Dollar Shave Club 214

Xconomy

NOVEMBER 5, 2019

The small venture capital firm was started in San Diego about two years ago by Bill Maris , who, during his time at Google, founded and led its corporate venture capital arm, now part of parent company Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL ).

Southern California 59

Southern California San Diego Venture Capital Google 59

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

Would Google have become today’s juggernaut without Yahoo! What if Google had paid attention to Dodgeball – would there be no FourSquare today? That was back when VCs weren’t so quick to respond to emails. I was thinking about all of this as I looked at the logs from my WordPress blog this evening.

Startup 391

Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

Xconomy

APRIL 4, 2018

The advent of big fundraising rounds for startup chip innovators—a class shunned by most venture capital firms only a few years ago—seems to mark a turnaround in recent VC attitudes about semiconductor investments.

Artificial Inteligence 69

Artificial Inteligence Venture Capital Class Capital 69

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

Fred Wilson wrote a blog post yesterday called “Real Names” in which he talked about a commenter on his blog who preferred not to comment because he didn’t want to use his real name. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, Quora, Tumblr. It’s a powerful concept. Of course they can be duped.

Social Network 329

Social Network Startup Blogging Venture Capital 329

Xconomy

SEPTEMBER 18, 2018

Top venture capital firms continue to pour money into software robotics companies that promise to automate monotonous business operations, like processing mortgage applications, that are often performed by humans. Read more » Reprints | Share: UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS.

Venture Capital 67

Venture Capital Google Equity Capital 67

socalTECH

JULY 28, 2010

The 3 methods are so dead simple and obvious that this blog post will likely come across as pointless to anyone in the internet space. That being said, I'm still amazed at how often I have this conversation with folks  both with semi-season internet players, VC's, and newbies. READ MORE>>.

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Organic Search Startup Web Venture Capital 193

InfoChachkie

AUGUST 20, 2010

I recently read a book I'd highly recommend to every reader of this blog called "Yes, 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive” by Robert B. If you are not already a subscriber of Mark’s Both Sides of the Table blog , you need to be. There is a reason Both Sides of the Table is one of the most well-read startup blogs.

Southern California 113

Southern California GRP Partners Blogging SoCal 113

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 9, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series, “ Pitching a VC.&#. I recently wrote a blog post here in which I argued that the best VC meetings are discussions and not sales pitches. A few weeks ago I sat through two very contrasting presentations and wrote this blog post right afterward. Both presenters are anonymized.

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Venture Capital Startup Advertising Yahoo 288

Xconomy

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

Section 32, a venture capital firm headquartered near San Diego that launched in 2017 with a $151 million fund, has had a big month. In an interview with Xconomy last year , the former Googler said his firm planned to focus most of its attention on investments at the juncture of life sciences and information technology.

San Diego 78

San Diego Funding Venture Capital Google 78

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2011

This thinking is largely driven by the venture capital industry (and subsequently Wall Street) who are in search of high margin, highly scalable businesses. It’s nearly impossible to get a services company financed by VCs. Why Shouldn’t Most Services Businesses Raise VC? Even tech blogs know this.

Services 332

Services Venture Capital IP Startup 332

Xconomy

MAY 16, 2018

After establishing a partnership with the Google Cloud Platform, Zesty.io CEO Gerry Widmer said Wednesday the San Diego-based company is expanding its workforce and extending its Web content management system (WCMS) to international customers. founder Randy Apuzzo at the end of 2017.

Google 49

Google San Diego SaaS Capital 49

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2012

In his blog he says, “I responded that I thought it was stupid. The birthplace of sponsored search (Overture), semantic search (Applied Semantics which became Google AdSense), comparison shopping (ShopZilla, PriceGrabber) and many others. ZestCash, founded by Douglas Merrill, former CIO of Google [Hollywood].

Startup 304

Startup Venture Capital Los Angeles Woodland Hills 304

socalTECH

APRIL 4, 2012

The round was led by Rincon Ventures, and also included. SoftTech, Google Ventures, Matt Coffin, CrossLink, and Morado. Pervical--who was previously at MySpace--is also known for founding LA technology blog Lalawag. in a seed funding round. WittleeBee is one of a number of firms recently launched out of Science, Inc.,

Seed Funding 187

Seed Funding Incubator Blogging Google 187

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 27, 2011

By definition, you read blogs. But should you actually write one if you’re a startup, an industry figure (lawyer, banker) or VC? People often ask me why I started blogging. GRP Partners last fund is the single best performing VC fund in the US (prequin data) for its vintage year). Absofuckinglutely. accessibility.

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Blogging Startup Writing Venture Capital 373