Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2016

At the Upfront Summit in early February, we had a chance to have many off-the-record conversations with Limited Partners (LPs) who fund Venture Capital (VC) funds about their views of the market. LPs Still Believe Strongly in Venture Capital as a Diverse Source of Returns.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Capital Marketing Seed Funding 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

If you truly believe that you, your company and your products are exceptional and your company will be valuable then you’re actually doing them a FAVOR by helping them invest in your startup. If you don’t believe in your bones that you’re amazing then it’s no wonder you don’t want to sell them on making the investment.”

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 21, 2009

On the third Wednesday of every month I co-chair a meeting called the SoCal VCA (venture capital alliance), which represents participants from all of the top venture capital firms in Southern California as well as prominent members of the Tech Coast Angels (TCA). with only 19% saying they would decrease levels.

Venture Capital 241

Venture Capital Technical Review Southern California Company 241

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

Picking a VC is hard. So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. Most VCs are book smart. VCs should be more of a coach than proscriptively telling you what to do. You want a VC who will spar with you but then STFU and let you get on with things.

Venture Capital 364

Venture Capital Coach Writing SaaS 364

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

I was on This Week in Venture Capital (TWiVC) again this week with Jason Calacanis. You can watch this week’s TWiVC episode by clicking on the link and my summary notes are below. {if I won’t belabor this – I have an investment in this space ( ad.ly ) so I’m biased. In fact, it is Overture 2.0.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Capital Google Platform 271

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2009

I recently appeared on Fox Business News covering the topic of raising Venture Capital. If you’re in the market or thinking about VC in the future the following video may be of interest to you – click here to view. If you want to learn more about “Pitching a VC&# make sure to check out the entire series here.

Venture Capital 210

Venture Capital Startup Summary Social Network 210

SoCal Tech Calendar

JUNE 5, 2019

Tuesday, June 11, 2019 -- San Diego FundingPost VC and Angel Investor PitchFest + Pitch Workshop. At this San Diego Event, we will be showcasing some of the newest early-stage venture funds and angel groups in the San Diego area! All of the Investors will get your company description and contact info! We're doing it again!

San Diego 100

San Diego Venture Capital Angel Summary 100

SoCal Tech Calendar

JUNE 7, 2019

Thursday, June 13, 2019 -- Orange County FundingPost VC and Angel Investor PitchFest + Pitch Workshop. At this OC Event, we will be showcasing some of the newest early-stage venture funds and angel groups in the San Diego area! All of the Investors will get your company description and contact info! We're doing it again!

Orange County 100

Orange County Venture Capital Angel Tech Coast Angels 100

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 26, 2013

Your executive summary is essentially the cover letter to your business plan: its goal is to get the reader to check out your business plan and, hopefully, to set up a meeting. Here’s how to write an executive summary with impact: 1. Sure you can get help, but the exercise of creating your executive summary is an important one.

Summary 76

Summary Tips Startup Writing 76

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 12, 2010

I recently got an email from a friend who had been approached by a well known VC. I’m an investor at [Big Name, Large Fund VC] and recently came across [Your Company]. It's big, well known & we've invested in all of these really cool companies]. Why do VCs send generic outbound emails like this?

Venture Capital 294

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Email Equity 294

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2011

I recently filmed a show for This Week in Venture Capital in which I talked about how to prepare for a VC meeting: whom you’ll meet, who should attend from your side, what materials you should bring and how you should run the meeting. I wrote the summary notes in this blog post. I funded them 8 weeks later.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2010

It was especially fun for me because we got the chance to talk about the VC industry and how entrepreneurs should think about the VC industry in addition to discussing deals. Clearstone currently invests out of a $200 million fund based in LA with offices in Menlo Park and in India. Some summary notes are below.

Clearstone 236

Clearstone Venture Capital ReachLocal Google 236

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 23, 2012

This is one of the best episodes of This Week in VC for a long time. In case you don’t know, they are one of the biggest media companies in the world. And they invest n select VC funds. I asked Andrew how companies can best work with Condé Nast and he gave the answers in the episode. Watch: [link].

Media 285

Media Company Companies Venture Capital 285

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 1, 2016

Scott Kupor of A16Z responded with a comprehensive overview of valuation methodology in a post that while accurate feels more targeted at sophisticated Limited Partners (LPs) who invest in funds. VCs strangely never seem to weigh in on other VC funds. As an entrepreneur I never really knew what to make of VC return data.

Venture Capital 264

Venture Capital Invest Funding Competition 264

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

Executive Summary. I believe the rise in angel investing is here to stay and the professionalization of this class (aka “super angels&# or “micro VC&# ) is a good thing for the VC industry and for entrepreneurs. maybe the best definition of ‘investing’ is ‘gambling with the odds in your favor.’ ”.

Invest 306

Invest Angel Venture Capital Slides 306

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

I know all of this because every VC knows this because we’ve all either funded companies that have marketing technology or we’ve seen a pitch with a company that does this. If you haven’t read the other VC fund-raising posts I’ve done as part of this series you can find the whole outline and this first in the series here.]

Funding 239

Funding Venture Capital IP Email 239

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.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2010

I’m very pleased today to announce that I invested, on behalf of GRP Partners, in Burstly alongside Rincon Venture Partners , an early stage VC in Southern California whith whom we love to work (and were our co-investors on RingRevenue ). Naturally I’m excited about this investment or I wouldn’t have done it.

Mobile 282

Mobile Invest Company Companies 282

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

If you are looking for money, this question will certainly come up in one form or another when you approach professional or organized angel or VC investors. And great management can morph a company to adopt without destroying the culture of the company in the process. I would not, nor would most all of those I co-invest with.

Venture Capital 120

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Ideas Summary 120

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

If you are looking for money, this question will certainly come up in one form or another when you approach professional or organized angel or VC investors. And great management can morph a company to adopt without destroying the culture of the company in the process. I would not, nor would most all of those I co-invest with.

Venture Capital 120

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Ideas Summary 120

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. Other founders, “as a privately held company we don’t disclose our valuation.&# Me, “dude, I’m not a journalist. The VC assumes you’ll have an option pool.

Venture Capital 405

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

The first three skills I espoused were: access to the highest-quality deal-flow, domain knowledge of the topic area in which you’re investing and access to VCs to help fund the next stages of development. Markets like these are very kind to angel investors because you get taken out early and see a nice pop on your investment.

Invest 283

Invest Angel Startup Marketing 283

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2018

When you raise money from investors you produce information that you are told they want and care about: A fund-raising deck that articulates your company strategy, plans, team, market, competitors and so forth. These collective sets of documents form the basis of what somebody looking at investing would call “financial due diligence.”

Funding 336

Funding Venture Capital Startup Email 336

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

He and I once took different sides of an debate about whether “VC signaling&# in early-stage deals is a serious problem or not. He is the CEO of Hunch , company that I believe is solving a very big problem that I have been telling entrepreneurs needs to be solved for the past 2 years. West Coast”).

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

I took the opportunity this past week to publish summary notes of some of the VCs and entrepreneurs I had interviewed on This Week in VC. One of my goals in doing the show was not only to educate entrepreneurs but also to put a human face on many of the VCs in our industry as VCs can be hard to get to know.

Capital 265

Capital Venture Capital Veoh Startup 265

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 1, 2010

There has been much discussion about VCs doing seed funding in the past year. I’ve written about it myself (Is VC Seed Funding Dead?) and (Is There Really a Signaling Problem with VC Seed Funding?). Short summary of my posts: 1. There is a structural reason that VCs are investing at early stages, 2.

Seed Funding 298

Seed Funding Funding Venture Capital GRP Partners 298

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 10, 2012

And great management is able to morph a company to adopt without destroying the culture of the company in the process. What if you were the investor and someone walked into your office handing you a business plan executive summary that floored you with its brilliance?

Venture Capital 240

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Summary Incubator 240

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

They have totally changed the way you run a VC firm, investing heavily in systems & events for their founders that are pushing the boundaries of the way our industry works. It is clear that he is simply passionate about being a VC and participating in this industry. Investing Strategy. and Half.com.

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2022

Yet as I mentor entrepreneurs around the country, crowdfunding still seems to be one of the least understood approaches to startup funding, with more myths than accredited angels and professional venture capital investors combined. The crowd gets the satisfaction of helping, with minimal risk, and no expectation of any high return.

Funding 141

Funding Startup Outsource Development Satisfaction 141

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 5, 2023

I saw a good summary of the most effective ways to source prospective investors in a classic book, “ The Art of Startup Fundraising ,” by Alejandro Cremades, who has been there and done that, both as an entrepreneur and an investor. Industry leaders are a prime source of leads to companies and individuals that may invest.

Statistics 98

Statistics Entrepreneur Funding Social Media 98

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2014

Companies were getting funded more easily and many more companies were actually being created. Throughout all of these years I was a full-time VC so Launchpad really came out of evenings and weekends for me. Throughout all of these years I was a full-time VC so Launchpad really came out of evenings and weekends for me.

Venture Capital 290

Venture Capital Startup Idealab Funding 290

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

Or, as always, summary notes available below. My initial desire to blog came from something that’s always been my approach to investing – I’m a nerd and I love to play with the technology and part of my approach has really been to understand things both at a user level and at a reasonably deep tentacle level. Brad on blogging.

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 22, 2020

I saw a good summary of the most effective ways to source prospective investors in a classic book, “ The Art of Startup Fundraising ,” by Alejandro Cremades, who has been there and done that, both as an entrepreneur and an investor. Industry leaders are a prime source of leads to companies and individuals that may invest.

Funding 173

Funding Tips Startup Statistics 173

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series, “ Pitching a VC.&# Getting a meeting with a prominent angel or VC is difficult enough. Some advice on how to do that was covered in this link – Getting Access to a VC. If you haven’t read how to build VC relationships and demonstrate traction make sure to read it.

Venture Capital 277

Venture Capital Startup Email News 277

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 17, 2010

I was recently interviewed for an article that appeared in Fast Company titled, “ Why you should start a business in LA.&# If you’re interested in the topic it’s worth a read, but I thought I’d elaborate on the topic since it comes up all the time. But we have a great city for building technology companies.

Company 290

Company Companies Technology Startup 290

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

You have to understand whether they’re likely to yield revenue growth in the near term OR whether you have access to cheap enough capital to fund your losses until your investments pay off. Exec Summary: Most companies (98+%) in the world (even tech startups) should be very profit focused. ” The Details.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

I am fond of quoting that about 70% of my investment decision of an early-stage company is the team. How you build out your team in the first few years can have a huge impact on the trajectory of your company. How you build out your team in the first few years can have a huge impact on the trajectory of your company.

Startup 388

Startup Slides Outsource Development Sales 388