Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

I always tell founders … “An investors job is to deploy capital and make a return. 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. an investment in your company.

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

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

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

Most sophisticated investors ignore them, focusing their attention on an entrepreneur's pitch and presentation materials, financial forecast and executive summary. As noted in Entrepreneurs Shouldn't Pitch Their Ideas To Venture Capitalists , most sophisticated investors place their bets on people rather than opportunities. Financials.

Venture Capital 211

Venture Capital Summary Technical Review Template 211

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

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 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

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

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

JULY 12, 2011

Chris Dixon is one of my favorite people in tech and writes one of the few blogs I read religiously. He and I once took different sides of an debate about whether “VC signaling&# in early-stage deals is a serious problem or not. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should.

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. Back to regular writing this week so check back in. if you get some value out of the notes consider checking out his company or Twitter feed). TWIVC Summary – Richard de Silva.

Capital 265

Capital Venture Capital Veoh Startup 265

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. So what does a VC do when he or she isn’t ready to say “no” or perhaps might like to talk with you in a year but not now?

Funding 336

Funding Venture Capital Startup Email 336

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. I'm a huge fan of this innovation. and Half.com.

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

Or, as always, summary notes available below. Huge thank you to Steve De Long for the write up. Yeah, that was when I changed for me…” “…there was so much positive feedback on demystifying this one element of venture capital. But, in fact, I would rather have an executive summary than a pitch deck. was starting.

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

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

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2017

of all Statistics are Made Up ” My summary is an example I use often: when I consumed reports from Goldman Sachs about the future predictions of mobile phone penetration for a report I was working on for a client I would call the analyst to ask how she calculated her data because I wanted to be sure of my conclusions.

Venture Capital 182

Venture Capital Statistics Writing Report 182

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2011

I recently was reviewing a press release for a company in which I’m an investor. Of course I can’t write every press release for the company nor would I want to. VC Pitches. Having been an entrepreneur for near-on a decade and having pitched in 100 VC meetings I hated getting no feedback. In Summary.

Press 337

Press Venture Capital Doc Summary 337

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 22, 2012

Usually it’s on behalf of a portfolio company. After all, if your VCs won’t help you get access to potential buyers or business development partners – what will they do? But the reality is that unfiltered intros just create work for the VC. Companies are always looking for highly qualified talent.

Email 359

Email Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 359

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” Exec Summary: Most companies (98+%) in the world (even tech startups) should be very profit focused. One of them is profitability.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

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? Now I’m a VC.

Blogging 286

Blogging Startup Writing Summary 286

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 16, 2011

It’s easy to think that the wife of a well-known & successful VC ( Fred Wilson ) would have had an easy and storied life of wealth and privilege. That’s why I was so interested in having “ The Gotham Gal &# come on This Week in VC ( video link on YouTube , download iTunes, episode 15) ) and dispel those myths.

Startup 311

Startup Sales Venture Capital Entrepreneur 311

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 ). I’ll explain in detail below. He knows the ad management and ad network businesses.

Mobile 282

Mobile Invest Company Companies 282

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

It’s a hard topic to write about because it’s almost an accepted norm that total transparency is good. You took the risk to start your company. ” Your VC friends have been egging you on. They told you, “Yeah, man, I’ll gladly write the first $250,000. CEO transparency. Of course not.

Startup 417

Startup Course Venture Capital Writing 417

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

Of course you could start your own company. As I talked about in “ Is it Time to Learn or Time to Earn ” – overwhelmingly the best economics go to those that start successful companies. Of course I’m not suggesting people shouldn’t start a company. For many people that’s the right answer.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital IP 150

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

There are very few people in Silicon Valley who have such a precise grasp on what defines success of early-stage startup companies than Eric Ries. I interviewed Eric for an hour for - This Week in Venture Capital. should companies do spreadsheets / plan / have a hypothesis for success? 26:44 Too much capital is not good.

Social Media 301

Social Media Startup Metrics Media 301

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

Yesterday I wrote Part 1 of the series on the changes to the software industry over the past decade that has led to changes in the venture capital industry itself. If you don’t want to read that post, the summary is: Open source computing drove computing costs down 90%, which spurred innovation in technology. Funny, that.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Capital Software Startup 296

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series Pitching a VC. Great companies are built by having great products. One great company, AppFolio , filmed all of this user interaction and made the DVD available to me. In SoCal we have Crosscut Ventures, Matt Coffin, Mike Jones, Klaus Schauser, etc. They might be as hard as raising VC.

Angel 291

Angel Funding Venture Capital Startup 291

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2010

Understand Personality Types – One of the benefits of working for a big company (Accenture) was that we had lots of speakers come in and train us in topics like leadership, creativity, presentations, strategy, etc. And because as a VC or as a CEO or senior exec you get presented to all the time we’re extra sensitive to it.

Slides 358

Slides Venture Capital Startup Summary 358

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2012

I recommend that you start by writing down the attributes you would want people to think about when they think about your brand. Whatever you’re trying to brand – your company, your community or yourself – this is the first exercise I would recommend that you start with. Think about venture capital.

Startup 304

Startup Venture Capital Los Angeles Woodland Hills 304

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

I shifted my thinking a few years ago after I read Tim Ferris’s book The Four Hour Workweek (link is to a short summary I wrote). So I ask you – if you’re being reactive to somebody else’s emails are you really being as productive in your company as you could be? You’re writing a freaking blog post!

Email 314

Email Product Startup Writing 314

InfoChachkie

AUGUST 11, 2011

Messenger : Naval Ravikant, Co-Founder AngelList and Co-Maintainer Venture Hacks. Investor in Twitter, Foursquare, DISQUS, and (by Naval’s own admission) “a lot of other companies you have never heard of”. What follows is a summary which paraphrases Naval’s responses. We are productizing the raising of capital for startups. ”.

Startup 273

Startup Software Review Summary Technical Review 273

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 19, 2011

And yes, VC’s, too. They have a wide set of existing relationships, they have teams of junior staff that cull databases (or increasing pile through LinkedIn), they are skilled in approaching prospective talent and they can “pre sell&# your company to get the recruit to the table in the first place. Recruiters. You name it.

Venture Capital 319

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Outsource 319

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

A good early-stage CEO needs to be accessible, to be accountable for producing results and should be establishing the cultural norms of the company through direct leadership at all levels. But issues do arise as your company grows. This applies to both founders and to VC’s that work with them.

Startup 308

Startup CTO Coach Technical Review CTO Hire 308

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2012

.” If you don’t read any more of the post, the summary lesson learned for entrepreneurs is this: Product-centric founders often over-intellectualize their communications and therefore fail to sell their concepts to the masses. This does not mean you shouldn’t solve big, complex problems or write complex code.

Entrepreneur 370

Entrepreneur Startup Press Venture Capital 370

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

Many MBA programs still cater too much to the needs of large, corporate management jobs or prepare students to enter big consulting companies or investments banks. I got an email recently from my friend & fellow VC, Jeff Bussgang from Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston. In Summary. Specifically, 1.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

InfoChachkie

JUNE 27, 2011

My response was brief and straightforward, which is common of popular Quora answers (as discussed in How To Write An Effective Quora Answer ). Although my answer was off-the-cuff, the question caused me to consider the issue of raising entrepreneurial children in greater depth, which led me to write this series. Plot Summary.

Entrepreneur 270

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Resource 270

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

Let’s assume you run a Customer Support software company. I recommend starting the meeting with a VERY brief introduction of your company, your background and why it’s relevant to the job you currently have. After that you need to begin discussing your company. Where are your current pains?&#.

Sales 314

Sales Startup Venture Capital Customer 314