Both Sides of the Table

JULY 15, 2010

We started this week’s show with a Q&A session where I answered viewer questions about fund raising and the VC industry. Heck, stick around and watch me discuss the seed funding debate that is going on right now and what is happening in the VC industry overall. Google’s investment in Zynga. Don’t.

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Southern California 210

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 18, 2010

What do Google Analytics and print newspapers have in common? I’ve been using Chartbeat for over a month now to track performance of my blog and I find myself looking at Google Analytics much less these days. In fact, I’m surprised by how antiquated Google Analytics feels. Basically, it rocks!

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Blogging Google Screening Mahalo 287

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). They do this because they have amazing skills at writing business plans.

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Venture Capital Startup Pricing Invest 347

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Put simply – if you invested early in Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. For starters some funds are small and thus while they put $750k into your company to own 10% of your company they might not be able to write another $2 million if you then raise a $20 million round (10%). ” Some do, some don’t.

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Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

500 Hats , February 1, 2010 When to Use Facebook Connect – Twitter Oauth – Google Friend Connect for Authentication? Steve Blank , January 25, 2010 10 Tips for Adding Game Mechanics to a Non-Gaming Service - ReadWriteStart , September 21, 2010 Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own. - First Principles.

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Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Coach 378

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

He writes with a great perspective and is well worth reading. 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

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. In retrospect, our decision was both perfectly rational and completely lame. > -jeff.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

Every tech or major news journal in the country is preparing to write their Snap, Inc (creators of Snapchat, Spectacles, etc) stories and many of them seem to want a “How does it feel to have missed this investment story.” My job as a VC isn’t to beat myself up or any other partner up for the one deal we didn’t do. Mostly kidding.

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Snapchat Invest Technical Review Dollar Shave Club 214

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.

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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 29, 2014

They get pissed off if a senior executive at Google doesn’t take a meeting with them, if people are late to their meetings or if they have emails that are unreturned. I wrote an example of why this matters when meeting VCs but it’s true of all exec. You need to know how to write good & action oriented emails.

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Venture Capital Email Startup Conference 389

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

This is part of my series on Raising Venture Capital. Many businesses that pitch to me have White Elephant issues and I’d like to tell you how to deal with these when you’re raising venture capital. But the VC is thinking about the issue whether you address it or not. Deal with your White Elephants.

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Venture Capital Startup Training Sales 264

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. What did you do before VC and how did that lead you to VC? (1:00 How did you get into VC? (9:30 Thank you. (if

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Capital Venture Capital Veoh Startup 265

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 8, 2019

Warren’s plan called for regulators to be appointed to oversee the unwinding of several acquisitions that were critical to the development of the core technology that make Alphabet’s Google and the social media giant Facebook so profitable… and Zappos. — Balaji S. .

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Technical Review Startup Chief Technology Officer Social Media 144

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

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2018

Or if you’re a VC raising from LPs you have to list all of your deals, your investment value, your carrying value, your multiples, your IRRs, TVPIs, DPIs, etc along with net cashflows plus your previous LPAs. 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?

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Funding Venture Capital Startup Email 336

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Why Every Entrepreneur Should Write and 9 Tips To Get Started - OnStartups , September 27, 2010 "The best part of blogging is the people you will meet"- Hugh MacLeod repeating wisdom from Loic Lemeur to me at the Big Pink at 2 am in South Beach after the Future of Web Apps 2008. Why You Should Write. People want status.

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Startup Product Technology Venture Capital 191

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.

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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.

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Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

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. I blog on entrepreneurship & VC precisely because entrepreneurs and other VCs are my customers. That may soon change.

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Startup Entrepreneur SEO Venture Capital 363

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? People who comment to me privately about how surprised they are by how rapidly I’ve “built a name for myself in VC&# remind me of this fallacy.

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Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

“Yes&# was given to me by one of my favorite angel investor / seed VC’s to work with – John Greathouse of Rincon Venture Partners and author of the blog InfoChachkie that you should check out because it is filled with great info from a guy who has been a very successful operator. You should, too.

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Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital. Recently I’ve been debating with a number of young startup companies that are raising money in the next few months, “what is the right about of capital to raise at a startup?&#. Google suddenly makes your product category free). -

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Startup Venture Capital Capital Competition 319

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). They are venture bankers not investment bankers. What stage? What price?

Startup 361

Startup Venture Capital Pricing Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

You join teams that got good write-ups on TechCrunch, have great VCs, have star CEO’s, whatever. In fact, just a short Google search reveals that I’ve referred to him frequently through the years. Writing a book will be fun. You hire people who look good on paper. After 6 months – you know.

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CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

billion in venture capital to LA’s technology startups and 2014 will shatter that figure. Over the past 4 years LA’s tech fundings have growing at a 30% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) which is > 4 times the US average VC CAGR (7%). billion (Upfront Ventures was an early Overture backer).

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Entrepreneur Snapchat Startup Google 376

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Your goal should be to turn your VCs into extended members of your team to get real value from them. Understanding where your VC partner sits in their respective fund and where their fund is in the cycle of its investment lifecycle will help you understand your VCs behavior. He is very pleasant when he calls and writes.

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Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2011

I then asked for editing rights to his Google Doc and I rewrote a version of it. 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.

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Press Venture Capital Doc Summary 337

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2010

I started with the hosted version and then migrated to an installed version so I could use Google Analytics and some other products. Now I’m a VC. Don’t just write a carbon copy of what somebody else is doing. OK, well, actually the first thing I did is come up with a list of 50 posts that I wanted to write.

Blogging 286

Blogging Startup Writing Summary 286

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

And any even casual follower of the tech industry knows that Google Plus has been criticized for cracking down on anybody who wasn’t a “real person.” Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, Quora, Tumblr. Where you can talk about topics that it might not be appropriate for a VC to discuss in writing.

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Social Network Startup Blogging Venture Capital 329

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

For the past 5 years or so Google, Facebook and a handful of tech industry giants have been quietly buying scores of early-stage startups for their talent. You have been at Google, Salesforce.com, Yahoo! Acquihires and Venture Capital. I’m a VC. And to keep up with the Jones’s it seems that Yahoo!

Press 357

Press Startup Yahoo Venture Capital 357

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 14, 2012

…” I’ll write soon on my views of why I believe Instagram took off as a social network and what I think comes next. You’ve found yourself in a super hot category and – let’s face it – it’s still a very frothy venture capital funding market so you may have loads of VCs chasing you.

Venture Capital 316

Venture Capital Pricing Social Network Acquisition 316

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?

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Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 152

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. Argument two says, “big companies can’t innovate anymore so Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. Remember it was only 2008 where Microsoft and even Google were laying off employees.

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Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 22, 2012

But the reality is that unfiltered intros just create work for the VC. But if you start the send multiple deals and if the quality of those deals is not super hight then you begin to erode the trust that the VC has in your judgment. Remember as a startup – the person who sends the intro to the VC matters a lot.

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Email Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 359

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. The birthplace of sponsored search (Overture), semantic search (Applied Semantics which became Google AdSense), comparison shopping (ShopZilla, PriceGrabber) and many others. Think about venture capital.

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Startup Venture Capital Los Angeles Woodland Hills 304

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.

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Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 23, 2011

Obviously you should have somebody that helps you research journalists, gets you meetings, pitches stories, helps prep you for interviews & helps make sure your writing is cogent. And as a result their competitors were able to raise a considerable VC round from well-known firms. I write on my blog how I think in my head.

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Startup Writing Press Blogging 349