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. GRP Partners is looking to hire two analysts (maybe even three) to join our practice in Los Angeles. Or if you did something really interesting / innovative in a startup company. Are we elitist?

Venture Capital 290

Venture Capital Technical Review GRP Partners Email 290

socalTECH

JULY 19, 2011

Southern California companies raised $739M in venture capital in Q2 of 2011, according to the latest numbers from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) based on data from Thomson Reuters. in funding, and San Diego $198.18M in investments. billion invested across 814 deals.

Southern California 167

Southern California Venture Capital Orange County Rustic Canyon 167

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Understanding Venture Capital. I recently wrote a blog post on understanding how the size and age of a venture capital fund might affect you when you’re raising money. I believe these VC funds have suffered some amount of reputation fall out. Let me explain: 1.

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Invest 265

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 12, 2013

It is with great pleasure that I can finally announce that we have added Greg Bettinelli as a partner at GRP Partners. He had joined a young startup in LA called HauteLook and was interested in getting to know the local tech community. So I started introducing him to portfolio companies. You won’t regret it.

Venture Capital 360

Venture Capital GRP Partners Startup Invest 360

socalTECH

JULY 13, 2009

This morning's interview is with Mark Suster , a venture capitalist at GRP Partners (www.grpvc.com). GRP has just recently closed on a new $200M fund, and Mark has been one of the more active venture capitalists in the Los Angeles area in recent months. We invested in Overture, which was sold for $1.2

GRP Partners 157

GRP Partners Southern California Santa Barbara Rustic Canyon 157

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

One of the questions I’m most often asked is, “what’s it like being a VC?&# I’ve been a VC for nearly 3 years now. I always start my answer to this question with, “you’d have to be a pretty big baby to complain about being a VC.&# And the VC job has plenty of admin and minutiae.

Venture Capital 312

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Entrepreneur 312

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2013

I am super excited to announce that today is a day of lots of new things for my partners & me: A new fund, a new office and a new brand. Let’s start with the fund. If you’ve been following the press about VC funds you’ll know this is no small feat. What’s up with that? So what changed?

Funding 343

Funding Santa Monica Venture Capital Startup 343

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Continuing my series of posts that I’ve been collecting that live at the intersection of Startups and being a Startup CTO : Startup CTO Top 30 Posts for April 16 Great Startup Posts from March here are the top posts from May 2010. It is to out friend. Enjoyed this post? Disruptive. We get it! I Be specific. Tesla is not.

Startup 248

Startup Venture Capital Conference Social Media 248

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2012

I wrote a blog post on how to work with lawyers at a startup nearly two-and-a-half years ago. If you don’t have much experience in working with law firms at a startup it’s a good primer. In that post I talked about how to select a law-firm for a startup. Startup-focused. Invest they have.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Startup Los Angeles GRP Partners 299

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Our guest this week on #TWiVC was Dana Settle , partner at Greycroft Partners , a venture capital firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles. Greycroft is an early-stage VC. Closing a VC fund in 2009/10 is a major achievement in and of itself. To be fair to Ben Horowitz – I think he thinks this as well.

Venture Capital 240

Venture Capital Startup Platform Technical Review 240

socalTECH

JANUARY 17, 2013

The latest numbers from the PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree report were released today, finding that a total of $683.7M was invested across Southern California in Q4 of 2012. The funding brings Southern California's total 2012 investments to $3.2 billion in venture capital.

Southern California 237

Southern California Orange County GRP Partners San Diego 237

Tech Zulu Event

NOVEMBER 9, 2011

Today marks another great day for the LA startup community as one of the city’s prominent mentoring programs , Launchpad LA, received VC funding – for each startup.

Venture Capital 74

Venture Capital GRP Partners Funding Idealab 74

socalTECH

JUNE 23, 2020

Los Angeles-based Upfront Ventures has just kicked off an effort to raise a new, $280M venture capital fund, Upfront VII, L.P. Upfront Ventures started raising $250M in a growth fund, Upfront Growth II, back in June of 2019, and raised its last core fund, Upfront VI, back in June of 2017.

GRP Partners 113

GRP Partners Funding Venture Capital Los Angeles 113

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2013

I’m very excited to be finally be able to announce that this week we’ve added Sam Rosen to our ranks at GRP Partners in the role of entrepreneurs-in-residence – EIR. I became aware of Sam several years ago as I started noticing his name repeated in the comments section of my blog. So what is an EIR and why Sam?

Startup 372

Startup Course Ideas Invest 372

Tech Zulu Event

NOVEMBER 9, 2011

Today marks another great day for the LA startup community as one of the city’s prominent mentoring programs , Launchpad LA, received VC funding – for each startup.

Venture Capital 65

Venture Capital GRP Partners Funding Idealab 65

socalTECH

OCTOBER 11, 2010

Los Angeles-based venture capital firm GRP Partners --which has been very active in the local technology startup market--has made its latest investment, in an interesting industry: mortgage lending. GRP is the lead investor in Skyline Financial , a Calabasas-based provider of mortgage banking and lending.

GRP Partners 160

GRP Partners Calabasas Venture Capital Invest 160

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

Greycroft is Alan’s venture capital firm that recently raised its second fund ($130 million) with offices in both New York and LA. Get your product/market fit working before you ramp up your costs (or raise too much money). My action item – I will soon announce the GRP Partners CEO Summit.

Startup 279

Startup Venture Capital Tips Custom Development 279

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?). There is a structural reason that VCs are investing at early stages, 2. Short summary of my posts: 1.

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Seed Funding Funding Venture Capital GRP Partners 298

Tech Zulu Event

FEBRUARY 8, 2013

Over 500 startups applied last quarter to Launchpad LA’s accelerator, but only eight were chosen. Meet the Graduates: · Connectifier, which connects recruiters to potential job candidates, consists of 4 ex-Google employees and local angel investor, Terrence Yang, has dubbed Connectifier one of the best startups of 2012.

GRP Partners 96

GRP Partners Startup Tech Coast Angels Bertelsmann 96

socalTECH

JUNE 27, 2013

Despite the increase in startup activity in Southern California, local venture capital funds are still few and far between, and a large chunk of the funding here is still from Sand Hill Road. The firm just announced that new fund, and a new name, Upfront Ventures (www.upfront.com). All of our partners are based here.

Funding 196

Funding Venture Capital Los Angeles Social Media 196

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 21, 2013

There's been a lot of talk about the boom in Southern California's startup world. Driven by success in the sector, accelerators, serial entrepreneurs, and more, there are more startups starting and relocating here than ever. In this special report, we've mined our extensive database of venture capital.

Dollar Shave Club 170

Dollar Shave Club Report Southern California Funding 170

socalTECH

JULY 15, 2010

Investments by venture capitalists in Southern California were up, both in terms of deals and dollars in Q2, according to the latest numbers from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). in 91 investments, up significantly from the $451.8M invested in 24 deals.

Southern California 174

Southern California Orange County Rustic Canyon SoCal 174

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2013

But less as a complaint and more as advice to younger networkers, the more you invest in relationships the more you will get when you need. It’s why I talk about building VC relationships early – Lines, Not Dots. Fill your VC good will, build relationships, be helpful to them not just asking for things. Be helpful.

Venture Capital 407

Venture Capital Press GRP Partners Blogging 407

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

In fact, he’s personally started 34 businesses and run 17 of them. He started a car washing business as a way to be able to drive other people’s fancy cars. So while it started more about finding solutions to get him driving cars more or logging airline miles he also focuses on big, industry-changing ideas.

Zag 248

Zag Truecar Venture Capital CarsDirect 248

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2011

I am a big believer in VC pitches that the bio slide should come up front. The short answer is that by knowing the key members of the management team the VC firm can quickly identify strengths on your time and know whether you have some competitive advantage in your chose field relative to other people with whom you will compete.

Slides 296

Slides GRP Partners Venture Capital Writing 296

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

Startups are hard. You join teams that got good write-ups on TechCrunch, have great VCs, have star CEO’s, whatever. We tell startup stories. Our founder, Yves Sisteron, was my mentor and board member at my first startup. My other partner, Steven Dietz, was on the board of my second company.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

SoCal Tech Calendar

MARCH 25, 2011

Mark Suster is a 2x entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC. He joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a General Partner after selling his company to Salesforce.com. Mark is a UCSD graduate and writes one of the best startup blogs on the Internet. He focuses on early-stage technology companies.

GRP Partners 100

GRP Partners UCSD SoCal Southern California 100

socalTECH

APRIL 18, 2012

Earlier this week, Brad Feld, a venture capitalist who is well known for his work on TechStars, investments, and for his frequent blogging and speaking engagements, commented on the Los Angeles area using the term Silicon Beach. Read the rest of Mark Suster's opinions at Some Thoughts on Branding Startups and Communities.

GRP Partners 147

GRP Partners Startup Blogging Los Angeles 147

socalTECH

JANUARY 19, 2012

The latest numbers from the PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture capital Association MoneyTree survey, which is based on data from Thomson Reuters, tallies $738.34M invested in Southern California in Q4 of 2011. The amount is up from $528.0M billion was invested, a 22 percent increase in dollars over the prior year.

Southern California 157

Southern California Orange County San Diego GRP Partners 157

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. my firm, GRP Partners, was an investor).

Company 290

Company Companies Technology Startup 290

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 21, 2010

One of the investment themes I’ve been focused on in the past 3 years has been Performance-Based Marketing. When I started investing the US advertising market was $300 billion with only 10% of it ($30 billion) of it being online and measurable. I hope to announce one investment in this space in the next few months.

Advertising 284

Advertising Invest RSS CPC 284

Tech Zulu Event

JULY 16, 2013

Today’s startup innovators come from about six hours south of Silicon Valley. Venture Capital: Upfront Ventures. Previously known as GRP Partners, Upfront Ventures has focused on early stage investments since 1996. Fun Fact: Their startup beach house costs a tiny fee of $20,000 per month!

Startup 111

Startup Snapchat Venice Social Media 111

socalTECH

JULY 9, 2009

Santa Monica-based GumGum , the online startup headed by Ophir Tanz which licenses photos on a CPM basis to online publishers, confirmed it had raised $2.6M in a venture round Wednesday, telling socalTECH that the Series A-1 round was led by GRP Partners , with participation by First Round Capital. READ MORE>>.

Invest 100

Invest SoCalTech GRP Partners Geni 100

Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 14, 2014

Every day, 1000’s of new bright-eyed and bushy tailed companies sprout from depths of start-up soil. Like a song on the radio, we never quite know how some blow up and become chart topping billion-dollar organizations while others – even crowd favorites – simply bang, pop and fizzle; never to be heard from again.

GRP Partners 87

GRP Partners Startup Incubator Venture Capital 87

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. I like that.

Mobile 282

Mobile Invest Company Companies 282

socalTECH

JUNE 3, 2010

Los Angeles-based MySpace and startup Ad.ly , also based in LA, said today that they have linked in an in-stream advertising deal. helps celebrities, musicians, and other social influencers monetize their Twitter and other activity streams with advertising; the firm is backed by GRP Partners, Greycroft Partners, and LowerMyBills' Matt Coffin.

Advertising 168

Advertising Userplane GRP Partners Mahalo 168

Tech Zulu Event

SEPTEMBER 1, 2010

StartupDemo partners Mixergy & AsAble.com have just announced their VC/Angel investor panel for the event. This Panel is filled with investing super stars who will be going over amazing content for all the startups and entrepreneurs out there. Allen Morgan , Mayfield Ventures. Mark Suster , GRP Partners.

Venture Capital 58

Venture Capital Mixergy Orange County Tech Coast Angels 58