SoCal CTO

MAY 17, 2011

I was just talking with someone who's new to Los Angeles and wanting to connect into the Los Angeles Startup Community. I will do my best to keep this up to date. Los Angeles Startup Community Posts/Articles Here are some interesting articles and posts on the ecosystem around startups in Los Angeles.

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Los Angeles Southern California Startup Angel 196

SoCal CTO

MAY 17, 2011

I was just talking with someone who's new to Los Angeles and wanting to connect into the Los Angeles Startup Community. I will do my best to keep this up to date. Los Angeles Startup Community Posts/Articles Here are some interesting articles and posts on the ecosystem around startups in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles 188

Los Angeles Southern California Startup Angel 188

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

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

This is part of my series on Understanding Venture Capital. I’m writing this series because if you better understand how VC firms work you can better target which firms make sense for you to speak with. It in not uncommon to see a VC talk about “total assets under management&# as in “We have $1.5

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Venture Capital Funding Invest GRP Partners 269

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

Lots of discussion these days about the changes in the VC industry. The VC industry grew dramatically as a result of the Internet bubble - Before the Internet bubble the people who invested in VC funds (called LPs or Limited Partners) put about $50 billion into the industry and by 2001 this had grown precipitously to around $250 billion.

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Venture Capital Startup Seed Funding Rustic Canyon 311

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. Quarter to quarter, investments were up from Q1, when $585M was invested in the region.

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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.

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Invest 265

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.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Entrepreneur 312

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. What's your thoughts on the local venture market?

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GRP Partners Southern California Santa Barbara Rustic Canyon 157

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.

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Startup Venture Capital Conference Social Media 248

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?

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Funding Santa Monica Venture Capital Startup 343

socalTECH

APRIL 15, 2010

Southern California venture capital investments totaled $686.5M for the quarter, up from both Q4 of last year as well as the comparable Q1 quarter in 2009, according to the latest numbers from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the NVCA. in Q1, up from $588.033M tallied by the report in Q4 of 2009, and up significantly from the $320.2M

Southern California 208

Southern California Orange County Invest GRP Partners 208

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.

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Venture Capital GRP Partners Startup Invest 360

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.

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Venture Capital Startup Platform Technical Review 240

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.

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GRP Partners Funding Venture Capital Los Angeles 113

socalTECH

JANUARY 9, 2014

Los Angeles-based mobile food ordering startup ChowNow has raised $708,414 as part of a new funding round, according to regulatory filing by the firm this week. ChowNow has previously raised funding from Daher Capital, Double M Partners, GRP Partners, Karlin Ventures and Velos Partners, and was part of LaunchpadLA.

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GRP Partners Venture Capital Mobile Los Angeles 170

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

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. It was very widely read.

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Venture Capital Startup Los Angeles GRP Partners 299

socalTECH

MAY 29, 2013

Los Angeles-based social, celebrity advertising startup Adly confirmed the company''s recent $2M funding round today, officially announcing the funding from GRP Partners and Siemer Ventures. adly venture capital funding social celebrity advertising' The firm disclosed the funding last week. READ MORE>>.

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Funding GRP Partners Social Media Advertising 170

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2012

It all started in 2010 with Klout. I had always liked and respected CEO Joe Fernandez but could never get my head around the fact that the Klout was putting up charts showing who influenced me and it didn’t map to the reality I knew in my head. Every startup needs accounting and it’s often a huge distraction and non core.

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Cornerstone OnDemand Venture Capital GRP Partners Startup 303

socalTECH

JUNE 11, 2013

Los Angeles-based mobile food ordering startup ChowNow has raised $1.19M more in an ongoing funding round, according to a regulatory filing by the firm last week. ChowNow is venture backed by Daher Capital, Double M Partners, GRP Partners, Karlin Ventures and Velos Partners. READ MORE>>.

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GRP Partners Incubator Mobile Venture Capital 174

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

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.

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Startup Venture Capital Tips Custom Development 279

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 3, 2011

But last week I noticed a blog post by a woman, Tara Tiger Brown, that asked the question, “ Why Aren’t More Women Commenting on VC Blog Posts? I would love to see Tara follow up with blog posts on: why she believes this is the case & what we can do about it. We need to start encouraging it in our youth.

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Entrepreneur Venture Capital Startup Blogging 341

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 27, 2011

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. It really started simply enough. I know that I have not yet earned these kudos based on investment returns (although my partners have. By definition, you read blogs.

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Blogging Startup Writing Venture Capital 373

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute of an entrepreneur : Tenacity. Having street smarts with no inspirational ability to build teams can yield a great small business but will be difficult to scale into a large VC-backed business. A caller dialed in to ask us questions about his startup.

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Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital CTO Hire 293

socalTECH

AUGUST 3, 2016

The scholarship also includes a conference call with DogVacay CEO Aaron Hirschhorn--who, aside from his experience starting DogVacay, previously spent his days vetting startup ideas as a venture capitalist. The company says it plans on another scholarship competition next year.

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GRP Partners Conference Venture Capital Ideas 100

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.

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GRP Partners Calabasas Venture Capital Invest 160

socalTECH

JULY 21, 2011

Hollywood-based ZestCash , a startup offering up short-term, consumer loans online, has scored $19M in funding today, including $11M in a Series A equity round plus $8M in venture debt. The equity came from Lightspeed Venture Partners and GRP Partners. READ MORE>>.

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GRP Partners CIO Startup Hollywood 133

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. Sam in the perfect example.

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Startup Course Ideas Invest 372

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 billion in venture capital. Karlin Ventures and Siemer Ventures both made five investments each. was invested across Southern California in Q4 of 2012.

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Southern California Orange County GRP Partners San Diego 237

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

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.

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GRP Partners Startup Tech Coast Angels Bertelsmann 96

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2013

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. Todd Gitlin is one of the best executive recruiters the technology & startup market in Los Angeles. “I’ve never been a VC before.

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Venture Capital Press GRP Partners Blogging 407

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.

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CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

socalTECH

AUGUST 19, 2009

This morning's Insights and Opinions article comes from venture capitalist Mark Suster of GRP Partners , who shares some of the most common mistakes he sees startups making. Read more on the most common startup mistakes. Tags: insights opinions mark suster venture capital.

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GRP Partners Startup Venture Capital Ideas 124

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