SoCal Tech Calendar

MARCH 3, 2010

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 -- Shaking the MoneyTree 2009 Q4 Review. Please join LAVA, PricewaterhouseCoopers and a distinguished panel of industry experts and local VCs for their insights on the results of the Q4 2009 PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree Report based on data from Thomson Reuters.

LAVA 100

LAVA Study Venture Capital Press 100

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). It was a fun period for me because everything was new and I was curious. What stage?

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Startup Pricing Invest 347

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 27, 2016

Struggling entrepreneurs are often so happy to get a funding offer that they neglect the recommended reverse due diligence on the investors. Investor due diligence on a startup is not a mysterious black art, but is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan.

Technical Review 63

Technical Review Innocal Offshore Entrepreneur 63

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.

Snapchat 214

Snapchat Invest Technical Review Dollar Shave Club 214

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

For some aspiring to be tech entrepreneurs, I often suggest a two-step process, as I argued in this post that “ The First Startup Founder You Need to Invest in Is You.” He or she has worked at some very successful big technology or media companies and went to a great school.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital IP 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2014

We are often asked how companies get funded, why VCs make the decisions we make and what we’re looking for in entrepreneurs. I think this is a Seriously great example of how this process works for at least one VC – Upfront Ventures. So I hope that offers you insights into how companies move through the VC system.

Funding 373

Funding Technical Review Startup Screening 373

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. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should. He and I once took different sides of an debate about whether “VC signaling&# in early-stage deals is a serious problem or not.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

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. It’s always fun debating companies with Dana because she’s always so knowledgeable on deals – particularly those in the digital media, ad-tech and eCommerce spaces.

Venture Capital 240

Venture Capital Startup Platform Technical Review 240

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 27, 2012

David encourages entrepreneurs to stay away from the big tech firms (such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple) because they are hard to compete with. I believe entrepreneurs should, in David’s words, “build big businesses on the outskirts” but I don’t believe that Silicon Valley tech giants will outmaneuver startups.

Technical Review 299

Technical Review Venture Capital Yammer Google 299

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. These tensions seep out in some angels or seed funds publicly or semi-privately deriding later-stage VCs for their “bad” behavior.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

Venture Capital is a tricky industry. There were many moments in each space when pioneers were funding startups and the press hadn’t written much about them and if you were a typical investor you were still funding the last trend while some VCs were trailblazing into new categories. Far from it. Online education.

Funding 362

Funding Technical Review Ideas Startup 362

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2013

If you’ve been following the press about VC funds you’ll know this is no small feat. Perhaps the biggest piece of new news is that after 17 years of operations we’ve changed our name from GRP Partners to Upfront Ventures. Well, the venture capital industry has changed a lot in the past 20 years … and we have too.

Funding 343

Funding Santa Monica Venture Capital Startup 343

InfoChachkie

MAY 6, 2013

Jim Andelman, my Partner at Rincon Venture Partners , aptly describes the genesis of the Series A crunch, stating that: "Over the next 12-to-18 months, a lot of good companies that have been Seed financed are going to have a tough time raising a Series . There is a similar Darwinian aspect to venture capital investing.

Entrepreneur 246

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Technical Review Capital 246

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 18, 2010

Full press release with more details is here. Applications are due April 6th, 2010, the form is on the website and the Twitter address is @launchpadlad. Encourage the most successful LA tech entrepreneurs who had previously started companies to get involved as mentors, instructors or just informal advisors. We connected.

Technical Review 259

Technical Review Venture Capital Southern California Tech Coast Angels 259

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. We jockey to make sure the press release has our names on it. For venture capitalists this isn’t troubling. Logic tells me the following: It is hard to make money angel investing.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

Tech Zulu Event

JUNE 7, 2013

Stained Glass Labs (SGL), the first Glass and wearable technologies accelerator has launched the world’s first comprehensive app directory and a self-service app publishing portal for Google Glass pre-launched applications. Comprehensive App Directory. SGL says the Comprehensive App Directory launched is a simple 2 step process.

Google 87

Google Technical Review Press Software Review 87

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 4, 2014

I think as a tech industry we have bred a culture that places more emphasis on product excellence than managing human behavior. Yet talk with people at Twitter these days and many seem to feel like they are part of a movement – and that doesn’t just come due to product success. Those are the easy cases.

Startup 340

Startup Technical Review Course Press 340

socalTECH

JUNE 23, 2017

The insurance industry today is one of the last industries to fully jump into adopting technology for offering up their products, says Wayne Slavin , CEO and founder of SURE (www.sureapp.com), and just needs some help in getting there. We're here to serve, as a technology distribution platform, to help those insurance carriers become digital.

Southern California 244

Southern California Technical Review Startup Commerce 244

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Many observers of the venture capital industry have questioned whether its best days are behind it. I can’t help feel a bit of rear-view mirror analysis in all of “VC model is broken” bears in our industry. They are, in fact, great news for traditional venture capitalists. This article originally ran on PEHub.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2010

Social Proof in Action … Yesterday I wrote about the benefits of using social proof and authority in raising venture capital. It influenced a generation of tech marketers. The book popularized the technology adoption lifecycle curve that originally came out of Iowa State University shown below.

Marketing 294

Marketing Customer Custom Technical Review 294

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

MARCH 30, 2011

I believe that over capitalizing companies too early often favors the VC. Here’s what those VCs (and us entrepreneurs, myself included) didn’t understand: 9 women can’t make a baby in a month. I recently read this anecdote in the press (withholding company name because I actually really love the concept).

Development Team Review 374

Development Team Review Technical Review Startup Resource 374

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. Most experienced VCs won’t push you to give up founder control at this stage of the business nor should they. Reviewing financial & operational performance. In the Early Days.

Startup 325

Startup Sales Technical Review Software Review 325

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 2, 2011

I don’t think any serious VC or angel thought it was “collusion.&# I just had this chat last night with a friend / VC who I respect. He assured me it wasn’t but also said humorously, “you’re the sixth VC to email me to check!&#. Is VC being disrupted by AngelList? Examples: Bin38.

Email 287

Email Blogging Venture Capital Writing 287

TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 26, 2021

The project ultimately imploded due to a combination of factors. An emerging tech dystopia. In 2006, a platform called FanLib raised $3 million in venture capital to launch a platform where copyright owners (like ViacomCBS, which owns “Star Trek”) could host fan fiction contests to engage fans.

Writing 196

Writing Outsource Development Technical Review Examples 196

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2010

&#. I’m doing due diligence on a company of another entrepreneur in LA whose company was apparently doing very well. He has raised (and spent) a ton o’ VC money. I know, I know … technically they can be structured as mergers. Remember that all companies sound great from their press coverage.

Technical Review 276

Technical Review Startup Press Pricing 276

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I spoke about how Amazon Web Services deserves far more credit for the last 5 years of innovation than it gets credit for and how I believe they spawned the micro-VC category. I said that I felt that Micro-VCs were the most important change in our industry. It is great for entrepreneurs and great for VCs. I believe that.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Nearly every successful tech startup I’ve observed over the past 20 years has gone through a similar growth pattern: Innovate, systematize then scale operations. As a startup in this phase you often raise capital, get press, hire staff and everything feels possible. As an early-stage VC I love this phase.

Startup 286

Startup Technical Review Customer Custom 286

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 15, 2014

This was in part due to a tremendously busy 30-day period for me (in which my overall writing has been down) and in part the inevitability of knowing that weighing in just tees me up to take abuse on one anonymous app called Secret. But my job is to understand technology and therefore you must use it to understand it. So so funny.

Technical Review 329

Technical Review Blogging Examples Startup 329

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 18, 2019

Unit Economics Accelerating One topic I heard a lot in investor circles last year and in the press a lot was that there weren’t good unit economics and therefore the scooter market was never going to perform well. Turns Out There Are Competitive Moats There were some tech meme’s out there last year that scooter companies had no moats.

Santa Monica 250

Santa Monica Venice Competition Software Review 250

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

How could Bird really be worth the reported $2 billion valuation that I read about in this press? People said this about Ring (which went from startup to selling to Amazon > $1 billion in around 5 years), Facebook, YouTube, Airbnb, Uber, Twitter, Instagram and many other great behemoths of the technology industry. Not really.

Santa Monica 256

Santa Monica Funding Startup Course 256

InfoChachkie

JULY 18, 2012

The following guest post is from Eric Greenspan, Founder and CEO of MakeItWork, a consumer facing, in-home tech support service. Entrepreneurs are inundated with success stories, but far less is written about ventures that do not succeed. Most entrepreneurs do not have the guts to publicly discuss a venture gone awry.

RSS 170

RSS Technical Review Capital Email 170

SoCal Delicious

AUGUST 28, 2012

VentureBeat | News About Tech, Money and Innovation. Venture capital. I assumed that the people of Los Angeles were disingenuous attention whores and didn’t know anything about technology.”. MYTH 3: SoCal lacks Fortune 500 Tech Leadership. Whats Hot Menu. Skip to primary content. Skip to secondary content.

Southern California 57

Southern California PHP Technical Review Orange County 57

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

Seattle should be the envy of any non Silicon Valley tech community in the country. It really wouldn’t take much to turn a great technology ecosystem into a truly electric one. I need to take some VC meetings. You need to have passionate tech entrepreneurs who want to build businesses locally. Me: “Bullshit.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

And of course I’ve sat on the other side of the table: As a VC. This is not just the perspective of a VC although I can’t say I have zero VC bias. This is not just the perspective of a VC although I can’t say I have zero VC bias. I now observes the fund raising process as a profession. Why buy me?

Develop 366

Develop Development Funding Venture Capital 366

AeA Los Angeles Council

JULY 7, 2008

Approximately 50 executives from the worlds of technology & venture capital piled into the dining hall on June 30th to listen to Dr. Mark Drapeau speak about "innovation" and its sister topic, "STEM education." It proposed to fund advertising to encourage young Americans to enter the science and technology workforce.

Education 45

Education Technical Review Research Web 2.0 45

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

You’ll be able to give them an update on key hires, pilot customers, key tech innovations – whatever. I spoke about this more in depth in these two posts: 4 things I look for in an investment & how to manage VC relationships. Tags: Startup Advice Tech Market Analysis VC Industry. Quick coffees, whatever.

Invest 411

Invest Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 411