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On Funding?—?Shots on Goal

Both Sides of the Table

When you first start your career as an investor (or when you first start writing angel checks) your main obsession is “getting into great deals.” When you’ve been playing the game a bit longer or when you have responsibilities at the fund level you start thinking more about “portfolio construction.” Hint: don’t do only 2–3 deals!!

Funding 294
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What is the Definition of a Seed Round or an A Round?

Both Sides of the Table

When I first became a VC, seed rounds were typically $500k – $1.5 There weren’t a lot of seed funds in 2007 so this was often done by angels, funding consortia or sometimes early-stage funds that existed then (First Round Capital, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, etc.). Why the latter? So back to reality.

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What is the Right Burn Rate at a Startup Company?

Both Sides of the Table

Gross Burn vs. Net Burn. Burn rate in case you don’t know is the amount of money a company is either spending (gross) or losing (net) per month. (it Net burn is the amount of money you are losing per month. I often see companies burning $100,000 per month (net) looking to raise $6-8 million.

Startup 383
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What Do LPs Think of the Venture Capital Markets for 2016?

Both Sides of the Table

In fact, if you add the capital flows of the past ten years, there have been just shy of $50 billion in net cash outlays. But the problem for LPs is that as VCs write bigger checks with increased frequency, these firms go “back in the market” to raise funds more quickly than in the past.

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What’s the Real Deal with AngelList?

Both Sides of the Table

This is a blog post I really didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to write it because I have mixed feelings about AngelList. I didn’t want to write it because the bloggosphere doesn’t always do nuance well. So why I am writing it then? Most VCs fund companies with a degree of traction.

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VC Confessions: We Passed On Twilio’s Seed Round

InfoChachkie

For a high-volume seed fund that adds many portfolio companies every year (such as our friends at 500 Startups who invest in over 100 distinct companies annually), the cost of a bad affirmative decision (a false positive) is quite low, since it accounts for a relatively small portion of their total fund. com> 4/25/08.

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The Long-Term Value of Loyalty

Both Sides of the Table

I didn’t mean to be so insulting and I didn’t mean for the net to be cast so wide that many people wondered whether I was talking about them when I was speaking of “job hoppers.&# I learned a lot from reading the comments. No rule is ever absolute no matter how it sounds when one writes a blog.

Startup 285