article thumbnail

Retro: My Favorite Blog Post on Raising VC

Both Sides of the Table

On December 2nd, 2006 I wrote the blog post published later in this post when I was CEO of startup Koral about my experiences in pitching VCs. After my company was acquired by Salesforce.com I was asked to stop blogging and they took over my blog as an asset in the sale of the company. My blog was wiped out.

article thumbnail

Angel Investing 4 – Why You Need Deep Pockets to Win Big

Both Sides of the Table

The first three skills I espoused were: access to the highest-quality deal-flow, domain knowledge of the topic area in which you’re investing and access to VCs to help fund the next stages of development. Markets like these are very kind to angel investors because you get taken out early and see a nice pop on your investment.

Invest 283
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

How the Seed-Stage VC Trend Began, The Downsides of Unicorns & Much More

Both Sides of the Table

Let me take you back just 10 years ago to 2005 in Silicon Valley where I returned after 11 years of living in Europe. But back in 2005 there were a few people who spotted the trend before others and one of the true pioneers was (and continues to be) Jeff Clavier who founded SoftTech VC. It is, of course, a very recent phenomenon.

article thumbnail

Here are More Signs that LA Tech is Moving to the Next Level

Both Sides of the Table

I wrote a blog post on how to work with lawyers at a startup nearly two-and-a-half years ago. This was 2005 when I had no exits under my belt, no blogs … nobody was looking. I told him that our market was absolutely booming and was worthy of a commensurate investment. Invest they have. Startup-focused.

article thumbnail

Brad Feld Drops Knowledge. Here’s What He Said …

Both Sides of the Table

Brad on blogging. How did you start blogging? “My My initial desire to blog came from something that’s always been my approach to investing – I’m a nerd and I love to play with the technology and part of my approach has really been to understand things both at a user level and at a reasonably deep tentacle level.

article thumbnail

Interview with Jamie Siminoff, Unsubscribe.com

socalTECH

I had been doing some angel investing, and incubating several projects. Not everyone had a spam filter, and lots of companies didn't have a spam filter in place until 2003, 2004, or 2005. I understand you managed to get funding through interest from a blog post? Jamie Siminoff: Fred Wilson is a good friend of mine.

article thumbnail

Why Email May Be Draining Your Company’s Productivity

Both Sides of the Table

You’re writing a freaking blog post! I had a pre breakfast with a CEO of a company in which I invested talking about his next fund raising round. He turned me down for a job in 2005. Separately, in the morning I called a seed-stage investor in NY and talked to him about investing in one of my companies. Operations.

Email 314