Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. In case VC’s haven’t figured this out yet, shit rolls downhill. My blog linked to Brad Feld’s blog because I was so grateful for his series on term sheets and he was one of the biggest reasons that as a VC I felt compelled to blog. Tempus Fugit.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

by Michael Woolf that is worth any startup founder reading to get a sense of perspective on the reality warp that is startup world during a frothy market such as 1997-1999, 2005-2007 or 2012-2014. We’re going to start aggressively spend money on marketing our product. Availability of Capital.

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2012

He knows every startup & VC in town.” This was 2005 when I had no exits under my belt, no blogs … nobody was looking. And over the past few years I had been egging him on from LA to get Cooley to take our market more seriously. I told David, “Look at the changes we’ve seen in the VC / funding market.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Startup Los Angeles GRP Partners 299

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

"Authentic" is dead - A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , May 3, 2010 It's time to retire the following phrases. Draw Your Ideas - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 16, 2010 I saw Jack Dorsey give this talk at The 99% Conference last month. SlideShare: VC signaling in seed rounds.

Startup 248

Startup Venture Capital Conference Social Media 248

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

But knowing the right people and knowing a market only works well for angel investors in bullish tech markets in which IPO’s happen quickly (97-99) or where larger companies are actively scooping up little tiny companies at sub $50 million valuations to drive innovation (05-08, 10-?). Do you have solid VC relationships?

Invest 284

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 284

socalTECH

DECEMBER 30, 2016

In 2016, our Santa Monica office more than doubled market share of early-stage companies. Despite the Q1 correction in valuation, and subsequent drop in VC funding, we saw numerous LA companies not only survive, but thrive - despite the macroeconomic trends. What's the biggest news from you or your‏ firm this year?

Santa Monica 124

Santa Monica Southern California Venture Capital SoCalTech 124

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

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

But knowing the right people and knowing a market only works well for angel investors in bullish tech markets in which IPO’s happen quickly (97-99) or where larger companies are actively scooping up little tiny companies at sub $50 million valuations to drive innovation (05-08, 10-?). Obviously I agree.

Invest 152

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 152

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 14, 2015

I spoke at Michael Kim’s excellent annual Cendana VC/LP conference today. One of the points I tried to make is that as venture capital investors as an industry we seem to have a healthy disdain for public market investors. I put up this slide as part of my discussion. What is your cash balance? It’s not fun.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Slides Capital Funding 150

socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2016

The funding came from PeakSpan Capital, along with SK Ventures and SAP SE. MindTouch, which was founded by Steve Bjorg and Aaron Fulkerson back in 2005, said the funding will go to increase its integration with software such as Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle, and grow its marketing, business development, sales, and engineering teams.

Customer 100

Customer Custom Software Services 100

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

If you read this blog often you'll know that I'm a huge fan of First Round Capital. They have totally changed the way you run a VC firm, investing heavily in systems & events for their founders that are pushing the boundaries of the way our industry works. First Round Capital receives about 2500 submissions each year.

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

In 2004 / 2005 I was starting to get intrigued with user-generated content. Yeah, that was when I changed for me…” “…there was so much positive feedback on demystifying this one element of venture capital. This time frame – 2005/2006 – web 2.0 Brad’s start in Venture Capital. was starting.

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

socalTECH

DECEMBER 21, 2017

For today's interview, we spoke with Richard Sussman , who is leading up investments for a new venture capital firm in town, NordicEye (www.nordiceye.com), which just saw a big exit in one of its very first investments, Los Angeles-based Weblife. As a very young VC, we can't do that. We also want to see some market penetration.

Southern California 133

Southern California Startup Venture Capital Invest 133

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

They have seen one side of a market where many of us have seen the ebb and flow multiple times. Still, market amnesia by ordinarily rational actors always surprises me. 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

socalTECH

APRIL 7, 2011

Todd is now Chief Operating Officer of Marmol Radziner (www.marmol-radziner.com), an architecture and construction company, which recently installed a eco-friendly mobile home park project in Santa Monica which was focused on applying clean and eco-friendly technologies to the pre-fab building market. It's been around for about 20 years.

Santa Monica 190

Santa Monica Venture Capital Anthem Design 190

socalTECH

JANUARY 14, 2009

Los Angeles-based United Sample, which operates online survey and sampling services for the market research industry, announced today that it has raised $3M in a Series B funding round. Tags: survey sample united online venture capital. The round was led by Greycroft Partners, and also included prior investor DFJ Frontier.

Sample 113

Sample Venture Capital Sales Research 113

socalTECH

JANUARY 19, 2009

Southern California's venture capital numbers for Q4 slipped, as did numbers nationally, according to numbers released over the weekend by Dow Jones VentureSource. According to the report, Southern California's venture capital totals slipped for the first time since 2003, down more than 18 percent annually, to $3.2

Southern California 100

Southern California SoCal Orange County Venture Capital 100

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

I first met Ethan in 2005. And we wanted a head of global marketing. I wanted them to have a market lead before others could try and build what Ethan was working on. And I certainly didn’t want him having to trapse up-and-down Sand Hill Road informing every VC of his next idea.

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

As I’ve highlighted I believe we’re in a unique period similar to 2005-08 where the biggest tech firms of Silicon Valley (and some media companies) are scooping up small software companies as “talent acquisitions&# versus accretive revenue / profit generators. Total disruption on the funding market? I doubt it.

Invest 283

Invest Angel Startup Marketing 283

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Lately I’ve been having to say things I thought I’d never have to remind people, like, “getting to positive gross margin in several territories is a very low bar to claim success” or “profitable excluding marketing costs” is not actually a real thing. Market Size. MakeSpace provides physical storage.

Startup 150

Startup Marketing Study SEO 150

SoCal Delicious

MARCH 10, 2010

Among the highest acquisition values were MySpace ($580M in 2005), Shopzilla ($560M in 2005), Rent.com ($430M in 2004), Lowermybills ($330M in 2005) and Sandpiper Networks ($630M in 1999). The region has produced 95 exits over $100 million (13%), 50 over $250 million (7%) and 23 over $500 million (3%) during the period analyzed.

Southern California 29

Southern California Study Venture Capital Redpoint 29

socalTECH

MAY 27, 2009

He was basically active investing until 2004 and 2005, and then started getting much more involved in the non-profit space. I met him a year ago, and we got chatting about the market, what's going on, and his own interest in getting back involved in investing. where do you see the VC industry here now?

Southern California 113

Southern California Venture Capital Startup SoCal 113

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

” Your VC friends have been egging you on. We funded one in 2005 and lost a lot of money. ” A cautious person wouldn’t stand on stage and tell a large audience she is going to change the world while secretly wondering when the f**k her team is going to work out the bugs in the product so you can actually launch.

Startup 417

Startup Course Venture Capital Writing 417

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

One of the great joys of doing the web series This Week in VC every week is that I get to spend time with great people debating the issues of our day including how our industry is evolving as well as insights into how companies got started, got their initial traction and dealt with adversities. Meebo’s current focus is US market.&#.

Startup 286

Startup Venture Capital Web Ideas 286

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

Los Angeles-based Crosscut Ventures (www.crosscutventures.com) is one of the newest venture capital funds in the area, and has quietly been working on funding local companies over the last year. Brian Garrett: We started Crosscut Ventures about a year ago. Let's start with an overview of the fund. What do you invest in?

Southern California 153

Southern California Startup Palomar Rustic Canyon 153

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 17, 2012

Topics of discussion will be Saas, Cloud, Mobile, Gaming, Social Markets, what surprises are coming for 2013, creating value with your company, hiring problem solvers, and building sensible businesses. In 1991, Marks and a partner transformed ailing video game giant Activision into a $14B market cap video game industry leader.

Startup 110

Startup Activision Santa Monica SaaS 110

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

He turned me down for a job in 2005. Can you please intro me to XYZ VC? Marketing. But what kind of business person would I be if I allocated 100% of my time to customer service and zero to marketing? Marketing = deal flow = share of mind = start of future relationships. Yesterday I offered him a term sheet.

Email 314

Email Product Startup Writing 314

socalTECH

APRIL 5, 2017

And, even more impressively, it's now seeing more than $100M in annual revenues--without ever having taken any institutional or venture capital. We spoke with CEO Bryan Cheung to learn more about LifeRay, and how it grew from a church basement and open source to $100M+ in revenues, without ever taking outside capital.

Diamond Bar 169

Diamond Bar Customer Custom Organization 169

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

Two weeks after Brad’s post I was at the 140 Conference in LA and I held open office hours for any entrepreneur who wanted to spend 15 minutes talking with a VC about their business. In 2005 he was graduated and took a job in South Carolina working for technology company while he started his own web design company on the side.

Technical Review 282

Technical Review Startup High Tech Software Review 282

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2012

I lived in London from 1997-2005 and for 6 of those years ran my startup based out of London. I think the fact that NorCal didn’t have strong industries in financial services, manufacturing, autos, marketing or other traditional industries also made experimentation more acceptable. I remember this lesson well.

Startup 350

Startup Ideas Education Class 350

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 24, 2011

I am currently at the annual VC in the OC program held in Irvine CA by OCTANe , an organization that connects people and ideas to resources and capital in Orange County. Over 600 people came to this event to listen share and network, including entrepreneurs, VC’s and investors. in 2009 and #1 in LED quality in 2010.

Orange County 104

Orange County OCTANE Technical Review Outsource Development 104

socalTECH

MAY 11, 2011

My other, non-marketable skill included philosophy. Elizabeth Amini: I actually ran into him in 2005, when he was a keynote speaker at a conference. As they improve their focus and memory, and as we find they become happier and self confident, those people actually do the marketing for us. This is my third company.

Study 252

Study Startup Design Tips 252

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 1, 2011

The startup is headed by Robert Flynn --a former VC, and co-founder of Liquid Audio, and most recently head of Modern Feed, the company that is now Clicker--who talked with us about his new company. The target market was initially all of the sound work done in the media space. What is Aggregage? Robert Flynn: I'm actually an LA native.

Startup 162

Startup Content Advertising Sites 162

socalTECH

APRIL 22, 2010

Last week, Irvine-based Teridian Semiconductor (www.teridiansemiconductor.com), a developer of semiconductors for the electric metering and electricity measurement market, was acquired by Maxim Semiconductor. Jerry Fitch: The business management team at Golden Gate Capital bought Teridian in 2005.

Equity 124

Equity San Diego Startup Activity 124

socalTECH

JULY 13, 2009

Mark has also been quite active mentoring entrepreneurs, We caught up with Mark to hear about what kinds of investments GRP is looking at nowadays, his view on the software-as-a-service market, and how best to approach him with a pitch. So we think we're the right size for the market in 2009.

GRP Partners 157

GRP Partners Southern California Santa Barbara Rustic Canyon 157

socalTECH

JULY 20, 2010

One of Southern California's successful, serial entrepreneurs is Winston Damarillo , who founded Gluecode, which he sold to IBM in 2005. CSK Ventures in Japan is on eof the largest data center operators, and they have their own venture capital firm, which provided us with our seed funding.

Southern California 242

Southern California Startup Cloud Computing El Segundo 242

socalTECH

JULY 20, 2009

One of the big, open source successes in both Southern California and the software world was Gluecode Software , which was based in Los Angeles and acquired by IBM in 2005. Adam also had a stint at Mission Ventures, and ran worldwide sales for open source middleware at IBM. It gives them an escalation path only dealing with us.

IBM 100

IBM IBM Mission Ventures Venture Capital 100