socalTECH

DECEMBER 27, 2018

Editor's note: All this week, and into the start of next year, we'll be featuring reflections on 2018 from notable investors, entrepreneurs, and others from Southern California's technology community. Anna Barber is the Managing Director at Techstars LA where she invests in B2B and B2C early stage startups.

Startup 124

Startup Press Commerce Southern California 124

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 8, 2019

With the current strong economy, as an active startup mentor, I’m seeing a new surge of entrepreneurs and startups, with the commensurate scramble for funding. This approach is thus not viable for entrepreneurs already out of money. Increased jeopardy and less fun for the entrepreneur. Being a public company isn’t cheap or easy.

Summary 121

Summary Startup Entrepreneur Funding 121

Tech.Co

MAY 25, 2018

If you’re an early-stage entrepreneur, technology has served you well. In 2006, a passion to help startups grew into Tech Cocktail , a company whose mission was to showcased burgeoning companies in bars around the country. The Case Foundation invests in people and ideas that can change the world.

Startup 141

Startup Technical Review Competition Software Review 141

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2016

In 2006 I started using Facebook and most of my friends & colleagues thought I was strange. I had blogged when I was an entrepreneur. But how can you invest in technology unless you’re going to use the tools and understand them? They thought it was like MySpace and why did I need a MySpace page?

Snapchat 150

Snapchat Product Startup AMA 150

socalTECH

DECEMBER 31, 2018

Editor's note: As we head into the new year, we've been featuring reflections on 2018 from notable investors, entrepreneurs, and others from Southern California's technology community. You'll be able to browse all of those contributions here.

Southern California 100

Southern California News Class Writing 100

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2012

You could argue that choosing the name “first round” paints them into a corner in case they want to ever do a late stage fund, but I suspect they named it FRC precisely because they wanted to excel at early-stage investing. IA Ventures – Roger Ehrenberg was doing angel investing before he became a VC.

Startup 304

Startup Venture Capital Los Angeles Santa Monica 304

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

I took the opportunity this past week to publish summary notes of some of the VCs and entrepreneurs I had interviewed on This Week in VC. One of my goals in doing the show was not only to educate entrepreneurs but also to put a human face on many of the VCs in our industry as VCs can be hard to get to know. (5:00 5:00 – 5:55).

Capital 265

Capital Venture Capital Veoh Startup 265

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2010

If you don’t know Montgomery & Co it is one of the premier technology & media focused investment banks in the country (and as Michael corrected me they also have a strong Healthcare / Med tech practice). Should you use investment banks to raise venture capital? This is often in the 5-7% range. Revenue of ~$160mm in 2008.

Venture Capital 242

Venture Capital Mission Ventures Capital Help 242

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

I’m writing this post to explain to entrepreneurs what you should be thinking about in terms of the VC’s you approach and the size and stage of their funds. VC’s don’t invest 100% of their own money. And funds also have investments from the partners of the firm. What is total assets under management? -

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Funding Invest GRP Partners 269

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 18, 2013

We will also have some of the top companies present that each of the panelist has invested in. Our Panelist Include: Brock Pierce - Starting & Investing in Bitcoin, Games, and Gambling Businesses. Brock Pierce is a 10x entrepreneur best known for pioneering the market for digital currency. MusicMatch was acquired by Yahoo!

Startup 111

Startup Entertainment Media Santa Barbara 111

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

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. “My This time frame – 2005/2006 – web 2.0 Brad on blogging.

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

SoCal Delicious

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

Ten Tech Entrepreneurs Who Are Putting LA on the Map. Tech startup accelerators dot the landscape, feeding investments into the waiting arms of the nation’s most intelligent and driven entrepreneurs. Miller was even honored as an Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” for 2011. Post navigation.

Technical Review 75

Technical Review Entrepreneur Riot Games Southern California 75

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

And for some strange reason entrepreneurs didn’t share this information. I’ve started from day one trying to build total transparency into my process with entrepreneurs. This starts with understanding how VCs and entrepreneurs often see valuation differently. Back then VentureHacks didn’t exist.

Venture Capital 405

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

Tech.Co

MARCH 8, 2018

Lisha is a member of Pipeline Angels , a social impact angel investing group focused on women and non-binary femmes, and serves as the Deal Flow lead. She has created a successful model to bridge entrepreneurs, investors and the federal government. At NextGen Venture Partners, Ashley discovers and vets potential investments.

Technical Review 70

Technical Review Startup Software Review Entrepreneur 70

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

When venture capitalists scale back investing activities it can be very swift and leave many companies that are in the process of fund raising hung out to dry. But any entrepreneurs raising capital should keep in mind that this opening of the markets could possibly be temporary. Why did the VC markets freeze so quickly?

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Funding Invest 263

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 13, 2018

With the current strong economy, as an active startup mentor, I’m seeing a new surge of entrepreneurs and startups, with the commensurate scramble for funding. This approach is not for entrepreneurs already out of money. Increased jeopardy and less fun for the entrepreneur. Being a public company isn’t cheap or easy.

Summary 79

Summary Startup Entrepreneur Funding 79

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 27, 2013

We caught up with David Siemer , both an investment banker who runs Siemer & Associates (www.siemer.com) and an early stage investor here with Siemer Ventures (www.siemervc.com), to get his thoughts on the subject. You have a unique position, being both in the investment banking as well as being an early stage investor.

Southern California 124

Southern California SoCal Commerce Invest 124

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 3, 2014

With the uptick in the economy, as an active startup mentor, I’m seeing a new surge of entrepreneurs and startups, with the commensurate scramble for funding. This approach is not for entrepreneurs already out of money. Increased jeopardy and less fun for the entrepreneur. Being a public company isn’t cheap or easy.

Funding 98

Funding Startup Entrepreneur Summary 98

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 15, 2015

With the uptick in the economy, as an active startup mentor, I’m seeing a new surge of entrepreneurs and startups, with the commensurate scramble for funding. This approach is not for entrepreneurs already out of money. Increased jeopardy and less fun for the entrepreneur. Being a public company isn’t cheap or easy.

Funding 102

Funding Summary Startup Entrepreneur 102

InfoChachkie

JULY 11, 2011

As Fred points out, many entrepreneurs hear the word “debt” and promptly run the other direction. By combining our equity investment with a tranche of venture debt, the company has avoided a larger equity round, which would have significantly diluted the Founders’ ownership share. Go ahead, I will wait…. welcome back.

Equity 235

Equity Startup Invest Funding 235

socalTECH

AUGUST 24, 2010

In light of the recent success, we sat down with Marc Averitt and Sharon Stevenson to talk about the recent exit, where they are with their fund nowadays, and what advice they have for entrepreneurs. It was about three years from investment to exit, which we were really thrilled about. Nice chatting with you today!

Startup 185

Startup Southern California Ideas Research 185

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

This was really a fun week at TWiVC because we decided to have an entrepreneur come and talk about raising capital rather than having a VC come on. It’s always such a pleasure for me to spend time with Farb because he has all of the enthusiasm and energy you love to see in entrepreneurs. He’s also candid, humble and helpful.

Venture Capital 214

Venture Capital Startup Design S3 214

socalTECH

JULY 16, 2010

One of the questions we get most from entrepreneurs is how companies reach an exit event, and the thinking that goes into acquisitions. Quinn Curtis: We were around since 2005, we were incorporated and funded in 2006. Quinn is now VP of Hosted Security Services at Webroot (www.webroot.com). Quinn, thanks for the time.

San Diego 145

San Diego IP Acquisition Web 145

socalTECH

APRIL 5, 2017

How is it you made it to $100M in revenues without outside investment? There are something like 110 different ways for someone to make money, whether that might be investing in the stock market or real estate, building a Silicon Valley company and flipping it. We have a pretty good retention rate, over 90 to 95 percent.

Diamond Bar 169

Diamond Bar Custom Customer Organization 169

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

He didn’t tell it in the video but, ever the entrepreneur, Scott started a business to take couples up on a “mile high club&# flight on airplanes as a way of getting all of his miles logged to get his next class of airplane license that required a certain number of hours logged. It’s part of what makes him so likable.

Zag 248

Zag Truecar Venture Capital CarsDirect 248

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 13, 2013

Identify the total investment required for profitability. A very common mistake of early stage startups is to request a small investment to get started. Yet I can’t argue their success in the value proposition, since they turned down a billion dollar offer from Yahoo way back in 2006, and their market cap today is about $126 billion.

Startup 96

Startup Course Yahoo Funding 96

socalTECH

OCTOBER 2, 2012

We thought it might be interesting to talk with one of the fund's managing directors, Jeb Spencer about the fund's success in technology investments, plus how it managed to raise another fund in this kind of environment, plus its unique goal of getting companies to an acquisition--and not an IPO.

Acquisition 168

Acquisition Software Review Technical Review Equity 168

Tech Zulu Event

MAY 24, 2011

Over 600 people came to this event to listen share and network, including entrepreneurs, VC’s and investors. William spent about half the time showing amusing new commercials and going through the evolution of his life leading up to the inception of Vizio as well as how a $600,000 investment turned into a $3 billion company seven years later.

Orange County 104

Orange County OCTANE Technical Review Outsource Development 104

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. We invested in Overture, which was sold for $1.2

GRP Partners 157

GRP Partners Southern California Santa Barbara Rustic Canyon 157

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

They also talked about their outlook on the venture capital market, and how likely they are to be investing this year, given the worried economy. One thing I like to look for is some barrier to entry, whether that is technology, or partners, or great entrepreneurs who understand the space. It's in the DNA of entrepreneurs.

Tech Coast Angels 100

Tech Coast Angels Ideas Entrepreneur Invest 100

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

This post highlights some of the reasons why the market is moving again and what entrepreneurs should do about this. There’s no doubt (at least anecdotally) that the pace of VC investments in early-stage technology companies has picked up in the past few months. Because you have multiple forces at work. billion.

Venture Capital 255

Venture Capital Marketing Startup Social Network 255

Frank Addante

AUGUST 2, 2006

► August (1) Invest in Transparency & Active Communication ► July (1) The Fear of Success ► May (2) Optimized for Speed = 30% Waste Happy 1st Birthday Rubicon Project! ▼ 2006 (20) ► December (2) Just Say What it Is 12 Proven Guidelines for Rapid Product Development. Hire Entrepreneurs!

Entrepreneur 40

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Web 2.0 40

Tech Zulu Event

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Founded in 2006, Demand Media is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA with offices in Bellevue, WA, Austin, TX, New York, NY and London, UK. Tech Coast Angels is ever-mindful that some of the world’s greatest companies began with angel investments and we take our commitment to that tradition seriously. Together they do amazing things.

Technical Review 58

Technical Review Software Review Santa Monica Tech Coast Angels 58

socalTECH

AUGUST 8, 2012

Santa Monica-based Fundable (www.fundable.com) is a newly launched, crowdfunding site which is headed by local entrepreneur Wil Shroter. Dolgoff has a fascinating background--he invented the first LCD projector, he helped inspire Star Trek's Holodeck, and he also is a serial entrepreneur who took his company public on the NASDAQ in the 90's.

Startup 252

Startup Sites Patents Outsource Development 252

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

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. The Original Post (after the jump): Venture Capital, By Mark Suster (December 2nd, 2006). Experienced and serial entrepreneurs in the content management space. People said, “invest more.”

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 15, 2017

Identify the total investment required for profitability. A very common mistake of early stage startups is to request a small investment to get started. Yet I can’t argue their success in the value proposition, since they turned down a billion dollar offer from Yahoo way back in 2006, and their market cap today is around $400 billion.

Snapchat 55

Snapchat Startup Course Yahoo 55

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 18, 2011

Identify the total investment required for profitability. A very common mistake of early stage startups is to request a small investment to get started. Most Internet businesses should show profitability in two years, while new medicines may take ten years to pass FDA and other safety tests.

Startup 97

Startup Course Yahoo Funding 97