Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European startups need to work as hard as those in Silicon Valley and I echoed the sentiment in my post about the need for entrepreneurs to be maniacal about their businesses if one wants to work in the hyper competitive tech world. We were based in London.

Entrepreneur 308

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital Conference 308

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2016

In 2008 I started VC blogging. I had blogged when I was an entrepreneur. I went to an industry event where people actually called me self-centered for writing publicly. In 2007 I started using Twitter and most of my friends & colleagues wondered why people would care what I ate for lunch.

Snapchat 150

Snapchat Product Startup AMA 150

InfoChachkie

DECEMBER 22, 2011

I began publishing my blog in 2008. By early 2010, I found my stylistic voice and identified my audience of emerging entrepreneurs and thus dropped my penname. was published in 2009 and Time Wounds All Heels was written in 2008. For instance, I was recently asked by Inc.com to write a weekly column. 2011 Rank.

Newsletter 205

Newsletter Blogging Santa Barbara Content 205

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 4, 2010

Later, when I was in the tax business at Intuit and H&R Block, running those businesses, every year we had to hire a couple hundred tax professionals, who had to unwind the tax code, and who had to write it all down to give again to developers, in order for them to interpret and provide a usable product to consumers.

Startup 150

Startup San Diego Entrepreneur Tool 150

socalTECH

JUNE 27, 2013

Our 2008 fund is also performing incredibly strong. In a world where we have blogs, social media, sites like TheFunded, and a variety of other sources where entrepreneurs can figure out what other people think about VCs, being open and transparent matters. If I write about online education, I''ll see 25 online education plans.

Funding 196

Funding Venture Capital Los Angeles Social Media 196

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. We do, as of the writing of this in early December, seem to be seeing a correction at this time.

Southern California 100

Southern California News Class Writing 100

Eric Greenspan

NOVEMBER 6, 2013

I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but 2008 accelerated its demise and while we continued to do great things, fate and progress eventually took control and it was over. Today, as I write this, I’m working on several deals in the world of coffee and other food products. Coffee Entrepreneuring Me' I looked back.

Startup 167

Startup Entrepreneur Writing Customer 167

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

There were no unicorns in sight on April 14th, 2008 when Kevin O'Connor, my Partner Jim Andelman and I met Twilio's Founder and CEO, Jeff Lawson. A true Internet Pioneer, by 2008, Kevin had already founded or co-founded two Unicorns in his own right, DoubleClick (sold to Google $3.1 billion) and ISS (sold to IBM $1.3 billion). . <Note:

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

After all, I am no stranger to the publicly expressing the frustrations of dealing with the downside of this industry as I wrote about in 2006 when I was an entrepreneur. In the original version of his post, Andy writes. 2008 App ecosystem on iOS = $0. The best VCs don’t try to help entrepreneurs. Shame on you.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2017

Recently the firms two founding partners (and also Managing Partners) —  Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham  — decided to transition management of the firm to Andy Weissman (who joined in 2012) and Albert Wenger (joined in 2008 and writes one of the most thoughtful blogs in our industry ).

Venture Capital 161

Venture Capital Funding Capital Startup 161

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

This is the third article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). I should say that I agree that naive optimism in entrepreneurs can produce higher beta (upside or flops) and that’s good from an investment standpoint if you’re looking for big returns.

Invest 284

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 7, 2015

One of my favorite entrepreneur-Twitterer weighed in, “You want to keep tapping into their collective intelligence so you keep saying ‘Thank you for the feedback’ and they keep sending it,” Ms. Even if one disagrees with the premise, why would anyone feel the need to attack Mike for writing it? Morrill said.

Angel 150

Angel Startup Seed Funding Invest 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

Just 3 years ago there was talk of institutional investors “not being able to write small enough checks.” Many pension funds are simply too large to write small checks and favor the ability to write $50-100 million checks to funds. ” Stated simply – if you seed funded Uber at $4.5m Why is this?

Venture Capital 398

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Seed Funding 398

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

years ago you’d remember RIP Good Times from Sequoia, which still strikes me as having been prudent advice in late 2008. I hope to offer experiences from being an entrepreneur and being a VC.&#. I started by writing 3-4 times / week. .&# That’s how it felt then and a bit how it feels in May 2011. So which is it?

Startup 391

Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

As a courtesy if you enjoyed his write-up please check out his startup company, ChannelStack. In 2008 they raised a much larger fund $132.5 The Exchange Fund – This allows the entrepreneurs to diversify their founders stock into other portfolio companies stock. million and opened another office in San Francisco.

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

This was an audience of mostly first-time entrepreneurs. It is great for entrepreneurs and great for VCs. I will write more about this in the next 2 weeks. So here is what I have been telling entrepreneurs privately for the past 6 months. What a bubble means for each entrepreneur. I believe that. But it will end.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

My initial reaction to Adeo when we spoke was that while it may have solved some issues (debt versus equity) it didn’t solve the ones that I’ve been warning entrepreneurs about most loudly. A standard entrepreneur retort I heard back then (2008-09) was “I don’t know what my company is worth now.

Startup 354

Startup Pricing Equity Venture Capital 354

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 9, 2012

Everyone recognizes a great entrepreneur when they work with one, but most entrepreneurs don’t know what to look for in themselves that will drive that perception by others. The points are great, but can be made even simpler and more actionable by adapting then to the world of the entrepreneur: Demonstrate character.

Startup 104

Startup Examples Entrepreneur Ideas 104

SoCal Delicious

MAY 6, 2012

where entrepreneurs share their stories. 63 Los Angeles Entrepreneurs To Be Proud Of By mario on May 2, 2012 in Features , grid. Free Corporations For First-Time Entrepreneurs. Right now they’re setting up 500 free corporations for first time entrepreneurs. Here are 62 63 Los Angeles entrepreneurs we can be proud of.

Los Angeles 78

Los Angeles Entrepreneur Angel Fractional CTO 78

socalTECH

JUNE 8, 2011

It's the biggest portion of our revenues at our company, and our clients include the Buffalo News, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, JDate, Spark network, and many entrepreneurs. But, with the economy turning south in 2008, lots of those customers went out of business. Jimmy Hendricks: Our lead product is a white label, daily deal product.

Platform 263

Platform Training Software Review Advertising 263

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2: As expected at least one person accused me of writing this post because I want to see lower valuations. I have conversations with entrepreneurs and other VCs on a daily basis about fund raising, the prices of deals, how much companies should raise, etc. I acknowledged this in the article. I’m just making the commentary.

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 6, 2016

The points are great, but can be made even simpler and more actionable by adapting then to the world of the entrepreneur: Demonstrate character. Howard Schultz, who grew Starbucks to 13,000 stores by 2008, decided to step back in as CEO when the economy was killing his stores, and refocus everyone on the customer. Drive innovation.

Examples 76

Examples Startup Coach Patents 76

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

This is the third article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). And if I were an entrepreneur I’d rather find investors who understood “my space&# so that in tough times they felt comfortable about “doubling down.&#. Not everybody agreed.

Invest 152

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 152

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

These days that’s not the case and it’s a great outcome for entrepreneurs and for innovation. A new group of investors have clustered around writing earlier-stage, smaller checks. A: Only because it’s a nicer branding for entrepreneurs. I totally agree and have been arguing this to entrepreneurs for years.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2010

I’ve seen too many entrepreneurs try to do things on the cheap. But there are also problems / risks: - the funding environment might change dramatically – there may never be a next round (see: March 2000, September 11, 2001 and September 2008). - But the lower end also has risks. Don’t let that be you.

Startup 319

Startup Venture Capital Capital Competition 319

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 16, 2010

A couple of years ago an entrepreneur had requested a meeting with me to present his business. The meeting was set for Wednesday, May 8th 2008 at 11am. We write that into the calendar entry so that I (and any my partners) know this and would only reschedule if extremely urgent. Let me give you an example.

Startup 346

Startup Conference Century City Email 346

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

I’d like to explain as best I can my opinion on what is going on because most of what I hear from entrepreneurs is not only wrong but is reminiscent of what I heard in 1997-2000. ” “This will be great for VCs and bad for entrepreneurs.” That was written in September 2008. All of these are false.

Startup 150

Startup Company Companies Venture Capital 150

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write this post since September of last year when Brad Feld first wrote about the The Founders Visa Movement. I commented briefly on his blog and made a mental note to write a blog post. But it turns out I met a bunch of really interesting entrepreneurs. But TWTFelipe is an entrepreneur.

Technical Review 282

Technical Review Startup High Tech Software Review 282

socalTECH

MAY 25, 2016

At Idealab, we saw many shots on goal with companies who were consumer focused, and we have found the quality of entrepreneurs going to consumer Internet companies has changed dramatically, which represents a real opportunity. It's all about the entrepreneur. Post 2008, LPs abhor illiquidity.

Southern California 113

Southern California Capital Funding Invest 113

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

And so it happened that between 2000-2008 I was the biggest buzz kill at dinner parties. Remember it was only 2008 where Microsoft and even Google were laying off employees. Yet nearly any entrepreneur who has an idea that other people aren’t doing will tell you that it’s hard to get investors excited. Same with VCs.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

But any entrepreneurs raising capital should keep in mind that this opening of the markets could possibly be temporary. Bu when you start to worry that the world is ending (as it seemed it was in late 2008 / early 2009) you tend to get worried about large burn rates. So we have almost no triage problem. The deal was done in late 2007.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

In 2008, he founded StackOverflow , and it has become the foundation for a question and answer platform called StackExchange. Microsoft Office ended up beating its competitors because it was able to read and write to file formats other than its own. Communicating with the developers who write code. His Tenure at Microsoft.

Software Review 285

Software Review Software Blogging Startup 285

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

It’s always fun chatting with Jason because he’s knowledgeable about the market, quick on topics and pushes me to talk more about VC / entrepreneur issues. We’re staring to get the hang of how to divide the show up into talking about deals but also talking about issues for entrepreneurs during funding.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Startup Advertising Redpoint 285

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

I’m writing this series because if you better understand how VC firms work you can better target which firms make sense for you to speak with. 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.

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Funding Invest GRP Partners 269

Tech Zulu Event

AUGUST 22, 2012

WePay was founded in 2008 by Bill Clerico and Rich Aberman and is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. The company was founded in 2008 but launched publicly in March 2010. BusinessWeek named Bill and Rich two of the Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs of 2011. When was it launched? Key features and how does it work?

Startup 71

Startup Tool Capital Customer 71

socalTECH

JULY 20, 2011

We thought it was a real opportunity to bring in some taste-maker editors, who could write specifically for that audience, and break news. It was the fall of 2008, when Lehman Bros. It was the fall of 2008, when Lehman Bros. Jennifer Sargent: We did our initial fundraising in the fall of 2008, and launched in January of 2009.

News 173

News Entertainment Startup Bertelsmann 173

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

I was saying that I was happy it was all out in the open because I felt at least everybody could now understand the issues & opportunities from the perspectives of angels, entrepreneurs and VCs. He has set up an office, a process & people around him that are helpful to entrepreneurs in need of hands-on skills in a mass service way.

Startup 292

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Summary 292