socalTECH

MAY 25, 2016

Santa Monica-based March Capital Partners (www.marchcp.com) has just announced a brand new, $240M venture investment fund, led by longtime venture investing veterans Jim Armstrong, Sumant Mandal, Gregory Milken and Jamie Montgomery. What is the investment focus for this fund?

Southern California 113

Southern California Capital Funding Invest 113

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

The rise of “micro VCs” or seed-stage funds. The rise of alternative sources of capital (crowd funding and the like). Lower costs to start a business (95% reduction), many more companies created & funded by angels / seed. ” 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

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

I’d rather be Roger Ehrenberg with a thesis around data-centric companies and base my investment decisions on my background. 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 152

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 152

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2016

At the Upfront Summit in early February, we had a chance to have many off-the-record conversations with Limited Partners (LPs) who fund Venture Capital (VC) funds about their views of the market. However, they have been sending VCs far more investment checks in the last ten years than they’ve gotten back as distributions.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Capital Marketing Seed Funding 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 7, 2015

” I found myself nodding through all of it with quotes like, “Seed investing is the status symbol of Silicon Valley,” said Sam Altman. I save room in literally every deal to invite angels (or seed funds) to co-invest with me. By March, a month after Mr. D’Angelo agreed to invest, CodeFights had raised $2.5

Angel 150

Angel Startup Seed Funding Invest 150

socalTECH

DECEMBER 31, 2018

We do, as of the writing of this in early December, seem to be seeing a correction at this time. The biggest news was the continued bullish market now coming on ten years even though historical cycles show markets don't usually last more than 7-8 years. I had expected a correction much earlier in the year and I was wrong.

Southern California 100

Southern California News Class Writing 100

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. Just ask anybody who was trying to close funding the fateful week of September 11, 2001 or even March 2000. The best MBA class I took was an investment strategy class.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

In the startup world, the former happens when a VC makes a bad investment, and the latter occurs when they miss a great opportunity. In contrast, low-volume, high-conviction investors like Rincon only invests in a handful new companies each year, making it much more costly (in dollars and effort expended) to invest in a loser.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

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. 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

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

He said, “They need an unbiased view of the fund raising environment because there is too much misinformation and everything seems to be changing fast.&#. I will write more about this in the next 2 weeks. – you’re very well positioned as a fund. This post originally ran on TechCrunch. I believe that.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2012

I had been looking around at several deals in late 2008 as the markets were tanking. I got a call from a VC friend of mine who said, “we’re looking at this deal but can’t write the full check. It mapped pretty well to my dream team for an A round investment. I think you should look at it.”

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Writing 356

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

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

In the original version of his post, Andy writes. Most top tier VCs return about 3x invested capital and outlier funds (the best of a vintage) might return 6-8x. But the larger funds usually have lower returns because they are often investing bigger dollars at later stages with less risk and therefore lower returns.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

The VC industry has different segments in it that have different fund sizes, different investment amounts and different risk / return expectations. We need people at all stages of the funding lifecycle and not just VCs. A new group of investors have clustered around writing earlier-stage, smaller checks.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

socalTECH

DECEMBER 17, 2008

WordHustler launched in May of 2008 in a beta. In their case, people write their scripts on a web site, and when they're done, they can submit them to contests with a single click. What kind of writing and writers are you targeting? People can write comments and rate publishers, which we vet very carefully.

Writing 209

Writing Hollywood Startup Sites 209

socalTECH

JULY 20, 2011

Earlier this month, Los Angeles-based HitFix (www.hitfix.com) an online news site focused on entertainment, announced it had raised $2M in a funding round. 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.

News 173

News Entertainment Startup Bertelsmann 173

socalTECH

JULY 13, 2009

GRP has just recently closed on a new $200M fund, and Mark has been one of the more active venture capitalists in the Los Angeles area in recent months. It looks like GRP has been making lots of early stage investments lately--can you talk a little bit about your investment preferences and what you are looking at nowadays?

GRP Partners 157

GRP Partners Southern California Santa Barbara Rustic Canyon 157

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. The company was founded in 2008 but launched publicly in March 2010. Any funding yet? When was it launched? Previously, he worked for the U.S.

Startup 71

Startup Tool Capital Customer 71

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 20, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Innovation and Geography I ran across a post in Read/Write Web - Does Location Matter in Web Innovation? that talked about a recent NY Times article When It Comes to Innovation, Geography Is Destiny. eHarmongy) as an acting CTO. in Computer Science.

CTO Coach 150

CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

As of today, I will have published an article here for entrepreneurs and startups every day for the last 1001 days, since I started Startup Professionals Musings near the close of 2008. Finding funding for startups is a tough process. The simple answer is that if you need funding, do your homework and start networking early.

Entrepreneur 96

Entrepreneur Startup Blogging Social Media 96

Jason Nazar

DECEMBER 7, 2008

If the limited partners who fund venture firms either a) change the percent of funds they allocate to VCs or b) don’t come through on their capital calls, we’ll all quickly find the venture community becoming drastically constrained.

Venture Capital 44

Venture Capital Rustic Canyon Capital Clearstone 44

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 23, 2013

As an employee of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets from 1999-2003 and of the Indianapolis Pacers from 2003-2008, I learned first-hand from the likes of Rod Thorn, Byron Scott, Jason Kidd and Larry Bird about the importance of leading by example and keys to assembling a championship-caliber team. Have you raised any funding yet?

Social Network 92

Social Network Networking Training Summary 92

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

When convertible debt first started being introduced as a “faster, cheaper way to get startups funded” they didn’t have pricing built into them. A standard entrepreneur retort I heard back then (2008-09) was “I don’t know what my company is worth now. Investors call Bull Cap. Enter “the cap.”

Startup 354

Startup Pricing Equity Venture Capital 354

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

Brad was openly writing about this and it felt like he was giving the VC playbook away for free! We write about $40 million of first-checks into new deals / year and about $40 million of follow-on investments. I’ll spare you the math and point out that this means we funded 0.104% of the market. This is how VCs feel.

Startup 150

Startup Company Companies Venture Capital 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

When I described to people why I initially invested my calls went something like this, “He’s taken kicks to the face for nearly 2 years and is still standing. Jody didn’t exactly have an easy time fund raising because he’s not one of the prototypical Silicon Valley funded entrepreneurs.

Startup 292

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Summary 292

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. But I didn’t write it for you; I wrote it for myself. How to Take Down Facebook -- Hint: It Ain't Twitter. but: Something is Still Missing.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

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. Next Wednesday we’ll have Dana Settle of Greycroft Partners, a New York / LA early-stage venture capital fund. short answer: very, very rarely. But it does happen. Short answer: no.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Startup Advertising Redpoint 285

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

Spark Capital is relatively new to VC (founded in 2005) yet has become one of the hottest new VCs having invested in Twitter, Tumblr, AdMeld, Boxee, KickApps and many more companies. We both felt that the critical reasoning skills and writing skills were critical to our career development. Founded in 2008 by Mehdi Maghsoodnia.

Venture Capital 217

Venture Capital Capital Metrics Competition 217

Frank Addante

JUNE 4, 2006

. ► February (1) Building and Developing an A++ Team ► 2008 (14) ► December (1) Develop a Culture Roadmap ► November (2) Green Week - Save the Environment and Your Cash Creating a Culture of Innovation: Cultural Values. Venture Capital Funding 7. We invested the first $1 million to develop version 1.0

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Email CTO Hire 40

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

My original thinking from Oct ’09 was, while I didn’t (and still don’t) have a crystal ball I worried that: consumers were over-stretched with debt (and make up 77% of the economy), unemployment would continue to rise, which in turn would drive the stock market south and cut the rate of M&A activity and VC investment even further.

Entrepreneur 298

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 298

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

Welcome to the Lost Decade (for Entrepreneurs, IPO’s and VC’s) - Steve Blank , July 15, 2010 If you take funding from a venture capital firm or angel investor and want to build a large, enduring company (rather than sell it to the highest bidder), this isn’t the decade to do it. Yesterday he outlined his investment thesis on his blog.

Startup 217

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Software Review 217