Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. That company was Invoca, which just announced a $20 million fund raise led by Accel. So I think it’s now fair to rate me at 9/10 on follow-on fundings. 5 years ago. Sourcing high-quality leads : 9/10.

Venture Capital 387

Venture Capital Downey Writing Press 387

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

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. Most top tier VCs return about 3x invested capital and outlier funds (the best of a vintage) might return 6-8x.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2015

In the old days VCs funded off of a “pre-money” valuation. This was until about 2009 because most the investments in companies came from one, maybe two, sources. In the old days there usually weren’t convertible notes on early-stage deals and there weren’t party rounds with 20 angels or 6 seed funds.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Invest 150

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. These days that’s not the case and it’s a great outcome for entrepreneurs and for innovation.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

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. Why did the VC markets freeze so quickly?

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

I spoke a lot about the need for “personal branding” which I plan to write about soon. My mom was an entrepreneur – she was kind of my inspiration for entrepreneurship. And no one could see me as anything but a startup guy, so I started a second company and called myself a serial entrepreneur. Just forget it.”

Startup 337

Startup Entrepreneur Ideas Venture Capital 337

socalTECH

MAY 18, 2010

Al is a repeat entrepreneur, who last founded Integrien, and was SVP and GM at LowerMyBills. We built that and put it on the App Store on December 24 of 2009. Al Eisaian: We spent all of 2009 doing research with moms, having moms come into our Pasadena office and researching what things they wanted in the app.

Mobile 168

Mobile .Net Pasadena Software Review 168

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

APRIL 17, 2010

The VC’s & executives were then asked to make “commitments&# (in writing) to 3-5 of the companies that they felt they could make some sort of contribution to. I first met him there and knew he was a talented entrepreneur that I wanted to work with some day. And of course we had, TheMan. Now begins the 6-month journey.

Company 276

Company Companies Startup Southern California 276

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

It’s why the first company I ever invested in as a VC – Invoca – just announced a $20 million funding by Accel Partners. Only naive people believe that but for inexperienced entrepreneurs you can be fooled into the narrative by the press who sometimes write stories without the actual data. THE FULL STORY.

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

That would mean that the increased number of new business startups will lead to a “funding gap&# of deals that can’t get financed. But I’ll judge the angel class of 2009/2010 on a 7-10 year time horizon. in 2009 the market was completely constipated as investors focused on triage. I avoided much of this.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

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 28, 2014

It’s what signals to existing investors how quickly their teams need to be fund raising and the level of risk the company is facing and also it signals to potentially new investors both how quickly you need to raise (ie you have less leverage if you’re in a rush) as well as how much cash you’ll need if they fund you.

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

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? Mobile Internet Apple Facebook ► 2009 (32) ► December (3) Startup Software Developers Startup Software Development – Do Your Homework Be.

CTO Coach 150

CTO Coach Southern California CTO Hire Social Media 150

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

For a high-volume seed fund that adds many portfolio companies every year (such as our friends at 500 Startups who invest in over 100 distinct companies annually), the cost of a bad affirmative decision (a false positive) is quite low, since it accounts for a relatively small portion of their total fund. Unicornless. It's Me, Not You.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

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. Why the new funding round now?

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. In 2000, we set up our second fund--worth almost $400M--and for that vintage year, that fund is one of the top tier performing funds in the entire country.

GRP Partners 157

GRP Partners Southern California Santa Barbara Rustic Canyon 157

socalTECH

JUNE 18, 2009

That was the jumping off point for OneCubicle a little over 18 months ago, when we started writing the business plan and code. It was funded by David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, Paul Allen, and some other really big names. Talk a bit about your previous experience? It was Pop.com, back in 1999, 2000.

Social Network 100

Social Network Entertainment Startup CTO Coach 100

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 18, 2014

In my Twitter bio is says that I’m “ looking to invest in passionate entrepreneurs ,” which almost sounds like I was just looking for a cliché soundbite to describe myself. Yet along with “authenticity” they are two of the key attributes I look for when I meet with companies I may consider funding one day.

Startup 419

Startup Entrepreneur Design Funding 419

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

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.” What is the True Sentiment of VCs? ” “Sure, prices are dropping.

Startup 150

Startup Company Companies Venture Capital 150

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

SEPTEMBER 8, 2012

If you do a capped note it’s bad for the entrepreneur. I would never as a VC fund a round and then expect somebody else to pay a higher price right after me. Since 2009 I have been counseling people to offer discounts to the first angel investors. The trouble is, nobody has an incentive to agree to write the first check.

Pricing 294

Pricing Venture Capital Writing Equity 294

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

He blogs to 10,000 web entrepreneurs at Software by Rob and co-hosts the podcast Startups for the Rest of Us. Dec 26, 2009). We had to write a CRM to keep track of them all. They are: Fred Wilson: Lead Investors, Dipshit Companies, and Funding Every Entrepreneur. What’s going to happen in the future?'

Startup 191

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Hire 191

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. 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. have focused this as advice to entrepreneurs building enterprise software ventures today.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Startup Product Technology 175

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

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

My advice to entrepreneurs was and is “ when the hors d’oeuvres tray is being passed take two ” (e.g. So I agreed to offer my current thinking on the economy and what it portends for the VC industry & fund raising for entrepreneurs. While not 1999 all over again but I am observing first-hand the signs of funding frenzy.

Entrepreneur 298

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 298

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

My 1,000th Post on This Blog - Tim Berry's Blog - Planning Startups Stories , July 21, 2010 HTML5 video markup, compatibility and playback - Niall Kennedy's Weblog , February 8, 2010 Your Product Needs a Soul - ArcticStartup , February 12, 2010 Product Friday: Monetizing Content is a Product Problem - This is going to be BIG.

Startup 378

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Coach 378

Frank Addante

JUNE 4, 2006

► 2009 (3) ► May (1) A Tour of the Rubicon Project Headquarters ► April (1) "Pay it Forward" Event for Students & Aspiring Ent. Venture Capital Funding 7. We used some of the proceeds from these consulting projects to fund the development of StrongMail, along with personal funds.

Startup 40

Startup Venture Capital Email CTO Hire 40

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2016

I do regular (almost daily) “Snapstorms” of content around one topic for entrepreneurs and VCs. It’s more like writing a Tweet vs. sending a Direct Message (DM) in Twitter, which feels more intimate and intrusive or a FB post vs. a Private Message. Stories is the place to find your sea legs.

Snapchat 150

Snapchat Screening Venture Capital Guide 150