SoCal Tech Calendar

JANUARY 23, 2009

Thursday, January 29, 2009 -- "Accessing Government Funding for Research: Partnering for Success in Challenging Economic Times" Southern California Biomedical Council. government agencies provide funds, such as SBIR and STTR grants, to small biotech and medical device firms in support of their RandD and commercialization activities.

Research 100

Research Funding Southern California Writing 100

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

OCTOBER 7, 2014

My view: “Spending any time or energy trying to game the ‘definition’ of your round of fund raising is a total waste. There weren’t a lot of seed funds in 2007 so this was often done by angels, funding consortia or sometimes early-stage funds that existed then (First Round Capital, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, etc.).

Seed Funding 399

Seed Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 399

SoCal Tech Calendar

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

Tuesday, October 6, 2009 -- SBIR/STTR Phase I Grant Proposal Course. This one-day, 8-hour intensive course provides an overview of the SBIR and STTR funding process and helps individuals prepare to write a comprehensive grant proposal. See [link] (more).

Course 100

Course Writing Funding Help 100

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2012

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. I decided to write a $2+ million check along with my co-investor who offered $750k. But it was early 2009 and not many companies were getting new financings at all so I thought they should take the deal.

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Writing 356

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 Funding Invest 263

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

I’m going to write a pure admiration piece. Yes, I still used a Blackberry in 2009. “Pishevar was turned down by Uber in its 2nd round of funding. ” Shervin has done much since then including founding his own fund, Sherpa Ventures. Not this one. A “hats off” (see what I did there?)

Startup 150

Startup Conference Ideas Writing 150

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

JULY 26, 2022

Considering that many of our funds are in the $200–300 million range, these returns were more meaningful than if we had raised billion dollar funds. Obviously the funding environment has changed considerably in 2022 but as early-stage investors our daily jobs stay largely unchanged. What do you do with a $650 million platform?

Startup 408

Startup Venture Capital Writing Invest 408

socalTECH

MAY 18, 2010

We built that and put it on the App Store on December 24 of 2009. As of the last four months, we've had about 200,000 plus downloads, a bunch of great write ups, and a lot of mom bloggers who have been reviewing the app and writing stories on it. All of 2009 was figuring out what people want.

Mobile 168

Mobile .Net Pasadena Software Review 168

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. Yeah, true.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

But when I’m looking to write my check I need to look in the eyes of the captain — the maestro who brings the whole orchestra together. If your idea is so amazing that it warrants my hard-earned angel money or the money of my LP investors from our fund then why should I take a risk on you if you won’t take a risk on yourself?

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur Startup Venture Capital CTO Hire 293

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

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. PHONE CALLS.

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

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. He then joined their venture fund, TheMailRoom Fund, which is where I met him. It was a great chance for the class to interact with the community in LA.

Company 276

Company Companies Startup Southern California 276

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. That’s awesome.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

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

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. I’ve got guys getting funded at 23! If you’re not confident enough to get funded now, you’re never going to be funded. If I write $2 million and we hit a bump in the road, I can write another $2 million.

Startup 337

Startup Entrepreneur Ideas Venture Capital 337

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

Either downside scenario requires angel deals to be funded further. In the latter cases many companies (Flickr, Delicious, Blogger, Writely in 05-08 and lately Invite Media, Aardvark, Dodgeball, etc.) Yes, the VC industry was over funded and too many non value-add people entered the industry.

Invest 284

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2021

It has historically been the case that VCs would rather fund the promise of 100x in a company with almost no revenue than the reality of a company growing at 50% but doing $20+ million in sales. Imagine if, say, Autodesk had purchased it in 2009 for $100 million? that plays a leading role in funding in the Central Coast of California.

Venture Capital 363

Venture Capital Capital Funding .Net 363

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

Either scenario requires angel deals to be funded further. In the latter case many companies (Flickr, Delicious, Blogger, Writely, etc.) Yes, the VC industry was over funded and too many non value-add people entered the industry. Let’s call these cards 1996-99 and 2005-08. got picked up early without raising a lot of VC.

Invest 152

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 152

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

APRIL 25, 2011

Scott Lahman: When we first put it out in early 2009, free texting was just a huge offering. By 2007, when we started GOGII, we really wanted to break out of the mobile ecosystem, and we were one of the first five companies funded by the Kleiner Perkins iFund. If you think that it is easy, however, you'll be disappointed.

Gogii 200

Gogii Mobile Activision Electronic Arts 200

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

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.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

So before you ask someone to even spend an hour of their time writing code or reviewing specs make sure you can pay them in some form (coffee, dinner, laptop, etc.), and if you can’t then you better start thinking of ways to raise enough funds to be able to pay them something. Don’t expect someone to work for nothing endlessly.

CTO Hire 241

CTO Hire CTO Coach Equity Develop 241

Tech Zulu Event

MARCH 6, 2014

Beginning with hip hop in 2009, they’ve since included different genre verticals into their model with rock, poetry, news, even bible. We had users, and even when people wanted to give us money – they wouldn’t even have known how to fund us. But YC was how we got serious. ” The Team. The Future of Genius.

Startup 93

Startup Mobile Entertainment Sites 93

Xconomy

SEPTEMBER 29, 2016

General interest, awareness, and discussion about AI has waxed and waned since the field was founded in 1956,” they write ( PDF ). “We We find that discussion of AI has increased sharply since 2009, and that these discussions have been consistently more optimistic than pessimistic.

Artificial Inteligence 40

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Technical Advisors Research 40

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 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.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Startup Advertising Redpoint 285

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 18, 2014

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. This is how Upfront Ventures came to fund Tristan Walker – one of the most talented and passionate entrepreneurs with whom we work whose new company is called Bevel. And we did.

Startup 419

Startup Entrepreneur Design Funding 419

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2012

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. By the way, this is EXACTLY how VCs close their funds.

Pricing 294

Pricing Venture Capital Writing Equity 294

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

SoCal Delicious

JANUARY 15, 2010

Shortcut: sebastian-x.com Blog About Blogroll Links How to cleverly integrate your own URI shortener Posted on 30 December, 2009 This pamphlet is somewhat geeky. It was fun to write, so go get the best out of it. Sebastian’s Pamphlets If you’ve read my articles somewhere on the Internet, expect something different here.

SEO 37

SEO IP Blogging PHP 37

SoCal Delicious

MAY 6, 2012

There are hundreds of entrepreneurs here in Los Angeles who are building awesome companies, writing awesome books, making awesome movies and are trying to solve important problems to help make this world a better place. Goodreads raised a Series A round of funding from True Ventures in the summer of 2009. MUST be on this list!!

Los Angeles 78

Los Angeles Entrepreneur Angel Fractional CTO 78