InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 15, 2012

One the most frequent questions asked of me by entrepreneurs is, "How can I become a Venture Capitalist?" The inquiry is common because being a VC is (to an entrepreneur, at least) a sexy job. I define a "VC" as, "a professional investor who deploys third-party funds into relatively early-stage companies." Microscopic Industry.

Venture Capital 242

Venture Capital Technical Review Invest RSS 242

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

The dinner parties now are filled with self-righteous angel investors bragging about how many deals they are in on. They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. Logic tells me the following: It is hard to make money angel investing.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

We thought today for our interview, that we'd get an update on the angel investment environment here in Southern California from Scott Sangster , the incoming President of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Tech Coast Angels , the biggest angel investment group in Southern California.

Tech Coast Angels 182

Tech Coast Angels Technical Review Angel Southern California 182

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Over the past month a colleague ( Chang Xu ) and I sifted through data on the venture capital industry (as we do every year) and made a bunch of calls to VCs and LPs to confirm our hypotheses. As a result of the IPO window shifting we saw a massive inflow of public-market capital into the latest stages of venture.

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Invest Seed Funding Startup 328

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

Today I’m handing her the largest A-round check I’ve ever written as a VC as we lead her $10 million A-Round at uBeam. As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning. The practical uses for uBeam technology is limitless.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 28, 2013

The Tech Coast Angels , Southern California's most active , organized angel investment group, has a goal: cut down the time it takes to fund a startup presenting to the organization.

Tech Coast Angels 168

Tech Coast Angels Technical Review Angel Funding 168

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

You’ll be able to give them an update on key hires, pilot customers, key tech innovations – whatever. I spoke about this more in depth in these two posts: 4 things I look for in an investment & how to manage VC relationships. This is happening with both angels and VCs. Quick coffees, whatever.

Invest 411

Invest Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 411

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

Venture and angel investing has long been considered a man''s world--with domination of the industry, executives, financiers, and others by men, with only a few exceptions. Eva Helene Yazhari: It''s a program for budding angel investors, and female angel investors. What is the Pipeline Fellowship?

Angel 276

Angel Invest Mentor Technical Review 276

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

If you track the venture capital industry it would be hard to miss the conversation going on this week over AngelList “Syndicates.” My favorite new VC blogger, Hunter Walk, weighed in with some thoughtful comments about how Syndicates might actually pit, “ angel vs. angel.” Bowery Capital).

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Invest Course Technical Review 356

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

Earlier this week, the Tech Coast Angels , the largest and most active organized angel group in Southern California, announced a new effort to create an angel group network, which will share and syndicate deals between groups--current the TCA, Golden Seeds, and Band of Angels.

Technical Review 145

Technical Review Networking Angel Tech Coast Angels 145

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. These tensions seep out in some angels or seed funds publicly or semi-privately deriding later-stage VCs for their “bad” behavior. Why prorata rights are becoming a bigger deal to angels.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Our guest this week on #TWiVC was Dana Settle , partner at Greycroft Partners , a venture capital firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles. It’s always fun debating companies with Dana because she’s always so knowledgeable on deals – particularly those in the digital media, ad-tech and eCommerce spaces.

Venture Capital 240

Venture Capital Startup Platform Technical Review 240

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 5, 2010

I attended the inaugural Open Angel Forum in Los Angeles back in January and wrote about it here. Jason Calacanis started this initiative in response to the pay-to-play network of angel events that he despised. The first event was a big success and brought out many of LA’s angel elite.

Angel 254

Angel Technical Review Software Review Platform 254

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

Chris Dixon is one of my favorite people in tech and writes one of the few blogs I read religiously. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should. He and I once took different sides of an debate about whether “VC signaling&# in early-stage deals is a serious problem or not.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

Let’s review all of our existing investments. But I guess you could say the same about VC. Stock market declines would bring back dog days of VC. If you want a comprehensive summary of the industry in this era it’s worth a read: VC Ice Age Part 1 – What Happens When a Market Comes to a Standstill?

Marketing 305

Marketing Venture Capital Funding Technical Review 305

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

So today I’m excited to announce that Upfront Ventures is leading an $8 million round with some amazing co-investors including Founder’s Fund, OATV, Lowercase, High Peaks, Collaborative Fund and many great angel investors. After 9 months it was time to raise seed capital and go test drive our new software and processes.

Technical Review 380

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire Startup 380

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2014

We are often asked how companies get funded, why VCs make the decisions we make and what we’re looking for in entrepreneurs. I think this is a Seriously great example of how this process works for at least one VC – Upfront Ventures. So I hope that offers you insights into how companies move through the VC system.

Funding 373

Funding Technical Review Startup Screening 373

SoCal Tech Calendar

FEBRUARY 17, 2012

Thursday, February 23, 2012 -- Current VC market and how to pitch it. The current venture market and how to pitch it - Getting professional tech investment (private, angel, venture, strategic) in these times is not easy. See [link] (more)

Venture Capital 113

Venture Capital Technical Review Marketing Capital 113

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 18, 2010

There is no cost but you must physically be based in or move to Los Angeles for the 6 months of the program. Applications are due April 6th, 2010, the form is on the website and the Twitter address is @launchpadlad. John Morris from the Tech Coast Angels was encouraging me to do something similar. The rest is history.

Technical Review 259

Technical Review Venture Capital Southern California Tech Coast Angels 259

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 25, 2010

Having re-read it, I believe his real premise instead is, “Fixed-size, multi-investor angel rounds are such a bad idea for startups that one wonders why things were ever done that way.&#. This leads to the problem of “herding cats&# for entrepreneurs raising angel money. I’ve always believed this.

Venture Capital 286

Venture Capital Pricing Technical Review Startup 286

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

Seattle should be the envy of any non Silicon Valley tech community in the country. It really wouldn’t take much to turn a great technology ecosystem into a truly electric one. I need to take some VC meetings. You need to have passionate tech entrepreneurs who want to build businesses locally. Me: “Bullshit.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

TechCrunch LA

MAY 20, 2021

Builders VC led the round, which included participation from Celtic, Newfund and Wish co-founder Danny Zhang. Construction tech startups are poised to shake up a $1.3-trillion-dollar As more people spent time at home last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the startup saw its contract revenue spike by 5x, Wu says.

Technical Review 185

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital Software Review 185

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2013

If you’ve been following the press about VC funds you’ll know this is no small feat. But in Los Angeles, Santa Monica is akin to SoMa in San Francisco, Cambridge in the Boston area or Flatiron / Union Square in NYC. Well, the venture capital industry has changed a lot in the past 20 years … and we have too.

Funding 343

Funding Santa Monica Venture Capital Startup 343

socalTECH

JUNE 15, 2020

The Tech Coast Angels says it has launched a new, annual fund, and is continuing to invest--despite the pandemic. The angel group, the largest in the nation, said it invested over $19M in 2019, in part due to a similar fund created by its San Diego chapter, the TCA-San Diego, last year. READ MORE>>.

Tech Coast Angels 113

Tech Coast Angels Technical Review Los Angeles Angel 113

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 14, 2011

The Tech Coast Angels announced this morning that it has had a first close on its Angel Capital Entrepreneurial (ACE) Fund 1, the firm's new early-stage investment fund. The angel group said that the first investment from the fund was in Vokle, an online event broadcasting service. fundraising. READ MORE>>.

Tech Coast Angels 165

Tech Coast Angels Angel Funding Technical Review 165

socalTECH

JANUARY 7, 2013

Surf Air ($2.6M, Los Angeles, subscription aircraft service). Southern California's Most Popular Tech Stories. LaunchpadLA Opens Up Spring Applications. Ignyta ($6M, San Diego, personalized medicine). Independa ($5M, San Diego, software for senior independence). AwarePoint ($4M, San Diego, real time patient location systems).

Southern California 168

Southern California Technical Review SoCal San Diego 168

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. Brad’s start in Venture Capital. Brad on blogging. was starting.

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

socalTECH

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Southern California venture totals for Q3 totaled around $1.0 billion in investments, according to the Q3 analysis of venture capital deals by socalTECH.com. Interestingly enough, that area of perpetual interest for the Los Angeles area--Content and Media--only garnered $10.68M in funding during the quarter.

Southern California 196

Southern California Invest Westlake Village SoCal 196

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

“Yes&# was given to me by one of my favorite angel investor / seed VC’s to work with – John Greathouse of Rincon Venture Partners and author of the blog InfoChachkie that you should check out because it is filled with great info from a guy who has been a very successful operator. So how does this apply to you?

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

The frantic pace of technology cycles, the amount of tech news, the blogs, the conferences, the demo days, the announcements, the fundings, the IPOs. It got me thinking about the advice that I often give to new VCs. Many new VCs I know fall into this reactive trap. It’s exhausting. Perhaps unsustainable.

Startup 317

Startup Technical Review Venture Capital Email 317

Berkonomics

JUNE 19, 2014

If you seek funds from an organized investment group such as an angel fund, venture capital entity, or even an investment club, the first thing you want to do is to find one person to buy into your vision, become excited by your enthusiasm and be willing to become the internal champion for your fund-raising effort.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Tech Coast Angels Summary Email 207

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

Venture Capital is a tricky industry. When the early teams: angels, lowercase capital & first round capital funded Uber they had no idea it would be one of the most revolutionary ideas of our time. Periodically we do portfolio reviews to evaluate whether we have enough diversified risk across the fund.

Funding 362

Funding Technical Review Ideas Startup 362

TechCrunch LA

JUNE 10, 2020

Some firms have said that they’re going to turn to HBCUvc , a nonprofit organization that helps students from historically Black colleges and universities enter venture and tech. It held a city-based internship program with Los Angeles, which connects students to venture capital firms in the area.

Equity 220

Equity Technical Review Venture Capital Blogging 220

socalTECH

JULY 6, 2010

An analysis of Q2's venture capital deals and investment activity in Southern California find that venture capitalists invested around $1.6 The most active investors in the region, by number of investments, were the Tech Coast Angels (9 tracked deals); followed by clean tech investor Angeleno Investors (3 deals).

Southern California 195

Southern California Westlake Village Invest Tech Coast Angels 195

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

You have to understand whether they’re likely to yield revenue growth in the near term OR whether you have access to cheap enough capital to fund your losses until your investments pay off. Exec Summary: Most companies (98+%) in the world (even tech startups) should be very profit focused. ” Harsh, but reality.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

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

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

If you read this blog often you'll know that I'm a huge fan of First Round Capital. 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. First Round Capital receives about 2500 submissions each year.

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284