L.A. Business Journal

APRIL 26, 2017

Prominent seed-stage startup investor Chris Sacca announced in a blog post titled “Hanging up my spurs” on Wednesday that he has retired from venture capital investing.

Invest 174

Invest Startup Blogging Venture Capital 174

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2017

Union Square Ventures (USV) has been one of the most successful venture capital firms of the past 10–15 years and continues to be a leader in our industry. Lindel is no stranger to thorny venture capital issues — he was arguably amongst the most successful LPs of his generation. Maybe that’s USV, too.

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Venture Capital Funding Capital Startup 161

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2018

If you’re an entrepreneur who would like to see this clause in more startups please ask your VC to include it in future term sheets and link to it from their home page. “We We strive to invest in companies that are consciously working to create a diverse leadership team?—?one Ours is: upfront.com/inclusion.

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Venture Capital Coach Ideas Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

I always tell founders … “An investors job is to deploy capital and make a return. If you truly believe that you, your company and your products are exceptional and your company will be valuable then you’re actually doing them a FAVOR by helping them invest in your startup. an investment in your company.

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Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Xconomy

JULY 10, 2019

More than a third of the companies that went public in the first half of this year were backed by venture capital. That, plus robust merger and acquisition activity, set a record for venture-backed exit value—$165.2 That, plus robust merger and acquisition activity, set a record for venture-backed exit value—$165.2

Venture Capital 86

Venture Capital Invest Startup Activity 86

InfoChachkie

MAY 22, 2012

The steps outlined below represent an ideal approach to raising capital from sophisticated investors. You might be at Step 2 with one VC and Step 3 with another. Step 2: Get Personal & Give Freely – Once you identify a handful of potential VC partners, stealthily cyber stalk them. Subscribe to their blog.

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Venture Capital Capital Research Customer 236

Xconomy

MAY 8, 2017

Austin —Dell Technologies is publicly unveiling a venture capital investment arm that has been quietly investing in startups since the operation was run by EMC, the data storage giant that Dell agreed to acquire for $67 billion in 2015. Read more » Reprints | Share: UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS.

Venture Capital 77

Venture Capital Capital Technology News 77

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series about Raising Venture Capital. This posting was inspired by an email from Rajat Suri who wrote me an email in response to Chris Dixon’s blog post (link below) from August, which recently re-ran on Business Insider and has generated much Twitter chatter. I was an early cynic. What gives?

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Seed Funding Venture Capital Funding Software Review 283

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Understanding Venture Capital. I recently wrote a blog post on understanding how the size and age of a venture capital fund might affect you when you’re raising money. I believe these VC funds have suffered some amount of reputation fall out. Let me explain: 1.

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Invest 265

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

In the VC insider baseball world a discussion has gone on about “VC platforms” over the past 5 or so years. While firms define platforms differently, let’s just say they are the services that a VC offers outside of investment capital and partner time on boards or providing intros.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Platform Startup Resource 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 27, 2011

By definition, you read blogs. But should you actually write one if you’re a startup, an industry figure (lawyer, banker) or VC? People often ask me why I started blogging. I know that I have not yet earned these kudos based on investment returns (although my partners have. This post originally ran on TechCrunch.

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Blogging Startup Writing Venture Capital 373

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2011

Venture capitalists, or VCs, are the folks with millions upon millions of dollars to invest in companies such as theirs. And for a select few entrepreneurs, they are able to go out and raise the venture capital they need and make their dreams a reality. They make sure they are a proper fit for venture capital.

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Venture Capital Capital Invest Entrepreneur 93

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2010

They had received a term sheet from a VC and were wondering whether to work with this firm. I often tell people that raising venture capital is more difficult than getting married. Not so in venture capital. You’re tied at the hip to your VC. But what was the VC like when the chips were down?

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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Capital Help 298

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 15, 2010

We started this week’s show with a Q&A session where I answered viewer questions about fund raising and the VC industry. If you enjoy this blog I think you’ll enjoy watching the first 14 minutes of this video (just click on the image of me below). What advice do you have for people who want to get into venture capital?

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Southern California 210

Xconomy

APRIL 8, 2019

If you’ve been following venture capital trends, what you expected to happen in the first quarter of 2019 did: More money is being invested in fewer deals, and women founders still are getting less of it than men. Venture firms sent $32.6 Venture firms sent $32.6 Companies raised only $9.66

Venture Capital 109

Venture Capital Capital Invest Startup 109

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2011

If you want a very quick primer on all the stuff nobody ever tells you about raising venture capital check out this video where Mark Jeffrey & I break it down on This Week in VC. All of this is covered in more detail on the TWiVC video above (and much of it is covered in text on this blog on the “ Raising VC &# tab).

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Venture Capital Slides Doc Startup 340

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

In the first post in this three part series I described why I believe the VC market froze between September 2008 – April 2009. I’m not a doomsday guy, but just believe that we won’t see a V shaped recovery, which could make VC funding more difficult for tech start-ups (don’t shoot the messenger!).

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Venture Capital Startup Funding Technical Review 269

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2010

I’m often asked by people, “how do I get into VC?&# Well, I know 3-4 VC jobs that are publicly available. The chosen candidate will probably have worked for a very reputable firm that is either in technology, consulting, investment banking, media or a startup. Often these jobs aren’t even publicized.&#.

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Venture Capital Technical Review GRP Partners Email 290

SoCal CTO

MARCH 20, 2007

His work in social media, e-Learning and Performance Support has won awards and has led him into engagements at many Fortune 500 companies including Credit Suisse, Royal Bank of Canada, Citibank, Lexus, Microsoft, Nissan, Universal, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Fidelity Investments, Symbol Technologies and SHL Systemhouse.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Guide CTO Coach Southern California 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2010

One of things I’ve loved the most about doing now 11 weeks of This Week in VC is a chance to have an hour-long recorded conversation with investors. And in my interviews with many VCs I feel that people can watch these and get to know the VC’s as human beings a bit better. So how did Mike get into VC?

Venture Capital 230

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Fandango 230

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2015

At the time almost nobody had heard of the following funds: FirstRound Capital, TrueVentures, Floodgate and SoftTech. Firms like Baseline, Felicis, ff Ventures, Founder Collective, Freestyle, HomeBrew, IA Ventures, K9, Lowercase, NextView, Resolute, Rincon, Crosscut and the countless other great firms we all now know didn’t exist.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Startup Invest Cloud Computing 150

socalTECH

JULY 14, 2009

Contrary to the common belief that Southern California "should be an easy place to raise money" with all of its' entertainment and real estate wealth, it is a very difficult place to raise Venture Capital for technology start-ups. So how does an entrepreneur based in SoCal get the attention of VC funds today?

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Venture Capital Southern California Invest Tech Coast Angels 100

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

Every tech or major news journal in the country is preparing to write their Snap, Inc (creators of Snapchat, Spectacles, etc) stories and many of them seem to want a “How does it feel to have missed this investment story.” My job as a VC isn’t to beat myself up or any other partner up for the one deal we didn’t do. Mostly kidding.

Snapchat 214

Snapchat Invest Technical Review Dollar Shave Club 214

TechCrunch LA

JUNE 10, 2020

In response to VCs’ sudden rush to invest in more Black founders , Black venture capitalists and entrepreneurs have penned a bunch of advice on the best way to tap into talent. 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

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. Investing Strategy. I'm a huge fan of this innovation.

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

To see the video of This Week in VC click on this link. What a pleasure that I got to spend an hour talking with both Om Malik (whom I’ve always respected his views) and Paul Jozefak , a venture capital partner at Neuhaus Partners in Germany (and formerly the head of Europe for SAP Ventures).

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital Google Web Sites 225

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

When I was new at Venture Capital I was trying to figure out the business. As a VC you want to feel like you have “proprietary sources” of deal flow. I eventually stumbled on to the best source of high-quality deal flow imaginable – blogging. They are venture bankers not investment bankers.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Startup Pricing Invest 347

Xconomy

JANUARY 9, 2019

Venture capital investments rose in 2018 to levels not seen since the heady days of 2000, the last year U.S. That’s according to PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association’s Venture Monitor report, released this week, which tallied nearly 9,000 deals made last year, through which venture investors sunk $130.9

Venture Capital 86

Venture Capital Invest Capital Report 86

SoCal CTO

MARCH 9, 2007

skip to main | skip to sidebar SoCal CTO Friday, March 9, 2007 Map of VC Investments Found this Map of 2006 VC Investments post. Kevin Federline Search Engine Realistic Entrprenuer's Guide to Venture Capital Time Rich, Time Poor and Apple F2F Still Matters 8 Ways the Internet has Changed Software Marketing.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Invest CTO Coach Southern California 150

SoCal Tech Calendar

OCTOBER 31, 2016

Prior to co-founding Foundry Group (link is external), he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures. Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. Brad is also a co-founder of Techstars (link is external).

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Writing Blogging Activity 100

Xconomy

OCTOBER 5, 2016

Venture capital activity is gradually easing from last year’s peak, according to a new quarterly report put together by Seattle-based PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. VC firms invested $14.99 billion that was invested in 2,559 deals (2,545 companies) in the third quarter of 2015.

Venture Capital 86

Venture Capital Activity Report Funding 86

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2011

I recently filmed a show for This Week in Venture Capital in which I talked about how to prepare for a VC meeting: whom you’ll meet, who should attend from your side, what materials you should bring and how you should run the meeting. I wrote the summary notes in this blog post. But take prompts from the VC.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

socalTECH

JUNE 24, 2013

Why did lead investor IVP invest in what most local investors shied away from? Among the reasons given in a blog post from IVP, defending its investment in Snapchat: the firm loves LA. snapchat venture capital investment valuation jamdat' READ MORE>>.

Snapchat 145

Snapchat Invest Electronic Arts Venice 145

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2011

What I’d like to do is tell you the story of how the investment came to be, what my thesis is / was and share some thoughts on macro trends. I always try hard to make this blog a place where you can learn lessons rather than an advertisement for portfolio companies. I’m also on record as saying I invest in lines & not dots.

Invest 303

Invest Company Companies Web 2.0 303

Xconomy

OCTOBER 10, 2017

In mid-October, eleven college students will be flying to California for an opportunity that would be the envy of any Ivy League MBA candidate—they’ll meet the venture capital firm partners who will personally mentor them throughout the school year. Read more » Reprints | Share: UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS.

Venture Capital 67

Venture Capital Statistics Mentor Invest 67

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2014

I have blogged about some of the downside consequences of the changes and the private information I have says the consequences are much worse than is reported in the press since few people publicly talk about. We led an investment round in a company a while ago in which we wrote a seven-figure check and have taken a board seat.

Venture Capital 352

Venture Capital Seed Funding Email Blogging 352

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. At the time I pointed out: “If I had realized exits almost certainly it would be because I invested in a company that failed. “Ok, so this guy can write a blog and source deals but can he make any money?”

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Venture Capital Downey Writing Press 387