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DECEMBER 6, 2017

I titled this post “We Must Have Zero Tolerance in Venture Capital” but of course I could just say “zero tolerance anywhere” because that’s true. As a VC let me specifically just speak out for our industry. I have known Shervin, liked him and respected his big bets as a VC like Uber and Hyperloop. I was wrong.

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Venture Capital Capital Course Report 254

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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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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

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JULY 25, 2011

tl;dr version: If you’re an entrepreneur or VC or will be working in this industry - buy this. When I first started as a startup CEO in 1999 there were no guides on raising venture capital. 3) VCs are anal about things like voting thresholds, seniority of their stock, protective provisions, etc. Drag along rights?

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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Guide Blogging 304

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JANUARY 27, 2013

6 or 7 years ago when TechCrunch was at its peak market share (they are still strong but many more tech blogs have also popped up) there was a term for getting covered there called “the TechCrunch bounce.” that they probably read the main tech blogs. Frankly, every VC’s, too. Perception = reality.

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Blogging Journal Press Startup 309

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NOVEMBER 18, 2012

As I’ve written about before, You’d Have to be a Big Baby to Complain about Being a VC. Think about it – most entrepreneurs who manage to raise seed money or venture capital usually raise enough money for 12-18 months maximum. I was pretty sure we were going to raise another round of capital.

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Blogging Press Entrepreneur Venture Capital 420

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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. Every time I do recruiting I get somebody who says, “I’m willing to take a step back in my career to work in VC.&# This isn’t likely to appeal to us. Tags: VC Industry. Yesterday.

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Venture Capital Technical Review GRP Partners Email 290

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SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I was reading Chris Dixon’s blog tonight. I came across this blog post about getting a computer science degree as the best degree for getting into venture capital or working at a VC-backed start up. I just completed an exercise where I went out to hire a new associate for my VC firm, GRP Partners.

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Startup Venture Capital Study Course 337

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JULY 22, 2010

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. I just want to figure out what a fair valuation is.&# I figured all the VC’s talked so we should. But this example above is all entrepreneur math, not the VC’s.

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Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

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

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Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284

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MAY 13, 2018

I always tell founders … “An investors job is to deploy capital and make a return. The typical VC process is as follows: They say there are three rules in property: Location, location, location. Of course there’s no exact number of VCs you should meet?—?these Same with VC. these are simply guidelines. To be clear?—?your

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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. The process of raising capital IS part of running a business.

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Venture Capital Startup Pricing Invest 347

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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. Next Wednesday we’ll have Dana Settle of Greycroft Partners, a New York / LA early-stage venture capital fund. I’d link to it but it’s behind a paywall.

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Venture Capital Startup Advertising Redpoint 285

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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. Does he blog about venture capital and try to advise entrepreneurs? Has written a book on venture capital.

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Email Blogging 352

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MARCH 24, 2014

As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. In 2010 somebody posed the question on Quora, “Is Mark Suster a Successful Venture Capitalist?” “Ok, so this guy can write a blog and source deals but can he make any money?” 5 years ago.

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Venture Capital Downey Writing Press 387

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OCTOBER 6, 2012

From this debate about Klout John and I have had a series of in person meetings and debates about our industry (both VC & tech) and what is changing. Including ff Venture Capital’s unique approach to finding deals and the services they provide to their startups. 2:00 Why don’t you like the term VC?

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Cornerstone OnDemand Venture Capital GRP Partners Startup 303

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FEBRUARY 20, 2012

She hasn’t raised any venture capital. It represents the great majority of entrepreneurship and eschews the fairytale rags-to-VC-riches stories we so often read about in the press. So Tracy began keeping a blog about … (what else?) She did her first tech startup after the age of 30. That may soon change.

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Startup Entrepreneur SEO Venture Capital 363

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OCTOBER 3, 2011

On my blog I’ve been hesitant to take the topic head on. But last week I noticed a blog post by a woman, Tara Tiger Brown, that asked the question, “ Why Aren’t More Women Commenting on VC Blog Posts? In it she observes that only 3% of the comments on this blog are from women. Please watch this.

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Entrepreneur Venture Capital Startup Blogging 341

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MARCH 10, 2014

My blog had been looking tired for a year or two. I considered changing to a blog publishing platform that would allow me to change the visual design more easily myself. He wrote a nice blog post describing the project to redesign my website. He was able to take Jess’s design concepts and get them built into my blog.

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Blogging Design Venture Capital Screening 294

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JUNE 12, 2013

Brunson’s short and to-the-point blog post, “ It’s Called Networking, Not Using.” It’s why I wrote the blog post on 50 Coffee Meetings. It’s why I talk about building VC relationships early – Lines, Not Dots. “I’ve never been a VC before. ” Be authentic.

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Venture Capital Press GRP Partners Blogging 407

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NOVEMBER 29, 2009

Handling PR with VCs. This is part of my series on How to Raise VC but could equally be filed under Startup Advice more generally. Just notice how many VC emails you get after your TechCrunch article or after you were on stage at TC50. In your VC pitch your PR page should take no longer than 30 seconds – Wait.

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Venture Capital Press News Startup 291

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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

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NOVEMBER 11, 2013

Nearly four months ago we rebranded at Upfront Ventures. You can watch the video above for a very brief overview of why we rebranded and where we see our place in the VC ecosystem along with what has changed in our industry. Relaunching our brand is part of our larger initiative to build a VC firm of the future.

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Venture Capital Startup Blogging Platform 324

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JUNE 27, 2013

If you’ve been following the press about VC funds you’ll know this is no small feat. Perhaps the biggest piece of new news is that after 17 years of operations we’ve changed our name from GRP Partners to Upfront Ventures. Well, the venture capital industry has changed a lot in the past 20 years … and we have too.

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Funding Santa Monica Venture Capital Startup 343

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MARCH 3, 2013

” But I pointed out a professor at HBS ( Tom Eisenmann ) who teaches a course where blogs are a part of the classroom reading material. He spoke about ROCE (return on capital employed). But “on capital employed” encourages companies to push more off balance sheet and thus into offshore & outsourced situations.

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Venture Capital Education Offshore Outsource Development 403

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NOVEMBER 16, 2010

I have Twitter chats, respond to blog comments, trade emails, respond to comments on This Week in VC. I remember! &# You’re the guy who built the Twitter plug-in for blogs. Tags: Raising Venture Capital Startup Advice. I do dinners too often as my waistline can attest. You get the picture. I remember.

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Venture Capital Blogging Conference Email 288

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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 Ours is: upfront.com/inclusion. We strive to invest in companies that are consciously working to create a diverse leadership team?—?

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Venture Capital Coach Ideas Startup 284

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JUNE 8, 2014

Cincinnati, like many startup communities in the US over the past 5 years, has revitalized important regions in its urban core, created accelerators, built co-working facilities, pooled together angel capital, attracted VCs, involved educational institutions and solicited the help of important corporations in a more cohesive ecosystem.

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Startup Venture Capital Capital Funding 390

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DECEMBER 17, 2012

But honestly there are times when being a VC can feel like that, too. VENTURE CAPITAL. And finally that brings me to obvious topic of venture capital. Coincidentally my good friend Roger Ehrenberg wrote a post this past week on founders having trust in their VCs. After I posted I saw the following Tweet.

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Startup Venture Capital Coach Press 363

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SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series, “ Pitching a VC.&# Getting a meeting with a prominent angel or VC is difficult enough. Some advice on how to do that was covered in this link – Getting Access to a VC. If you haven’t read how to build VC relationships and demonstrate traction make sure to read it.

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Venture Capital Startup Email News 277

InfoChachkie

DECEMBER 8, 2011

I began our discussion by asking Brad what motivated him to co-author Venture Deals , rather than continuing to share venture capitalists’ secrets via his Ask The VC blog. Writing a book is very different from writing a blog. The incentives of the VCs matter a lot. There were a couple motivations.

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Venture Capital Writing Entrepreneur Blogging 224

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APRIL 13, 2011

Brad on blogging. How did you start blogging? “My 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. was starting.

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Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

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NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Frankly, I think venture capital is that way, too. How do VCs break out of group think when they are shuttling from one board meeting to the next, from one conference to the other and talking with all the same people? How does the world in Los Angeles intersect differently with venture capital? go on, click it ).

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Venture Capital Conference Ideas Entrepreneur 400

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JUNE 1, 2011

I think that’s the beauty of both capitalism and innovation. That was back when VCs weren’t so quick to respond to emails. I was thinking about all of this as I looked at the logs from my WordPress blog this evening. I started blogging 2 years ago. If you were reading the headlines from only 2.5 Bull or bear?

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Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

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OCTOBER 14, 2011

If you raise a new round venture capital (say $2.5 His personal blog with some great example is here. The goal is to have the value of the startup go up by enough that you own a smaller percentage of a much larger business and therefore your total personal value goes up. million at a $7.5 million or a gain of $1.1

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Startup Newsletter Course Equity 394

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JULY 12, 2011

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

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Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

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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.

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