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

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2009

Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings). This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice. I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully. I like to say to first-time entrepreneurs, picking a VC is more permanent than marriage.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Entrepreneur 297

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

But for some strange reason they make you file your progress on fund raising, which is the widely picked up by the press. And why I woke up at 4.50am. As I’ve written about before, You’d Have to be a Big Baby to Complain about Being a VC. There is a difference between a Conference Ho and a successful entrepreneur.

Blogging 420

Blogging Press Entrepreneur Venture Capital 420

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Final startup grind from msuster. And the folks at Startup Grind have been kind enough to invite me to present this morning in Mountain View on the topic. And you need to be careful about giving up control to cofounders as much as VCs. I don’t think VCs care as much about co-founders & economics as people think.

Startup 388

Startup Slides Outsource Development Sales 388

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2012

I wrote a blog post on how to work with lawyers at a startup nearly two-and-a-half years ago. If you don’t have much experience in working with law firms at a startup it’s a good primer. In that post I talked about how to select a law-firm for a startup. Startup-focused. It was very widely read.

Venture Capital 299

Venture Capital Startup Los Angeles GRP Partners 299

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2017

We’re expected to be at conferences, events, sales meetings and be publicly visible. People expect blog posts, Tweets, panels, speeches. I have written about this before and often recommend to executives that they do less, but complete more by avoiding the shiny objects and distractions stop us from living up to our true potential.

Activity 297

Activity Blogging Email Startup 297

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

I made every textbook mistake at my first startup, which is why I believe I was much more effective at my second one. The following are some lessons I learned about early-stage startup marketing. Also be careful about VCs. But once a VC has heard your idea he can’t “un-think&# it. Be careful about this advice.

Marketing 380

Marketing Startup Press Technical Advisors 380

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

would you want to give up the right to invest in subsequent rounds? Do investors always take up their prorata rights in later rounds? The simple answer is “No, investors don’t always take up their prorata rights.” Finally, some early investors specifically like NOT taking up their prorata.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 23, 2011

In a startup this is a mistake. And as a result their competitors were able to raise a considerable VC round from well-known firms. In this instance I typically recommend that startups NOT hire a big, well-known PR firm. There are some excellent PR firms that will occasionally take a “strategic view&# on you as a startup.

Startup 349

Startup Writing Press Blogging 349

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2012

He has it on stage, too, at conferences. I told him only 2 weeks ago when we were in London together that I wanted to write a blog post that has been in my head for 2 years. I knew him well before he became a VC. I knew his as he considered becoming a VC and we talked a lot about how it was going for me in my early years.

Startup 309

Startup Venture Capital Email Writing 309

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Business Etiquette Tips for dealing with VCs and Corporates at Conferences. This is part of my ongoing series with Startup Advice. With the LeWeb conference about to start in Paris I thought the timing of this post would be appropriate. I have a new startup in the space that I think would interest you.

Startup 322

Startup Conference Email Venture Capital 322

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

El Segundo-based Aggregage , which develops software driven B2B websites and newsletters which aggregate blog and news postings for specific industries, has raised $1M in a convertible note, the company said today. The startup, which is led by Robert Flynn, said it will use the funding to launch new sites and grow its advertising sales.

Tech Coast Angels 113

Tech Coast Angels El Segundo Newsletter Blogging 113

Both Sides of the Table

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. Despite best intentions they probably won’t follow up on their actions. Let’s be honest.

Venture Capital 277

Venture Capital Startup Email News 277

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2013

I recently wrote a post about how to manage relationships when you’re at a startup or are busy executive. I had images in my brain of all of the stresses I had placed on my wife in the heyday of my startups. A spouse’s hints for surviving an incredibly busy start-up person.

Tips 418

Tips Startup Email Blogging 418

socalTECH

JUNE 27, 2013

Los Angeles-based venture capital investor GRP Partners announced this morning that it has raised a fourth fund, worth $200M, and also renamed the firm Upfront Ventures. upfront ventures partners venture capital fund startup msuster suster launchpadla' READ MORE>>.

GRP Partners 164

GRP Partners Funding CitySearch Venture Capital 164

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 14, 2013

Creating awareness for your brand and products is one of the lifebloods of technology startups yet in a world where so many companies are being created it becomes difficult to rise above the noise. ” Here’s what I mean … Let’s start with what it takes for a journalist to want to write a story. I am a VC.

Marketing 389

Marketing Press Blogging Startup 389

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

I speak at conferences where I might meet 75-100 people and have conversations. I have Twitter chats, respond to blog comments, trade emails, respond to comments on This Week in VC. I spoke briefly to you about my startup in the x,y,z space. I remember! &# You’re the guy who built the Twitter plug-in for blogs.

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Blogging Conference Email 288

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 11, 2010

I haven’t written a blog post in a week. I travelled for a couple of days for work and decided to get some sleep on those days rather than staying up into the wee hours as I often do when I travel. And for the last few evenings I decided to get through email rather than blog. Are all VC’s just a-hole’s?

Email 265

Email Startup Writing Blogging 265

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

But VC is like congress. “I don’t know the exact math, but I hear it again and again: the top 2% of firms generate 98% of the returns in venture capital.” As you can see from the chart their data suggests there are about $25 billion of VC distributions per year in the US. Their data looks at tech VCs.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2011

This thinking is largely driven by the venture capital industry (and subsequently Wall Street) who are in search of high margin, highly scalable businesses. It’s nearly impossible to get a services company financed by VCs. Why Shouldn’t Most Services Businesses Raise VC? You’re a small fish.

Services 332

Services Venture Capital IP Startup 332

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2014

This blog started from a series of conversations I found myself having over and over again with founders and eventually decided I should just start writing them.It Kobe is famous for waking up crazy early every morning and practicing for longer and harder than nearly anybody else in the NBA. Think about Kobe Bryant.

Competition 394

Competition Startup Writing Marketing 394

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.

Startup 361

Startup Venture Capital Pricing Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

When to start PR? Contrary to popular opinion I actually believe crowd-funding is best used after seed capital or venture capital. In a startup this is a mistake. It’s like “direct” traffic to your website that seems to magically appear. What do you do when you have finally raised seed funds?

Press 319

Press Startup Writing Training 319

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “Start-up Lessons”. Tonight I was reading a good blog post ( here ) from Sean Powers with Alistair Croll on preparing yourself for the TC50 “bump” – the rise in traffic that a company gets from presenting at TechCrunch 50. I’ll talk about all that in a future post. We closed a $16.5

Startup 310

Startup Venture Capital Press Journal 310

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 4, 2014

Yesterday I wrote a post about “ the politics of startups ” in which I asserted that all companies have politics, which in its purest sense is just about understanding human psychology. A co-founder who started by working hard but gets sucked into the tech party circuit and has more interest in socialize than building cool s**t.

Startup 340

Startup Technical Review Course Press 340

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

I must have pitched 40-50 VCs over the years. As I talked about on many occasions when I was an entrepreneur – and blogged publicly about - I learned a lot about my business and myself in these meetings. I realized it was part of the process because it’s such a high-volume activity being a VC. Possibly more.

Venture Capital 292

Venture Capital Blogging Conference Google 292

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute of an entrepreneur : Tenacity. I’ll start with an obvious one – I talk with the entrepreneur about competitors. I once had a startup team pitch me for an investment where the President of the company led the first call with me on his own.

Entrepreneur 286

Entrepreneur Startup CTO Hire Sales 286

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Every so often I find myself caught up in a really hectic 3-4 week schedule where it seems like I float endlessly betweens meetings. Conferences. I get sucked up in “Do” mode. Startups Are for Doers. But getting caught up in the doing can often leave you directionless. Board Meetings.

Venture Capital 400

Venture Capital Conference Ideas Entrepreneur 400

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

My internal compass has always steered me strongly toward the belief that founders who can scale with their startup companies are better to back that founders who eventually need to hire a CEO. Very few founder CEOs go into the job ever expecting to give up their seat. So give up the CEO role? It’s your baby.

Startup 303

Startup Technical Review Product Blogging 303

Xconomy

DECEMBER 5, 2018

Steven Burrill, once a noted biotech investment fund founder, sought-after conference speaker, and life sciences publisher, was sentenced Wednesday to serve 30 months in federal prison for defrauding his investors and evading taxes. Burrill was indicted by a federal grand jury on September 14, 2017.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital Conference Funding Invest 70

Xconomy

JULY 24, 2018

Come join us at our newest interactive conference, XCON: The Xconomy Conference on Technology and Transformation. This fall, we are convening exemplary business leaders, investors, and far-seeing technologists for an in-depth exploration of the innovation ecosystem and its impact on the future.

Conference 49

Conference Technology Google Sites 49

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Your goal should be to turn your VCs into extended members of your team to get real value from them. Understanding where your VC partner sits in their respective fund and where their fund is in the cycle of its investment lifecycle will help you understand your VCs behavior. Ask for short conference calls. Rob does it.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

Justyn Howard, founder of Sprout Social has a blog post that he’s written about his experiences of migrating from scrappy tools to more efficient ones (i.e. Startups often make this mistake. Startups often make this mistake. Like everything, I screwed this up in my first startup. Penny wise, pound foolish.

Startup 333

Startup Class Conference Product 333

Xconomy

APRIL 23, 2019

We’ll tackle big trends, challenges, and opportunities in areas like venture capital, software, genomics, digital medicine, education, and diversity. The conference kicks off with a dinner at Brix Restaurant & Gardens in Napa, on Thursday, June. The program is interdisciplinary and highly interactive.

Venture Capital 90

Venture Capital Google Conference Education 90

Xconomy

OCTOBER 26, 2017

I rarely attend startup pitch competitions anymore. But a startup contest held Tuesday at a machine learning conference in Cambridge, MA, put a twist on the typical scenario: the startups were judged by an artificial intelligence software program, instead of a panel of investors.

Artificial Inteligence 54

Artificial Inteligence Startup Conference Competition 54

Xconomy

MAY 18, 2017

But some details were offered yesterday by Kirby Brady, the EDC’s director of research, following a press conference intended to promote. Final results of the EDC study won’t be released until June 19, the first day of the Bio International Convention, as part of a panel discussion on the local genomics cluster.

Study 97

Study San Diego Venture Capital Press 97

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. Of course that website isn’t completely up to date but it’s a great resource for seeing the overall picture. But let me start with some data. Much more data in the full post.

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339