Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

It’s what life was like as an entrepreneur. But this is nothing like the stress of being an entrepreneur. As I’ve written about before, You’d Have to be a Big Baby to Complain about Being a VC. What’s it really like being an entrepreneur? I’m reminded of this feeling. And so it goes again.

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SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

My 1,000th Post on This Blog - Tim Berry's Blog - Planning Startups Stories , July 21, 2010 HTML5 video markup, compatibility and playback - Niall Kennedy's Weblog , February 8, 2010 Your Product Needs a Soul - ArcticStartup , February 12, 2010 Product Friday: Monetizing Content is a Product Problem - This is going to be BIG.

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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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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2015

How do you have time for all your entrepreneurs? I don’t know Ezra yet but since he’s taking the time to blog (which I hugesly respect) and share thoughts I thought I’d take him up on his challenge and also spill the beans on my secrets. On blogging I blog because I love it. My other secret on blogging?

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InfoChachkie

MAY 22, 2012

The same should be true of an entrepreneur who is attempting to secure money from sophisticated investors. 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. Subscribe to their blog. Prep Steps. Prep Steps.

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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. Does he blog about venture capital and try to advise entrepreneurs? There is a reason for this.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2010

I recently wrote a piece for Mashable on how to create a company blog. Since it’s already written (and since I promised not to republish on my blog other than a summary) if you’re interested please have a read over there. Summary notes and then I’ll extend: Should you blog? What should you blog about?

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2009

This is part of my new series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. I wanted to also post the series here to have it as a resource on my blog for future entrepreneurs who stop by. Excite, Ask Jeeves and Lycos? Yeah, right.

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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. One of the most difficult things to do as a first time entrepreneur is to get to know the investors you might be working with if you accept money. So how did Mike get into VC?

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 2, 2011

It’s apropos because there is so much noise these days with email, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, web shows, etc. I was thinking back to a few previous “insider baseball&# blog debates that raged for several weeks: AngelGate (aka Bin38 secret cabal), convertible debt vs. equity, bubble vs. not, and now the AngelList discussion.

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Email Blogging Venture Capital Writing 287

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 25, 2009

This is part of my blog series “ Pitching a VC.&#. I’ve sat through a lot of VC pitches and having been CEO of an enterprise software firm for many years I’ve also sat through many customer meetings with sales teams. The following are some tips for the debate style VC meeting.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2010

On why you should be an entrepreneur, “A lot of people do what they have to do. So it was my great pleasure to host Chamillionaire on This Week in VC this week talking marketing, entrepreneurship, old media and, of course, music. In his early career he realized the importance of email lists. This was in the 90′s.

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Both Sides of the Table

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. I recently got a phone call from an entrepreneur whom I respect and who runs a company that I hope will do great things one day. Many entrepreneurs have a PR page in the PowerPoint deck.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2010

I call it the entrepreneur thesis. I’m not talk about the age old debate amongst investors whether you back entrepreneurs, markets or products (or as people like to hedge – product / market fit). It’s entrepreneurs I back. It’s what I call the “entrepreneur thesis.” So what is the “entrepreneur thesis?”

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

After all, I am no stranger to the publicly expressing the frustrations of dealing with the downside of this industry as I wrote about in 2006 when I was an entrepreneur. 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.”

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Both Sides of the Table

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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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2013

I see it on email even more. Brunson’s short and to-the-point blog post, “ It’s Called Networking, Not Using.” ” In it he talked about how he gets daily emails asking for intros to Oprah (he does a lot of work with her) and his advice. It’s why I wrote the blog post on 50 Coffee Meetings.

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InfoChachkie

JUNE 3, 2013

You can watch/listen to how John and Kyle turned their email newsletter into an international bestseller in the following 9-minute excerpt from John''s recent talk at UC Santa Barbara. However, a number of them wanted to vicariously experience the startup world through John and Kyle''s venture. an email) to about 35 people.

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Newsletter Startup Entrepreneur Writing 233

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 3, 2011

As the authors make clear in the book’s preface, their goal is to create a “definitive guide to venture capital deals” and “demystify the venture capital financing process.” Brad and Jason have been exposing venture capitalists’ secrets since 2005, when they began writing a blog series on Term Sheets at AskTheVC.

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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Writing Guide 205

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2012

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. Dave is terrible with email. He’s so bad that his email auto-responder tells you he likely won’t email you back. I knew him well before he became a VC. My guess is that many VCs are.

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Startup Venture Capital Email Writing 309

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

If you follow the tech media you would be subject to a lot of narrative biases that are completely off base – and this includes the value of email and phone calls. It’s why the first company I ever invested in as a VC – Invoca – just announced a $20 million funding by Accel Partners. billion email accounts.

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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. 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

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2012

I had been trading emails & Tweets with venture capitalist John Frankel and we were to meet in person in March 2011 at SxSW to talk about Klout and other investments he had made. We met at a private party hosted by his venture partner Mike Yavonditte and I outlined my concerns for the lack of precision of the algorithm.

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Both Sides of the Table

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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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

To be a great entrepreneur you really do need talent. Consider Usher a hard-working early-stage VC. It’s that sort of mentorship experience that drives many of us hands-on VCs. There has been all sorts of discussions about marketing on blogs lately. And he has acted as a personal mentor for Justin ever since.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

In case you missed all the kerfuffle this weekend, I posted this blog post originally on TechCrunch. This is a blog post I really didn’t want to write. Shervin Pishevar, another person who I respect wrote the following on Twitter, “ Saying you don’t like @AngelList is like saying you don’t like Email.

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Venture Capital Writing Blogging Startup 267

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 18, 2015

There is a lot of uncertainty about the state of the private, high-growth technology markets and the venture capital markets that underpin them. Perhaps I would call it “Mourning in VC” as in mourning for the days of rational behavior. I spoke last week at the annual Cendana VC/LP conference. Are LPs to blame?

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InfoChachkie

JULY 21, 2016

The reality television show Shark Tank makes for entertaining content but many of its underlying messages are potentially detrimental to tech entrepreneurs. Thus, emerging entrepreneurs should parse fact from fantasy by watching the show with an experienced business pro. According to David S. Shark Tank Distortions.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Now, I’m pretty on the record that being an entrepreneur is about being great at The Do. 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?

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InfoChachkie

JUNE 3, 2013

You can watch/listen to how John and Kyle turned their email newsletter into an international bestseller in the following 9-minute excerpt from John''s recent talk at UC Santa Barbara. However, a number of them wanted to vicariously experience the startup world through John and Kyle''s venture. an email) to about 35 people.

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Newsletter Startup Entrepreneur Writing 133

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

Because my wife is a superstar she published them all on a blog here along with much other wonderful type-A mom advice. I was saying that I was happy it was all out in the open because I felt at least everybody could now understand the issues & opportunities from the perspectives of angels, entrepreneurs and VCs.

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Startup Venture Capital Blogging Summary 292

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2016

In 2008 I started VC blogging. I had blogged when I was an entrepreneur. And honestly I love technology products and if you don’t try the newest stuff you’ll wake up an old person emailing from your Hotmail account with links to MapQuest over your dial-up AOL plan. I can’t imagine being that miserable person.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2013

Last year I wrote a blog post on entrepreneurs with a chip on their shoulders. A chip on one’s shoulder as in, “F**k the system, it’s broken and I want to fix it” is exactly the energy I look for in entrepreneurs. My point … We’ve all been there – every entrepreneur.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

TechCrunch ran my article yesterday as a guest post but I wanted to have a copy here for anybody who missed it and for future readers of this blog. Having been through this all before myself I would like to tell a cautionary tale that can happen to the best of us: The Yo-Yo life of the tech entrepreneur. We were based in London.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

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. People who comment to me privately about how surprised they are by how rapidly I’ve “built a name for myself in VC&# remind me of this fallacy.

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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. But I’m guessing the narrative is similar elsewhere. Domain Knowledge.

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SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Why Every Entrepreneur Should Write and 9 Tips To Get Started - OnStartups , September 27, 2010 "The best part of blogging is the people you will meet"- Hugh MacLeod repeating wisdom from Loic Lemeur to me at the Big Pink at 2 am in South Beach after the Future of Web Apps 2008. I got rejected from every single one.

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