Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2015

I used to love blogging. Blogging proved to be a great way to hone my ideas, have public conversations with people and as it turns out – build meaningful relationships through public dialog that spilled over into the real world. Somewhere along the way blogging changed. Fred Wilson said as much in his blog post today, too.

Blogging 150

Blogging Writing Startup Ideas 150

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.

Startup 378

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Coach 378

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

I recently read a book I’d highly recommend to every reader of this blog called “ Yes, 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive &# by Robert B. First, no matter what anybody tells you (people don’t want to believe that we’re influenced by the crowd), social proof is hugely important in fund raising.

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2014

It had an influence on the people who fund our industry in a negative way as many asset managers who fund our industry read this flawed report. I wrote about this in a blog post last year titled “ It’s Morning in VC ” but I never made the full deck available until now. Now they are funding & holding.

Venture Capital 362

Venture Capital Capital Startup Writing 362

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. One of the most important aims of a fund-raising process is to keep similar firms at the same stage of your process. Why 8–10 and not just 3–4?

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2015

I answered. ” Ezra was recently a Kauffman Fellow (meaning a tribe of aspiring VCs who get apprenticeship and have a cohort of classmates, many of whom will go on to be VCs), is a senior associate at a Chicago-based fund called Chicago Ventures and is an alum of my alma mater, University of Chicago, GSB. My other secret on blogging?

Blogging 150

Blogging Writing Startup Email 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 6, 2018

Fund raising. But it’s critical for your business, for you as a leader and people who excel at fund raising have an extreme advantage over those who do not. As a VC I also have to fund raise every three years and these posts 100% apply to VCs raising money, too. It definitely has a “d” in it, as in it’s really not fun, raising.

Funding 236

Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 236

socalTECH

JUNE 27, 2013

Despite the increase in startup activity in Southern California, local venture capital funds are still few and far between, and a large chunk of the funding here is still from Sand Hill Road. The firm just announced that new fund, and a new name, Upfront Ventures (www.upfront.com). Tell us about the new fund?

Funding 196

Funding Venture Capital Los Angeles Social Media 196

Both Sides of the Table

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. But then the truth sets in.

Entrepreneur 341

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Startup Blogging 341

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 11, 2013

Be open & transparent (mimicking the greater social order changes that have come with blogs & social media). At a big Hollywood fund raiser this past weekend a well-known entrepreneur pulled me aside to thank me for hiring Hamet. When he starts his blog I’ll let you know. But I miss blogging.

Venture Capital 324

Venture Capital Startup Blogging Platform 324

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2014

We all know that funding markets have changed for startups. The trends are well understood: more angels, more seed funds, more crowdsourcing and so forth. They asked LPs to rush to get into their next side-car fund to have access to this great deal plus the LPs also get the “benefit” of investing in their next fund.

Venture Capital 352

Venture Capital Seed Funding Email Blogging 352

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 14, 2013

The major battle for press is a battle for “mindshare” and it’s exactly the reason I blog. Consider this blog post titled, “ Christmas 2012 Shatters More Smart Device and App Download Records.” And I’m sure it’s not lost on you that my tips and my blogging are, in fact, POV marketing.

Marketing 389

Marketing Press Blogging Startup 389

socalTECH

MARCH 18, 2014

Irvine-based Bitvore , a startup developing big data and intelligence-gathering software which pulls information from both public and private data sources for businesses, said this morning that it has closed a $4.5M, Series A funding round. The funding was led by serial entreprenur Yuri Pikover, as well as $1M from crowdfunding.

Software 227

Software IBM IBM Social Media 227

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 23, 2011

He won the battle (the lawsuit) but lost the war (went bankrupt, with pending litigation he couldn’t get funded. We had a long chat about “pseudonymity” – so much so that I came home that night and wrote this blog post. He’s back in the game as an entrepreneur and this time he wants to take on Facebook.

Veoh 269

Veoh Netflix Social Network Blogging 269

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. Jody didn’t exactly have an easy time fund raising because he’s not one of the prototypical Silicon Valley funded entrepreneurs. He had just written another one of his way-over-the-top blog posts.

Startup 292

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Summary 292

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 15, 2010

He had followed me on Twitter and sent me a nice message about my blog. So when I saw the merely mortal Tristan with a normal sized Twitter following I clicked through to his link, saw his blog, saw that he was a second year at Stanford and just thought, “hey, he seems like an interesting guy. before having 300k followers!).

Social Network 347

Social Network Networking Blogging RSS 347

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

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. Aside from having one of the best performing funds in the entire country (I’ve seen the data) they’re a down to Earth group of guys. Possibly more.

Venture Capital 292

Venture Capital Blogging Conference Google 292

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

That company was Invoca, which just announced a $20 million fund raise led by Accel. So I think it’s now fair to rate me at 9/10 on follow-on fundings. “Ok, so this guy can write a blog and source deals but can he make any money?” I am closing 3 new fundings in April (2 new, 1 follow-on). 5 years ago.

Venture Capital 387

Venture Capital Downey Writing Press 387

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2011

I always try hard to make this blog a place where you can learn lessons rather than an advertisement for portfolio companies. I first met the founder of Pose, Dustin Rosen , when he was a junior person with an LA-based venture capital firm called The Mail Room Fund. We started uploading images of ourselves to our blogs.

Invest 303

Invest Company Companies Web 2.0 303

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2011

This series inspired me to start my blog as a VC. I also decided never to spend much time on term sheets on my blog because they had already covered it far better than I thought I ever could ( Jason was a lawyer with Cooley Godward, one of the top VC law firms, after all). It is also a must read.

Venture Capital 304

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Guide Blogging 304

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 9, 2021

People cite sources like this Inc.com article “ 5 Reasons Why You Don't Need a Business Plan ,” or my own blog discussion on this subject, “ Situations Where A Business Plan Does Not Add Value.” The ability to communicate effectively is critical to standing above the crowd.

Entrepreneur 156

Entrepreneur Tips Funding Startup 156

TechEmpower

AUGUST 7, 2023

Getting something to market and getting funding override any other concerns. Check out our blog post 53 Questions Developers Should Ask Innovators. Please write us at blog@techempower.com ! That’s why the CTO’s attention is on programming for the earliest stage. Is it a tiny crack, or a widening chasm? And how can you tell?

CTO Hire 260

CTO Hire Develop Development Fractional VPE 260

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Brad Feld hadn’t written his seminal “ term sheet series &# and The Funded hadn’t yet been created. NOTE: In the video I talked about how VC’s and entrepreneurs decide the total number of shares at the first major funding round and why it’s often a high number. Back then VentureHacks didn’t exist.

Venture Capital 405

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

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. Still, as I’ve written in the past, what I love about blogging is the ability to have a public debate where we can all learn. I’m sorry, but that’s dumb.

Venture Capital 267

Venture Capital Writing Blogging Startup 267

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 18, 2014

Yet along with “authenticity” they are two of the key attributes I look for when I meet with companies I may consider funding one day. This is how Upfront Ventures came to fund Tristan Walker – one of the most talented and passionate entrepreneurs with whom we work whose new company is called Bevel. And we did.

Startup 419

Startup Entrepreneur Design Funding 419

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

No blog post about how Tiger is crushing everybody because it’s deploying all its capital in 1-year while “suckers” are investing over 3-years can change this reality. million, our Seed Funds mostly between $200–300 million and have delivered median ownerships of ~20% from the first check we write into a startup. It’s just math.

Venture Capital 416

Venture Capital Marketing Technical Review Seed Funding 416

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. Any longtime readers of this blog will know that I often try to simplify complex ideas into a simple parable that is easier to remember to set the tone of one’s behaviors.

Startup 317

Startup Technical Review Venture Capital Email 317

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 15, 2014

” I have been weighing in slowly on the topic over the past few weeks on Twitter but have avoided writing a blog post about it until now. I first discovered him or her as a commenter on Fred Wilson’s blog. And we’re promoting apps like this in the tech press and funding it. I have a blog and a voice.

Technical Review 329

Technical Review Blogging Examples Startup 329

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 13, 2010

In the industry they’re known as “conference ho’s.&# OK, they’re known as conference “whores&# but that sounded too harsh for a blog post. I hear investors talking about how they’d never fund somebody that spend more time in conference halls than in their office. I think I know the root cause.

Conference 414

Conference Blogging Startup Product 414

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2011

Or you have disagreements about strategy, recruiting, funding, etc. Involve them in fund raising, hiring, strategy, etc. But … if you have very big disagreements about funding, risk levels (e.g. They don’t want the risk of the first 3-6 months with no salary and having to walk around with a tin-cup for funding.

Startup 393

Startup Equity Funding Summary 393

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2017

Recently the firms two founding partners (and also Managing Partners) —  Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham  — decided to transition management of the firm to Andy Weissman (who joined in 2012) and Albert Wenger (joined in 2008 and writes one of the most thoughtful blogs in our industry ).

Venture Capital 161

Venture Capital Funding Capital Startup 161

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

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. So what are Rob’s secret hacks that he didn’t spill in his blog post? . What Rob wrote in his post is right. Email updates frequently.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 25, 2010

Chris Dixon wrote a blog post last week titled, “ Techies and Normals &# in which he defined “Techies&# as people who are not just “early adopters&# but also have more of a geeky, technical, product bent. Anyway, Chris’s blog got me thinking about Techies and Normals. He is both. Kind of the obvious next step.

Product 348

Product Startup Design Blogging 348

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2014

The basic components are obvious: talented founders, great engineers, angel money, venture capital, access to larger corporates (for business, funding & talent), great education / research (for IP breakthroughs) and a sufficient ecosystem of mentors, advisors, executive coaches and mavens. million under management across three funds.

Startup 390

Startup Venture Capital Capital Funding 390

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

In that article I talked about how PR drives: recruiting, employee retention, biz dev deals, funding and even M&A and that often “attribution” to your PR activities is unknown. Contrary to popular opinion I actually believe crowd-funding is best used after seed capital or venture capital. I have no money?

Press 319

Press Startup Writing Training 319

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2012

I had been hanging around Klout for a year and many of my friends had angel funded the company and were champions. Other people were convinced including Kleiner Perkins who lead their $30 million fund raising in 2012 (they had previously also invested in 2011). 7:00 80% of the VC funds last year went to a small handful of funds.

Cornerstone OnDemand 303

Cornerstone OnDemand Venture Capital GRP Partners Startup 303

TechCrunch LA

JUNE 10, 2020

The program is expanding to Chicago in 2021, the blog post notes. Mujhid had to communicate that the “community they’ve built may formally cease without emergency funding.” Read the whole HBCUvc blog post here. HBCUvc’s first batch was 11 students from three universities.

Equity 220

Equity Technical Review Venture Capital Blogging 220