Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2010

We received so much positive feedback from our This Week in Venture Capital show walking through valuation calculations & term sheets that we decided to do a Q&A show this week to address topics that entrepreneurs want to learn about. This question runs from about minute 2 – minute 8. This is wrong.

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MAY 13, 2018

The typical VC process is as follows: They say there are three rules in property: Location, location, location. Your entire process should be about “testing” whether your prospect has Interest Authority to make a decision Budget Is willing to continue spending actual time with you and analyzing you. Same with VC. To be clear?—?your

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 8, 2010

I was on This Week in Venture Capital today with Jason Calacanis talking about the big VC deals at the moment and talking about the VC industry. It’s about a 30 minute video (or about as long as it normally takes to read my rambling posts! Tags: VC Industry. Crazy valuation.

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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.” Here’s how you should think about your PR plan. that they probably read the main tech blogs.

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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.

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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.

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Both Sides of the Table

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. Founders don’t often think about “primary&# stock vs, “fully diluted&# stock in terms of voting rights.

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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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APRIL 21, 2010

Before jumping into the post I wanted to point out one thing about doing TWiVC and posting my notes here on BSOTT. In writing anything positive about any of the companies I’m not suggesting that it means that I prefer them to any of their competitors. Finally, a lot of people asking me about typos on my blog.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

We did know about Snapchat as early as anybody. But that narrative was fresh in my head when I first had the discussion about Snapchat. What I *SHOULD HAVE* considered was that I was in college in a time when there were no digital cameras and I’m very thankful for that or I likely wouldn’t be writing this blog post today.

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DECEMBER 14, 2010

I was recently speaking with some founders about their fund raising process. 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. After Sept 11th?

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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). Can you please expand on your post about distributed teams?

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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.

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NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Now, I’m pretty on the record that being an entrepreneur is about being great at The Do. I’ve talked in the past about how I manage my own creative process. I zone out and think about how things could be different. Frankly, I think venture capital is that way, too. Startups Are for Doers.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

One of the questions I’m most often asked is, “what’s it like being a VC?&# I’ve been a VC for nearly 3 years now. Since I answer this all the time anyway I thought it might make an interesting blog post. We have debates about how the industries will change / evolve. That’s true.

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NOVEMBER 18, 2012

I plan to write about it early next year when we’re all through. As I’ve written about before, You’d Have to be a Big Baby to Complain about Being a VC. The Truth About Building Starutps from msuster. The Truth About Building Starutps from msuster. It has been a fascinating experience.

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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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Blogging Startup Writing Summary 286

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. Will a VC sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement)? What is the VC process? What is a VC looking for?

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Venture Capital Slides Doc Startup 340

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.

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Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

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AUGUST 20, 2015

VC funding. We love capital efficiency until we love land grabs until we abhor over funding until we get huge payouts and ring the bell for more funding until we attract every non-VC on the planet to invest in startups until it crashes and we start the cycle all over again none the wiser. blog here ). Same as I felt.

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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. The most relevant segment is where we talked about his passion for pseudonymity – the notes of which are linked there. Intolerance. Same goals. You have authority and achievement.

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Technical Review Blogging Examples Startup 329

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MARCH 31, 2012

If you haven’t read Adam Lashinsky’s awesome new book about Apple , you should. It takes on many of the lessons MBA programs and Corporate America have been teaching about business for the past 50+ years and questions whether lessons from Apple might be more applicable in thinking about the future. Specifically, 1.

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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. In a way it feels intuitive to us – the readers of this blog – because we’re the tech crowd. I suppose I could have skipped the whole rest of the blog post and just posted that.

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APRIL 18, 2010

I’ve been using Chartbeat for over a month now to track performance of my blog and I find myself looking at Google Analytics much less these days. I’m only writing about the product because I’m passionate about it. I’m only writing about the product because I’m passionate about it.

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Blogging Google Screening Mahalo 287

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JULY 14, 2015

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. I don’t worry about typos. My other secret on blogging?

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Blogging Writing Email Startup 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

What Can You Do if a VC Pulls Their Term Sheet? This isn’t Dave McClure secretly taking over Mark’s blog. Finally, know that the VC & entrepreneurial worlds are very, very small. I have spoken with many VCs in the past about which VCs pull out of deals. So, what can you do?

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Venture Capital Content Writing Blogging 150

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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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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?

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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. Where do you think things are heading?

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Venture Capital Technical Review GRP Partners Email 290

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.

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Startup Venture Capital Pricing Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 22, 2019

A Startup I’ve Been Excited to Tell You About for Years A few years ago I spent time in prison with Trevor O’Brien , the founder of Projector. We were of course there to work with incarcerated men on developing entrepreneurial skills on behalf of Defy Ventures. This is certainly true in how startups raise money from VCs.

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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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Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Coach 378

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OCTOBER 25, 2009

Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings). 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. I guarantee this is a bad VC. Gus has been amazing.

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Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Entrepreneur 297

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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).

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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

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 billion through 1,648 deals.

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Venture Capital Capital Invest Startup 109

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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. Let me be clear about this. Does he blog about venture capital and try to advise entrepreneurs?

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