Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

Today we’re announcing that my partner Kara Nortman is becoming Co-Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to welcome her to her new role. I’ve become fond of saying “if I had a dollar for every person who told me just how much they loooooved Kara Nortman, I’d have a 10x fund.”

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

I took the opportunity this past week to publish summary notes of some of the VCs and entrepreneurs I had interviewed on This Week in VC. One of my goals in doing the show was not only to educate entrepreneurs but also to put a human face on many of the VCs in our industry as VCs can be hard to get to know. Thank you. (if

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InfoChachkie

MAY 22, 2012

The steps outlined below represent an ideal approach to raising capital 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. I wish that was true. It’s not.” Prep Steps.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

I love how transparently Danielle lives her startup (& encourages other to join in) because it provides much needed transparency to other startups. . ” I highly recommend reading it. But what IS the right amount of burn for a company? Turns out like most things there are no simple answers. Let’s set up a framework.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 26, 2015

One of the least understood parts of the venture capital industry and venture capital firms is how investment decisions actually get made. The truth is that each firm is different and there isn’t one standard but over the years I’ve talked with enough of my peers to get sense of how many firms work.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

I became a VC 12 years ago in 2007 when the pace of deals was much slower. As I was trying to figure out the role I wanted to play in the VC world I decided I wanted to focus on businesses that were building deeply technical products to solve problems for business users. We not only have our Series A funds that can write $500k?—?$15

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2010

Social Proof in Action … Yesterday I wrote about the benefits of using social proof and authority in raising venture capital. Social proof is defined as “looking for others to guide our decisions&# and is also one of the most important techniques in acquiring customers in your company. We are evangelists.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 29, 2014

One of the hardest things for most entrepreneurs to know is how hard to push in situations where people tell you “no.” I once went to a startup event where a VC told the audience that if a VC doesn’t respond to your email to move on to the next VC – that VC is clearly not interested.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 21, 2010

So I hope y’all understand (Especially the chap who sent me a private message saying how frustrating he found my typos to be. So I hope y’all understand (Especially the chap who sent me a private message saying how frustrating he found my typos to be. Thank you to anybody who sent Jason a note on Twitter on my behalf.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2013

I spent countless hours with VC firms, startups & LPs (the people who invest in VC firms). On my first real day back the first thought I have is that most entrepreneurs don’t manage their VC relationships as well as they could. But you need to understand that VCs are partnerships. We make decisions as groups.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2018

The idea is simple enough: several female VC partners at top funds will hold 1-hour meetings with 40 promising female entrepreneurs looking to get advice on their business and pitch in a friendly, non-judgmental, safe environment. LA Female Office Hours. So why is this initiative so important for men, women and other gender identities?

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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. It’s nearly impossible to get a services company financed by VCs. You’re a small fish.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

But VC is like congress. They see how hard she does her job. “This essay is dedicated to the great VC’s on my board who I am lucky to work with: Sameer Gandhi from Accel, Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed, and Kirsten Green from Forerunner. .” Their data looks at tech VCs. Because they know him or her.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

As the startup figures out how to make something lots of people want and how to reach those people, there’s a period of rapid growth. He also nails the reason why venture capital is still necessary to grow large businesses quickly in a world where the costs of running startups have fallen dramatically. For example.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 17, 2017

You begin to think about how hard it will be to fund raise, sign customers, hire employees, etc. You begin to think about how hard it will be to fund raise, sign customers, hire employees, etc. For my family Ring has become a way that we joke and communicate with each other when I’m on the road.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. Most experienced VCs won’t push you to give up founder control at this stage of the business nor should they. In the Early Days. Offering a sparring-partner function on strategic decisions.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

There is all sorts of advice on the Internet about how to raise capital. I’ve raised money as a “hot company” and I’ve raised capital when no one would return my phone calls. And of course I’ve sat on the other side of the table: As a VC. Raising money is hard. Executive Summary.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

I have long advised startup companies that if you don’t control your messaging somebody else will and your potential customers will form impressions of you shaped by somebody else or by nobody at all. It is simply the most important way to proactively control your career development and how the market perceives you.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

In fact 61% of all mobile searches where a customer contacts a business it is via a phone call (source: Google). It’s why the first company I ever invested in as a VC – Invoca – just announced a $20 million funding by Accel Partners. Calls are changing but not dying. Much more data in the full post. THE FULL STORY.

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Berkonomics

JUNE 8, 2017

The subject of raising money is critical to many businesses and a passing option to others, depending upon the capital efficiency of the enterprise. But few businesses grow into the sweet spot of $20 million to $30 million in worth to an ultimate buyer without the injection of outside capital.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 4, 2013

Compelling in the sense that you solve a real problem a target group of potential customers has with a product that is significantly better than the alternatives on that market. I see many companies these days just race to raise capital. They see capital raising at the success validator. My take on his argument is this: 1.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 12, 2013

Because my role as a VC requires me to take and endless stream of meetings I long ago decided I need to learn as much as I can from the meetings I attend so I often just ask tons of questions and assimilate knowledge. He always had an angle for how he could acquire better, faster, cheaper than others. You won’t regret it.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Understanding how your company will change as you move through these phases is critical if you hope to scale to a large business one day. Understanding how your company will change as you move through these phases is critical if you hope to scale to a large business one day. As an early-stage VC I love this phase.

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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!). So why the ’09 bounce?

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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. Just notice how many VC emails you get after your TechCrunch article or after you were on stage at TC50. He started the call by telling me he had exciting news.

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Both Sides of the Table

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. The idea came from having been recently married herself and seeing how expensive it can be to buy a new wedding dress. More on that later.

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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. I funded them 8 weeks later.

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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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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series about Raising Venture Capital. A few years ago it became fashionable for large VC’s to do seed funding. Some larger VCs felt they were being “scooped&# by some younger, nimbler and smaller VCs. If a VC term sheet comes in they begin their due diligence process.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2015

One of the questions we discussed is, “How much capital should a startup raise?” ” Fred & I are both in agreement that there is a tension between capital constraints and creativity. ” Here is a three-minute video with Fred answering this question. I promise it’s worth watching. Again, Fred.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

Those that we survive with become family. The truth is you really don’t know how your teammates or your bosses will perform in good times and bad. How about asking, “If we hired Susan could you imagine considering coming with her?” Startups are hard. You’ve heard that a million times. It was a moment.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2017

I was influenced heavily before my career even began because in my undergraduate work I took a ton of statistics classes that showed how easily we human brains fall prey to easy biases and slights of data and try to draw conclusions that don’t exist. A well-mounted case and I drop my defenses and embrace what I hadn’t seen before.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 11, 2013

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. If you choose your name well and it represents what your customers value in you then it will be memorable, differentiated and meaningful.

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SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Kathy Sierra at Business of Software 2009 - Business of Software Blog , May 4, 2010 "In the old days, getting customers was easy. Putting customers first. Legendary customer support. Draw Your Ideas - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 16, 2010 I saw Jack Dorsey give this talk at The 99% Conference last month.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

He and I once took different sides of an debate about whether “VC signaling&# in early-stage deals is a serious problem or not. So it was fun to turn the cameras on him for 45 minutes for a special “NY edition of This Week in VC&# and hearing his views. Such that during that time, Chris “learned how to learn.”.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2010

It was especially fun for me because we got the chance to talk about the VC industry and how entrepreneurs should think about the VC industry in addition to discussing deals. We also talked about Elevation Partners who invested in Palm and how this deal really salvaged their investment, which was a VERY big bet on Palm.

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FEBRUARY 24, 2019

This post sets out how I believe founders (and investors) should think about independent board members having worked with many of them for the past 20 years. I will also outline how to select them and incentivize them. This is really a checklist in my mind of how I think about independents. Why Independent Directors?

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