Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

I was having dinner with a friend last night and we were chatting about venture capital and a bit about what I’ve learned. Today we’re in a world where 10 accelerators are bombarding you with emails to meet their 10-15 companies. If an accelerator is writing you they’re also writing 25 other VCs.

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Venture Capital Invest Press Startup 374

Both Sides of the Table

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. Well, aside from it showing discipline and intelligence – we always get flooded with emails when we recruit and when you have to manage volume you need to go for obvious filters. What is the timeframe?

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Venture Capital Technical Review GRP Partners Email 290

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. This experience made me want to dig into my archives, re-write & publish this piece. I often tell people that raising venture capital is more difficult than getting married. Not so in venture capital.

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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Capital Help 298

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC&# – the outline is here. You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s. Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue. Unfortunately your advisers are wrong.

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Venture Capital Guide Startup Technical Review 309

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 8, 2012

As noted in 6 Steps To Raising Venture Capital , as you accomplish your previously communicated milestones, send your target VCs a brief email update (think eye-candy graphics and charts, not dense text). Follow my startup-oriented Twitter feed here: @johngreathouse. Photo Credit: ralphbijker via Flickr.

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Venture Capital RSS Customer Custom 265

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. Back to regular writing this week so check back in. What did you do before VC and how did that lead you to VC? (1:00 How did you get into VC? (9:30 Thank you. (if

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Capital Venture Capital Veoh Startup 265

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2014

Generally speaking in venture capital financings the legal documents will specify that only “major investors” (a threshold set in the agreement – which can be $500,000 investor or more). We are doing what we do – writing larger checks and playing an active role at the company. You betcha. Speaks on CNBC.

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Email Blogging 352

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 29, 2014

They get pissed off if a senior executive at Google doesn’t take a meeting with them, if people are late to their meetings or if they have emails that are unreturned. The 70% of entrepreneurs that simply can’t get past an un-responded-to email. You need to know how to write good & action oriented emails.

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Venture Capital Email Startup Conference 389

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

If you read this blog often you'll know that I'm a huge fan of First Round Capital. They have totally changed the way you run a VC firm, investing heavily in systems & events for their founders that are pushing the boundaries of the way our industry works. I'm a huge fan of this innovation. and Half.com. Investing Strategy.

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

Too Techie - Tone down emphasis on the technology underlying your venture; an interested investor will perform tech diligence at the appropriate time. No VC Fit - Match your venture with appropriate funding source. Explain your team's experiences that are relevant to the success of your current venture. Capitalization.

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Venture Capital Summary Technical Review Template 211

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 5, 2010

Last week at an angel investor forum I was privileged to meet Stephanie Spong, who is a Principal with EPIC Ventures, an increasingly rare early stage VC firm. Stephanie: I am a venture capitalist currently based out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, with EPIC Ventures. Stephanie: I love building companies. Marty Zwilling.

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Venture Capital Capital Entrepreneur Competition 65

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

I would argue that the shut-down of September 2009 was equally severe yet there are signs that this “VC Ice Age” has begun to thaw. But any entrepreneurs raising capital should keep in mind that this opening of the markets could possibly be temporary. Why did the VC markets freeze so quickly? Short answer – yes.

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Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

TechCrunch LA

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

Capitalism is fundamentally about timing, since market competition is about finding opportunities before others. When should a VC invest? Start writing down predictions about people, companies, and markets. Between TechCrunch today and my former roles in venture capital, I’ve had the opportunity to practice timing a lot.

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Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Invest 202

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

He writes with a great perspective and is well worth reading. 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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Startup Venture Capital Study Course 337

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

VC's love to talk about their successes. Yet most VC's bury their failures under six feet of denial. In the startup world, the former happens when a VC makes a bad investment, and the latter occurs when they miss a great opportunity. In retrospect, our decision was both perfectly rational and completely lame. > -jeff.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

But VC is like congress. In the original version of his post, Andy writes. “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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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

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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Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

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

FEBRUARY 18, 2016

Every year at Upfront we try to analyze the venture markets. We try to look at the sources of capital, the valuations, exits and trends. In venture our goal is to fund companies over a 10-year+ time horizon, which is the time it takes to build truly transformational companies. VC survey data 2016 from Mark Suster.

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Funding Venture Capital Marketing Writing 150

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

Huge thank you to Steve De Long for the write up. Yeah, that was when I changed for me…” “…there was so much positive feedback on demystifying this one element of venture capital. The value of Pitch Decks; Brad’s personal preferences on deal presentation; and Brad’s practice of accepting cold approaches via email.

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Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

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? How does the world in Los Angeles intersect differently with venture capital?

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Venture Capital Conference Ideas Entrepreneur 400

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 15, 2022

Finally I realized that venture capital and angel investors are actually humans, despite some views to the contrary. Some entrepreneurs love to talk and produce videos, but hate to write anything down. Others send investors email and business plans in all uppercase or no punctuation.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Social Media Patents Mentor 111

socalTECH

MARCH 16, 2017

Earlier this week, Derek Norton , a long time advisor to the media, Internet, and technology industry in Los Angeles, announced a brand new venture capital fund called Watertower Ventures (www.watertowerventures.com). I hate to put us into the pre-seed and seed area, so I am saying literally, first institutional capital.

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Invest Funding Capital Startup 145

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. an email) to about 35 people. If you want to be kept informed just send me an email and let me know that you''re in, and that was it.

Newsletter 233

Newsletter Startup Entrepreneur Writing 233

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2010

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. As a teenager he experimented with writing & producing his own rap music and received a lot of feedback from elders that he had a talent with words. This was in the 90′s.

Entrepreneur 356

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Startup Email 356

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

“Yes&# was given to me by one of my favorite angel investor / seed VC’s to work with – John Greathouse of Rincon Venture Partners and author of the blog InfoChachkie that you should check out because it is filled with great info from a guy who has been a very successful operator.

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Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

I think that’s the beauty of both capitalism and innovation. That was back when VCs weren’t so quick to respond to emails. 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. So which is it? Feast or famine?

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Startup Blogging Venture Capital Writing 391

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Looking for an entrance into a VC, an angel group, a bank, a CxO for a sales opportunity, or any other entity? Few of your contacts will be willing to use their valuable social or political capital helping you with a sales effort, and you will definitely strain your relationship with the intermediary if not a close friend.

Ideas 120

Ideas Sales Competition Venture Capital 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 13, 2020

Finally I realized that venture capital and angel investors are actually humans, despite some views to the contrary. Some entrepreneurs love to talk and produce videos, but hate to write anything down. Others send investors email and business plans in all uppercase or no punctuation.

Entrepreneur 126

Entrepreneur Social Media Patents Mentor 126

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2014

I always try my best to take meetings like this since my friend had clearly committed some political capital to his friend in saying he could help him get a meeting. I wrote him the following email. We write that into the calendar entry so that I (and any my partners) know this and would only reschedule if extremely urgent.

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Conference Startup Century City Email 369

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

The company recently raised a round of funding from Santa Barbara-based ScOps Venture Capital. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and others have had to raise tons of capital and have super-solid foundations to go with the hyper-local play. How did you connect with Kevin and ScOps Venture Capital, and why did you decide to raise a round?

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Startup Venture Capital Beverly Hills Acquisition 113

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. an email) to about 35 people. If you want to be kept informed just send me an email and let me know that you''re in, and that was it.

Newsletter 133

Newsletter Startup Entrepreneur Writing 133

InfoChachkie

JULY 23, 2012

Rejecting the paint-by-numbers approach to corporate communications deployed by most marketing executives, Brad has embraced unconventional guerilla marketing tactics to help establish his venture capital firm, Foundry Group, as a thought leader in early-stage tech investing. Write Your Own Playbook. Share and Enjoy.

Marketing 233

Marketing Blogging Startup Venture Capital 233

Both Sides of the Table

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. Think about it – most entrepreneurs who manage to raise seed money or venture capital usually raise enough money for 12-18 months maximum.

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Blogging Press Entrepreneur Venture Capital 420

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

You originally had to have a.edu email address to even join. Where you can talk about topics that it might not be appropriate for a VC to discuss in writing. We then went on to film an amazing 90 minute discussion afterward for This Week in Venture Capital. Turns out anonymity mattered. Along came Facebook.

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Social Network Startup Blogging Venture Capital 329

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

Redpoint Ventures is one of the venture capital firms which has straddled both Northern California and Southern California, with offices in both locations. We've created over a billion dollars in public market capital created by our investments here. We can also write checks as large as $35M out of the Omega Fund.

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Redpoint Southern California Cornerstone OnDemand Invest 154

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 16, 2010

I always try my best to take meetings like this since my friend had clearly committed some political capital to his friend in saying he could help him get a meeting. We write that into the calendar entry so that I (and any my partners) know this and would only reschedule if extremely urgent. Recently a team flew to meet me.

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Startup Conference Century City Email 346