Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

There has been much discussion in the past few years of the changing structure of the venture capital industry. The rise of “micro VCs” or seed-stage funds. The rise of alternative sources of capital (crowd funding and the like). We all have one-click purchase power (Apple, Google, Amazon, eBay).

Venture Capital 398

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Seed Funding 398

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 8, 2019

Warren’s plan called for regulators to be appointed to oversee the unwinding of several acquisitions that were critical to the development of the core technology that make Alphabet’s Google and the social media giant Facebook so profitable… and Zappos. In this case the barrier would be reduced access to capital.

Technical Review 144

Technical Review Startup Chief Technology Officer Social Media 144

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

I was excited to read it because Robert Cialdini had been a speaker at Google when my wife worked there and she told me that many members of the senior management team at Google had been raving about his work. John gave me the book after I spoke at his entrepreneurship class at UCSB. You should, too. So how does this apply to you?

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Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

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). We sat down with Derek to learn more about the new $5M fund and what it's all about. Tell us about the new fund?

Invest 145

Invest Funding Capital Startup 145

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

These tensions seep out in some angels or seed funds publicly or semi-privately deriding later-stage VCs for their “bad” behavior. Prorata investments rights given investors the right to invest in your future fund-raising rounds and maintain their ownership % in your company as your company grows and raises more capital.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

socalTECH

APRIL 8, 2014

There seems to a perpetual shortage of local venture capital investors in the region, despite the huge growth in startup activity here, particularly along Silicon Beach. Among those funds is TYLT Lab (www.tyltlab.com), which recently announced a new, $20M early stage investment fund specifically focused on companies here.

Seed Funding 220

Seed Funding Santa Monica Funding Startup 220

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

Given how efficient markets are when a large market like LA starts to blossom it attracts capital pretty quickly. billion in venture capital to LA’s technology startups and 2014 will shatter that figure. The patents Overture held became known in small circles as Google’s ’361 problem as outlined here.

Entrepreneur 376

Entrepreneur Snapchat Startup Google 376

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

Every tech or major news journal in the country is preparing to write their Snap, Inc (creators of Snapchat, Spectacles, etc) stories and many of them seem to want a “How does it feel to have missed this investment story.” Another firm funded them. Of course that was a wrong narrative for both companies.

Snapchat 214

Snapchat Invest Technical Review Dollar Shave Club 214

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

She hasn’t raised any venture capital. Tracy is knowledgeable enough to talk tech and swap design & product stories with other founders, but she realized early that networking amongst this group and reading and writing in their journals would not bring her more customers. She did her first tech startup after the age of 30.

Startup 363

Startup Entrepreneur SEO Venture Capital 363

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. Heck, stick around and watch me discuss the seed funding debate that is going on right now and what is happening in the VC industry overall. Google’s investment in Zynga. Don’t.

Venture Capital 210

Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Southern California 210

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. Google knows it. The quote comes from Google. THE FULL STORY.

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

In the original version of his post, Andy writes. “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.” According to FLAG Capital there are 100 active VCs (as defined by making at least $1 million in VC per quarter for 4 consecutive quarters).

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

socalTECH

AUGUST 27, 2014

In the Los Angeles startup world, there are lots of high profile, buzzy companies which have lots of attention and funding--but which haven''t earned a dime of revenue. We caught up with CEO and co-founder Brett Rossman to learn more about the company and how it''s been able to grow, profitably, all without raising a dime of outside capital.

Startup 239

Startup El Segundo Marketing Media 239

socalTECH

DECEMBER 9, 2010

Last night, Santa Monica-based Factual (www.factual.com), the data provider and data tools firm, announced a big, $25M funding round from Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. The firm is headed by Gil Elbaz , who is known for co-founding Applied Semantics, the firm which invented Google's AdSense product.

Artificial Inteligence 203

Artificial Inteligence Century City Web Santa Monica 203

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital. Recently I’ve been debating with a number of young startup companies that are raising money in the next few months, “what is the right about of capital to raise at a startup?&#. Google suddenly makes your product category free). - There are trade offs.

Startup 319

Startup Venture Capital Capital Competition 319

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

For the past 5 years or so Google, Facebook and a handful of tech industry giants have been quietly buying scores of early-stage startups for their talent. Almost certainly the startup would have raised some capital. You have been at Google, Salesforce.com, Yahoo! Acquihires and Venture Capital. And who cares, right?

Press 357

Press Startup Yahoo Venture Capital 357

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

You join teams that got good write-ups on TechCrunch, have great VCs, have star CEO’s, whatever. In fact, just a short Google search reveals that I’ve referred to him frequently through the years. Writing a book will be fun. “Getting the band back together” doesn’t stop for me with just our fund.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 14, 2012

…” I’ll write soon on my views of why I believe Instagram took off as a social network and what I think comes next. 99.9999% of you won’t be contemplating raising capital at $500 million any time soon or selling for a billion. My friend Christin Herron of Intel Capital weighed in on the issue.

Venture Capital 316

Venture Capital Pricing Social Network Acquisition 316

socalTECH

DECEMBER 17, 2008

In their case, people write their scripts on a web site, and when they're done, they can submit them to contests with a single click. If you're doing freelance writing, have a story you're trying to sell, there's a whole process of finding out where you're doing well, not doing well, and what responses you have received.

Writing 209

Writing Hollywood Startup Sites 209

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2012

I recommend that you start by writing down the attributes you would want people to think about when they think about your brand. The birthplace of sponsored search (Overture), semantic search (Applied Semantics which became Google AdSense), comparison shopping (ShopZilla, PriceGrabber) and many others. Think about venture capital.

Startup 304

Startup Venture Capital Los Angeles Woodland Hills 304

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

I had an enjoyable conversation this morning with a young team straight out of college this morning and they were calling to ask advice on how to approach fund raising (angels vs. VCs, how to select a VC, etc.) So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. FourSquare.

Venture Capital 364

Venture Capital Coach Writing SaaS 364

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

There is a battle between entrepreneurs who try to change the world and solve a meaningful problem and those who write take-down pieces with no apparent personal benefit other than attention. As you may know Google recently restructured so that Larry could spend more time on big innovations – on “moonshots.”

Technical Review 417

Technical Review Startup Software Review Course 417

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

He said, “They need an unbiased view of the fund raising environment because there is too much misinformation and everything seems to be changing fast.&#. I will write more about this in the next 2 weeks. – you’re very well positioned as a fund. source: Capital IQ. I believe that.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

socalTECH

DECEMBER 11, 2018

Wildlink is backed by Mucker Capital. If I write back, and tell them to stay at the Marriott in Del Mar, we would detect the Marriott Del Mar in your message, whether that's on Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, in a text message, in an email, or whatever, and convert that into a link to one of our merchants who are part of the Wildfire network.

San Diego 159

San Diego Social Media Commerce Snapchat 159

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” To grow faster businesses need resources in today’s financial period to fund growth that may not come for 6 months to a year.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

This is part of my series on Raising Venture Capital. Many businesses that pitch to me have White Elephant issues and I’d like to tell you how to deal with these when you’re raising venture capital. Let me give you some (real) examples: - You were an EIR at a VC firm who isn’t funding your current company. -

Venture Capital 264

Venture Capital Startup Training Sales 264

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

When I was new at Venture Capital I was trying to figure out the business. I tapped my friends at big tech companies (Salesforce, Google, Oracle). It makes it extraordinarily hard to raise the next round of capital. And for the record, GRP has funded YC alum. What kind of deals should I be doing? What stage? What price?

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Startup Pricing Invest 347

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

Either downside scenario requires angel deals to be funded further. In the latter cases many companies (Flickr, Delicious, Blogger, Writely in 05-08 and lately Invite Media, Aardvark, Dodgeball, etc.) Yes, the VC industry was over funded and too many non value-add people entered the industry.

Invest 284

Invest Angel Venture Capital Startup 284

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?

Startup 113

Startup Venture Capital Beverly Hills Acquisition 113

socalTECH

MARCH 12, 2013

Obviously, anyone except the largest five to ten content companies in the world, such as Google, Netflix, or Amazon, does not need to own their own CDN. Software-as-a-service companies write good software, and network companies build good networks, but rarely do you find both that do that well as the same time.

CTO Hire 248

CTO Hire Content Networking Web 248

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

There are real changes in the venture capital industry and it would have been fun to talk about them. The VC industry has different segments in it that have different fund sizes, different investment amounts and different risk / return expectations. We need people at all stages of the funding lifecycle and not just VCs.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

We talked with Noah about how the company grew out of a business plan competition at the University of Southern California, his recent funding from the Maverick Angels, as well as how the firm hopes to stand out among a crowded list of comparison shopping sites. Finally, what are you using your recent funding round for?

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USC CPC Sites Startup 207

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. Argument two says, “big companies can’t innovate anymore so Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. Remember it was only 2008 where Microsoft and even Google were laying off employees.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

socalTECH

JUNE 6, 2011

We're looking to launch our first class in the fall, with five to ten companies, with the TechStars model of a small capital investment, and a seed investment of $6000 per founder. I helped them raise a few rounds of funding, ran their European operations. We have some funds committed now, but we're continuing to raise funds.

Startup 221

Startup Mentor Southern California Incubator 221

Xconomy

AUGUST 10, 2016

“Just about anything you’ve heard [about] at Google that sounds interesting and new is based on machine learning,” Jurvetson said at the time. Just over a year later, Jurvetson led the Series A round of venture funding for Nervana Systems. In the 2-1/2 years since it was founded, Nervana raised roughly $25 million. (In

Artificial Inteligence 40

Artificial Inteligence San Diego Framework Venture Capital 40

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

” It was meant both as a call to those writing angel checks into other people’s companies that they ought to think about putting that capital toward themselves either by becoming a startup founder or (and this was my real point) by taking an under-market salary in a company where they can learn the right skills to do it in the future.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital IP 150

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

For a high-volume seed fund that adds many portfolio companies every year (such as our friends at 500 Startups who invest in over 100 distinct companies annually), the cost of a bad affirmative decision (a false positive) is quite low, since it accounts for a relatively small portion of their total fund. Unicornless.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100