Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

Considering that many of our funds are in the $200–300 million range, these returns were more meaningful than if we had raised billion dollar funds. Obviously the funding environment has changed considerably in 2022 but as early-stage investors our daily jobs stay largely unchanged. What do you do with a $650 million platform?

Startup 408

Startup Venture Capital Writing Invest 408

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while and was going to use AngelList by Nivi & Naval as the basis for my example and the perfect prompt came yesterday when I read Fred Wilson’s blog post on AngelList. He first worked hard to get him to be an advisor to the company. So how does this apply to you?

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

<== Our conclusion was that this isn’t a temporary blip that will swiftly trend-back up in a V-shaped recovery of valuations but rather represented a new normal on how the market will price these companies somewhat permanently. First in late-stage tech companies and then it will filter back to Growth and then A and ultimately Seed Rounds.

Venture Capital 416

Venture Capital Marketing Technical Review Seed Funding 416

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. That company was Invoca, which just announced a $20 million fund raise led by Accel. At the time I pointed out: “If I had realized exits almost certainly it would be because I invested in a company that failed.

Venture Capital 387

Venture Capital Downey Writing Press 387

Berkonomics

MAY 8, 2014

I am chairman of a company that, as I write this, is twelve years old and has not yet taken a dollar of outside investment. The company has been funded entirely by grants from the National Institute of Health, amounting to millions of non-dilutive dollars in all. Grant writing takes skill and immense amounts of time.

Company 166

Company Companies Writing Education 166

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

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 27, 2011

But should you actually write one if you’re a startup, an industry figure (lawyer, banker) or VC? This is a post to help you figure out why you should write and what you should talk about. GRP Partners last fund is the single best performing VC fund in the US (prequin data) for its vintage year). Absofuckinglutely.

Blogging 373

Blogging Startup Writing Venture Capital 373

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

And she didn’t start her company in Northern California. Tracy built her company, Recycled Media , out of necessity. She drove her company to profitability before paying herself a modest salary. She put all of her savings into her company. When Tracy started her company she didn’t have a technical co-founder.

Startup 363

Startup Entrepreneur SEO Venture Capital 363

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

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. an investment in your company. Somehow many first-time founders equate “sales” with something that is beneath them. This is where most founders err.

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

When Nivi published the series he titled it “the top 10 things I look for before I write a check.&# As a result I felt compelled to add this final attribute because it matters a lot to me. If we’ve seen a company present where we feel that the CEO is shady. That in itself will be controversial, I know.

Technical Review 284

Technical Review Entrepreneur Startup Funding 284

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 25, 2011

Yesterday I saw a Tweet from Chris Sacca fly by that prompted me to want to write a blog post helping entrepreneurs understand why they should push back against VCs asking for “super pro-rata” rights. Obviously the situation is very different in companies where the company isn’t “killing it.”

Entrepreneur 310

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Writing Invest 310

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2018

I was recently with an entrepreneur and talking with him about his fund raising process. Some started asking him for very specific analyses to be completed on his data and wanted his company to crunch the numbers. She had emailed with a partner at a big VC fund and he had passed the request to a junior associate.

Funding 217

Funding Newsletter Venture Capital Email 217

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2014

I’ve been having this PR discussion with three separate portfolio companies at once so I thought I’d just publish my thoughts more broadly. PR is an insanely valuable activity in early-stage companies. It’s much hard to get funded as a company nobody has heard of. Business Development - Biz Dev is hard.

Press 415

Press Google Course Writing 415

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

My view: “Spending any time or energy trying to game the ‘definition’ of your round of fund raising is a total waste. There weren’t a lot of seed funds in 2007 so this was often done by angels, funding consortia or sometimes early-stage funds that existed then (First Round Capital, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, etc.).

Seed Funding 399

Seed Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 399

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

I Know Everybody Told You to Send Your Fund-Raising Decks as a Link. Here’s Why You Should Just Send the Deck I know you have your document sending tool to send your fund-raising deck to VCs and track who read your deck, which pages they read and how much time they spend on each page.

Funding 239

Funding Venture Capital IP Email 239

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

” I look for a lot of things, actually: Persistence (above all else), resiliency, leadership, humility, attention-to-detail, street smarts, transparency and both obsession with one’s company and a burning desire to win. In fact, my salary never caught up with my pre startup salary across 2 companies and 8 years.

Startup 409

Startup Invest Venture Capital Writing 409

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 3, 2011

The truth is I have been thinking a lot about the topic, I just haven’t been writing about it. AWS helped lower the cost of starting a company by 90%. When I started my first company at 31 year’s old I had to raise at least $5 million. million to launch a SaaS software company and we took $2.5 Even at 18.

Entrepreneur 341

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Startup Blogging 341

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2014

I wrote my version here and Scott wrote an excellent write-up of his views here. I believe most LPs still want discipline in fund sizes, fees and focus. This can’t all be driven by increased company performance). Each of the two videos is about 10 minutes long. Video 1 is here : Late stage valuations are in a mini bubble.

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital SaaS Writing Funding 309

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

Yesterday I wrote a post about The Silent Benefits of PR in which I pointed out that most young companies I encounter don’t fully grasp the benefits of PR because they are less measurable than product milestones or customer acquisition analyses (like CAC/LTV). It super charges a business that is closer to product delivery.

Press 319

Press Startup Writing Training 319

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Seed investments are down by any measure (funds, deals, dollars) over the past 3 years in deals < $1 million AND in deals between $1–5 million. As you can see below the number of seed funds shot up dramatically between 2006 and 2014. It’s very noticeable in terms of funds raised, dollars invested and deals completed.

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Invest Seed Funding Startup 328

socalTECH

APRIL 23, 2021

Hawke Ventures, a new, venture capital fund that is part of marketing company Hawke Media, said Friday that it has raised $5.6M for its first, venture capital fund. The new fund is being managed by Erik Huberman, Tony Delmercado, and Managing Partner Drew Leahy, along with angel investor Paige Craig.

Funding 113

Funding Invest Venture Capital Writing 113

socalTECH

APRIL 8, 2014

Among those funds is TYLT Lab (www.tyltlab.com), which recently announced a new, $20M early stage investment fund specifically focused on companies here. We''ve also had a pretty wide range of check writing in terms of amount. We decided to formalize our investing in October, and call it TYLT Labs, so here we are.

Seed Funding 220

Seed Funding Santa Monica Funding Startup 220

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

Thus, it is very hard to make a commitment to fund you. And don’t allocate two months of each year to “hardcore funding activities&# but allocate a regular amount of time each month to it like any other job function. Like it or not – finance is a major job function in any company – startup or public company.

Invest 411

Invest Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 411

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

The truth is – there isn’t a “right&# answer so for your company. And these ideas have ways of seeping into board discussions with portfolio companies as in, “have you ever thought about trying A, B or C?&# For early-stage consumer companies I would be careful not to market futures at all.

Marketing 380

Marketing Startup Press Technical Advisors 380

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2012

I got a call from a VC friend of mine who said, “we’re looking at this deal but can’t write the full check. But I had just seen the company present at a recent tech event and thought highly of what they were building. I was interested in the company but I wasn’t chasing the deal.

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Writing 356

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

It’s a hard topic to write about because it’s almost an accepted norm that total transparency is good. You took the risk to start your company. They told you, “Yeah, man, I’ll gladly write the first $250,000. We funded one in 2005 and lost a lot of money. CEO transparency. Of course not.

Startup 417

Startup Course Venture Capital Writing 417

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. So I recommend a high-level “state of the company” email a couple of times a year but a message that you assume might get shown to others.

Venture Capital 352

Venture Capital Seed Funding Email Blogging 352

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. Brad Feld hadn’t written his seminal “ term sheet series &# and The Funded hadn’t yet been created. You’ll need to hire and retain talen to grow your company.

Venture Capital 405

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 30, 2018

One of the hardest things about the fund-raising process for entrepreneurs is that you’re trying to raise money from people who have “asymmetric information.” I thought I’d write a post about how to talk about valuation at a startup and give you some sense of what might be on the mind of the person considering funding you.

Venture Capital 324

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Invest 324

TechCrunch LA

JULY 19, 2022

Josh Kaplan and Dee Murthy, both founder and co-CEO of the Los Angeles–based company, started Ghost in 2021 after previously working together at Four Five Group, a men’s apparel business. million in new funding for its predictive inventory recommendation platform, joining other similar companies, including Zippedi and Inventa.

Product 191

Product Funding Technical Review Equity 191

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

” And even the venerable Fred Wilson weighed in with how people “ leading vs. following ” in funding rounds play different roles and have different skills. If you know, VCs end up writing sizable checks into their own funds, which is important in better aligning interests. So there you have it. and much more.

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Invest Course Technical Review 356

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2 preamble issues having read the comments on TC today: 1: I know that the prices of startup companies is much great in Silicon Valley than in smaller towns / less tech focused areas in the US and the US prices higher than many foreign markets. There is an inherent value that any company has. I acknowledged this in the article.

Startup 336

Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

TechCrunch LA

JUNE 9, 2021

Even as NFT sales dip below their most speculative highs, startups aiming to tap into their potential are still scoring big funding rounds from investors who believe there’s much more to crypto collectibles than the past few months of hype. The round was led by WestCap. The startup has raised a whopping $120 million to date.

Platform 308

Platform Framework Los Angeles Design 308

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2021

It has historically been the case that VCs would rather fund the promise of 100x in a company with almost no revenue than the reality of a company growing at 50% but doing $20+ million in sales. The Valley has obsessed with a quick up-and-to-right momentum story because we were thought to live in “winner take most” markets.

Venture Capital 363

Venture Capital Capital Funding Startup 363

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

In the Beginning … This is a very important post to me because I find myself giving this advice all the time and if you don’t follow the basic advice here you can cause yourself much heartache down the line – even if your company ultimately becomes über successful. It’s hard enough to build a successful company.

Startup 365

Startup Technical Advisors IP Ideas 365

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.

Startup 419

Startup Entrepreneur Design Funding 419