Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2018

If you’ve read any of my ongoing series on fund raising from venture capitalist (episode 1?— ?controlling controlling your psychology ) you no doubt have heard me say that raising capital is a sales & marketing process. VC Partnerships Start by understanding how many partners are at the firm you are approaching.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Invest Slides 314

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

I always tell founders … “An investors job is to deploy capital and make a return. If you truly believe that you, your company and your products are exceptional and your company will be valuable then you’re actually doing them a FAVOR by helping them invest in your startup. an investment in your company.

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Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2016

At the Upfront Summit in early February, we had a chance to have many off-the-record conversations with Limited Partners (LPs) who fund Venture Capital (VC) funds about their views of the market. LPs Still Believe Strongly in Venture Capital as a Diverse Source of Returns.

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Venture Capital Capital Marketing Seed Funding 150

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2013

I spent countless hours with VC firms, startups & LPs (the people who invest in VC firms). I find these trips invaluable both from a relationship-building perspective as well as stretching my mind about our industry. And it would well be worth your while to broaden your relationships within your VC firm.

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Venture Capital Summary Organization Entrepreneur 309

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

Picking a VC is hard. So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. Most VCs are book smart. VCs should be more of a coach than proscriptively telling you what to do. You want a VC who will spar with you but then STFU and let you get on with things.

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Venture Capital Coach Writing SaaS 364

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

There is much discussion online and also in small, private groups, about why the price of technology companies – public and private – are falling. Valuing any company can be difficult because it requires a degree of forecasting future growth & competition and ultimately the profits of the organization.

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Startup Company Companies Venture Capital 150

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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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Guide Blogging 304

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

I was on This Week in Venture Capital (TWiVC) again this week with Jason Calacanis. You can watch this week’s TWiVC episode by clicking on the link and my summary notes are below. {if I think everybody heard about this acquisition. I talked about the platform moves of Twitter and why it should be expected.

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Venture Capital Capital Google Platform 271

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Over the past month a colleague ( Chang Xu ) and I sifted through data on the venture capital industry (as we do every year) and made a bunch of calls to VCs and LPs to confirm our hypotheses. As a result of the IPO window shifting we saw a massive inflow of public-market capital into the latest stages of venture.

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Venture Capital Invest Seed Funding Startup 328

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. A summary of what we discussed is below: Not 100% in order of the video, but close. What is the VC process? Competition.

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Venture Capital Slides Doc Startup 340

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2009

I recently appeared on Fox Business News covering the topic of raising Venture Capital. If you’re in the market or thinking about VC in the future the following video may be of interest to you – click here to view. Video is about 7 minutes. So respectfully ask the VC for an intro to other VCs.

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Venture Capital Startup Summary Social Network 210

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 29, 2012

And no wonder, lately he and his partners are on a tear, investing out of their $200+ million VC fund. Both companies were in Los Angeles. I don’t know the company or the details first hand. Nate, tell us a bit about Rustic Canyon Venture Partners. Not bad, hey? And so they never got consumer adoption.

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Rustic Canyon Venture Capital Southern California Userplane 279

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.

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Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

Most sophisticated investors ignore them, focusing their attention on an entrepreneur's pitch and presentation materials, financial forecast and executive summary. As noted in Entrepreneurs Shouldn't Pitch Their Ideas To Venture Capitalists , most sophisticated investors place their bets on people rather than opportunities. Financials.

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Venture Capital Summary Technical Review Template 211

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

Many MBA programs still cater too much to the needs of large, corporate management jobs or prepare students to enter big consulting companies or investments banks. If you haven’t read Adam Lashinsky’s awesome new book about Apple , you should. And that leads me to today’s post. Specifically, 1.

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Startup Sales Course Competition 319

Tech Zulu Event

DECEMBER 26, 2013

Your executive summary is essentially the cover letter to your business plan: its goal is to get the reader to check out your business plan and, hopefully, to set up a meeting. Here’s how to write an executive summary with impact: 1. Sure you can get help, but the exercise of creating your executive summary is an important one.

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Summary Tips Startup Writing 76

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2010

Had a great chat with Jim Armstrong who is a General Partner at Clearstone Venture Partners today on TWiVC. 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. Some summary notes are below.

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Clearstone Venture Capital ReachLocal Google 236

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 12, 2010

I recently got an email from a friend who had been approached by a well known VC. I’m an investor at [Big Name, Large Fund VC] and recently came across [Your Company]. It's big, well known & we've invested in all of these really cool companies]. No reason not to call him but I wouldn’t get too excited about it.

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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Email Equity 294

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2010

billion invested during the same three-month period in 2009, according to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). There is no doubt that many VCs are still holding onto their cash while they wait for conditions to improve — a lemming-like mindset of cash conservation that won’t help pull us out of the downturn.

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Venture Capital Capital Startup Summary 90

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

My friend Michael Broukhim, founder & co-CEO of FabFitFun and I recently had a catch-up meeting for 3-miles on the Santa Monica “Bird Trail” No company has ever elicited so many questions by friends, colleagues, entrepreneurs, fellow VCs and journalists as has Bird, the company that pioneered the electronic scooter as a service market.

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Santa Monica Funding Startup Course 256

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 23, 2012

This is one of the best episodes of This Week in VC for a long time. In case you don’t know, they are one of the biggest media companies in the world. And they invest n select VC funds. I asked Andrew how companies can best work with Condé Nast and he gave the answers in the episode. Watch: [link].

Media 285

Media Company Companies Venture Capital 285

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 1, 2016

Rolf Winkler wrote a piece in the WSJ about A16Z’s returns in which he says they “lag behind Sequoia, Benchmark and Founders Fund.” VCs strangely never seem to weigh in on other VC funds. As an entrepreneur I never really knew what to make of VC return data. What about those RETURNS the WSJ article spoke of?

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Venture Capital Invest Funding Competition 264

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

By now you will likely have read Andy Dunn’s scathing post about Venture Capitalists in which he decries the industry’s masses. After all, I am no stranger to the publicly expressing the frustrations of dealing with the downside of this industry as I wrote about in 2006 when I was an entrepreneur. The second is not.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

I know all of this because every VC knows this because we’ve all either funded companies that have marketing technology or we’ve seen a pitch with a company that does this. If you haven’t read the other VC fund-raising posts I’ve done as part of this series you can find the whole outline and this first in the series here.]

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Funding Venture Capital IP Email 239

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. Other founders, “as a privately held company we don’t disclose our valuation.&# Me, “dude, I’m not a journalist. The VC assumes you’ll have an option pool.

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Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2019

Here are some observations I have from this exposure: If a company moves from strength-to-strength with predictable outcomes, easy financings, low staff turn-over, limited competitive threats then the composition of the board probably doesn’t matter as much. In the best cases boards come together to help the company get through its trough?—?in

Startup 269

Startup Venture Capital Layoffs Resource 269

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

If you are looking for money, this question will certainly come up in one form or another when you approach professional or organized angel or VC investors. And great management can morph a company to adopt without destroying the culture of the company in the process. A more complex answer. Concentrate on a world class team.

Venture Capital 120

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Ideas Summary 120

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

If you are looking for money, this question will certainly come up in one form or another when you approach professional or organized angel or VC investors. And great management can morph a company to adopt without destroying the culture of the company in the process. A more complex answer. Concentrate on a world class team.

Venture Capital 120

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Ideas Summary 120

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. I raised money as an entrepreneur, like you, in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005 for two different companies.

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Develop Development Funding Venture Capital 366

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2013

Watch the 30-minute interview to hear why but summary notes below. Let me start by saying that Clayton is one of the most influential people on my thoughts about markets that led to both the concept behind my first startup and my main theses in investing. We spoke about how there needs to be a change in how employers view educators.

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Venture Capital Education Offshore Outsource Development 403

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should. He’s thoughtful about markets, investors, products and is always very well reasoned in his arguments. He and I once took different sides of an debate about whether “VC signaling&# in early-stage deals is a serious problem or not.

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Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 18, 2015

There is a lot of uncertainty about the state of the private, high-growth technology markets and the venture capital markets that underpin them. Perhaps I would call it “Mourning in VC” as in mourning for the days of rational behavior. I spoke last week at the annual Cendana VC/LP conference.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Pricing Platform Marketing 150

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

So the industry formed around a day of the week when all partners could avoid having company board meetings or traveling. Valuations were enormous relative to progress in companies. was still a term being bandied about. Companies with less than $2 million in revenue were asking for $50-60 million valuations and getting them.

Marketing 305

Marketing Venture Capital Funding Technical Review 305

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.

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Capital Venture Capital Veoh Startup 265

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2018

the most counter-intuitive fund-raising advice you’ll ever get I’m about to offer you some fund-raising advice that flies directly in the face of what most conventional wisdom will tell you. So what does a VC do when he or she isn’t ready to say “no” or perhaps might like to talk with you in a year but not now?

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Funding Venture Capital Startup Email 336

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2014

Companies were getting funded more easily and many more companies were actually being created. Throughout all of these years I was a full-time VC so Launchpad really came out of evenings and weekends for me. Throughout all of these years I was a full-time VC so Launchpad really came out of evenings and weekends for me.

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Venture Capital Startup Idealab Funding 290

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2014

I have never been more optimistic about the impact that the tech startup community is having on cities in America or about the role that cities outside of San Francisco / Silicon Valley can play in our future. Not all of these products & companies came from Silicon Valley but the overwhelming majority did. KickStarter?

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Startup Venture Capital Capital Funding 390