Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? What happened?

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Venture Capital Startup Marketing Pricing 466

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. I always tell founders … “An investors job is to deploy capital and make a return. Of course there’s no exact number of VCs you should meet?—?these

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Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

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

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. You’d be surprised how many firms are “dictator VCs” – even those that don’t formally acknowledge it internally. ” Some firms are collegiate.

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Venture Capital Capital Startup Invest 150

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 15, 2012

One the most frequent questions asked of me by entrepreneurs is, "How can I become a Venture Capitalist?" The inquiry is common because being a VC is (to an entrepreneur, at least) a sexy job. I define a "VC" as, "a professional investor who deploys third-party funds into relatively early-stage companies." Microscopic Industry.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Invest RSS 242

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 14, 2013

Mostly it’s because your marketing campaigns suck. Or more directly – they are likely narcissistic resuscitations of your newest features or bragging points that nobody but your marketing team and your mom care about. I am a VC. Do I have data or facts to present so the story has legs? I hand out money.

Marketing 389

Marketing Press Blogging Startup 389

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

One of the questions I’m most often asked is, “what’s it like being a VC?&# I’ve been a VC for nearly 3 years now. I always start my answer to this question with, “you’d have to be a pretty big baby to complain about being a VC.&# And the VC job has plenty of admin and minutiae.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Entrepreneur 312

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. I had seen many cycles and decided that since I was going to do it all over again I should write about it. In case VC’s haven’t figured this out yet, shit rolls downhill. No prizes for guessing which VCs I didn’t work with (and still won’t).

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Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

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. The “Triple Play&# of VC Presentations. I funded them 8 weeks later.

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Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

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.]

Funding 239

Funding Venture Capital IP Email 239

InfoChachkie

JULY 23, 2012

Serial entrepreneur, venture investor and startup accelerator pioneer Brad Feld has notoriously mocked traditional marketing throughout his career. If you have amazing products, the marketing of those products is trivial. If you have $hitty products, the marketing is impossible. Trada – Guerilla Marketing In Action.

Marketing 233

Marketing Blogging Startup Venture Capital 233

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. Competition. Explain your team's experiences that are relevant to the success of your current venture.

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Venture Capital Summary Technical Review Template 211

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

seed and they are writing $1.25m of it you can expect them to require a board seat) The competitive landscape (If you have several sources of capital you can likely politely decline the board request or can grant them a seat but ask for it to be “common appointed” and those revokable if you need in the future).

Startup 236

Startup Venture Capital Tips Capital 236

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

It is simply the most important way to proactively control your career development and how the market perceives you. It will affect your ability to get the right jobs and promotions as well as your ability to attract talent and capital. That was fine with me – the market is the market. That was the market.

Technical Advisors 385

Technical Advisors Marketing Startup Venture Capital 385

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. These tensions seep out in some angels or seed funds publicly or semi-privately deriding later-stage VCs for their “bad” behavior. And sometimes they take part of their prorata right.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

TechCrunch LA

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

Capitalism is fundamentally about timing, since market competition is about finding opportunities before others. When should a VC invest? Anyone who has worked in a large company further knows that timing a product launch or a new marketing strategy has more to do with internal politics than reading market forces.

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Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Invest 202

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. Most importantly, it just doesn't feel right to us to hold positions in competitive companies.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

If you track the venture capital industry it would be hard to miss the conversation going on this week over AngelList “Syndicates.” My favorite new VC blogger, Hunter Walk, weighed in with some thoughtful comments about how Syndicates might actually pit, “ angel vs. angel.” Bowery Capital).

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Venture Capital Invest Course Technical Review 356

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. Due to competitive markets we ended up with a pretty good term sheet until we needed to raise money in April 2001 and then we got completely screwed. That’s normal.

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Venture Capital Pricing Startup Funding 405

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

This week I wrote about obsessive and competitive founders and how this forms the basis of what I look for when I invest. But then you can springboard from there to your next gig and you’ll be an experienced startup employee with functional experience at sales, marketing, product or whatever roles you played.”

Startup 409

Startup Invest Venture Capital Writing 409

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 28, 2014

by Michael Woolf that is worth any startup founder reading to get a sense of perspective on the reality warp that is startup world during a frothy market such as 1997-1999, 2005-2007 or 2012-2014. We’re going to start aggressively spend money on marketing our product. Availability of Capital.

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 6, 2018

As a VC with scores of startups in our portfolio we have ringside seats to many, many fund raising processes plus I had to raise money across about 5 different rounds of capital as an entrepreneur so I’ve developed some thought on the process that I hope can be helpful to some of you before you start. Remind me why I love you?

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Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 236

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 16, 2018

Without taking a dime of outside capital, the company has achieved impressive success in a competitive, SaaS market segment, landing companies such as Nike, Intuit, NASA, AutoDesk and PBS. Most companies have a roadmap describing what they’re planning to build, deliver or market. That causes friction internally.

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Venture Capital Entrepreneur Santa Barbara SaaS 115

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

VC funding. Our perspectives on the topic wax and wane with market cycles. I think I’m at the expert stage of venture capital and I mean in the Wardley sense. With perfect information and too much competition you pay up or they walk right down the street and get it from somebody else.” Your CAC stinks.

Funding 150

Funding Venture Capital Startup Marketing 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

Contrary to popular opinion I actually believe crowd-funding is best used after seed capital or venture capital. It’s why in this article I advise that people “market today not futures” because you don’t want your playbook in the hands of the competition. In a startup this is a mistake.

Press 319

Press Startup Writing Training 319

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2013

One of the advantages of blogging, using social media, public speaking, etc as a VC is that you get a more nuanced view of these shifts by watching your own successes and failures. I will add to this as I write more in the coming weeks on the topic. For me the question on announcing funding is now whether to do it but when.

Startup 355

Startup Funding News Press 355

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. As with most business and personal interactions, first impressions tend to become lasting ones. Expert in your chosen domain.

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Entrepreneur Social Media Patents Mentor 111

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

Chris Dixon is one of my favorite people in tech and writes one of the few blogs I read religiously. He’s thoughtful about markets, investors, products and is always very well reasoned in his arguments. If you like the quick summary notes, please check out Adam’s blog on tech, entrepreneurship & VC as a thank you.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2014

Sometimes those motives are positive (they really want the chance to work with you, they think you have unique skills) and sometimes they are less positive (their first-tier of “go to” referrals passed on the deal, they don’t want to write another check themselves, etc.). VCs don’t need to be perfect.

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Venture Capital Invest Ideas Entrepreneur 337

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

And that was evident on today’s Angel vs. VC panel. There are real changes in the venture capital industry and it would have been fun to talk about them. The VC industry is segmenting – I have spoken about this many times before. We need people at all stages of the funding lifecycle and not just VCs.

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Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

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?&#. It’s a tricky question with no clear answer. There are trade offs.

Startup 319

Startup Venture Capital Capital Competition 319

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. I can’t control the market. Private markets for stocks are the opposite.

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Startup Pricing Technical Review Marketing 336

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

Value Prop Twitter Style : “Ringrevenue’s call performance marketing platform enables ad networks, agencies, advertisers & publishers to generate more inbound sales calls.”. In today’s market, so much focus is placed on transacting business online. Who do you view as your biggest competition? You’re right.

Marketing 209

Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

I remember just a decade ago in 2003 when we all laughed at how dumb people in the 90′s were talking about the race to “capture as many eyeballs as possible” before your competition. Should I write off my $2.5 My VC told me that if we monetize too early we will scare away our nascent marketplace and not grow as fast.

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Venture Capital Startup Funding Snapchat 412

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2012

I told him only 2 weeks ago when we were in London together that I wanted to write a blog post that has been in my head for 2 years. I knew him well before he became a VC. I knew his as he considered becoming a VC and we talked a lot about how it was going for me in my early years. I’ve been told so. Sounds obvious.

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Startup Venture Capital Email Writing 309

From the Venture Trenches

MARCH 27, 2013

Yet despite his ability to raise over $1 billion of private equity and to build an organization that is worth $5 billion as of this writing, Mason was shown the door. Thirteen months after raising more than $10 billion in the public markets the board forced Mason out after another dismal financial quarter.

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Venture Capital Capital Anthem Startup 45