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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SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

how on Earth could the venture capital market stand still? One of the most common questions I’m asked by people intrigued by but also scared by venture capital and technology markets is some variant of, “Aren’t technology markets way overvalued? How our VC Firms Like Ours Organizing to Meet the Challenges?

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Venture Capital Writing Invest Pricing 471

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

Competitive (Athlete: skier & rowed at Princeton, hates losing at everything she does). Investment experience (5 years a VC at Battery Ventures). As I like to say (and as Kara humbly hates when I do so in front of others) … she has a much better resume to a venture capital partner than I do.

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Venture Capital Startup Outsource Development CitySearch 408

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2011

In this three-part series I will explore the ways that the Venture Capital industry has changed over the past 5 years that I would argue are a direct result of changes in the software industry, not the other way around. I will argue that LPs who invest in VC funds will also need to adjust a bit as well. Enter Amazon.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

The typical VC process is as follows: They say there are three rules in property: Location, location, location. Your entire process should be about “testing” whether your prospect has Interest Authority to make a decision Budget Is willing to continue spending actual time with you and analyzing you. Same with VC. To be clear?—?your

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Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2018

In order to understand how to “get to yes” with a VC you first need to understand how VC partnerships make decisions and then you can understand how to increase your odds of closing a deal. VC Partnerships Start by understanding how many partners are at the firm you are approaching. Reciprocity is equally destructive.

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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. If you have a NINA (no influence, no authority) or somebody timid or who cares too much about CYA then your deal may not overcome objections raised.

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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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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? Until we weren’t.

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Venture Capital Startup Marketing Pricing 466

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2021

In case you hadn’t noticed, the key elements of a competitive advantage for your business have changed as businesses move online, and your domain is instantly global. As a business advisor, I have to recommend even to established companies that they review and revamp their competitive strategy now, even if it appears to be working today.

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Competition Software Review Social Media Customer 142

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2013

And I am often approached by entrepreneurs in cities which don’t have a vibrant VC community. You can build a meaningful company just about wherever these days. Just ask the people of Portland, Seattle, Boulder, Iowa, Princeton, Dallas or countless other cities that don’t have enough venture capital.

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Venture Capital Marketing Santa Barbara Startup 365

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

APRIL 18, 2019

The Truth About the Scooter Economy?—?An Pause to think about how remarkable that truly is. They also were exclusive to Bird so they gave the company a competitive advantage. Turns Out There Are Competitive Moats There were some tech meme’s out there last year that scooter companies had no moats. they were highly visible.

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Santa Monica Venice Competition Software Review 250

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 3, 2016

In the VC insider baseball world a discussion has gone on about “VC platforms” over the past 5 or so years. While firms define platforms differently, let’s just say they are the services that a VC offers outside of investment capital and partner time on boards or providing intros.

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Venture Capital Platform Startup Resource 150

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Understanding Venture Capital. I recently wrote a blog post on understanding how the size and age of a venture capital fund might affect you when you’re raising money. I believe these VC funds have suffered some amount of reputation fall out. Let me explain: 1.

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Invest 265

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. Tags: This Week in Venture Capital.

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Southern California 210

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital. Not so in venture capital. You’re tied at the hip to your VC. You’re tied at the hip to your VC. Get to know VCs over a long period of time so that when you’re ready to get engaged you feel you know their character.

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Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur Capital 288

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

VC funding. We love capital efficiency until we love land grabs until we abhor over funding until we get huge payouts and ring the bell for more funding until we attract every non-VC on the planet to invest in startups until it crashes and we start the cycle all over again none the wiser. I know we spoke about it this week.

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Funding Venture Capital Startup Marketing 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

If you haven’t read Adam Lashinsky’s awesome new book about Apple , you should. It takes on many of the lessons MBA programs and Corporate America have been teaching about business for the past 50+ years and questions whether lessons from Apple might be more applicable in thinking about the future.

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Startup Sales Course Competition 319

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

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. So why would I have talked so much about the deck in my post?

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Venture Capital Slides Technical Advisors Startup 299

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

On December 2nd, 2006 I wrote the blog post published later in this post when I was CEO of startup Koral about my experiences in pitching VCs. 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. Tempus Fugit.

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Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 31, 2021

The sweeping infrastructure package put forward today by President Joe Biden comes with a price tag of roughly $2 trillion (and hefty tax hikes) but gives startups and the broader tech industry about $1 trillion worth of reasons to support it. What excites me about this space is that there’s so much low-hanging fruit.

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Startup Technical Review Invest Research 229

TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

Most of the venture capital firms covered in TechCrunch and other tech publications compete for a spot on the cap table of the hottest Bay Area, New York or Los Angeles companies of the moment. Lots of firms are now talking about this pretty actively.”. Revolution Ventures managing partner David Golden.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

We all know about AngelGate by now. Here’s what you need to know… As a funny coincidence I happend to have written about the topic of collusion 3 weeks prior to the fateful dinner. But the majority of VCs & Angels all speak. Have you looked at competition? How well financed is the competition?

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Pricing Entrepreneur Technical Review Venture Capital 292

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

leadership, mentorship, competitiveness, communications, relationship-building?—?and I called an (ex) LP to tell him about her and my goals for her. She worked for 5 years as a VC at Battery Ventures and co-headed M&A at IAC working with Barry Diller. Wait, What About Yves? And all the platform stuff.

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Venture Capital Startup Invest CitySearch 361

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2014

We’ve been dying to tell you all for a while that we had raised a new venture capital fund and of course given SEC filing requirements the story was somewhat already scooped by the always-in-the-know Dan Primack a few weeks ago. If you want to understand how the VC industry is changing there is a great primer in the link.

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Venture Capital Funding Technical Review Startup 396

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

To see the video of This Week in VC click on this link. What a pleasure that I got to spend an hour talking with both Om Malik (whom I’ve always respected his views) and Paul Jozefak , a venture capital partner at Neuhaus Partners in Germany (and formerly the head of Europe for SAP Ventures).

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Venture Capital Google Web Sites 225

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “ Pitching a VC.&#. The “Triple Play&# of VC Presentations. A large part of my series has been outlining what the typical VC PowerPoint presentation should look like. You want to build a dialogue where you get to know the VC with whom you’re meeting. I recommend it.

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Venture Capital Slides Startup Sales 238

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 19, 2015

Yesterday I saw two biopic films: “ Amy ” about the life of Jazz sensation Amy Winehouse who died of alcohol poisoning at the age of 27 and “ Montage of Heck ” about the life of Kurt Cobain , the grunge-rock generational voice who died of an overdose of heroin and valium at the age of … 27.

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Press Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 150

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JULY 16, 2010

Lots of discussion these days about the changes in the VC industry. But VC is an “illiquid asset&# so funds didn’t disappear quickly - In 2000/01 the stock market quickly adjusted punishing investors in the NASDAQ and in individual public technology stocks. So the people who invest in VC funds have two problems.

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Venture Capital Startup Seed Funding Rustic Canyon 311

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 15, 2017

Upfront Ventures was created 20 years ago as one of the original VC funds in Los Angeles. 10 years ago we found ourselves trying to persuade LPs and VCs that it was worth spending more time getting to know the LA market and now the most common refrain that I hear from them is “there really is something going on in LA.”

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Dollar Shave Club Cornerstone OnDemand Riot Games Venture Capital 321

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

One of the things that founders have the most angst about is whom they should have on their board and at what stage of the business. Others may not have the experience you want and they fill up a seat that makes retaining founder control more difficult if you ultimately raise large rounds of venture capital in the future.

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Startup Venture Capital Tips Capital 236

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APRIL 10, 2016

My partner Greg Bettinelli (worth following on Twitter) was recently named by The LA Business Journal as the “ Top deal maker in Los Angeles in Venture Capital.” 7 times out of 10 he knows what’s going on before I do and is either slipping a paper on my desk, texting me or emailing me something about to go down.

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Venture Capital Journal Invest Santa Monica 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

When Ethan was considering leaving Google we talked about it. In the same year they won Business Insider’s Startup competition. And I certainly didn’t want him having to trapse up-and-down Sand Hill Road informing every VC of his next idea. What do we like about OpenTable? Nice sweep!

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CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

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

JUNE 28, 2018

less than 18 months from when the company was created so I thought it was probably a good time to weigh in on the questions I get asked most frequently and why we’re so excited about Bird. How could Bird really be worth the reported $2 billion valuation that I read about in this press? That’s what we all thought about Uber, too.

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Santa Monica Funding Startup Course 256