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. Wait, didn’t you just raise a fund? Was it hard to raise the fund?

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Venture Capital Funding Technical Review Startup 396

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2019

I’m sure that every one of us who has been out in the business world for a few years can look back with perfect hindsight and name a few college courses that we should have taken. But on the business side, here is my list of useful courses that we wish existed, but as far as I know, still aren’t generally available: Basic Office Politics.

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Course Email Social Network Ideas 96

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2018

I was recently with an entrepreneur and talking with him about his fund raising process. She had emailed with a partner at a big VC fund and he had passed the request to a junior associate. it’s just respecting your personal time and your fund-raising process as much as you’d respect the VCs time. This isn’t rude?—?it’s

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Funding Newsletter Venture Capital Email 217

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

I started in 2007 with a thesis that my primary investment decision would be about the team (70%) and only afterward about the market opportunity (30%). Seed investors are aplenty and of course they need downstream money to fuel their early-stage bets. Of course I would like to be in every great deal ever done.

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Venture Capital Invest Press Startup 374

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

We have global opportunities from these trends but of course also big challenges. Of course we can’t. On the one hand, you’re over paying for every investment and valuations aren’t rational. If we wanted to we could have sold > 2x the fund easily in the secondary markets with significant upside remaining.

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Venture Capital Writing Invest Pricing 471

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2023

Yet everyone has limits, and every investor implicitly has similar limits on what makes a startup investable, or one to avoid at all costs. If you need investors, it’s important that you understand their filters, and even if you are funding your own efforts, you need to recognize the red flags. Huge ramp-up time and money required.

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Invest Sites Technical Review Social Media 98

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2022

Even if you ignore all the hype around crowdfunding, there can be no doubt that it is a real alternative for entrepreneurs to achieve visibility and funding today. Of course, there are thousands of other companies that don’t achieve their minimum goal, requiring all contributions to be returned. Donation good-cause model. In the U.S.,

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Funding Startup Outsource Development Satisfaction 141

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 26, 2022

For example, Bill Gates founded and grew Microsoft, and Michael Dell built a great technology company, both with no outside funding until they went successful enough to go public years later and sell shares to common stockholders. Many times friends and family have been broken by failed investments.

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Funding Startup Satisfaction Venture Capital 107

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 22, 2020

They don’t realize that according to statistics from Startup.co , almost 60 percent are funded with personal savings and credit, and another 25 percent get their money from friends and family. That leaves only about fifteen percent that actually get their funding from investors, through crowdfunding, banks, angels, and venture capitalists.

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Funding Tips Startup Statistics 173

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. I had been thinking a lot about this recently because I’m often asked the question of “what I look for in an entrepreneur when I want to invest?” My first response mentally was, “Of course!”

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Startup Invest Venture Capital Writing 409

socalTECH

JULY 17, 2012

The California Institute of Technology is backing, Coursera , a startup in the area of online education with an equity investment, plus the promise to put some of its courses online for free, in a deal worth $3.7M, the school announced this morning with Coursera. in investments to back its efforts to put university courses online.

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CalTech Invest Course Education 154

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.

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Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 236

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2017

Yet as we enter February 2017 the VC funding markets are booming, Snap, Inc has filed for its IPO, AppDynamics was just purchased for $3.7 But the reality is that “global warming” massively blunted the effects of winter and my prognosis for VC fundings of entrepreneurs in 2017–2018 is now very sunny indeed. Baidu alone raised $3.2

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Venture Capital Capital Funding Startup 150

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 9, 2014

Entrepreneurs who require funding for their startup have long counted on self-accredited high net worth individuals (“angels”) to fill their needs, after friends and family, and before they qualify for institutional investments (“VCs”). Thus investing in startups should always be approached as a low odds game.

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Invest Angel Funding Startup 111

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

If you’re funding the same stuff as everybody else and if you started your activities when the clues were obvious you’re much less likely to drive enormous returns. When Fred Wilson funded Twitter I guarantee you it wasn’t obvious that it was a billion dollar idea. Venture Capital is a tricky industry. Far from it.

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Funding Technical Review Ideas Startup 362

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 11, 2021

Many first-time entrepreneurs find themselves unable to bootstrap their startups, and also unable to find early funding at the venture capital level or even with angel investors. The average amount per startup has been $23,000, usually in the form of a convertible loan, rather than an equity investment.

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Funding Startup Equity Invest 138

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

Santa Monica-based venture investor March Capital Partners (www.marchcp.com) announced last week that it has raised a second fund, worth $300M. To learn about the new fund, we sat down with Jamie Montgomery , one of the fund's co-founders, to hear about March Capital's strategy and the new fund. They're all big winners.

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Funding Capital Artificial Inteligence Startup 160

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 21, 2013

The Investment Group of Santa Barbara is the primary backer of a developer of online training software for corporations, which announced a funding round Thursday. during 2012 from the Investment Group of Santa Barbara. during 2012 from the Investment Group of Santa Barbara. READ MORE>>.

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Santa Barbara Invest Training Course 174

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 19, 2020

Venture capitalists (VCs) have long been seen as the top of the pyramid for startup funding sources, but in fact angel investors now fund over twice as many companies, according the Crunchbase. Individual angel investors and crowdfunding have been adding to the momentum, some say exceeding VCs in total amount invested.

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Funding Venture Capital Startup Class 125

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. If you don’t believe in your bones that you’re amazing then it’s no wonder you don’t want to sell them on making the investment.”

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Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

and of course a relentless pursuit of helping founders succeed. I’ve become fond of saying “if I had a dollar for every person who told me just how much they loooooved Kara Nortman, I’d have a 10x fund.” For example, we’re now already well into our third growth fund that we started in 2015 (the first returned 2x cash in 3.5

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Venture Capital Startup Invest CitySearch 361

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 29, 2020

Of course, every alternative has advantages and disadvantages, so any given one may not be available or attractive to you. For example, professional investors put great priority on your previous experience in building a business, and they expect to own a portion of the business equity and control for the funds they do provide.

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Funding Startup Equity Examples 174

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 8, 2014

VC firm policy or fund analysis. Most associates need some entrepreneurial experience before actually making investments. Jordan joined us a couple of years ago from Fox Filmed Entertainment where he worked in corporate strategy and he previously had worked for GCA Savvian in investment banking. Portfolio community building.

Help 365

Help Invest Venture Capital Technical Review 365

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

Even then private market investors can paper over valuation changes by investing at the same price but with more structure so it’s hard to understand the “headline valuation.” No blog post about how Tiger is crushing everybody because it’s deploying all its capital in 1-year while “suckers” are investing over 3-years can change this reality.

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Venture Capital Marketing Technical Review Seed Funding 416

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.” Of course that was a wrong narrative for both companies. Another firm funded them. Mostly kidding.

Snapchat 214

Snapchat Invest Technical Review Dollar Shave Club 214

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 20, 2018

Every entrepreneur wants to hear “yes” during the fund-raising process but I would argue that being too risk averse and not pushing hard enough and be willing to hear a “no” is what holds back many people from “yes.” Of course stringing out the process doesn’t lead to good outcomes. Do they have authority to invest?

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Funding Software Review Entrepreneur Venture Capital 189

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 11, 2020

Struggling entrepreneurs are often so happy to get a funding offer that they neglect the recommended reverse due diligence on the investors. Taking on equity investors to fund your company is much like getting married – it is a long-term relationship that has to work at all levels. A sample of three views is adequate.

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Technical Review Funding Innocal Offshore 124

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

I’m sure that every one of us who has been out in the business world for a few years can look back with perfect hindsight and name a few college courses that we should have taken. But on the business side, here is my list of useful courses that we wish existed, but as far as I know, still aren’t generally available: Basic Office Politics.

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Course Email Social Network Ideas 104

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2014

And of course many of you know this is near and dear to me because my own father is from Medellín, Colombia so I grew up in a household with the music, food, culture and language of South America. And of course they are also focused on the US Hispanic market. We will obviously take a page out of their successful playbook.

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Invest Content Media Networking 291

TechCrunch LA

JULY 2, 2020

From larger fund investors like Mark Suster and Kara Nortman at Upfront Ventures to Dana Settle at Greycroft Partners; to early-stage investors like Will Hsu at Mucker Capital; TX Zhuo at Fika Ventures, the responses were generally upbeat about the future opportunities for Los Angeles startups. Mark Suster, managing partner, Upfront Ventures.

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Los Angeles Venture Capital Capital Invest 277

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

Until recently it was headquartered 2 blocks from our offices in Santa Monica so we literally saw it emerge under our feet and we proudly invested in the last 3 rounds of financing. Over the course of the first few months I saw a few people out on the street taking Birds and then a steady uptick in riders. having raised $300 million?—?less

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Santa Monica Funding Startup Course 256

TechCrunch LA

SEPTEMBER 21, 2021

Just Insure , a pay-per-mile insurance technology company, has raised $8 million in a funding round. . CrossCut Ventures, ManchesterStory and Western Technology Investments co-led the investment, which brings its total raised to $15.3 Of course, Just is not the first company to offer personalized auto insurance.

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Startup Customer Custom Los Angeles 203

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Of course, even though that is your contract with the investors, way over half of those implied contracts never work out that way. Of course, you will find yourself in opposition to your investors and some of most of your board members if you do this after taking outside investment. What if you later decide to just keep control?

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Equity Course Sales Invest 156

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 28, 2018

Some entrepreneurs start polling venture capitalists for that multi-million dollar investment before they even have a business plan. It’s helpful to think of startups as proceeding through several stages, which I have defined some time ago from a funding perspective. Funding or rollout stage.

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Funding Startup Organization Incubator 94

socalTECH

JANUARY 22, 2013

Last week, Carpinteria-based Lynda.com announced one of the biggest investments in the region in the last few years--a $103M, growth equity investment in the company, which came from Accel Partners and Spectrum Equity. To get the story behind the new funding, we spoke with Eric Robison , the firm's President and CEO, last week.

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Funding Calabasas Course Platform 164

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 23, 2017

Last week, Fika Ventures , LA's newest venture fund, announced its formation, led by tech investment veterans Tx Zhuo and Eva Ho. We sat down with Tx Zhuo to chat about the new fund, what investments it hopes to make, and what kind of entrepreneurs the fund is looking to invest in.

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Cornerstone OnDemand Funding Dollar Shave Club Los Angeles 100

socalTECH

APRIL 12, 2017

Wallach on investments out of a new fund, Inevitable Ventures. How did you end up here in Los Angeles doing investments? Coincidentally, that was the exact same time in 2009 when I moved out, when Ashton Kutcher started first investing. Ron chose me to manage those investments. Chris Hollod: For sure.

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Invest Startup Hollywood Echo Park 157