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. So in the past we needed VC to really get a startup going.

Venture Capital 308

Venture Capital Training Startup Entrepreneur 308

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

She hasn’t raised any venture capital. It represents the great majority of entrepreneurship and eschews the fairytale rags-to-VC-riches stories we so often read about in the press. I blog on entrepreneurship & VC precisely because entrepreneurs and other VCs are my customers. That may soon change.

Startup 363

Startup Entrepreneur SEO Venture Capital 363

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.

Startup 309

Startup Venture Capital Email Writing 309

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 and I once took different sides of an debate about whether “VC signaling&# in early-stage deals is a serious problem or not. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2013

Showing me designs. She helps write press releases. She talks about creative design of websites and physical products – in our case – stickers. Soleil is paranoid about leaking design & product information because she’s been burned. Unsurprisingly for Kara is was the VC connections.

Startup 398

Startup Design Downey Activity 398

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Why Every Entrepreneur Should Write and 9 Tips To Get Started - OnStartups , September 27, 2010 "The best part of blogging is the people you will meet"- Hugh MacLeod repeating wisdom from Loic Lemeur to me at the Big Pink at 2 am in South Beach after the Future of Web Apps 2008. Why You Should Write. People want status.

Startup 191

Startup Product Technology Venture Capital 191

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. Back to regular writing this week so check back in. What did you do before VC and how did that lead you to VC? (1:00 How did you get into VC? (9:30 Thank you. (if

Capital 265

Capital Venture Capital Veoh Startup 265

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

When I was new at Venture Capital I was trying to figure out the business. As a VC you want to feel like you have “proprietary sources” of deal flow. There is one source I never liked and no early-stage VC should – investment bankers. They are venture bankers not investment bankers. What stage?

Startup 361

Startup Venture Capital Pricing Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” Do you imagine eventually raising VC and trying to build a faster growing company?” One of them is profitability.

Startup 418

Startup Venture Capital Sales Technical Review 418

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

I’m generally not a believer in too much PR until you have a product built or at least well designed. This is somewhat changing in the world of crowd funding where people actually raise money so that they can build products but at a minimum your product design ought to be complete and ready to execute.

Press 319

Press Startup Writing Training 319

SoCal CTO

MARCH 11, 2013

Yesterday, I was talking to a startup founder about their MVP and they said something that finally got me to write this post: "I have a few investors interested but they want to see a product." What The Heck Does “Traction” Really Mean To A VC? Great analysis from John Greathouse: Do You Speak VC?

Metrics 264

Metrics Venture Capital News Product 264

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2011

Of course I can’t write every press release for the company nor would I want to. VC Pitches. Having been an entrepreneur for near-on a decade and having pitched in 100 VC meetings I hated getting no feedback. I then asked for editing rights to his Google Doc and I rewrote a version of it. But I can’t always be that.

Press 337

Press Venture Capital Doc Summary 337

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

So I thought I’d write a post about how I drive my personal creativity. (A The need for creativity extends well beyond product design. The key is channeling what you learn when you drive onto paper for retention purposes so you have to write it down soon afterward. Many people are visual thinkers.

Writing 356

Writing Startup Ideas Summary 356

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

This started as a post in which I was going to write out tips to personal branding and became in stead an essay of my own branding journey. I was 23 and had been programming computers, designing computer networks and selling software for 10 years. I talked with a few VCs and batted around the idea of becoming a VC.

Technical Advisors 385

Technical Advisors Marketing Startup Venture Capital 385

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 17, 2009

If you live somewhere where this is the case you’re better off discussing with your employer that you may from time-to-time work on private projects outside of work hours and you want their clearance in writing that this is OK. There is nothing wrong with non-founders – by design they are the overwhelming majority of companies.

Startup 365

Startup Technical Advisors IP Ideas 365

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 21, 2010

When to get a lawyer - If you plan to be a venture or angel backed technology company (what I mostly write about) the best time to start meeting and getting to know lawyers is long before you ever start your company. I write about some of the lessons in my post on Startup Mistakes. Many people start companies arse backwards.

Startup 318

Startup IP Southern California Entrepreneur 318

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

Today I’m handing her the largest A-round check I’ve ever written as a VC as we lead her $10 million A-Round at uBeam. As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning. When I first met Meredith Perry she was 24.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 17, 2012

I recommend that you start by writing down the attributes you would want people to think about when they think about your brand. Creative – we’re a place of writers, directors, producers, musicians, costume designers, make-up artists, graphic artists, 3D modelers. Think about venture capital. downtown LA].

Startup 304

Startup Venture Capital Los Angeles Woodland Hills 304

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

You need to be great at something: technology back-end, front-end design, usability, sales, marketing, quantitative analysis, leadership –> whatever. Consider Usher a hard-working early-stage VC. It’s that sort of mentorship experience that drives many of us hands-on VCs. And they have done hundreds of them.

Entrepreneur 398

Entrepreneur Startup Writing Blogging 398

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 22, 2019

Upfront immediately wrote a check to back this vision and we later teamed up with their former colleague from Twitter turned VC, Rishi Garg of Mayfield and we’ve stayed quiet on what we were up to. Projector gives you dedicated space for real-time collaborative notes with colleagues on both logic and design, all in the same tool.

Startup 191

Startup Social Media Slides Design 191

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

All of that are in this week’s episode of This Week in VC. It was a pleasure to write them myself. In the video Bill talks about how he started his first entrepreneurial venture at 12 doing a mail-order business (very Tony Hsieh of Zappos who did the same thing). Summary notes, as always, provide below.

Competition 350

Competition Idealab Product CitySearch 350

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

One of the great joys of doing the web series This Week in VC every week is that I get to spend time with great people debating the issues of our day including how our industry is evolving as well as insights into how companies got started, got their initial traction and dealt with adversities. Oh, yeah.

Startup 286

Startup Venture Capital Web Ideas 286

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I spoke about how Amazon Web Services deserves far more credit for the last 5 years of innovation than it gets credit for and how I believe they spawned the micro-VC category. I said that I felt that Micro-VCs were the most important change in our industry. It is great for entrepreneurs and great for VCs. I believe that.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

I asked him if he’d be willing to allow me to interview him for This Week in VC and we filmed it in the offices of Stack Overflow – his new company. Microsoft Office ended up beating its competitors because it was able to read and write to file formats other than its own. Communicating with the developers who write code.

Software Review 285

Software Review Software Blogging Startup 285

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

There’s one attribute (coming soon) that I need to have in order to write a check but I don’t believe is vital for success. Assistly is a customer support product designed to meet the needs of the current era of multi-channel touch points (think Twitter, email, chat, forum in addition to phone calls). Another example.

Entrepreneur 267

Entrepreneur Startup SaaS San Diego 267

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2012

Kind of like a law firm (or VC firm) with four partners but shortened to just two, people dropped off his second two words. I’ve wanted to write a blog post called “Mobile Second” for a long time to make this point more forcefully. Try writing long reviews of a restaurant. That’s why Yelp is effective.

Web 334

Web Mobile Startup Software Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write this post since September of last year when Brad Feld first wrote about the The Founders Visa Movement. I commented briefly on his blog and made a mental note to write a blog post. At the time he granted me permission to write about his story. Felipe grew up in Brazil.

Technical Review 282

Technical Review Startup High Tech Software Review 282

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

Today Upfront Ventures is announcing that we’ve backed Rebecca Kantar ’s startup Imbellus , a company designed to assess human potential and ultimately change the way we teach children. We led a $4 million investment along with Thrive Capital, GLG and Sound Ventures. Fundamentally the system feels broken.

Design 150

Design Ideas Startup Writing 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

I’m writing this post to make sure you’re all on that same playing field. Fortunately I was mostly a technology consultant, which meant that I coded computers, designed databases and planned system integration projects. Here’s how I learned my lesson: I started my life as a consultant. OK, yes.

Statistics 415

Statistics Startup Report Research 415

From the Venture Trenches

APRIL 30, 2013

As a fourteen-year veteran of the venture industry I have often heard the phrase, “value added investors”, which is usually touted by certain VC’s as their biggest differentiating quality. Amplify’s close mentoring is by design. And they do all this in the span of four intense months. Amplify Mentor Panel in full swing.

Web Design 103

Web Design Social Media Seed Funding Design 103

socalTECH

APRIL 8, 2014

There seems to a perpetual shortage of local venture capital investors in the region, despite the huge growth in startup activity here, particularly along Silicon Beach. We''ve also had a pretty wide range of check writing in terms of amount. How did you guys end up working together on investments? READ MORE>>.

Seed Funding 220

Seed Funding Santa Monica Funding Startup 220

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

I wasn’t going to write about it since he had just covered the topic and echoed my point of view. Notes Wadhwa, “Jason [Calacanis], Fred [Wilson], and Silicon Valley VC’s, I’ve got news for you: you’ve got it all wrong. I’m now a VC that funds entrepreneurs. Fred Wilson said as much on his blog also.

Startup 289

Startup Statistics Entrepreneur Study 289

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 7, 2019

Let AI write the script. Or Apple, which designs its own devices to carry out superior software experience,” explained Ma. The startup is about to close its Series A funding round just months after banking seed money from Y Combinator and Chinese venture capital firm Skysaga , the startup told TechCrunch.

Startup 235

Startup Artificial Inteligence Los Angeles Software 235

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 15, 2014

” I have been weighing in slowly on the topic over the past few weeks on Twitter but have avoided writing a blog post about it until now. If this drives enormous VC returns I’m happy to be the person who missed out. As the old joke goes, “on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.” We can do better.

Technical Review 329

Technical Review Blogging Examples Startup 329

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2009

They spot opportunities that aren’t being met and the design products to meet these needs. .&# They know instinctually how customers buy and how to excite them. They have a sixth sense for the competitors’ weaknesses. It leads many of these people to be more street smart than those defined by convention.

Entrepreneur 306

Entrepreneur Startup Outsource Development Customer 306

Jason Nazar

MARCH 22, 2011

When he had the idea for his company, he didn’t write a long business plan or try to raise money to hire an agency to build a website for him. He just pounded out design and code for a few weeks and got Plancast up on the web and users adopting his product right away. It’s a chicken and egg problem.

Companies 111

Companies Company Startup Twiistup 111

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

billion in venture capital to LA’s technology startups and 2014 will shatter that figure. Over the past 4 years LA’s tech fundings have growing at a 30% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) which is > 4 times the US average VC CAGR (7%). In the last full year where we have data LA attracted $1.5

Entrepreneur 376

Entrepreneur Snapchat Startup Google 376