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.

Venture Capital 211

Venture Capital Summary Technical Review Template 211

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

She hasn’t raised any venture capital. She actually IS the prototypical entrepreneur. It represents the great majority of entrepreneurship and eschews the fairytale rags-to-VC-riches stories we so often read about in the press. But Tracy did what entrepreneurs do. That may soon change.

Startup 363

Startup Entrepreneur SEO Venture Capital 363

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OCTOBER 12, 2014

For starters some funds are small and thus while they put $750k into your company to own 10% of your company they might not be able to write another $2 million if you then raise a $20 million round (10%). A day after I published this Changing Structure of VC article I noticed at least one “Angel Prorata Fund” on AngelList.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

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NOVEMBER 5, 2012

I use George Bush vs. Al Gore as allegory and I’ve been using it with entrepreneurs for years to sink in a simple point about how to communicate with the market. This does not mean you shouldn’t solve big, complex problems or write complex code. Bush had the opposite narrative in the press. It is election season.

Entrepreneur 370

Entrepreneur Startup Press Venture Capital 370

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NOVEMBER 9, 2014

I have blogged about some of the downside consequences of the changes and the private information I have says the consequences are much worse than is reported in the press since few people publicly talk about. We are doing what we do – writing larger checks and playing an active role at the company. Is this investor on AngelList?

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Email Blogging 352

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NOVEMBER 18, 2012

It’s what life was like as an entrepreneur. But for some strange reason they make you file your progress on fund raising, which is the widely picked up by the press. I plan to write about it early next year when we’re all through. But this is nothing like the stress of being an entrepreneur. It’s not.

Blogging 420

Blogging Press Entrepreneur Venture Capital 420

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JANUARY 26, 2013

Understanding “The Funding Angle” I sit at enough board meetings to hear conflicting advice given to entrepreneurs about how to handle PR and announcements at startups. I think many board members (including VCs) were trained 10+ years ago when life was very different and their advice often comes from an outdated lens.

Startup 355

Startup Funding News Press 355

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MAY 25, 2013

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. But VC is like congress. In the original version of his post, Andy writes. Their data looks at tech VCs. Here the data is not always kind to VCs.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Invest Funding 374

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APRIL 1, 2010

In today’s post I want to talk about the concept of a VC flightpath. This is my description of a VC process, not one I’ve heard from other VCs so don’t expect it to be accepted nomenclature. I have no idea why, but that’s always how it always felt to me when I was an entrepreneur raising money.

Venture Capital 275

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Capital Ideas 275

InfoChachkie

JUNE 3, 2013

Consistent with the statistics cited in Why Entrepreneurs Hate (Most) MBAs , the large majority of John and Kyle''s classmates accepted positions at investment banks and consulting firms upon graduation. However, a number of them wanted to vicariously experience the startup world through John and Kyle''s venture. everybody opted in.".

Newsletter 233

Newsletter Startup Entrepreneur Writing 233

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

And a few teams of super talented, educated and bright entrepreneurs make a few mill. It has even gone so far that we now have evocative headlines in the tech press such as “ Buy or Die ,” which is what got me thinking about this post. Almost certainly the startup would have raised some capital. Woo the press.

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Press Startup Yahoo Venture Capital 357

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DECEMBER 7, 2011

I recently was reviewing a press release for a company in which I’m an investor. I told him that I thought the press release was crap (I think my words, exactly). Of course I can’t write every press release for the company nor would I want to. VC Pitches. ” My response?

Press 337

Press Venture Capital Doc Summary 337

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MARCH 14, 2013

Ever notice how some companies tend to be in the press all the time and your big new product launch struggled for inches? ” Here’s what I mean … Let’s start with what it takes for a journalist to want to write a story. I am a VC. ” Can you imagine that ever getting inches in the press?

Marketing 389

Marketing Press Blogging Startup 389

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MARCH 2, 2011

I’m sitting at my computer now at 9.00pm writing this – which is an hour earlier than I normally write (there are about 8 women at my kitchen table having a book club (aka excuse to drink wine & gossip so I’m locked in another room writing. It sure wasn’t when I was a first-time entrepreneur.

Email 287

Email Blogging Venture Capital Writing 287

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NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Now, I’m pretty on the record that being an entrepreneur is about being great at The Do. Frankly, I think venture capital is that way, too. How do VCs break out of group think when they are shuttling from one board meeting to the next, from one conference to the other and talking with all the same people?

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Venture Capital Conference Ideas Entrepreneur 400

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JULY 19, 2015

Entrepreneurs could learn about loneliness of success: nobody talks about. He suffered publicly as the press called his wife fat and begged people at concerts to be kinder to his wife. Success can be lonely because it is only a heartbeat away from failure and the press love a rise-and-fall story. But needed to be seen.

Press 150

Press Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 150

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JUNE 27, 2011

Also be careful about VCs. But once a VC has heard your idea he can’t “un-think&# it. I actually like finding entrepreneurs who are more circumspect, less braggadocios and generally more planned about their actions. In my experience, entrepreneurs who are overly paranoid or are information hoarders rarely do well.

Marketing 380

Marketing Startup Press Technical Advisors 380

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AUGUST 16, 2011

It’s the entrepreneur’s equivalent of “ 10,000 hours.&#. If you wait until you need to fill somebody in a roll you’re losing valuable time as an entrepreneur. Help them write other stories. One day they’ll write yours. Raising money from angels and VCs some day? Are You a VC?

Startup 410

Startup Writing Press Venture Capital 410

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JUNE 17, 2017

I often ask entrepreneurs to consider, “What’s your objective? Do you imagine eventually raising VC and trying to build a faster growing company?” Venture capital isn’t right for many business but if you do want to raise from a VC at some point you need to understand that often investors care more about growth than profits.

Startup 227

Startup Venture Capital Sales Course 227

InfoChachkie

JUNE 3, 2013

Consistent with the statistics cited in Why Entrepreneurs Hate (Most) MBAs , the large majority of John and Kyle''s classmates accepted positions at investment banks and consulting firms upon graduation. However, a number of them wanted to vicariously experience the startup world through John and Kyle''s venture. everybody opted in.".

Newsletter 133

Newsletter Startup Entrepreneur Writing 133

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. Because entrepreneurs often went to lawyers at their earliest stages to get their company registration done. They are venture bankers not investment bankers.

Startup 361

Startup Venture Capital Pricing Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 23, 2011

One of the most frequent questions entrepreneurs ask about when they raise a little bit of money or are getting close to launching their first product is whether they should hire a PR firm. I pointed out the fact that they only ever talked to the press when the had an announcement and that it was a continual process.

Startup 349

Startup Writing Press Blogging 349

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. So, whether an entrepreneur raises money or not, they have to have a long-term vision. By this measure, Groupon was by no means your typical start-up.

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Venture Capital Capital Anthem Startup 45

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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

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JANUARY 14, 2014

It’s why the first company I ever invested in as a VC – Invoca – just announced a $20 million funding by Accel Partners. Only naive people believe that but for inexperienced entrepreneurs you can be fooled into the narrative by the press who sometimes write stories without the actual data. PHONE CALLS.

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

InfoChachkie

JULY 23, 2012

Serial entrepreneur, venture investor and startup accelerator pioneer Brad Feld has notoriously mocked traditional marketing throughout his career. When the entrepreneur is obsessed with the product and the company has organized all of its activities around that, it’s very powerful.”. We have never done a press release.

Marketing 233

Marketing Blogging Startup Venture Capital 233

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FEBRUARY 24, 2011

This is a post I’ve been dying to write for 18 months. OK, that sounds like an interesting business, but nothing to write a freakin’ blog post about? I know this category has gotten a lot of press. Mostly, I love writing. I know this because you’re not a young teenager. But wait, there’s more!

Gogii 310

Gogii Invest Blogging Startup 310

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APRIL 25, 2013

She was everything I was looking for in an entrepreneur to back. She helps write press releases. Unsurprisingly for Kara is was the VC connections. And for Soleil it was her entrepreneur friends: Dan Rosensweig, Tim Ferriss, Kevin Rose, Shervin Pishevar, Randi Zuckerberg, Gina Bianchini, Erik Lammerding and Rick Marini.

Startup 398

Startup Design Downey Activity 398

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SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

I’m not going to cover in this post the obvious post-show marketing tasks such as following up on all those business cards you grabbed, communicating with all those people who registered at your site and leveraging your new found fame to score venture capital. We listened way too much to what the press said.

Startup 310

Startup Venture Capital Press Journal 310

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SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

It’s a hard topic to write about because it’s almost an accepted norm that total transparency is good. ” Your VC friends have been egging you on. They told you, “Yeah, man, I’ll gladly write the first $250,000. The don’t understand VC liquidation preferences or multiple return expectations.

Startup 417

Startup Course Venture Capital Writing 417

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JUNE 22, 2011

This was an audience of mostly first-time entrepreneurs. 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. I believe that.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

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MARCH 8, 2010

As Brian Solis is fond of saying, “PR stands for public relations, not press release.&# That’s right. I was an entrepreneur. Now I’m a VC. Don’t just write a carbon copy of what somebody else is doing. I didn’t want to run out of things to write about in the first 6 months.

Blogging 286

Blogging Startup Writing Summary 286

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FEBRUARY 23, 2015

For some aspiring to be tech entrepreneurs, I often suggest a two-step process, as I argued in this post that “ The First Startup Founder You Need to Invest in Is You.” I often tell people in this scenario to focus on a VC “fixer upper.” I’m just pointing out that it’s not for most people.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital IP 150

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SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

This is the second article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). I like to invest where I have a personally strong connection with the entrepreneur and/or a strong intuition on the market from prior experience. Part 1 – Access to Great Deal Flow – is here.

Invest 288

Invest Angel Web 2.0 SEO 288

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JULY 19, 2011

And yes, VC’s, too. Yet a critical mistake I see many entrepreneurs make is that they hand over too much control to their third-parties. I doubt they’d be willing to press harder in questioning and/or be more attuned to negative signals that the reference might be implying but not actually saying. Recruiters.

Venture Capital 319

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Outsource 319

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NOVEMBER 14, 2010

They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. We jockey to make sure the press release has our names on it. For venture capitalists this isn’t troubling. I will write about some of these topics soon. There are too many deals.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

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JULY 13, 2013

I spoke a lot about the need for “personal branding” which I plan to write about soon. My mom was an entrepreneur – she was kind of my inspiration for entrepreneurship. And no one could see me as anything but a startup guy, so I started a second company and called myself a serial entrepreneur.

Startup 337

Startup Entrepreneur Ideas Venture Capital 337