Both Sides of the Table

JULY 15, 2010

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. If you’re an entrepreneur, all else equal you prefer convertible debt because the deal is priced at a later stage when you’re worth more.

Venture Capital 210

Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Southern California 210

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

Because it is a “series&# I plan to get into some of the deeper complexities of funds such as “cross over funds&# and “why VC’s hate to price their own deals&# at a later stage. I believe these VC funds have suffered some amount of reputation fall out. Why are VC’s really doing seed deals?

Venture Capital 265

Venture Capital Seed Funding Pricing Invest 265

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

These tensions seep out in some angels or seed funds publicly or semi-privately deriding later-stage VCs for their “bad” behavior. New investors sometimes want early investors to put in money to “prove” they have confidence in the new price. but didn’t have funds to back-up their prorata rights?

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2013

.” In the article I discussed the downside of raising capital at a too high of a price and referred people to a previous article I had written encouraging founders to raise “ At the Top end of Normal ” as opposed to stratospheric prices. If we count seed funds and large angels maybe that number goes up by 2x?

Pricing 302

Pricing Seed Funding Invest Venture Capital 302

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

So super angel and seed funds are proliferating – As a result there has been an explosion in the number of amazing early-stage investors such as Softtech VC , Floodgate , Felicis Ventures , K9 Ventures , OATV , Lowercase Capital , Founder Collective , and many, many more. . Some seed angles and seed funds clearly get it.

Venture Capital 311

Venture Capital Startup Seed Funding Rustic Canyon 311

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2015

Even if you work every day in the world of new-venture funding, as I do, the options are confusing, and their meanings seem to change on a regular basis. I challenge any entrepreneur, for example, to define the difference between "seed-stage" and "early-stage" financing. Business accelerator funding.

Funding 104

Funding Venture Capital Startup Seed Funding 104

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2015

” Today I want to talk about how a VC thinks about equity pricing on your round and particularly if you’re coming off of a convertible note. In the old days there usually weren’t convertible notes on early-stage deals and there weren’t party rounds with 20 angels or 6 seed funds. Size of my check.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Pricing Startup Invest 150

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

Fair (www.fair.com), the latest startup by serial entrepreneur Scott Painter , does just that, letting users shop for a car, get approved, and pay for a car through a month-to-month payment--with no long term committment. The average price of an automobile is $20,000 to $30,000. What is Fair all about? READ MORE>>.

Startup 124

Startup Truecar Pricing Entrepreneur 124

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2009

A few years ago it became fashionable for large VC’s to do seed funding. So they set up seed programs that allowed for rapid decisions for $500k or less, often done as convertible debt for both speed and cost reasons. I told entrepreneurs that it was a bit of a Faustian bargain. I was an early cynic.

Seed Funding 283

Seed Funding Venture Capital Funding Software Review 283

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 7, 2015

One of my favorite entrepreneur-Twitterer weighed in, “You want to keep tapping into their collective intelligence so you keep saying ‘Thank you for the feedback’ and they keep sending it,” Ms. I save room in literally every deal to invite angels (or seed funds) to co-invest with me. Morrill said.

Angel 150

Angel Startup Seed Funding Invest 150

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 12, 2010

Dan believed that consumer internet entrepreneurs have a choice now: traditional VC vs. super seed investors. You are seeing a lot more entrepreneurs OK with selling their companies to Google or Facebook and not waiting for billions. Not as many entrepreneurs are aspiring to do it any more. Minutes 8 – 10. Minutes 11-13.

Venture Capital 232

Venture Capital Slides Seed Funding Google 232

socalTECH

DECEMBER 28, 2017

I continue to be surprised by some clever SoCal entrepreneurs who are creating out-of-the box companies that are opportunistic and reflect our markets ingenuity. We are seeing SaaS companies more and more are competing against other SaaS companies and experiencing more churn, price resistance and customer demand for customization.

Capital 124

Capital Southern California SaaS SoCal 124

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

” The new narrative is “will my seed funds be able to fund the prorata of their winners?” ” Stated simply – if you seed funded Uber at $4.5m Seed funds now represent 67% of all funds being created now, which is up 100% from 6 years ago.

Venture Capital 398

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Seed Funding 398

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2010

If a round of funding does happen then this debt is converted into equity at the price that a new external investor pays with a “bonus&# to the inside investor for having taken the risk of the loan. They also trust VC’s to determine the right price to pay for the company securities that they buy.

Startup 290

Startup Funding Venture Capital Pricing 290

socalTECH

MAY 26, 2011

The way brighter makes that dental care more affordable, is it empowers consumers to find dental benefits, and allows them to compare that by price and reputation. We started looking to figure out if $6500 was a good price or a bad price, and we found out that there was no information on the Internet about what that procedure should cost.

Startup 249

Startup Pricing Southern California Networking 249

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

It should help some entrepreneurs to better access early-stage capital and should allow some angel investors better access to deal flow. If you know, VCs end up writing sizable checks into their own funds, which is important in better aligning interests. They will have to negotiate price and terms. So What’s the Big Deal?

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Invest Course Technical Review 356

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 15, 2016

There is much talk these days that startup valuations have decreased and may continue to do so and that the amount of time it takes to fund raise may take longer. I’m surprised how few entrepreneurs have this open conversation with their investors. In fact, most entrepreneurs I know don’t ask – why is that?

Startup 150

Startup Capital Funding Invest 150

socalTECH

JUNE 25, 2013

What are the details on your seed funding? The way we represent our product, how we merchandise it, and how we price it, and our UX is really targeted towards the younger clientele. The really important thing to those folks, obviously, was transparency in pricing and customer service. It''s completely customizable.

Services 215

Services Technical Review Startup Pricing 215

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

Babak Nivi is one of the most understated, helpful & important people on the entrepreneur / startup scene in NorCal. What he (along with Naval) started with AngelList is also a very important transformation to the communications between first-time entrepreneurs & angels. But it +is+ an anti-entrepreneur stance.&#

Venture Capital 267

Venture Capital Writing Blogging Startup 267

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

I recently wrote a post on angel financing covering the topic of convertible notes but I realized I was thinking about the issue more from investor perspective and a very narrow topic of how to price the round. In most cases if you can’t get a prototype done you’re probably not an entrepreneur. That’s OK.

Angel 291

Angel Funding Venture Capital Startup 291

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

In a world where the economy only heads in one direction (read: 2009-2014) most investors & entrepreneurs forget to pay attention to gross burn. If you have raised a limited amount of money from angels, accelerators or seed funds be very careful about having a high burn rate.

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 29, 2016

Our mutual friend mentioned to me over breakfast during the late summer of 2010 that Uber was raising a seed funding round. Additionally, Uber initially focused on replacing limo-style town cars and thus appealed to a relatively small number of upscale riders, inclined to have smartphones and be price insensitive.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Email Invest Services 100

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

For a high-volume seed fund that adds many portfolio companies every year (such as our friends at 500 Startups who invest in over 100 distinct companies annually), the cost of a bad affirmative decision (a false positive) is quite low, since it accounts for a relatively small portion of their total fund. It's Me, Not You.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

socalTECH

OCTOBER 19, 2018

in a seed funding round. The funding was led by Moonshots Capital, and also included Techstars and Luma Launch. Even if the price per deal might be lower, they have a greater amount of them, and more predictability of projects. It's a much smaller percentage going to creatives than most people think.

Help 133

Help IP Content Google 133

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2016

Rise of Seed. Prior to then the concept of “seed funds” barely existed and as I’ve argued before the seed fund phenomenon was largely driven by: Open source + horizontal computing + Amazon AWS. Explosion in Seed Funds. Now seed funding is conventional wisdom. Non VC Growth Rounds.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Capital Funding Seed Funding 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

There is much discussion online and also in small, private groups, about why the price of technology companies – public and private – are falling. I’d like to explain as best I can my opinion on what is going on because most of what I hear from entrepreneurs is not only wrong but is reminiscent of what I heard in 1997-2000.

Startup 150

Startup Company Companies Venture Capital 150

Berkonomics

APRIL 24, 2014

Often I see executive summaries from entrepreneurs who have never managed any form of business, or even managed employees in their past life, and who don’t know the first thing about business formation and managing for growth. I used to tell them to find a partner with knowledge in business creation and management.

Coach 250

Coach Seed Funding Summary Incubator 250

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

This has led to the creation of incubators, accelerators and seed funds. The movie, “The Social Network” might have had more of an impact on creating future entrepreneurs than any other event of the past 5 years. The number of venture capital funds has shrunk by two-thirds. They compete on features, price and execution.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 10, 2018

Nobody commits, nobody wants to set a price, nobody wants to stick their neck out then BOOM! Many entrepreneurs let the early rejections get to them and it’s normal because when you hear “no” you think “what’s wrong with me!?” When investors hear that somebody else wanted to fund you it gets their FOMO going and they pile on.

Press 232

Press Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 232

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

Pricing models, the freemium myth and why you may not be charging enough for your product - Seth Levine's VC Adventure , August 12, 2010 I’ve been pulled into a number of product and pricing meetings recently (for reasons unknown I’ve become the Foundry pricing and productization guy). clearly didn’t cause this.” How it happens.

Startup 191

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Hire 191

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

My advice to entrepreneurs was and is “ when the hors d’oeuvres tray is being passed take two ” (e.g. So I agreed to offer my current thinking on the economy and what it portends for the VC industry & fund raising for entrepreneurs. raise money now to weather any storms). We took $2.3

Entrepreneur 298

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 298

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

My 1,000th Post on This Blog - Tim Berry's Blog - Planning Startups Stories , July 21, 2010 HTML5 video markup, compatibility and playback - Niall Kennedy's Weblog , February 8, 2010 Your Product Needs a Soul - ArcticStartup , February 12, 2010 Product Friday: Monetizing Content is a Product Problem - This is going to be BIG.

Startup 378

Startup Venture Capital Blogging CTO Coach 378

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 18, 2015

Or the influx of massive new amounts of entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs seeking fortune and fame? “Trade in an asset at a price that strongly deviates from an asset’s intrinsic value” The arguments against that, “This time the startups have real revenues!” Are LPs to blame? None of these.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Pricing Platform Marketing 150