SoCal Tech Calendar

JUNE 7, 2019

Thursday, June 13, 2019 -- Orange County FundingPost VC and Angel Investor PitchFest + Pitch Workshop. Due to the overwhelming demand to pitch at our last event in Orange County, we're throwing an exclusive PitchFest speed dating event where you will be pitching to over 20 investors one-on-one! We're doing it again!

Orange County 100

Orange County Venture Capital Angel Tech Coast Angels 100

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 17, 2017

He eventually founded and sold consumer health firm ViSalus to a public company and is now back making investments, in technology companies, as a venture capitalist here at Los Angeles-based HashtagOne (www.hashtagone.com). I'm a bit of an anti-VC, as you know. I love entrepreneurs. What's the theme of your investments?

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review 100

SoCal Tech Calendar

JUNE 5, 2019

Tuesday, June 11, 2019 -- San Diego FundingPost VC and Angel Investor PitchFest + Pitch Workshop. Due to the overwhelming demand to pitch at our last event in San Diego, we're throwing an exclusive PitchFest speed dating event where you will be pitching to over 20 investors one-on-one! We're doing it again!

San Diego 100

San Diego Venture Capital Angel Summary 100

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC&# – the outline is here. You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s. Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue. Unfortunately your advisers are wrong.

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital Guide Startup Technical Review 309

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2009

Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings). I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully. I like to say to first-time entrepreneurs, picking a VC is more permanent than marriage. I guarantee this is a bad VC. Let me explain.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Entrepreneur 297

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

This is part of my series on Understanding Venture Capital. I’m writing this series because if you better understand how VC firms work you can better target which firms make sense for you to speak with. It in not uncommon to see a VC talk about “total assets under management&# as in “We have $1.5

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Funding Invest GRP Partners 269

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

OCTOBER 19, 2009

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. In case VC’s haven’t figured this out yet, shit rolls downhill. No prizes for guessing which VCs I didn’t work with (and still won’t).

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Prorata rights are one of the most important rights of a private market technology investors and yet are seldom fully understood. These tensions seep out in some angels or seed funds publicly or semi-privately deriding later-stage VCs for their “bad” behavior. I believe I was one of the first to point this out publicly.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

Back in November I agreed with Nivi over at VentureHacks to do a series on the ten most important attributes of a successful entrepreneur. Unfortunately, I don’t believe it is perfectly correlated with what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. Perhaps VC isn’t the vest route for this individual.

Technical Review 284

Technical Review Entrepreneur Startup Funding 284

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 17, 2020

In most cases, these applicants for equity funding must be rooted in technology to apply to this limited discussion. There is a rather new term for those large, individual investors who are usually former entrepreneurs made rich through sale of their previous ventures. Then there is venture capital. Accelerators.

Equity 156

Equity Technical Review Class Organization 156

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. What kind of deals should I be doing? What stage?

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Startup Pricing Invest 347

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

VC's love to talk about their successes. Yet most VC's bury their failures under six feet of denial. In the startup world, the former happens when a VC makes a bad investment, and the latter occurs when they miss a great opportunity. Tech Diligence - Consider The Source. What’s The Worst Mistake?

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 8, 2019

Responding to Elizabeth Warren’s call to regulate and break up some of the nation’s largest technology companies, the venture capitalists that invest in technology companies are advising the presidential hopeful to move slowly and not break anything. This too shall pass.” — Balaji S. ”

Technical Review 144

Technical Review Startup Chief Technology Officer Social Media 144

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

I thought I’d try to look at it from a different lens, that of the entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur you should assume that. But the majority of VCs & Angels all speak. They’re not in search of price fixing or collusion, they’re in search of diligence information about the company. Cap or warrants?

Pricing 292

Pricing Entrepreneur Technical Review Venture Capital 292

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

If you track the venture capital industry it would be hard to miss the conversation going on this week over AngelList “Syndicates.” My favorite new VC blogger, Hunter Walk, weighed in with some thoughtful comments about how Syndicates might actually pit, “ angel vs. angel.” Bowery Capital).

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Invest Course Technical Review 356

Both Sides of the Table

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.” He or she has worked at some very successful big technology or media companies and went to a great school.

Technical Review 150

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital IP 150

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. VCs get paid to “put money to work.&#. raise money now to weather any storms).

Entrepreneur 298

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 298

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

My primary role was “chief psychologist&# and as I’ve learned over the past few years the same has been true as a VC. I finally got around to writing it having read Fred Wilson’s post about what a CEO does. Some entrepreneurs make the mistake of never devolving power. Both are basically people businesses.

Venture Capital 319

Venture Capital Startup Sales Customer 319

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

This sometimes frustrates entrepreneurs who just want to “get back to running the business.&# But if you understand it you’ll see that it is perfectly rational and it should also influence how you form relationships with investors. For this reason I tell entrepreneurs the following: Meet your potential investors early.

Invest 411

Invest Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 411

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2009

This is a story of one of the risks of venture capital. But some companies have entrepreneurs that seem talented on paper, are in a space that seems interesting to investors and are able to raise venture capital early in the company’s existence. 2 weeks later and we may never have raised any more VC.

Startup 299

Startup Venture Capital Technical Review Training 299

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

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

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. ” Climate resiliency . Fables of the reconstruction.

Startup 229

Startup Technical Review Invest Research 229

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

I would argue that the shut-down of September 2009 was equally severe yet there are signs that this “VC Ice Age” has begun to thaw. But any entrepreneurs raising capital should keep in mind that this opening of the markets could possibly be temporary. Why did the VC markets freeze so quickly? Short answer – yes.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

I’m an entrepreneur at heart so I’m always inspired when I hear stories about innovation. Seattle should be the envy of any non Silicon Valley tech community in the country. It really wouldn’t take much to turn a great technology ecosystem into a truly electric one. I need to take some VC meetings.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

To be a great entrepreneur you really do need talent. You need to be great at something: technology back-end, front-end design, usability, sales, marketing, quantitative analysis, leadership –> whatever. But if you’re not uber talented there is always a “Justin Bieber of technology&# waiting to kick your ass.

Entrepreneur 398

Entrepreneur Startup Writing Blogging 398

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

Huge thank you to Steve De Long for the write up. My initial desire to blog came from something that’s always been my approach to investing – I’m a nerd and I love to play with the technology and part of my approach has really been to understand things both at a user level and at a reasonably deep tentacle level. Brad on blogging.

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

Both Sides of the Table

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

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

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

This is a blog post I really didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to write it because I have mixed feelings about AngelList. I didn’t want to write it because the bloggosphere doesn’t always do nuance well. So why I am writing it then? But it +is+ an anti-entrepreneur stance.&# A few reasons.

Venture Capital 267

Venture Capital Writing Blogging Startup 267

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

If you read this blog often you'll know that I'm a huge fan of First Round Capital. They have totally changed the way you run a VC firm, investing heavily in systems & events for their founders that are pushing the boundaries of the way our industry works. First Round Capital receives about 2500 submissions each year.

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 13, 2011

Every entrepreneur is flooded with information from all directions, but despite their best efforts to absorb it, they likely miss the information really needed to start a business. and books for entrepreneurs like “Think and Grow Rich.” Here are a few that I aspire to: Venture Hacks , by Babak Nivi and Naval Ravikant.

Entrepreneur 92

Entrepreneur Technical Review Blogging Java 92

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. We haven’t hit that wall yet for three reasons: 1) not enough elapsed time, 2) the VC market is frenzied now, too and 3) we haven’t seen a market downturn since the volume picked up.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

This applies to both founders and to VC’s that work with them. You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. Similarly I liked to keep myself apprised of the technical decisions we were making. A quick example.

Startup 308

Startup CTO Coach Technical Review CTO Hire 308

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

“Yes&# was given to me by one of my favorite angel investor / seed VC’s to work with – John Greathouse of Rincon Venture Partners and author of the blog InfoChachkie that you should check out because it is filled with great info from a guy who has been a very successful operator. This is all explicit decision making.

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2010

I’m writing this post as part of my series with Advice on Raising Venture Capital but will file it under Sales Tips as well since it applies equally to both scenarios. You’ve found a VC partner or principal who has invited you to the Monday partners’ meeting. tip: write it down when asked / parked).

Venture Capital 318

Venture Capital Startup Sales Writing 318

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 7, 2018

A critical stage for most first-time entrepreneurs is getting their idea developed into at least a prototype to validate their technology. Specifically, I often point to the NSF or the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program for high-tech startups. Another alternative is to find an inexpensive class on grant writing.

Funding 90

Funding Technical Review Startup Research 90