Both Sides of the Table

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. THE FULL STORY. PHONE CALLS.

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Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

We did know about Snapchat as early as anybody. But that narrative was fresh in my head when I first had the discussion about Snapchat. I had a narrative in my head that I didn’t want to fund apps that would help husbands cheat on their wives or help kids send naked photos. Another firm funded them.

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Snapchat Invest Technical Review Dollar Shave Club 214

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

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Now, I’m pretty on the record that being an entrepreneur is about being great at The Do. I’ve talked in the past about how I manage my own creative process. I zone out and think about how things could be different. This is one of the positive signs of ADHD that nobody ever talks about. Startups Are for Doers.

Venture Capital 400

Venture Capital Conference Ideas Entrepreneur 400

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

We were the only such facility on the West coast to provide and control the entire process from studio, through finished vinyl record pressings in the same building, therefore able to promise quality control others could only dream about. The “clean” work in the front office. Email readers, continue here…] .

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Press Hollywood Custom Customer 156

Tech.Co

MAY 9, 2024

Seeking funding is a right of passage for many small business owners. If you’re interested in pursuing this type of finance, we round up some government grants small businesses can apply for in May, including their specialisms, funding limits, and deadlines. Learn more about the SBIR grant, and how to apply here.

Outsource Development 207

Outsource Development Technical Review Research Writing 207

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. I have thought a lot about anonymity over the years and actually have enjoyed debating the topic with those passionate about anonymity’s benefits because of course that’s how I learn.

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Technical Review Blogging Examples Startup 329

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2017

Fund raising is hard for everybody. Very, very few founders have an easy time despite what you read in the press. Fund raising is like a funnel where you need a bunch of potential leads in the top end and only a few will reach the bottom. The biggest surprise to meet in watching people fund raising is how few of them follow up.

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Funding Venture Capital Startup Course 238

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2014

I have written many times about PR so if you want a deep dive on the “how” of PR you may enjoy reading some of these posts. They don’t show up in a calculation that says I spent $7,000 and I got X-thousands inches of press. It’s much hard to get funded as a company nobody has heard of. Press matters.

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Press Google Course Writing 415

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. Today I want to talk about the process and how to allocate your time. Somehow many first-time founders equate “sales” with something that is beneath them.

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Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

recently wrote a post talking about how some VCs meddle in operating company decisions or some executive teams are too reliant on VCs to jump in and make hard calls for them. It isn’t uncommon for CEOs to talk about biz dev deals prematurely, hint at product announcements or even hint at acquisitions.

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Startup Sales CTO Coach Course 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2013

I’m not saying that lawyers were my screening process – simply that they knew about deals early on and they had voted with their time and pocketbooks so I knew I had a degree of filtering. no, I''m not talking about SVB, Comerica, Square1 and the like. And for the record, GRP has funded YC alum. Big difference.].

Startup 361

Startup Venture Capital Pricing Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2014

We are often asked how companies get funded, why VCs make the decisions we make and what we’re looking for in entrepreneurs. At Upfront we’re totally fine funding entrepreneurs who have done multiple businesses in the past – in fact we like it. But I’m guessing the narrative is similar elsewhere.

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Funding Technical Review Startup Screening 373

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2013

I am super excited to announce that today is a day of lots of new things for my partners & me: A new fund, a new office and a new brand. Let’s start with the fund. We have previously raised funds in 1996 ($200 million), 2000 ($400 million) and 2008/9 ($200 million). This month we closed our 4th fund of $200 million.

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Funding Santa Monica Venture Capital Startup 343

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

There is all sorts of advice on the Internet about how to raise capital. I now observes the fund raising process as a profession. This is the fund raising perspective from both sides of the table. Fund raising (as is much of life) is a sale – pure and simple. If you haven’t read my post about that, you should.

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Develop Development Funding Venture Capital 366

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 10, 2013

TechCrunch interviewed me and asked me to talk about failure. So I spoke for 12 minutes about my own failures. I made many classic first-time mistakes which serves both as my warning signal of which teams to avoid funding (if I perceive they will make critical mistakes often led by hubris) and also as my source for coaching others.

Startup 412

Startup Press Course Entrepreneur 412

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 10, 2018

Whether you’re fund raising from angels, seed investors and VCs?—?as I mention this because it’s critical that you not let the fund raising process psyche you out. While I tell founders not to let the lemons get to them I also have to remind people that “It only takes one yes to have a successful fund-raising round!”

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Press Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 232

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 8, 2011

We have significant VC commitments (listed below) – every entering company will get $50,000 in funding, mentorship from top VCs and successful entrepreneurs plus free office space. Of these 19 have received funding (10 have received significant amounts of VC funding) and 5 have been acquired (2 for more than $30 million).

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Venture Capital Funding Startup GRP Partners 287

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2015

We will have two well-funded companies educating the market on why this market opportunity for the $24 billion US storage market is ripe for disruption. When we funded Sam , Rahul and team at MakeSpace > 2.5 More consumers and businesses will hear about our solutions and want to learn more. Everybody reads the tech press.

Funding 150

Funding Competition Marketing Summary 150

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 27, 2013

The start of this series was, Should Your Startup Announce Funding ? Here’s how you should think about your PR plan. And while obvious this misses a critical point - PR is not only about your users. And while obvious this misses a critical point - PR is not only about your users.

Blogging 309

Blogging Journal Press Startup 309

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

It is the bane of every startups existence because it takes up so much time, it is so competitive to sign people and it feels like unproductive time because it’s not moving the ball forward on product, engineering, sales, marketing, biz dev, fund raising. I’d want to secure permission from the employee to issue a press release.

Press 341

Press Startup Email Sales 341

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

According to the SEC we’re not allowed to market the fact that we’re fund raising, so I won’t. But for some strange reason they make you file your progress on fund raising, which is the widely picked up by the press. So it is now publicly known that we have closed $150 million in our 4th fund.

Blogging 420

Blogging Press Entrepreneur Venture Capital 420

Both Sides of the Table

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? Or more directly – they are likely narcissistic resuscitations of your newest features or bragging points that nobody but your marketing team and your mom care about. Think about Luma Partners.

Marketing 389

Marketing Press Blogging Startup 389

TechCrunch LA

AUGUST 9, 2022

The funding, a Series C, will be used to continue expanding Boulevard’s product and engineering teams and to build out more tools targeting an ever-wider set of users in the bigger wellness and beauty sector (those product additions are typically big — it most recently added a whole new payments feature). Focusing on the U.S.

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Help Startup UCLA Tool 195

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

Yesterday I wrote a post about The Silent Benefits of PR in which I pointed out that most young companies I encounter don’t fully grasp the benefits of PR because they are less measurable than product milestones or customer acquisition analyses (like CAC/LTV). I wrote about how to build relationships with journalists in this post.

Press 319

Press Startup Writing Training 319

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2016

I talk about failure a lot because I think it can be tremendously instructive and I think that success without failure often masks underlying lessons. I even prefer to fund entrepreneurs who have experience some level of set-backs in their careers or startups because I think it brings a humility to decision-making that I find healthy.

Startup 261

Startup Press Blogging .Net 261

StartUp Beat

OCTOBER 14, 2018

A $5 million funding round was given to Baltimore startup FactoryFour, per a Friday press release. The Friday announcement confirmed that investor August Capital was the body that led the multi-million dollar funding round for FactoryFour. and Europe that are in the manufacturing industry. “We

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Funding Startup Press Seed Funding 40

TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 21, 2021

When it comes to content, the group wants Netflix to increase its funding of trans and non-binary talent, bring employee resource groups into conversations about potentially harmful content, hire more trans and non-binary content executives, and revise internal procedures around commissioning and releasing sensitive works.

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Netflix Demand Content Hollywood 300

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

The first check I wrote was just over 10 years ago into a company called Invoca who just announced a new $56 million in funding led by Scott Hilleboe at HIG Growth Partners. We not only have our Series A funds that can write $500k?—?$15 15 million first checks but we also have three growth funds. But here’s the big “aha.”

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Venture Capital IP Startup Google 223

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2013

What I loved about the founding team from day 1 was that the founders were all people who tried to break into Hollywood and found the system closed. I see this a lot in funding where an entrepreneur has struggled to raise money and spends all their time lamenting how lame investors are. You raised your seed funds. ” Chips.

Startup 371

Startup Press Blogging Entrepreneur 371

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2016

I see this a lot in funding where an entrepreneur has struggled to raise money and spends all his or her time lamenting how lame investors are. If my objective is raising capital and I’m struggling, what can I learn about those who do get funded and how can I improve my odds by changing me ?” Often it doesn’t.

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Startup Press Entrepreneur Funding 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2013

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. But the press (and I suspect many of the senior execs of these companies) don’t really explore the corrosive downside of these acquisition.

Press 357

Press Startup Yahoo Venture Capital 357

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Just not the kind you would initially read about on TechCrunch. And that’s what I love about her narrative. It represents the great majority of entrepreneurship and eschews the fairytale rags-to-VC-riches stories we so often read about in the press. Here’s what I learned about Tracy: 1.

Startup 363

Startup Entrepreneur SEO Venture Capital 363

Berkonomics

AUGUST 18, 2016

We were the only such facility on the West coast to provide and control the entire process from studio, through finished vinyl record pressings in the same building, therefore able to promise quality control others could only dream about. I lost an invaluable opportunity to learn from the front line.

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Custom Customer Services Press 120

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2014

I was having dinner with a friend last night and we were chatting about venture capital and a bit about what I’ve learned. 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%). I don’t. Co-investors are critical.

Venture Capital 374

Venture Capital Invest Press Startup 374

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2014

We all know that funding markets have changed for startups. The trends are well understood: more angels, more seed funds, more crowdsourcing and so forth. They asked LPs to rush to get into their next side-car fund to have access to this great deal plus the LPs also get the “benefit” of investing in their next fund.

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Venture Capital Seed Funding Email Blogging 352

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

That company was Invoca, which just announced a $20 million fund raise led by Accel. I remain a huge supporter and am very proud of our accomplishments and hugely optimistic about our future. So I think it’s now fair to rate me at 9/10 on follow-on fundings. I am closing 3 new fundings in April (2 new, 1 follow-on).

Venture Capital 387

Venture Capital Downey Writing Press 387