InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

Most newspapers are written at a third-grade reading level, White House press releases average a fourth-grade reading level and the New York Times is easily digestible by the average fifth grader. No VC Fit - Match your venture with appropriate funding source. Capitalization. Management Team. Financials.

Venture Capital 211

Venture Capital Summary Technical Review Template 211

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 10, 2014

Struggling entrepreneurs are often so happy to get a funding offer that they neglect the recommended reverse due diligence on the investors. Taking on equity investors to fund your company is much like getting married – it is a long-term relationship that has to work at all levels. It’s no fun for either side.

Technical Review 103

Technical Review Innocal Offshore Entrepreneur 103

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2017

Every tech or major news journal in the country is preparing to write their Snap, Inc (creators of Snapchat, Spectacles, etc) stories and many of them seem to want a “How does it feel to have missed this investment story.” Another firm funded them. That’s a benefit for us as a local VC. We simply didn’t think it fit our profile.

Snapchat 214

Snapchat Invest Technical Review Dollar Shave Club 214

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2014

Contrast that with a VC conversation I had. In case you don’t know – as VCs we have have 2 sets of customers: LPs (limited partners) who invest money in our funds and entrepreneurs (who we in turn give money to and help support them in building businesses we hope will be valuable). If not, somebody else will.

Customer 341

Customer Custom Venture Capital Software Review 341

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 27, 2016

Struggling entrepreneurs are often so happy to get a funding offer that they neglect the recommended reverse due diligence on the investors. Taking on equity investors to fund your company is much like getting married – it is a long-term relationship that has to work at all levels. It’s no fun for either side.

Technical Review 63

Technical Review Innocal Offshore Entrepreneur 63

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. I tapped my friends at big tech companies (Salesforce, Google, Oracle). And for the record, GRP has funded YC alum. What kind of deals should I be doing?

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Startup Pricing Invest 347

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. As always a balanced perspective is in order.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Our guest this week on #TWiVC was Dana Settle , partner at Greycroft Partners , a venture capital firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles. It’s always fun debating companies with Dana because she’s always so knowledgeable on deals – particularly those in the digital media, ad-tech and eCommerce spaces.

Venture Capital 240

Venture Capital Startup Platform Technical Review 240

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

InfoChachkie

MAY 6, 2013

Jim Andelman, my Partner at Rincon Venture Partners , aptly describes the genesis of the Series A crunch, stating that: "Over the next 12-to-18 months, a lot of good companies that have been Seed financed are going to have a tough time raising a Series . There is a similar Darwinian aspect to venture capital investing.

Entrepreneur 246

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Technical Review Capital 246

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 18, 2010

Full press release with more details is here. Applications are due April 6th, 2010, the form is on the website and the Twitter address is @launchpadlad. Encourage the most successful LA tech entrepreneurs who had previously started companies to get involved as mentors, instructors or just informal advisors. We connected.

Technical Review 259

Technical Review Venture Capital Southern California Tech Coast Angels 259

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

How could Bird really be worth the reported $2 billion valuation that I read about in this press? People said this about Ring (which went from startup to selling to Amazon > $1 billion in around 5 years), Facebook, YouTube, Airbnb, Uber, Twitter, Instagram and many other great behemoths of the technology industry. Not really.

Santa Monica 256

Santa Monica Funding Startup Course 256

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 jockey to make sure the press release has our names on it. For venture capitalists this isn’t troubling. Logic tells me the following: It is hard to make money angel investing.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

Tech Zulu Event

JUNE 7, 2013

Stained Glass Labs (SGL), the first Glass and wearable technologies accelerator has launched the world’s first comprehensive app directory and a self-service app publishing portal for Google Glass pre-launched applications. Comprehensive App Directory. SGL says the Comprehensive App Directory launched is a simple 2 step process.

Google 87

Google Technical Review Press Software Review 87

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Many observers of the venture capital industry have questioned whether its best days are behind it. I can’t help feel a bit of rear-view mirror analysis in all of “VC model is broken” bears in our industry. This has led to the creation of incubators, accelerators and seed funds. The Funding Problem.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Capital Technical Review Startup 347

socalTECH

JUNE 23, 2017

The insurance industry today is one of the last industries to fully jump into adopting technology for offering up their products, says Wayne Slavin , CEO and founder of SURE (www.sureapp.com), and just needs some help in getting there. We're here to serve, as a technology distribution platform, to help those insurance carriers become digital.

Southern California 244

Southern California Technical Review Startup Commerce 244

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

I believe that over capitalizing companies too early often favors the VC. Here’s what those VCs (and us entrepreneurs, myself included) didn’t understand: 9 women can’t make a baby in a month. I recently read this anecdote in the press (withholding company name because I actually really love the concept).

Development Team Review 374

Development Team Review Technical Review Startup Resource 374

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. I tapped my friends at big tech companies (Salesforce, Google, Oracle). They are venture bankers not investment bankers. What stage? What price?

Startup 361

Startup Venture Capital Pricing Technical Review 361

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2010

Social Proof in Action … Yesterday I wrote about the benefits of using social proof and authority in raising venture capital. It influenced a generation of tech marketers. The book popularized the technology adoption lifecycle curve that originally came out of Iowa State University shown below.

Marketing 294

Marketing Customer Custom Technical Review 294

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. Most experienced VCs won’t push you to give up founder control at this stage of the business nor should they. Reviewing financial & operational performance. In the Early Days.

Startup 325

Startup Sales Technical Review Software Review 325

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

He said, “They need an unbiased view of the fund raising environment because there is too much misinformation and everything seems to be changing fast.&#. 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.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 2, 2011

I don’t think any serious VC or angel thought it was “collusion.&# Just look at what happened with Yuri & Ron funding the YC deals. I just had this chat last night with a friend / VC who I respect. He assured me it wasn’t but also said humorously, “you’re the sixth VC to email me to check!&#.

Email 287

Email Blogging Venture Capital Writing 287

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2010

&#. I’m doing due diligence on a company of another entrepreneur in LA whose company was apparently doing very well. He has raised (and spent) a ton o’ VC money. They want to merge with other and want to know if I’d fund the combined entity. He had bought two companies and was eyeing a third.

Technical Review 276

Technical Review Startup Press Pricing 276

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 18, 2019

This led to massive funding rounds at Bird, Lime and others. There was seasonality, theft, tough unit economics and slowing funding rounds. This is only true when: 1) there is funding available to finance short-term losses and 2) when there is a lucrative positive unit-economics business when you become the winner.

Santa Monica 250

Santa Monica Venice Competition Software Review 250

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 15, 2014

This was in part due to a tremendously busy 30-day period for me (in which my overall writing has been down) and in part the inevitability of knowing that weighing in just tees me up to take abuse on one anonymous app called Secret. But my job is to understand technology and therefore you must use it to understand it. So so funny.

Technical Review 329

Technical Review Blogging Examples Startup 329

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

And of course I’ve sat on the other side of the table: As a VC. I now observes the fund raising process as a profession. This is not just the perspective of a VC although I can’t say I have zero VC bias. This is not just the perspective of a VC although I can’t say I have zero VC bias.

Develop 366

Develop Development Funding Venture Capital 366

InfoChachkie

JULY 18, 2012

The following guest post is from Eric Greenspan, Founder and CEO of MakeItWork, a consumer facing, in-home tech support service. Entrepreneurs are inundated with success stories, but far less is written about ventures that do not succeed. Most entrepreneurs do not have the guts to publicly discuss a venture gone awry.

RSS 170

RSS Technical Review Capital Email 170

SoCal Delicious

AUGUST 28, 2012

VentureBeat | News About Tech, Money and Innovation. Venture capital. I assumed that the people of Los Angeles were disingenuous attention whores and didn’t know anything about technology.”. MYTH 2: Silicon Valley companies will always have the best shot at funding. MYTH 3: SoCal lacks Fortune 500 Tech Leadership.

Southern California 57

Southern California PHP Technical Review Orange County 57

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

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. The ingredients are all here. As I gear up to give a keynote at the annual Seattle 2.0 Me: “Bullshit.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

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!”

Press 232

Press Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 232

AeA Los Angeles Council

JULY 7, 2008

Approximately 50 executives from the worlds of technology & venture capital piled into the dining hall on June 30th to listen to Dr. Mark Drapeau speak about "innovation" and its sister topic, "STEM education." The National Science Foundation mainly funds professors to do research. government.

Education 45

Education Technical Review Research Web 2.0 45

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

Thus, it is very hard to make a commitment to fund you. You’ll be able to give them an update on key hires, pilot customers, key tech innovations – whatever. I spoke about this more in depth in these two posts: 4 things I look for in an investment & how to manage VC relationships. I funded Ad.ly

Invest 411

Invest Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 411

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2010

My company had raised venture capital in April 2001 but we were told that there may never be any more coming. I learned how to get press coverage when we were no longer “hot.&# I learned how to manage costs effectively. I learned how to do a pipeline review with sales people without getting bullshitted to.

Startup 285

Startup Venture Capital Sales Software Review 285

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 26, 2013

I believe the days of the “job work” mentality are thankfully waning, with more people looking to get satisfaction by making the world a better place, rather than just tolerating brain-numbing work to fund enjoyment elsewhere. Twitter was one of the most notable, with a market capitalization now up to $38 billion all by itself.

Startup 109

Startup Entrepreneur Social Media Satisfaction 109

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Photo by Hope House Press - Leather Diary Studio on Unsplash It’s also true that there will be tough moments in your company’s journey where you will want to be able to carry people behind the tough decisions you want. Some members probably want most of the board meeting to be a review of financial information.

Startup 226

Startup Slides Metrics News 226

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2011

You do a startup and decide you want somebody to step in and run the company so you can focus on technical excellence. What results must you have in order to raise venture capital or garner good press coverage that helps drive customer acquisition (and also more funding!)? They fund people with no customers.

CTO Hire 363

CTO Hire Technical Review Startup Demand 363