Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2010

GRP Partners is looking to hire two analysts (maybe even three) to join our practice in Los Angeles. We also have a very strong financial services practice so we welcome people with this interest area, too. I’m already 2 weeks late in writing this blog post as my partners keep reminding me. What is the timeframe?

Venture Capital 290

Venture Capital Technical Review GRP Partners Email 290

socalTECH

JULY 15, 2010

In terms of venture firms, the most active firms from Southern California, nationally, were Redpoint Ventures (9 investments), Steamboat Ventures (5 investments), and GRP Partners , Rustic Canyon Partners , Blade Ventures , Avalon Ventures , and Angeleno Group , with four investments each. billion invested in Silicon Valley.

Southern California 174

Southern California Orange County Rustic Canyon SoCal 174

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

” Strangely, the best I’ve ever heard this exemplified is in Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential - which is really a book about startups as told through kitchen stories. How about asking, “If we hired Susan could you imagine considering coming with her?” In many ways that can be way more telling.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Startup CTO Coach Venture Capital 320

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

In the intro section of the show we talked a lot about why VC funds are becoming smaller again and where Greycroft fits. We also talked about the emergence of New York City as the “hot” new area of entrepreneurship, VC and innovation driven by the quantification of the online advertising industry. OTHER DEALS: 1.

Venture Capital 240

Venture Capital Startup Platform Technical Review 240

socalTECH

JUNE 19, 2013

We spoke with Ben about how Burstly is now creating a company to help mobile developers create, develop, distribute, and monetize their apps. Burstly is headed by Evan Rifkin, and backed by GRP Partners, Rincon Venture Partners, SoftBank Capital, and Founder Collective. Burstly is located in Santa Monica.

Startup 262

Startup Mobile Outsource Development Tool 262

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

I always start my answer to this question with, “you’d have to be a pretty big baby to complain about being a VC.&# One of the things that I’m loving about this side of the people is that it really satisfies my intellectual curiosity. We have debates about how the industries will change / evolve.

Venture Capital 312

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Entrepreneur 312

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 5, 2010

I attended the inaugural Open Angel Forum in Los Angeles back in January and wrote about it here. My personal favorite and best fit for GRP Partners was Thumbtack. Thumbtack is marketplace for local services. – and provide a way to facilitate a match between vendor and person needing service. .

Angel 254

Angel Technical Review Software Review Platform 254

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Especially fun when you get him telling stories about his pilot experiences. So while it started more about finding solutions to get him driving cars more or logging airline miles he also focuses on big, industry-changing ideas. A location based service which incorporates social and gaming elements. Scott has this obsession.

Zag 248

Zag Truecar Venture Capital CarsDirect 248

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I spoke about a lot of things during the keynote. 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 will write more about this in the next 2 weeks. You know what I’m talking about.

Pricing 309

Pricing Marketing Startup Venture Capital 309

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 27, 2011

This is a post to help you figure out why you should write and what you should talk about. If you care about accessing customers, reaching an audience, communicating your vision, influencing people in your industry, marketing your services or just plain engaging in a dialog with others in your industry a blog is a great way to achieve this.

Blogging 373

Blogging Startup Writing Venture Capital 373

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

He’d been working at a well-funded startup for about a year and had come to terms with the fact that the startup was really a pretty dumb idea. We'll be your hosts for a three-part series about the use of MongoDB here at Etsy. In the second post, John Allspaw will talk about how well MongoDB is working out operationally.

Startup 248

Startup Venture Capital Conference Social Media 248

InfoChachkie

JULY 14, 2011

This is especially true for companies with expensive and complex products or services that are more consultative in nature, like insurance, financial services, home services, education and travel, etc. 9) In Getting The Band Back Together , I write about the power of serial Founding teams.

Marketing 209

Marketing Advertising Paid Search Startup 209

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2012

I was here to see one of our LPs (limited partners are the people who invest money in VC funds) called Fort Washington. They’ve been a long-term investor in our fund – GRP Partners – and it was important to me to spend time with them in their home market and meet the people with whom they deal locally.

Press 364

Press Course Startup Email 364

SoCal CTO

JUNE 14, 2008

The basic conclusion was that it was a bit premature if you were talking about a serious, funded start-up. application services (security, integration), etc. Most likely, a Level 2 platform's apps also call into the platform via a web services API to draw on data and services. does make it seem like it's a lot of work.

Platform 150

Platform EC2 Java S3 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2009

My firm GRP Partners recently funded a young LA based company named Ad.Ly Finance and a host of other wonderful services brought to you by their sponsors. After all, when I’m in Facebook they know one hell of a lot more about me than Google does. Why am I excited about in-stream advertising then?

Ideas 286

Ideas Advertising Google Technical Review 286

SoCal Delicious

AUGUST 23, 2010

Why should a startup thinking about moving to a new place choose LA? provides online service to compile and compare plans and rates across multiple monthly services. PriceGrabber.com is an online comparison shopping service. MySpace is one of the world’s largest social networks, with about 125 million users.

Guide 42

Guide Startup Mahalo GRP Partners 42

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

We brought together Peter Cowen of Groundwork Equity , Mark Suster of GRP Partners , Rick Smith of Crosscut Ventures , and Richard Yen of Saban Ventures -- all of who will be on the judging panel for the Tech Coast Angel's Fast Pitch on February 24th, to give us a their hints and tips about pitching to venture capitalists.

Tech Coast Angels 100

Tech Coast Angels Ideas Entrepreneur Invest 100

Tech Zulu Event

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

We will be bringing you some of the hottest startups around to give you a quick rundown about their companies and get to know the entrepreneur behind those companies. For those of you who may not know about StartupDemo, it is an event that TechZulu and Schmoozd have partnered up to bring you some of the hottest startups around.

Social Media 71

Social Media Technical Review Mixergy Tech Coast Angels 71

Tech Zulu Event

SEPTEMBER 24, 2010

Mark Suster , GRP Partners. Investment trends in startups that are about or related to social media. Ruder Finn PR is paving the way for virtual and real-world technologies, products and services that serve to connect individuals, businesses and societies across networks, communities and borders. mt) Media Temple, Inc.

Social Media 60

Social Media Technical Review Tech Coast Angels Venture Capital 60

SoCal Delicious

MARCH 1, 2010

Los Angeles By: Laura Rich February 26, 2010 It used to be, if you were serious about starting a tech company, you went to Silicon Valley. In this series, we talk to leading figures in those communities about what makes them tick. Mark Suster, a partner at GRP Partners in Los Angeles, spoke with Fastcompany.com about what makes L.A.s

Los Angeles 50

Los Angeles Company Companies Angel 50

Tech Zulu Event

JUNE 28, 2012

“LA’s best chapter is about to be written,” said Eric Garcetti, LA City Council Member and Mayoral Candidate. Investors attending included: Benchmark, New World Ventures, True Ventures, Anthem Venture Partners, Rustic Canyon Partners, IdeaLab, GRP Partners, Tech Coast Angels, Pasadena Angels, and Maverick Angels.

Hollywood 67

Hollywood Technical Review Startup Rustic Canyon 67

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. And I think about the “Seattle issue&# as a metaphor for startups and business in general. They have the same trade-off decisions that you do about packing up and moving to Silicon Valley vs. staying and building locally.

Venture Capital 317

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Press 317

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 15, 2011

We were talking about a company, Factual (disclosure my firm is an investor), which was founded by one of LA’s most talented Internet entrepreneurs, Gil Elbaz , who as co-founder of Applied Semantics (purchased by pre-IPO Google for $102 million and now Google AdSense) is responsible for a large portion of the Internet’s monetization.

Venture Capital 313

Venture Capital Southern California Google Startup 313

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

Open cloud led by Amazon with their AWS services drove total operating costs down by 90%. It’s as though we forgot the management mantra of the 90′s about “core competencies&# or the most common VC advice to entrepreneurs: Focus. I would put my firm, GRP Partners in with the group working with teams in different ways.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Capital Software Startup 296

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2012

I had been trading emails & Tweets with venture capitalist John Frankel and we were to meet in person in March 2011 at SxSW to talk about Klout and other investments he had made. We met at a private party hosted by his venture partner Mike Yavonditte and I outlined my concerns for the lack of precision of the algorithm.

Cornerstone OnDemand 303

Cornerstone OnDemand Venture Capital GRP Partners Startup 303

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2011

Today I’m announcing that GRP Partners is doubling down on the Twitter ecosystem by investing in DataSift , a company who provides a real-time data platform and tools to third-party developers and corporations. Real time – Much has been written about the real-time nature of Twitter’s news. Real-time information drives commerce.

Platform 307

Platform News Startup Invest 307