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The Audacious Plan to Make Electricity as Easy as WiFi

Both Sides of the Table

Today I’m handing her the largest A-round check I’ve ever written as a VC as we lead her $10 million A-Round at uBeam. As I’ve written about recently, at Upfront Ventures we started talking a couple of years ago about wanting to fund stuff with more meaning. We hired IP specialists to review prior art.

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Retro: My Favorite Blog Post on Raising VC

Both Sides of the Table

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. It included one firm who I asked not to call Salesforce.com as a reference (they were our largest pilot customer) and in their kindness they called Marc Benioff (the CEO) and asked his opinion. In case VC’s haven’t figured this out yet, shit rolls downhill.

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VC Confessions: We Passed On Twilio’s Seed Round

InfoChachkie

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. However, they seldom acknowledge their mistakes.

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VC Seed Funding is Dead, Long Live VC Seed Funding!

Both Sides of the Table

This is part of my ongoing series about Raising Venture Capital. A few years ago it became fashionable for large VC’s to do seed funding. Some larger VCs felt they were being “scooped&# by some younger, nimbler and smaller VCs. I was an early cynic. What gives? Am I a hypocrite?

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Angel Funding Advice

Both Sides of the Table

This is part of my ongoing series Pitching a VC. I’m a software guy so I’m sure there are cases where building isn’t feasible. Professional angels / former entrepreneurs / seed funds – In Silicon Valley there are people like Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, Mike Maples and many more.

Angel 291
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The Long-Term Value of Loyalty

Both Sides of the Table

They come in the form of personal references. My company had raised venture capital in April 2001 but we were told that there may never be any more coming. But in these years I learned how to sell software – necessity is the mother of all invention. Hell – we fought against the VC’s together!

Startup 285
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Top 30 Startup Posts for July 2010

SoCal CTO

5 Lessons from 150 startup pitches - A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , July 11, 2010 I just reviewed several hundred startup pitches for Capital Factory. So, I’ve had about 4 years on the “inside” of a fast-growing, venture-backed B2B SaaS startup. Most were on paper and video; 20 were invited to pitch in person.

Startup 217