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. Angels / seed want their full prorata.

Guide

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2016

We All Know That Dollars into Venture Have Gone Up … As a starting point, we know that the dollars into venture have steadily rebounded to pre great-recession levels, with just under $30 billion committed to US technology venture capital in 2015. In good scenarios, they don’t have funds large enough to follow their winners.

Venture Capital

socalTECH

JANUARY 7, 2019

During the holiday season, our tradition over the last few years has been to post reflections on the past year and some predictions for 2019 from Southern California's technology industry. And, many of the presenting companies received sizable funding commitments and offers of ongoing help.

Technical Review

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 17, 2017

Tortuga Logic , a new startup focused on chip-level cybersecurity technology whose founders include professors from UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara, has raised $2M in a seed funding, the company disclosed on Thursday. The seed funding came from Eclipse Ventures.

Software Review

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

For a high-volume seed fund that adds many portfolio companies every year (such as our friends at 500 Startups who invest in over 100 distinct companies annually), the cost of a bad affirmative decision (a false positive) is quite low, since it accounts for a relatively small portion of their total fund.

Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

AngelList 101 : As you know, AngelList is a platform where angels can invest in semi-screened tech deals. I know the populist sentiment about VCs is that many want to believe that taking one’s time to make investments is due to 8-week’s holiday every summer and not working past 5pm. If I commit to a $2.5

Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

We as a country are suffering from what is known as “ structural unemployment &# where jobs have disappeared from certain segments forever due to technological or structural obsolescence. Either won’t bode well for angels if they’re also hurting on non tech investments. Tags: Startup Advice Tech Market Analysis.

Entrepreneur

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

There’s too much PR and too many tech blogs and too many newsletters and aggregators and Twitter summarizers to even try to catch everything that’s going on and equally there’s so much noise that it becomes harder to be heard. For investors life is no different. Year in, year out.

Software Review

socalTECH

JANUARY 2, 2019

During the holiday season, our tradition over the last few years has been to post reflections on the past year and some predictions from Southern California's technology industry. Are there any technology innovations, gadgets, devices, software, that you found most interesting in 2018? I remain VERY bullish on SoCal's tech community.

Capital

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 27, 2021

Initial funding. Many incubators do provide seed funding for entrepreneurs selected, usually in small amounts like $10,000 to $20,000, and usually taking 5% to 15% of your equity in return. Then it’s time for due diligence on the incubators in your area, to see who has the track record and credentials you need.

Incubator

InfoChachkie

APRIL 14, 2014

It performs "due diligence" before it makes "investments" and it measures results as a "return on its investment.". ABC has even created an incubator-style program in which startup non-profits compete for $100,000 in seed funding. ABC is applying entrepreneurial principles to the art of charity.

Organization

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 10, 2018

I remind founders that the no’s come early because it’s super easy to qualify out a deal that you know is unlikely due to stage, focus, geography, competitive deal you’ve done or even just the fact that you’re too busy right now. Fund raising seems so easy for everybody else and you’re doing something wrong.

Press

socalTECH

JUNE 25, 2013

What are the details on your seed funding? round changes things for us, and will let us invest in infrastructure, build our team, invest in media, and also invest in technology to better leverage our spend on media. It''s completely customizable. John Tabis: The announcement today is a $1.1 million round. Closing this $1.1M

Services

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

If Nivi ever sent me a deal I’d meet the team without any question or pre-review. Great seed investors like Bryce Roberts / OATV (and other great ones like Floodgate , Founder Collective , Information Arbitrage or Rincon Ventures ) still get all the dealflow the need. I mostly don’t look. This is what I feared up front.

Venture Capital

socalTECH

OCTOBER 30, 2013

The startup--which is part of MuckerLab--landed a seed funding round last week, so we thought we''d catch up with founder and CEO Farbod Shoraka to dig deeper into the company''s goals and service. I have such respect for other platforms and technology. What is BloomNation? What''s the biggest lesson you''ve learned so far?

Beverly Hills

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 2, 2013

Initial funding. Many incubators do provide seed funding for entrepreneurs selected, usually in small amounts like $10,000 to $20,000, and usually taking 5% to 15% of your equity in return. Then it’s time for due diligence on the incubators in your area, to see who has the track record and credentials you need.

Incubator

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 30, 2014

Initial funding. Many incubators do provide seed funding for entrepreneurs selected, usually in small amounts like $10,000 to $20,000, and usually taking 5% to 15% of your equity in return. Then it’s time for due diligence on the incubators in your area, to see who has the track record and credentials you need.

Incubator

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2010

I learned how to establish a technology center in India and how to manage disparate development teams (and this has drive my thoughts also about what does NOT work.). I learned how to do a pipeline review with sales people without getting bullshitted to. I learned about revenue recognition.

Startup

socalTECH

OCTOBER 11, 2010

The reason for that, is in my opinion, the majority of the innovations that have improved our nation in the past 150 years have been due to technology and engineering innovations. We hope they'll ues that prize to seed fund and start their company, and see how it goes after that. Who can enter the competition?

Competition

Tech Zulu Event

APRIL 14, 2015

Good news, Fixed , the San Francisco app that helps drivers fight tickets has just launched in Los Angeles after raising an additional $650,000 in seed funding last February. Yeah, purposefully vague. Fixed claims that 50% of tickets are dismissed when challenged. You know it is bad when the mayor has to refund fake parking tickets.

Los Angeles

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 7, 2013

Yet 2013 is still projected by The Fiscal Times as a difficult IPO opportunity for startups, due to choppy markets, continuing fiscal uncertainty, and the Facebook fiasco. Sure, there will always some seed funding (10% of overall deal flow), but you can bet that this money goes to entrepreneurs who have been there before and won.

Venture Capital

Tech Zulu Event

JANUARY 15, 2013

We have numerous candidates in various stages of the interview process including a number reviewing offers. Bootstrapping or seed funded? For some companies the delay is unavoidable as senior positions require candidates to undergo significant due diligence. How many hires and bounties so far?

Startup

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

Some of the big milestones we did, include a seed round of financing in the fall of 2015, which was led by Upfront Ventures. They were interested in the foot traffic that represented, and we provided the technology and training. The model of the Return Bar, and working with companies like Paper Source, made sense.

Training

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

” The new narrative is “will my seed funds be able to fund the prorata of their winners?” ” Stated simply – if you seed funded Uber at $4.5m Seed funds now represent 67% of all funds being created now, which is up 100% from 6 years ago. .”

Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

They’re not in search of price fixing or collusion, they’re in search of diligence information about the company. When I was fund raising for my second company we had agreed a company-wide deal with Salesforce.com to use our product. My advice: Do not mention the other VC firms, angels, seed funds, etc.

Pricing

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2009

I know you’re not a tech guy and haven’t done anything other than an HTML course you once took, but if you’re inspirational and a leader you’ll find somebody to moonlight for free to get your prototype built. Existing tech or industry executives - Do you have strong relationships in your industry?

Angel

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

You technically have more gas left but you never know if some unexpected circumstance causes you to run out of gas. If you have raised a limited amount of money from angels, accelerators or seed funds be very careful about having a high burn rate. You really need to subtract the final month.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 12, 2010

In the technology world there are a few websites that most startups track to keep up with the latest financings, acquisitions, product announcements and gossip: BusinessInsider, TechCrunch, Mashable, GigaOm, etc. A large part of this is due to Sarbanes Oxley which has made running a public company so much more difficult.

Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Well … I have had many late nights and I really didn’t contemplate writing many blog postings this month because I spent November in this interesting venture capital / fund raising dance involving lots of late night sessions reviewing legal documents, rewriting business plans and preparing for pitches.

Venture Capital

InfoChachkie

JUNE 9, 2015

With top-ranked accelerators Lauchpad LA closing its doors and Y Combinator rebranding itself as a seed fund, it seems fair to ask the question, “Are Accelerators Dead?”. Good news: a quick review of TechCrunch’s March 2015 List of Top 20 U.S. A version of this article previously appeared in Forbes.

Startup

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

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. Between this blog and reviewing applications to Capital Factory I see hundreds of pitches a year. Most were on paper and video; 20 were invited to pitch in person.

Startup