Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 29, 2010

I’m often asked by people, “how do I get into VC?&# Well, I know 3-4 VC jobs that are publicly available. If this isn’t you, we’d probably still have a look if you did something truly exception – probably at startup or tech firm. Plus, show my you can write! What is the timeframe?

Venture Capital 290

Venture Capital Technical Review GRP Partners Email 290

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 15, 2012

One the most frequent questions asked of me by entrepreneurs is, "How can I become a Venture Capitalist?" The inquiry is common because being a VC is (to an entrepreneur, at least) a sexy job. I define a "VC" as, "a professional investor who deploys third-party funds into relatively early-stage companies." Microscopic Industry.

Venture Capital 242

Venture Capital Technical Review Invest RSS 242

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2010

We received so much positive feedback from our This Week in Venture Capital show walking through valuation calculations & term sheets that we decided to do a Q&A show this week to address topics that entrepreneurs want to learn about. In fact, far better if you haven’t raised venture capital.

Venture Capital 282

Venture Capital Capital Startup Pricing 282

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2010

One of the questions I’m most often asked is, “what’s it like being a VC?&# I’ve been a VC for nearly 3 years now. I always start my answer to this question with, “you’d have to be a pretty big baby to complain about being a VC.&# And the VC job has plenty of admin and minutiae.

Venture Capital 312

Venture Capital Technical Review Startup Entrepreneur 312

SoCal Tech Calendar

JUNE 7, 2019

Thursday, June 13, 2019 -- Orange County FundingPost VC and Angel Investor PitchFest + Pitch Workshop. Due to the overwhelming demand to pitch at our last event in Orange County, we're throwing an exclusive PitchFest speed dating event where you will be pitching to over 20 investors one-on-one! We're doing it again!

Orange County 100

Orange County Venture Capital Angel Tech Coast Angels 100

TechCrunch LA

FEBRUARY 6, 2022

Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review ! This writeup from industry analyst Karl Guttag showcases how Magic Leap has turned away from several of the key technologies it raised billions of dollars to develop with its latest hardware which he nevertheless believes will “blow away” the HoloLens 2 in image quality.

Marketing 246

Marketing Newsletter Technical Review News 246

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 8, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “Pitching a VC&# – the outline is here. You’ve pitched several angels and VC’s. Your friends and advisers tell you that this means you need revenue because in this economy VC’s will only fund businesses with revenue. Unfortunately your advisers are wrong.

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital Guide Startup Technical Review 309

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

This is part of my series on Understanding Venture Capital. I’m writing this series because if you better understand how VC firms work you can better target which firms make sense for you to speak with. It in not uncommon to see a VC talk about “total assets under management&# as in “We have $1.5

Venture Capital 269

Venture Capital Funding Invest GRP Partners 269

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. I had seen many cycles and decided that since I was going to do it all over again I should write about it. In case VC’s haven’t figured this out yet, shit rolls downhill. No prizes for guessing which VCs I didn’t work with (and still won’t).

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Blogging Startup Slides 274

SoCal Tech Calendar

JUNE 5, 2019

Tuesday, June 11, 2019 -- San Diego FundingPost VC and Angel Investor PitchFest + Pitch Workshop. Due to the overwhelming demand to pitch at our last event in San Diego, we're throwing an exclusive PitchFest speed dating event where you will be pitching to over 20 investors one-on-one! We're doing it again!

San Diego 100

San Diego Venture Capital Angel Summary 100

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2009

Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings). I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully. I like to say to first-time entrepreneurs, picking a VC is more permanent than marriage. I guarantee this is a bad VC. Let me explain.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Entrepreneur 297

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

Too Techie - Tone down emphasis on the technology underlying your venture; an interested investor will perform tech diligence at the appropriate time. No VC Fit - Match your venture with appropriate funding source. Explain your team's experiences that are relevant to the success of your current venture.

Venture Capital 211

Venture Capital Summary Technical Review Template 211

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.” My job as a VC isn’t to beat myself up or any other partner up for the one deal we didn’t do.

Snapchat 214

Snapchat Invest Technical Review Dollar Shave Club 214

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

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. The practical uses for uBeam technology is limitless.

Technical Review 418

Technical Review Software Review CTO Hire IP 418

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. I believe I was one of the first to point this out publicly.

Guide 336

Guide Venture Capital Startup Writing 336

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 8, 2019

Responding to Elizabeth Warren’s call to regulate and break up some of the nation’s largest technology companies, the venture capitalists that invest in technology companies are advising the presidential hopeful to move slowly and not break anything. This too shall pass.” — Balaji S. ”

Technical Review 144

Technical Review Startup Chief Technology Officer Social Media 144

InfoChachkie

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

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. What’s The Worst Mistake?

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Technical Review Software Review Southern California 100

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 do this because they have amazing skills at writing business plans.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Startup Pricing Invest 347

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

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 17, 2017

He eventually founded and sold consumer health firm ViSalus to a public company and is now back making investments, in technology companies, as a venture capitalist here at Los Angeles-based HashtagOne (www.hashtagone.com). I'm a bit of an anti-VC, as you know. As a result, I really saw Visalus as a technology company.

Venture Capital 100

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review 100

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

My primary role was “chief psychologist&# and as I’ve learned over the past few years the same has been true as a VC. I finally got around to writing it having read Fred Wilson’s post about what a CEO does. As a VC you see the insides of companies rather than the companies positive spin on TechCrunch.

Venture Capital 319

Venture Capital Startup Sales Customer 319

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2013

If you track the venture capital industry it would be hard to miss the conversation going on this week over AngelList “Syndicates.” My favorite new VC blogger, Hunter Walk, weighed in with some thoughtful comments about how Syndicates might actually pit, “ angel vs. angel.” Bowery Capital).

Venture Capital 356

Venture Capital Invest Course Technical Review 356

TechCrunch LA

FEBRUARY 20, 2019

Capitalism is fundamentally about timing, since market competition is about finding opportunities before others. When should a VC invest? Start writing down predictions about people, companies, and markets. Between TechCrunch today and my former roles in venture capital, I’ve had the opportunity to practice timing a lot.

Venture Capital 202

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Invest 202

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

Chris Dixon is one of my favorite people in tech and writes one of the few blogs I read religiously. If you don’t read it and you care about tech & entrepreneurship, you should. He and I once took different sides of an debate about whether “VC signaling&# in early-stage deals is a serious problem or not.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Venture Capital Startup Artificial Inteligence 281

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

I would argue that the shut-down of September 2009 was equally severe yet there are signs that this “VC Ice Age” has begun to thaw. But any entrepreneurs raising capital should keep in mind that this opening of the markets could possibly be temporary. Why did the VC markets freeze so quickly? Short answer – yes.

Venture Capital 263

Venture Capital Startup Invest Funding 263

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 31, 2021

The sweeping infrastructure package put forward today by President Joe Biden comes with a price tag of roughly $2 trillion (and hefty tax hikes) but gives startups and the broader tech industry about $1 trillion worth of reasons to support it. ” Climate resiliency . Fables of the reconstruction.

Startup 229

Startup Technical Review Invest Research 229

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

When Nivi published the series he titled it “the top 10 things I look for before I write a check.&# As a result I felt compelled to add this final attribute because it matters a lot to me. We were super excited by their offering – they had patented technology in a field that we believe will continue to grow massively.

Technical Review 284

Technical Review Entrepreneur Startup Funding 284

TechCrunch LA

OCTOBER 26, 2021

Then fans would be tasked with writing their own stories, submitting them to the Realms of Ruin universe by minting them as NFTs on the Solana blockchain. If the authors are inviting fans to write fan fiction about a universe they created, who owns the derivative works? The project ultimately imploded due to a combination of factors.

Writing 196

Writing Outsource Development Technical Review Examples 196

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 haven’t hit that wall yet for three reasons: 1) not enough elapsed time, 2) the VC market is frenzied now, too and 3) we haven’t seen a market downturn since the volume picked up.

Invest 299

Invest Angel Technical Review Venture Capital 299

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

Huge thank you to Steve De Long for the write up. My initial desire to blog came from something that’s always been my approach to investing – I’m a nerd and I love to play with the technology and part of my approach has really been to understand things both at a user level and at a reasonably deep tentacle level. Brad on blogging.

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital Startup Technical Review Software Review 288

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

This applies to both founders and to VC’s that work with them. You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. Similarly I liked to keep myself apprised of the technical decisions we were making. A quick example.

Startup 308

Startup CTO Coach Technical Review CTO Hire 308

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 2, 2011

I’m sitting at my computer now at 9.00pm writing this – which is an hour earlier than I normally write (there are about 8 women at my kitchen table having a book club (aka excuse to drink wine & gossip so I’m locked in another room writing. I just had this chat last night with a friend / VC who I respect.

Email 287

Email Blogging Venture Capital Writing 287

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

“Yes&# was given to me by one of my favorite angel investor / seed VC’s to work with – John Greathouse of Rincon Venture Partners and author of the blog InfoChachkie that you should check out because it is filled with great info from a guy who has been a very successful operator. So how does this apply to you?

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

” Stay lean and only raise a big round if you DO find product / market fit and which point you want to loosen the belt quickly and raise the capital to do so. .” ” Stay lean and only raise a big round if you DO find product / market fit and which point you want to loosen the belt quickly and raise the capital to do so.

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

This is a blog post I really didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to write it because I have mixed feelings about AngelList. I didn’t want to write it because the bloggosphere doesn’t always do nuance well. So why I am writing it then? That’s less interesting for me as a VC.

Venture Capital 267

Venture Capital Writing Blogging Startup 267

Tech Zulu Event

AUGUST 27, 2014

With the proper tax planning, your company can greatly benefit from tax write-offs. Of equal importance, with the right support, your company can be assured that you are meeting all of your tax obligations, thereby avoiding an unwanted IRS audit due to compliance issues. an AR line of credit, or another source.

Venture Capital 93

Venture Capital Outsource Help Writing 93

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

If you read this blog often you'll know that I'm a huge fan of First Round Capital. They have totally changed the way you run a VC firm, investing heavily in systems & events for their founders that are pushing the boundaries of the way our industry works. First Round Capital receives about 2500 submissions each year.

Capital 284

Capital Venture Capital Technical Review Startup 284