A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MARCH 20, 2022

I met Mena Trott at a Nick Denton party in NYC in 2003 and she explained blogging to me. I bought Bitcoin and went about finding a Bitcoin investment to make. That was Coinbase. The same was true with blogging and tweeting a decade earlier. I was struck by the idea that anyone could be a publisher.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

DECEMBER 29, 2021

It reminds me of the early days of web2 in 2001/2002/2003, when we started USV. The good news is there are literally tens of thousands of teams building new things on a web3 stack now. Some of the best entrepreneurs and developers have moved over. The tooling is getting better. That was also a time of great cynicism.

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 2, 2014

Henry told me that I should start a fund--me, a 27 year old former VC analyst turned product manager with no MBA at a startup that wasn''t really headed in any particular direction. I tried to write a book for college kids in 2002-2003, couldn''t get it published, so I started blogging in February of 2004.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 24, 2015

I’ve seen friends (and family members) lose much of their savings that way over the years because “Black Swans” happen and in 1987, 2001, 2003 & 2008 (just to name a few from my memory) huge market gyrations caused much financial distress to people seeking short-term gains. p.s. my normal health warning.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 27, 2022

Latin America became the fastest-growing VC region globally, and the market expanded to $16 billion in 2021. By 2003, that was gone and the company quickly introduced fees accross its markets. Users could sell their products on the platform at no cost, which of course boosted GMV growth.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2013

I remember just a decade ago in 2003 when we all laughed at how dumb people in the 90′s were talking about the race to “capture as many eyeballs as possible” before your competition. My VC told me that if we monetize too early we will scare away our nascent marketplace and not grow as fast. Your VC is right.

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TechCrunch

AUGUST 9, 2021

In 2003, FreshBooks’ co-founder Mike McDerment was running a small design agency. Canada’s startup market booms alongside hot global VC investment. After relaunching its accounting platform, FreshBooks has raised another $43 million. As in the case of many startups, FreshBooks was started to solve a pain point for one of its founders.

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Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 5, 2024

in 2003, Sebastian Thrun had just won the DARPA Grand Challenge, right? ” Like, autonomous vehicle is a solved problem back in 2003. I think it requires a ton of partnership from the VC community, from the tech community, and certainly from D.C. And one of the best examples of this is autonomous vehicles or robotaxis.

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Entrepreneur's Handbook

JANUARY 21, 2022

My professorship began in 2003 but a couple of years ago, I took my leave to pursue my itch to start a company again. As part of a Coursera course on entrepreneurship that I helped put together, I came across an interview with Andy Rackleff, the founder of the VC firm Benchmark Capital and the robo advisor Wealthfront.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

I took the opportunity this past week to publish summary notes of some of the VCs and entrepreneurs I had interviewed on This Week in VC. One of my goals in doing the show was not only to educate entrepreneurs but also to put a human face on many of the VCs in our industry as VCs can be hard to get to know. Thank you. (if

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Tomasz Tunguz

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

Consumer web’s share of all US VC investment is increasing. And across all major sectors of VC investment (consumer, enterprise, healthcare and energy), consumer investments are growing their share. And across all major sectors of VC investment (consumer, enterprise, healthcare and energy), consumer investments are growing their share.

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Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

During our recent Dreamit Kickoff week, Bullpen Capital Founder and General Partner Paul Martino ( @ahpah ) spoke with our Spring 2020 cohort about the state of the VC ecosystem in the current economic crisis. Paul Martino, General Partner at Bullpen Capital. It went from 1 million employed people to 750k employed people within 18 months.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 17, 2022

” Ibex Investors , which is based in Denver with offices in New York and Tel Aviv, was founded in 2003 with a “multi-stage” and “multi-strategy” investment strategy. . “I would equate it (our fund) to an internet fund in 1996 or 1997.” Their structure is unlike the traditional venture capital firm.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2015

In part because as a VC I reached the longevity where you see some things fail and have to ask yourself, “would I readily work with that person again? I saw this in 2001-2003 and in 2008-2010. But I’ve been thinking a lot about failure in the past year or so. Why or why not?”

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David Teten VC

JUNE 9, 2021

See How to negotiate a partner role at a VC or private equity firm.) At Versatile VC , we’ve used all these models. Thank you to my co-author for this essay, Paulina Symala, a Consultant at Oliver Wyman and a past intern of Versatile VC. Certain VC funds offer “Fellowships” for industry executives. Expert Networks.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 11, 2022

Whether we will see as dramatic a correction in the next few years as we did in 2001 to 2003, however, is anyone’s guess.”. “If We look for founders where other VC firms said they aren’t the best founders, but really, they outperform and are high-performing founders and are resourceful when VCs didn’t give them money,” she added.

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This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 2, 2012

It was June of 2003. At least if you and some Silicon Valley VC get inked up in one of the breakout rooms, you can get it removed more quickly than you can get out of an investment relationship. I sat in a little ink shop on Rivington Street called Porcupine Tattoo. She had flower sleeves of spectacular color.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

White Elephant issues are those things that the VC would automatically be thinking about when you’re speaking but he/she may not immediately ask you about either for legal reasons or out of courtesy. But the VC is thinking about the issue whether you address it or not. Don’t pretend it isn’t in the room.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 16, 2012

I raised money as an entrepreneur, like you, in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005 for two different companies. And of course I’ve sat on the other side of the table: As a VC. This is not just the perspective of a VC although I can’t say I have zero VC bias. Neither can any VC. Executive Summary.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

I rode it to work and back for about ten years, from roughly 2003 to 2013. I used to ride a Vespa around NYC. I stopped riding it when Bloomberg’s Traffic Enforcement people starting towing it when it was parked between cars on the street (something I had been doing since I started riding it).

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

” Your VC friends have been egging you on. The don’t understand VC liquidation preferences or multiple return expectations. They weren’t with you when you did the VC pitch where you looked them in the eyes 9 months ago and said, “I see only one outcome, we want to build something really big.

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David Teten VC

AUGUST 7, 2019

In VC, this means you source companies by talking with other VCs and tracking the investment patterns and new Linkedin connections of other VCs. You could argue that when they were [raising] oversubscribed [VC rounds], Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc., But VC is historically and consistently cyclical.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

.” I applaud all efforts by people to take on this issue and especially be Adeo who – let’s be honest – was really the first champion of trying to make the VC world more transparent by launching TheFunded, which didn’t exactly endear him to VCs initially. They’ll get priced soon enough by a VC.”

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Gust

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I would point readers to Martin Kleppmann’s useful blog post with graphs illustrating the effects of a valuation cap on entrepreneurs, seed investors and later-round (typically VC) investors. Valuation caps can come into play in settings other than seed-stage convertible note financing rounds.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

I had finally appeared on the front cover of a magazine (TornadoInsider – then the top European VC magazine) but I felt so fat in the picture I never sent it to anybody. So I decided to run the London Marathon in April 2003, just 3 weeks before my son was born. April 29th, 2003 my first son was born.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

On Losing in VC. I know I won’t win every deal I want to in VC. There are other great VC’s in SoCal and there is always the allure of the NorCal guys flying down and talking about how they invested in Google, Facebook, Yahoo! In the 2003/04 timefame I was living in the UK and running my first company.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

On Losing in VC. I know I won’t win every deal I want to in VC. There are other great VC’s in SoCal and there is always the allure of the NorCal guys flying down and talking about how they invested in Google, Facebook, Yahoo! In the 2003/04 timefame I was living in the UK and running my first company.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JULY 5, 2019

When I started writing this blog in 2003, I was not a strong writer. Sixteen years later, I am a better writer. Doing something every day is the best way to improve at something. I’ve been doing yoga for roughly the same number of years as I’ve been writing this blog. But I am not as religious about yoga as I am about writing.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

OCTOBER 17, 2019

The result was called CAN-SPAM and it was passed into law in 2003. I remember back in the early 2000s, the direct marketing industry and the tech sector worked with Congress to craft sensible regulations for email marketing. The law has been modified to clarify certain terms and rules. While it certainly was not perfect (what is perfect?),

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2007, 2011) and for the hottest of companies and in bad markets for fund raising (2003, 2008) prices test the bottom end of the range. I’m a VC so I have an obvious bias. I saw this kind of pricing when I first entered the VC market in 2007. There is no such thing as a uniform price. I raised my A round at a $31.5

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 15, 2009

In the 2003/04 timefame I was living in the UK and running my first company. I know I won’t win every deal I want to in VC. There are other great VC’s in SoCal and there is always the allure of the NorCal guys flying down and talking about how they invested in Google, Facebook, Yahoo!

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

I ran my first marathon in London this way in 2003 raising $3,000 for Parkinson’s disease (and finishing in under 4 hours – my publicly stated goal). I got him talking about this on This Week in VC including a quick demo of his dashboard - I think I'll shoot a separate sequence with just a walk-through of their analytics.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

Sometime around 2003/04 my technology team turned me on to “Spolsky on Software&# a periodic newsletter served up blog style from Joel Spolsky of FogCreek Software, a maker of bug-tracking software. Blogs weren’t popularized yet so it was an oddity for me to read the founder of a software company spewing out advice.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 9, 2020

That lasted from September 2003 to February 2014. This is the third “iteration” of this blog. The first iteration (AVC 1.0) was the Typepad era during which I redesigned AVC a number of times using Typepad’s tools. About six years ago, we moved AVC to WordPress and did a significant redesign (AVC 2.0) and very little has changed since then.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2010

Most of what I learned about operating startups I learned from the really tough years at my first company from 2001-2003. Hell – we fought against the VC’s together! That VC who saw me stick through hard times at my first company and get an exit at both companies is the firm where I’m now a partner.

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Smart Hustle Magazine

MAY 20, 2021

So, I sort of grew up as a product manager at Google in the early days of the company working on Google AdWords, when we just launched AdWords, I think back in 2003. Go to your VC grant, loan from a bank, whatever. And I feel very fortunate to have been able to play a small role in those efforts. I want to open up a store.”

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