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. Infonautics went public in 1996 and Half.com was sold to eBay in 2000.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

It’s always fun chatting with Jason because he’s knowledgeable about the market, quick on topics and pushes me to talk more about VC / entrepreneur issues. Next Wednesday we’ll have Dana Settle of Greycroft Partners, a New York / LA early-stage venture capital fund. Invidi is based in New York and founded in 2000.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

To see the video of This Week in VC click on this link. What a pleasure that I got to spend an hour talking with both Om Malik (whom I’ve always respected his views) and Paul Jozefak , a venture capital partner at Neuhaus Partners in Germany (and formerly the head of Europe for SAP Ventures). But it’s a real phenomenon.

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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. This is wrong.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2009

This is a story of one of the risks of venture capital. But some companies have entrepreneurs that seem talented on paper, are in a space that seems interesting to investors and are able to raise venture capital early in the company’s existence. Our first big round of venture capital (our A round) was a whopping $16.5

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

Just ask anybody who was trying to close funding the fateful week of September 11, 2001 or even March 2000. 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. Why did the VC markets freeze so quickly? Short answer – yes.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2014

Scott and I agree on nearly everything: The VC structure is changing and there appears to be a bifurcation into small & large VCs with an impact on “traditionally sized” VCs. The only point we didn’t seem totally aligned on was what we happening to the “middle of the VC market.”

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2013

We have previously raised funds in 1996 ($200 million), 2000 ($400 million) and 2008/9 ($200 million). If you’ve been following the press about VC funds you’ll know this is no small feat. Well, the venture capital industry has changed a lot in the past 20 years … and we have too. Let’s start with the fund.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “ Start Up Advice &# but I’d really like to call this post, “VC Advice.&#. We exchanged ideas when I was an entrepreneur along side him in NorCal in 05-07 and my point-of-view on founder / VC relationships hasn’t shifted even 1% since I went to the dark side.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

We moved into the legal process and final due diligence in January and February of 2000. Our final closure was the first week of March 2000. It quickly became impossible to raise venture capital. Many deals – VC or otherwise – didn’t close. It isn’t even a story about raising venture capital or M&A.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 3, 2011

But last week I noticed a blog post by a woman, Tara Tiger Brown, that asked the question, “ Why Aren’t More Women Commenting on VC Blog Posts? She has a quote from literally every major VC from whom you’d want to hear. ” [it's short, you should read it]. Please watch this. Every single one.

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 11, 2012

Until you realize that vetting and helping companies is actually really hard--or did you not notice all the news that venture capital as an asset class doesn't beat the market. Who wouldn't want in on the next Union Square Ventures or First Round Capital funds? Want to know why there aren't more female partners at VC funds?

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

Back in 2009, I wrote a post called The Venture Capital Math Problem. In that post, I argued that the venture capital business could not sustain more than $20bn a year of new capital coming into it and continue to produce good returns to the investors in VC funds. ” instead of “what could go wrong?”

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 12, 2011

He and I once took different sides of an debate about whether “VC signaling&# in early-stage deals is a serious problem or not. So it was fun to turn the cameras on him for 45 minutes for a special “NY edition of This Week in VC&# and hearing his views. I’ve also found him to not be dogmatic either.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

But VC is like congress. “I don’t know the exact math, but I hear it again and again: the top 2% of firms generate 98% of the returns in venture capital.” As you can see from the chart their data suggests there are about $25 billion of VC distributions per year in the US. Their data looks at tech VCs.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

Just as an additional disclosure, these are my thoughts, not that of First Round Capital, my employer. There is an enormous amount of angel capital available, while at the same time there is a small amount of Series A and a large and concentrated amount of late stage capital. To me, there's some seriously flawed thinking here.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 15, 2019

This simple and short blog post by the folks at Correlation Ventures contains the key to venture capital returns – the hit rate. Venture capital returns are highly correlated to a fund’s hit rate. I think that is all about the amount of capital in the business now. More capital means more businesses get funded.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

And so it happened that between 2000-2008 I was the biggest buzz kill at dinner parties. They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. Bad times often require more capital but ironically this is when capital is dried up. I avoided much of this.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 10, 2020

When you’re running your own venture — especially if it’s your first — it’s unlikely you will find the time to deep dive into how venture capital firms work. But if you only start learning about VCs when you’re already down the fundraising path, you’ll already be too late. But the opposite is also true. But the opposite is also true.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

I recently read a blog post by Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director of Sapphire Ventures about why entrepreneurs should care about from whom their VC funds raise their capital. There are a lot of things I think entrepreneurs should care about when raising from a VC: How big or small their fund is? Beezer did.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

As many of you know I run a weekly webcast called This Week in VC that’s getting between 25-35,000 weekly views across ThisWeekIn.com, YouTube & mostly iTunes. They never did any PR or marketing to get their videos to first get shown on the news during the 2000 election. Yesterday’s show floored me.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

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 said that I felt that Micro-VCs were the most important change in our industry. It is great for entrepreneurs and great for VCs. source: Capital IQ.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 12, 2010

In the VC & Private Equity world there’s a small number, too, with one of the most respected being PEHub. I always wanted to have Dan on This Week in VC with Dan Primack ( to see video click link ) because he’s blunt, honest, opinionated and well informed. Question: Some people are saying traditional VC is dead.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

We raised a seed round of capital in 1999 and our first venture capital round was the first week of March 2000 (e.g. But this was early 2000 and our US competitors had already closed rounds North of $45 million. We had a $40 million round lined up to close in the Autumn of 2000. We were based in London.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2017

I am so proud and humbled to be able to formally announce that Upfront Ventures has raised its 6th venture capital fund in the past 21 years. A huge thank you to all of the Limited Partners who have entrusted us with your capital, time and reputations. This brings our combined funds under management to nearly $2 billion.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

I’d like to explain as best I can my opinion on what is going on because most of what I hear from entrepreneurs is not only wrong but is reminiscent of what I heard in 1997-2000. What is the True Sentiment of VCs? Brad was openly writing about this and it felt like he was giving the VC playbook away for free!

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

DECEMBER 31, 2022

What happened in 2022 is the bottom fell out of the capital markets and the startup and tech sector more broadly. As the capital markets, including crypto/web3, came undone, companies reacted by adjusting their burn rates to reflect that the growth at any cost phase was over and it was time to get on a path to breakeven.

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TechCrunch

AUGUST 29, 2022

Andrew Chan is a senior associate at Builders VC , investing in early-stage companies that are transforming pen and paper industries. In the last couple of years, a large group of “Gen Z VCs” have come to the forefront of what one might consider “hip” venture capital investing. Andrew Chan. Contributor.

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Tomasz Tunguz

JUNE 5, 2021

What does it mean for venture capital and Startupland? Let’s examine the relationship between total venture capital investment and the 10 year Treasury in some detail. The y-axis tracks enture capital investment by year and the year of the data point resides in the reddish circle. In short, we should expect some cooling.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

So in 2011 as a startup company if you can generate lots of demand you can definitely raise an A round of capital (say $3 million) at a $7 or 8 million pre-money valuation or slightly higher whereas just two years ago you would have struggled. I’m a VC so I have an obvious bias. It was early 2000. That’s fine.

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Tomasz Tunguz

JANUARY 26, 2020

Nathan Heller published an article called Is Venture Capital Worth the Risk? If you have ideas for how to improve venture capital for founders, please tweet me or send me an email with the link above. If you want to read more, Merchants of Debt and King of Capital are good books.). First, venture capital has become much bigger.

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Gust

OCTOBER 17, 2012

In addition, angels were up against a selection problem: All the best entrepreneurs and opportunities would naturally gravitate to the best venture capital funds, leaving only the “scraps” for angel investors. This is absolutely competitive with venture capital returns. This is essentially the same concentration as in venture capital.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Within a year, by late 2000 / early 2001 consulting firms were firing people en masse. I was reminded of all this this when I read a blog post by one of my favorite thinkers on the VC market, Bryce Roberts, who talked about “ unfundable companies.&#. Most of the Internet startup consulting firms went bankrupt.

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Onevest

MARCH 19, 2015

It significantly broadens investment opportunities and a startup’s potential to raise capital through only a few legislative provisions. Even the more realistic projection, $300 billion , is 10 times the current VC investment market. So why the hold up? More importantly, what can we expect if the SEC decides to pass Title III?

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Y Combinator

AUGUST 5, 2019

In 2005, when Y Combinator started, there was already a well developed ecosystem of venture capital firms in Silicon Valley and Boston. But access to those venture capital firms was limited. VCs preferred to fund companies that already seemed like a sure bet – in other words, were far along. But that’s no longer the case.

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Tomasz Tunguz

OCTOBER 3, 2022

In the span of two years, a region’s startups raised as much capital as all of the US. More financings occur outside San Francisco, but Bay Area companies now raise 2000 to 2500 rounds per year, up from 404. Plus, SF startups raise 26x more capital to grow than a decade ago. But that’s not the full story.

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Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 15, 2015

In Q2 2015, VC investment totaled $16.7B, about a 66% of the $28B deployed in Q2 2000 according to a new report. Amazingly, each of the last four quarters of venture investment from Q3 2014 to Q2 2015, are in the top 10 all-time for venture capital investment. However, the number of investments per quarter is about half of 2000.

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