Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

To see the video of This Week in VC click on this link. We spent the first 45 minutes or so talking about industry trends (in this order): The history and background of True Ventures, one of my favorite early-stage VC’s (and the one with whom Om is a venture partner). Founded in 2000 in New Brunswick, NJ. 406 Ventures.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2009

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. million which closed the first week of March 2000 – a week before the market crashed. True story.) million were enormous.

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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. Why should investors know all the tricks of the trade while first-time entrepreneurs operated at a disadvantage?

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 31, 2010

TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European startups need to work as hard as those in Silicon Valley and I echoed the sentiment in my post about the need for entrepreneurs to be maniacal about their businesses if one wants to work in the hyper competitive tech world. We were based in London.

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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

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

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? I’m still not sure.

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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.&#. A friend of mine is a serial entrepreneur and is running a high-profile, early stage company in NorCal. VC’s who don’t get this are naive. That’s when the VC has lost.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

A reminder that it is important for all entrepreneurs is to remember to be careful about “deal drift.” 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. Many deals – VC or otherwise – didn’t close. They accepted my argument.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

After all, I am no stranger to the publicly expressing the frustrations of dealing with the downside of this industry as I wrote about in 2006 when I was an entrepreneur. But VC is like congress. As you can see from the chart their data suggests there are about $25 billion of VC distributions per year in the US. It is changing.

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 11, 2012

16k+ Twitter followers, 5500+ e-mail subs a week, 6th most read VC blog, appearences on Bloomberg and CNBC and I can't use any of it to market any kind of financial product--but if I wanted to sell you a watch or build a video game, I'd be set. Want to know why there aren't more female partners at VC funds? scratches bald head].

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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. He is the CEO of Hunch , company that I believe is solving a very big problem that I have been telling entrepreneurs needs to be solved for the past 2 years.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

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. It is clear that he is simply passionate about being a VC and participating in this industry. Howard is successful enough that he doesn't need to work.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2011

One of the most common questions that entrepreneurs who meet me for the first time like to ask is, “Do you miss being an entrepreneur? I’m enjoying being a VC. I thought I’d talk a bit about the differences I’ve experienced between being an entrepreneur & a VC – you know, from “both sides of the table.&#.

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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

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? It pains me to see the typical (and predictable) responses on Twitter, “VCs want prices to drop!”

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

Every investor and entrepreneur knows there is something scary about the current startup economy. More entrepreneurs get to try out their ideas with smaller amounts of capital, but the bar remains the same to get to the bigger rounds. Is 2012 going to be 2000 all over again? It's actually a great situation for the ecosystem.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

This was an audience of mostly first-time entrepreneurs. 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. I believe that.

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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

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. on the entrepreneur side of the table) when I raised at too high of a price. This is wrong.

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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. 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. Great businesses take 7-10 years to build.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

Babak Nivi is one of the most understated, helpful & important people on the entrepreneur / startup scene in NorCal. What he (along with Naval) started with AngelList is also a very important transformation to the communications between first-time entrepreneurs & angels. But it +is+ an anti-entrepreneur stance.&#

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2017

Upfront VI is our latest core fund and is $400 million to invest in early stage entrepreneurs. link] There’s no doubt in my mind that “LA is having a moment” and both VCs and LPs realize it. More recently reports have come out listing VC firms ranked by percentage of female founders where we’re usually listed in the top 5% nationally.

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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. Gen Z VCs have raised funds, garnered social media followings and profited from the Gen Z mentality. Andrew Chan. Contributor. Share on Twitter. Objectively speaking, and much to my chagrin, I’m a Gen Z.

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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.&#. Bryce is a bit like the entrepreneurs I search for. I love that.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

I have conversations with entrepreneurs and other VCs on a daily basis about fund raising, the prices of deals, how much companies should raise, etc. These are not scientific, just anecdotal and just trying to provide some transparency for entrepreneurs on what I’ve seen the market. It was early 2000.

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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. It is not highly concentrated geographically, or in the bubble of 1998-2000, or in any industry. So which is it?

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TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Twitter Space: A Gen Z VC speaks up. According to Andrew Chan, a senior associate at Builders VC, GenZ investors “are still a bunch of kids, myself included.” ” According to Andrew Chan, a senior associate at Builders VC, GenZ investors "are still a bunch of kids, myself included." — Clever Canadian.

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Y Combinator

AUGUST 5, 2019

The only model of institutional seed funding was the “business incubator” model, where VC firms would fund well-connected founders they knew and incubate them in their office. Because these companies wouldn’t raise VC until they were much further along and had leverage, the balance of power shifted. But that’s no longer the case.

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Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 20, 2014

In fact, I found only two books: a textbook on private equity and venture capital by HBS professor Joshua Lerner, and an out-of-print collection of 32 VC interviews called “ Done Deals ,” published in September 2000. By my estimates, VCs are investing less than 1 ⁄ 3 of of the roughly $100B deployed in 2000.

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Ian Hathaway

OCTOBER 14, 2020

In fact, through the first three quarters of the year, 2020 is on pace to be the most active year for venture deals since the Dotcom era peak in 2000. Zooming out, that indicates that 2020 is on pace to have more venture deals than any year since the peak of the Dotcom boom in 2000.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 11, 2022

At the same time, he added, “high interest rates may also increase the demand for venture capital when bank lending is less attractive to entrepreneurs.” The biggest VC firms are managing a lot more moolah than you thought. Indeed, some of his earlier work has found few consistent effects of interest rates. That’s new.”.

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TechCrunch

MARCH 7, 2023

However, it appears that even though VCs are proceeding more cautiously than before and taking their time with due diligence, they are still investing. CB Insights recently found that two of the largest global VC firms, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, actually backed more fintech companies in 2022 than any other category.

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Berkonomics

JANUARY 12, 2012

And if the vision of the entrepreneur is flawed, or the product impossible to create within cost and time expectations, or the demand impossible to quantify, or revenues never close to plan, then it is time to rethink the plan and product. There should be no shame to the entrepreneur in admitting such a failure.

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TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 16, 2021

Admittedly, there were no entrepreneurs in my family. I was in college from 2000 to 2004. They try to become this cookie-cutter entrepreneur that is designed to raise money from investors, with their playbook and by their rules. Regardless, Black entrepreneurs must press forward and still show up.

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TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 28, 2022

Many entrepreneurs have been encouraged to believe that smooth storytelling and good social skills are enough to convince investors that things are moving according to plan. At a time like this, trust is more important than ever,” said Barber, adding that she tells entrepreneurs to stay in close touch, “particularly around bad news.”.

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 29, 2024

A personal story of failing fast My favorite story of a fast failure was of a technology incubator started in the year 2000 with optimistic money from several angel investors, including me. There should be no shame to the entrepreneur in admitting such a failure. Is it the end of your entrepreneurial world to fail quickly?

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