Both Sides of the Table

JULY 22, 2010

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. Due to competitive markets we ended up with a pretty good term sheet until we needed to raise money in April 2001 and then we got completely screwed. The VC assumes you’ll have an option pool.

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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. A: It’s not best.

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venture capital capital ventures angel investing 282

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. You don’t have a clue. Neither do I.

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financing finance ventures real estate 344

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

When venture capitalists scale back investing activities it can be very swift and leave many companies that are in the process of fund raising hung out to dry. Just ask anybody who was trying to close funding the fateful week of September 11, 2001 or even March 2000. Why did the VC markets freeze so quickly? Short answer – yes.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

I believe the rise in angel investing is here to stay and the professionalization of this class (aka “super angels&# or “micro VC&# ) is a good thing for the VC industry and for entrepreneurs. Mostly, this segment of the market (like all of VC) is stacked in favor of the few. Unfortunately that’s a myth.

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angel investing investing investment VC 306

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 14, 2015

I spoke at Michael Kim’s excellent annual Cendana VC/LP conference today. One of the points I tried to make is that as venture capital investors as an industry we seem to have a healthy disdain for public market investors. This will be seen as a watershed moment in the wake-up call and rationalization of our industry.

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VC capital culture venture capital 392

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. Will a financial crisis affect how venture funds deploy capital? Startups should know how VCs work.

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ventures startup capital board 334

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

And that was evident on today’s Angel vs. VC panel. There are real changes in the venture capital industry and it would have been fun to talk about them. The VC industry is segmenting – I have spoken about this many times before. We need people at all stages of the funding lifecycle and not just VCs.

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disruption VC entrepreneurs financing 308

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. You lose the dream.

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founder VC advice pitching 329

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. 2001–2007: THE BUILDING YEARS The dot com bubble had burst. Between 2006–2008 I sold both companies that I had started and became a VC. What happened?

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VC culture sustainability capital 466

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 2, 2014

It''s kind of a funny answer to "When did you start Brooklyn Bridge Ventures?". 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. So when did I really start Brooklyn Bridge Ventures?

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venture capital VC ventures technology 281

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

When I first started in venture capital, back in 2001, I used to fund funds. I worked for an institutional investor that invested in both venture capital funds and later stage growth deals. My job was to figure out why certain firms were winning and why they might continue to win.

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sustainability angel investing venture capital VC 304

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

It quickly became impossible to raise venture capital. I lived through this again September 2001. Many deals – VC or otherwise – didn’t close. It isn’t even a story about raising venture capital or M&A. VC, sales, biz dev, M&A or otherwise. Especially in VC. Anybody who didn’t close was dead.

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venture capital advice VC real estate 301

Gust

SEPTEMBER 17, 2014

Me: So, you raised venture capital? Me: Raising convertible notes as a seed round is one of the biggest disservices our industry has done to entrepreneurs since 2001-2003 when there were “full ratchets” and “multiple liquidation preferences” – the most hostile terms anybody found in term sheets 10 years ago. On the phone ….

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VC finance financing entrepreneurs 153

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. I believe that.

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real estate entrepreneurs financing finance 309

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. We found a way to make our venture capital last when it shouldn’t have, at around the same time one of my all time favorite New Yorker cartoons was published on this topic. We were based in London.

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entrepreneurs advice real estate venture capital 308

TechCrunch

APRIL 11, 2022

There’s been talk of a slowdown in venture funding recently, with TechCrunch looking at it from different angles, including the fintech sector, a PitchBook report and even earlier on how startups should prepare in case it happens. We asked Beezer Clarkson, partner at Sapphire Ventures, and Josh Lerner, the Jacob H.

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venture capital investment investing ventures 97

TechCrunch

MAY 17, 2022

The judges for this pitch-off will be Yoon Choi (Muirwoods Ventures), Mar Hershenson (Pear VC) and Gabriel Scheer (Elemental Excelerator) on day one; and Sven Strohband (Khosla Ventures), Victoria Beasley (Prelude Ventures) and John Du (GM Ventures) on day two. Yoon Choi — Muirwoods Ventures. ” Day 2

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pitching energy startup consulting 76

Gust

OCTOBER 20, 2011

This method compares the target company to typical angel-funded startup ventures and adjusts the average valuation of recently funded companies in the region to establish a pre-money valuation of the target. Such comparisons can only be made for companies at the same stage of development, in this case, for pre-revenue startup ventures.

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angel investing investment investing opportunity 146

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 27, 2022

Jennifer Queen is the founder of Pina , a PR firm focused on startups and venture capital firms. Latin American venture capital and growth investments through 2018 had averaged less than $2 billion per year. Latin America became the fastest-growing VC region globally, and the market expanded to $16 billion in 2021. Contributor.

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venture capital capital VC opportunity 95

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 22, 2014

Through the first six months of 2014, VCs have raised about as much as all of 2013. If this pace of fund raising continues, 2014 would mark the biggest year for VCs since 2001, when the industry raised about $38B. Each quarter, the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters gather data on the VC industry.

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venture capital capital ventures startup 40

Angel Capital Association

JUNE 27, 2024

The recent data from ACA for all Angel Groups shows a similar recent pattern, with only 7% in the $1-3 million range and 12% in the 3-6 million range: Source: TCA Venture Group, Angel Capital Association Angel Funders Report There are of course higher valuations (as expected) in Series A compared to Seed/Pre-Seed, and dispersion in each stage.

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funders peer-to-peer mix-use angel capital 52

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 12, 2020

While several marketplace unicorns prepare IPOs, a VC digs into the data (EC). Here’s more: Now north of $200 million in revenue, [ Nextiva ] is a quiet giant and, notably, has not taken venture capital funding along its path to scale. Wish wants to be the Amazon for the rest of us; will retail investors buy it? DoorDash, C3.ai

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venture capital capital startup SaaS 122

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2010

This is part of my ongoing series on Raising Venture Capital. It also takes options off the table if you eventually find out that this isn’t a VC backable business. I’ve spoken about this in a post entitled, “ Do you even need VC ?&# It’s a tricky question with no clear answer. There are trade offs.

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startup advice venture capital VC 319

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. My company had raised venture capital in April 2001 but we were told that there may never be any more coming. Hell – we fought against the VC’s together!

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advice venture capital VC construction 285

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

I’m not going to cover in this post the obvious post-show marketing tasks such as following up on all those business cards you grabbed, communicating with all those people who registered at your site and leveraging your new found fame to score venture capital. 2001-2004 were very humbling but we built a real company.

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media advice VC energy 310

Tomasz Tunguz

AUGUST 14, 2014

The chart above compares the total number of MegaRounds, those VC investments of $50M or more, from 2001 through 2013. In short, MegaRounds are increasingly common, while the number of VC-backed IPOs is relatively constant. Last year, there was 1 MegaRound for every 2 IPOs. In 2012, there were 3 MegaRounds for every 4 IPOs.

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finance financing VC capital 40

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. In case VC’s haven’t figured this out yet, shit rolls downhill. My blog linked to Brad Feld’s blog because I was so grateful for his series on term sheets and he was one of the biggest reasons that as a VC I felt compelled to blog. Tempus Fugit.

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VC venture capital pitching capital 274

Unvalidated Learnings

OCTOBER 5, 2016

With venture capital out of the equation, and only two business banks in his town, he couldn’t afford to lose one of them. “I A VC treating an entrepreneur that way today wouldn’t stay in business for long… 7. I recall one day, sitting in Wallace’s office. Both he and White were working me over pretty good.

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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. I’ve raised seed rounds and A-D rounds.

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strategy development VC advice 366

TechCrunch

JANUARY 29, 2021

For our latest investor survey, Natasha Mascarenhas polled 13 edtech VCs to learn more about how “employer-led up-skilling and a renewed interest in self-improvement” is expanding the sector’s TAM. Here’s who she spoke to: Deborah Quazzo , managing partner, GSV Ventures. Image Credits: Bryce Durbin.

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VC founder media education 107

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 6, 2021

Bain Capital Ventures has named Christina Melas-Kyriazi, a former Affirm executive and angel investor, as its newest partner. Matt Harris, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, agrees. Since BCV’s first fund in 2001, the firm has invested over $4.5 The move to VC felt like a natural transition,” Melas-Kyriazi said.

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capital ventures angel investing VC 79

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

2001, a Starbucks Odyssey : In August, Starbucks got things percolating with plans for a blockchain-based loyalty program and NFT community. Startups and VC. The reality is that if you’re a Silicon Valley-based venture firm, no LP at your annual meeting is going to ask you, ‘How did you miss company X in Columbus?’

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micromobility SaaS capital VC 89

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

I asked him if he’d be willing to allow me to interview him for This Week in VC and we filmed it in the offices of Stack Overflow – his new company. Lesson: Joel had been building a community of readers since 2001. With StackOverflow, Joel raised money through venture capital. Union Square Ventures is an investor.

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peer-to-peer communities development innovation 285

David Teten VC

OCTOBER 31, 2024

We’re fortunate to interview Victor Orlovski, Founder and Managing Partner of R136 Ventures. R136 Ventures partners with creative entrepreneurs to help scale their mid-to-late stage startups. It’s our hands-on approach and ability to navigate both the technical and business sides that make us different from traditional venture firms.

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ventures peer-to-peer mix-use VC 52