Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

I can’t help feel a bit of rear-view mirror analysis in all of “VC model is broken” bears in our industry. The movie, “The Social Network” might have had more of an impact on creating future entrepreneurs than any other event of the past 5 years. In 1998 there were around 850 VC funds and by 2000 there were 2,300.

venture capital 347

venture capital capital ventures VC 347

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

I spent my days meeting companies, figuring out what areas of the market interested me and trying to get a sense for how VCs thought about fair valuations. I thought about things I never had to as an entrepreneur: check size, ownership percentage, deal stage, portfolio construction and risk. VCs were very active in this period.

VC 305

VC disruption entrepreneurs venture capital 305

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

Two weeks after Brad’s post I was at the 140 Conference in LA and I held open office hours for any entrepreneur who wanted to spend 15 minutes talking with a VC about their business. But it turns out I met a bunch of really interesting entrepreneurs. But TWTFelipe is an entrepreneur. Felipe grew up in Brazil.

education 282

education creativity innovation entrepreneurs 282

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.

capital 284

capital board VC pitching 284

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 5, 2011

I’m an entrepreneur at heart so I’m always inspired when I hear stories about innovation. It’s why my investment philosophy is called, “ the entrepreneur thesis.&#. I need to take some VC meetings. This article originally ran on TechCrunch. I’m in Seattle this week. Of course I have.

communities 317

communities VC innovation entrepreneurs 317

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

Back in 2005, I was a lowly analyst at Union Square Ventures with a million product ideas that I'd blog about all the time. When you're on the VC side, you come up with a lot of ideas, because every company you see inspires three new things you wish someone would build across a wide variety of sectors. Indeed did one thing.

strategy 268

strategy VC ventures opportunity 268

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 11, 2011

Back in 2005, when I was with Union Square Ventures, we changed our brochureware homepage into a blog. A few other VCs had been blogging before, but no one had gone as far as to make the whole front facing effort of their firm into something so interactive. It changed the way we worked with entrepreneurs.

innovation 264

innovation media development technology 264

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. In 2005 they realized that this business was going to evaporate over night with the introduction of YouTube. Yesterday’s show floored me. Here’s the link.

mix-use 303

mix-use VC advice creativity 303

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2012

He knows every startup & VC in town.” This was 2005 when I had no exits under my belt, no blogs … nobody was looking. When I first arrived in LA my good friend Matt Pillar (a long-term veteran of tech, media & VC) who had been in LA for some time told me, “in LA there’s none better than David.”

VC 299

VC communities investing investment 299

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.

real estate 309

real estate entrepreneurs finance financing 309

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 11, 2014

I''m super proud of Rob, Ben and the whole Backupify team--and this is particularly special for me because Backupify was the first investment I ever made as a VC, and the first board I ever sat on. I''m proud of the whole team at Backupify and have been really impressed with Rob''s ability to grow and learn as an entrepreneur over time.

board 259

board venture capital creativity entrepreneurship 259

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

I do what I wish all entrepreneurs would do. It’s an entrepreneur with whom I’ve been wanting to work for 6 years. He turned me down for a job in 2005. It was a young, first-time entrepreneur who wanted to meet. Can you please intro me to XYZ VC? ” I never said that. I DO have time for email.

advice 314

advice culture board VC 314

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 15, 2012

So what would have happened had Sean met Joshua Schachter in 2005--would Josh have still sold out early to Yahoo! Seems to me that New York could use a guy who goes around broadening the visions of New York entrepreneurs. or would he have been convinced to take a financing round?

startup 278

startup financing finance venture capital 278

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

This is the third article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). And if I were an entrepreneur I’d rather find investors who understood “my space&# so that in tough times they felt comfortable about “doubling down.&#. Not everybody agreed.

angel investing 152

angel investing investing investment VC 152

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2009

On the other hand were everybody else including those that tried to make a full time of it like Robert Scoble as well as those that did it as a side job like VCs, CEO’s and start-up entrepreneurs. Bill Gurley , a well known VC from Benchmark Capital, seemed to have a 2-year hiatus from blogging and has now picked up the pace.

VC 219

VC creativity networking media 219

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

I first met Ethan in 2005. And I had been telling my partners for a couple of years that I thought Ethan was one of the more talented entrepreneurs I had come across in San Francisco. We generally have a policy to only fund entrepreneurs once the first version of a product has shipped or it near to shipping.

disruption 359

disruption VC entrepreneurs strategy 359

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

In 2004 / 2005 I was starting to get intrigued with user-generated content. This time frame – 2005/2006 – web 2.0 Deal evaluations the Foundry way, which continues into a great discussion about VC decision-making processes. “So RSS was something that had appeared.” “….I was starting.

venture capital 288

venture capital pitching communities entrepreneurs 288

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

One of the great joys of doing the web series This Week in VC every week is that I get to spend time with great people debating the issues of our day including how our industry is evolving as well as insights into how companies got started, got their initial traction and dealt with adversities. Oh, yeah. And when there is a spark, go for it.

board 286

board culture VC education 286

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

This is the fourth article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs). The first three skills I espoused were: access to the highest-quality deal-flow, domain knowledge of the topic area in which you’re investing and access to VCs to help fund the next stages of development.

angel investing 283

angel investing investing investment disruption 283

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

” Your VC friends have been egging you on. We funded one in 2005 and lost a lot of money. You know this isn’t likely to lead anywhere and frankly you didn’t quit your job to pursue your life dream of being an entrepreneur to sell 12 months later in an acquihire. I’ve finally cracked it.”

startup 417

startup peer-to-peer VC culture 417

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2015

When I counsel startup entrepreneurs I give them my blunt dose of reality, “If you can’t easily identify target leads who have a problem you can solve then hang up your cleats – you’re not going to succeed.” Let me give you another simple example from my experience as a VC at Upfront Ventures.

SaaS 315

SaaS VC strategy entrepreneurs 315

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2011

tl;dr version: If you’re an entrepreneur or VC or will be working in this industry - buy this. 2) how seldom lawyers walk you through the “how can this term be used against you&# scenarios or the “pragmatic guide to VC terms&# overview. I was significantly wiser by 2005 when I started my second company.

VC 304

VC entrepreneurs advice venture capital 304

Y Combinator

AUGUST 5, 2019

How tech startup fundraising changed from 2005 to now. In 2005, when Y Combinator started, there was already a well developed ecosystem of venture capital firms in Silicon Valley and Boston. Because these companies wouldn’t raise VC until they were much further along and had leverage, the balance of power shifted.

incubation 22

incubation startup VC business incubator 22

Gust

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Entrepreneurs and investors who have spent any time dealing with convertible debt seed financing transactions are likely to have encountered the subject of valuation caps. The spin-out took a few months to negotiate and didn’t actually close until February 2005. Redpoint, led by Geoff Yang , invested $11.5

incubation 98

incubation finance financing mix-use 98

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 24, 2020

While taxes are high, entrepreneurs won’t find the staggering income inequality so often seen in cities like San Francisco and New York. Booking.com started in 1996 and was later acquired by Priceline Group (now called Booking Holdings) in 2005. Janneke Niessen, partner, CapitalT VC. Stefan van Duin , partner, Borski Fund.

opportunity 93

opportunity startup startup ecosystem education 93

TechCrunch

APRIL 5, 2021

million in a Series A round led by Silicon Valley VC firm Ribbit Capital. The paid had worked together before — founding their first online payments company, MOIP, in 2005. Cora , a São Paulo-based technology-enabled lender to small-and-medium-sized businesses, has raised $26.7 million since its 2019 inception.

capital 88

capital real estate disruption financing 88

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 21, 2023

The UK has had real-time payments since 2005, via the Faster Payments network. This enabled them to unlock further funding as VC-backed growth companies over time. The creativity of UK entrepreneurs has and will continue to disrupt the status quo in financial services. A full 8 years earlier than the U.S.)

innovation 118

innovation disruption enablement support 118

TechCrunch

APRIL 6, 2022

TechCrunch Live is a free weekly event featuring investors, founders, and startups with the goal of helping entrepreneurs build better venture-backed businesses. As in other maturing markets, companies that have seen success in the past are now spawning a new generation of entrepreneurs as well as attracting others from various locales.

real estate 97

real estate VC angel investing culture 97

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Klarna’s first ever transaction took place at 11:06:40 am on April 10, 2005 at a Swedish bookshop called Pocketklubben, according to the abbreviated history published on the company’s website. competitors and sometimes described by Europeans as a Klarna clone. But first, let’s go back to the beginning.

investing 143

investing investment media mix-use 143

TechCrunch

JANUARY 21, 2021

million on average, the largest payout to employees in Israeli high tech at the time, and the exit created a pool of new entrepreneurs and angel investors. Over the last decade, startup funding for Israeli entrepreneurs increased by 400%. Waze’s 100 employees received about $1.2 So how are they doing?

startup ecosystem 88

startup ecosystem startup incubation culture 88

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 18, 2014

Each chart shows the number of rounds raised bucketed by size from $0 to $5M and up to $150M to $200M from 2005 to 2013. All of this is good news for entrepreneurs. The chart above breaks down fund-raising activity in US tech companies using Crunchbase data. Each bucket has grown over the past 8 years and most of them steadily.

VC 40

VC financing finance enablement 40

Don Dodge

APRIL 6, 2015

They were part of the Ycombinator Cambridge class of 2007, after being rejected by YC in 2005 and 2006. None of the local VC firms invested. from Sequoia Capital and have gone on to raise over $1 Billion from VC investors. Back in 2005 no one anticipated the success of YCombinator, not even its founders. This must change!

incubation 40

incubation angel investing pitching venture capital 40

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 20, 2012

So here's when I see people tend to raise: Entrepreneur + Approach to a Market. Entrepreneur + Kinda Workable Demo/Alpha + Little to No Data on Traction. This is a confusing one for entrepreneurs--because some people get this round done but others don't. That's all they have--no demo no code--and they get funding.

entrepreneurs 330

entrepreneurs advice VC ventures 330

Entrepreneur's Handbook

MAY 4, 2021

A survey of US-born founders of 502 engineering and technology companies, founded between 1995 and 2005, showed that only 10% of founders had a Ph.D. To pick the best prospect, entrepreneurs need to hustle more. link] Entrepreneur First added to demonstrate an alternative ‘talent investing’ model.

startup founder 53

startup founder founder startup entrepreneurship 53

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Klarna’s first ever transaction took place at 11:06:40 am on April 10, 2005 at a Swedish bookshop called Pocketklubben, according to the abbreviated history published on the company’s website. competitors and sometimes described by Europeans as a Klarna clone. But first, let’s go back to the beginning.

investing 82

investing investment media mix-use 82

Angel Capital Association

JULY 13, 2020

This physical presence adds tremendous value in terms of knowledge of the local entrepreneurs, technical experts, strategic partners, local support systems etc. CEVG and E8 have collaborative cultures and are of course open to collaboration and syndication with groups located in other regions.

energy 40

energy innovation ventures collaboration 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. Folksonomy.

VC 274

VC venture capital pitching capital 274