A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

I saw Dan Primack assert that the venture capitalist’s customer is their limited partners in this tweet about the Citizen app, the recap, and their VCs: Regular reminder that, ultimately, VC funds works for their limited partners, not for their portfolio companies. The entrepreneur is the customer and the LP is the shareholder.

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

I'm so excited to hear that Indeed.com, a company that Union Square Ventures invested in while I worked there, just exited for a reported billion dollars. 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. Indeed did one thing. That was it.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

In the early 80’s he left academia to work on venture capital investing with Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies. Josh and Howard began co-investing as angels and in 2005 they started a $10 million fund. The Exchange Fund – This allows the entrepreneurs to diversify their founders stock into other portfolio companies stock.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

JUNE 22, 2021

What can be more exciting to entrepreneurs than a brand-new venture? Imagine his excitement when he heard about the Canada Bridge Chapter: A chance to reconnect with fellow entrepreneurs and an opportunity to be in Forum, which he missed so much. He had to step away from his Forum and his chapter, becoming a “Member at Large.”

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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. It changed the way we worked with entrepreneurs. 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.

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 11, 2014

I don''t remember when I started talking to Rob, but I know it was before February of 2005, because I found "rob@businesspundit.com" in the contacts I ported over when I left GM and went to USV. Fundraising for the Series A looked like it was going to be difficult--and that''s when Rich Levendov from Avalon Ventures stepped in.

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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. We’re staring to get the hang of how to divide the show up into talking about deals but also talking about issues for entrepreneurs during funding.

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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?

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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.&#. Passionate Entrepreneurs & Ambassadors. You need to have passionate tech entrepreneurs who want to build businesses locally.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

This was an audience of mostly first-time entrepreneurs. It is great for entrepreneurs and great for VCs. So here is what I have been telling entrepreneurs privately for the past 6 months. In any given year there are about 50 venture-backed companies or so that are bought for $100 million or more. I believe that.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

In 2004 / 2005 I was starting to get intrigued with user-generated content. Yeah, that was when I changed for me…” “…there was so much positive feedback on demystifying this one element of venture capital. This time frame – 2005/2006 – web 2.0 RSS was something that had appeared.” “….I was starting.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 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). I should say that I agree that naive optimism in entrepreneurs can produce higher beta (upside or flops) and that’s good from an investment standpoint if you’re looking for big returns.

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 9, 2021

financing back in 2005, “climate change” was some future event. That’s where government, national labs, universities, angel investors and venture capital come in. We already have several multibillion-dollar tech and biotech venture and growth funds; now is time for several multibillion-dollar climate tech funds globally.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

by Michael Woolf that is worth any startup founder reading to get a sense of perspective on the reality warp that is startup world during a frothy market such as 1997-1999, 2005-2007 or 2012-2014. Understand how venture debt might shorten your projections. * If you have raised venture debt you might have even less time.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

Venture Capitalists typically have partners’ meetings on Mondays. I thought about things I never had to as an entrepreneur: check size, ownership percentage, deal stage, portfolio construction and risk. Companies raised too much money in 2005-08 and had high burn rates. I have a young entrepreneur friend who IMs me a lot.

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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). Roger Ehrenberg of IA Ventures talks about this in a recent post : “One of the biggest issues I have as a small venture fund is how to reserve for follow-on investments.

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TechCrunch

MARCH 9, 2022

Austin’s venture capital scene has been hot for years now, but a pair of local investment firms just closed on new funds aimed at injecting more capital into startups in Austin and elsewhere. It was a great place to live and work, and I believed that over time, it would be a growing venture opportunity.”.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 24, 2012

This was 2005 when I had no exits under my belt, no blogs … nobody was looking. For starters, David had once been an entrepreneur himself so it seemed like such a natural fit. Nearly everybody in the DC region had told me, “You must meet Mike. He knows every startup & VC in town.” He was a mensch.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

This is part of my series on Understanding Venture Capital. I’m writing this post to explain to entrepreneurs what you should be thinking about in terms of the VC’s you approach and the size and stage of their funds. You can ask around to startup lawyers and other entrepreneurs who know these things.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

If you have or are thinking about a business in the video space you’ll enjoy hearing from Gregg but even more broadly this is a great conversation for entrepreneurs, investors or industry analysts. In 2005 they realized that this business was going to evaporate over night with the introduction of YouTube. Here’s the link.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MAY 19, 2016

’s annual GrowCo conference on Wednesday, the entrepreneur, investor, and Internet advocate divulged the most valuable lessons he’s learned since he launched the hugely popular website in 2005. On Wednesday, in remarks before 700 entrepreneurs attending Inc.’s In remarks at Inc.’s Read them, he advised.

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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.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

This post highlights some of the reasons why the market is moving again and what entrepreneurs should do about this. So what is driving the new energy in the remaining venture capital firms when we kept hearing how much the whole industry was “against the ropes?&# … 1. style euphoria that swept the Valley beginning in 2005.

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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. My LA VC colleague Peter Lee of Baroda Ventures has started a blog about VC. Thank you, Twitter.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

He grew up in Connecticut attended Yale undergrad and worked for IBM after graduation doing M&A, strategy and venture capital. He knew he was an entrepreneur because he couldn’t stop thinking about ideas. You are also less likely to be an entrepreneur when your personal obligations, like family and mortgage pile up.

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Venture Hacks

APRIL 17, 2019

You can’t build a portfolio of pre-traction companies at $8-10M pre-money and expect to make a venture return. Valuations for pre-traction companies between 2005-2010 were $1-5M pre-money for the first non-friends-and-family round. Without these large exits, your portfolio will not achieve a venture return. Otherwise, pass.

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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.

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SaaS VC strategy entrepreneurs 315

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. Part of the deal was bringing in a new CEO, Richard Rosenblatt.

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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. But access to those venture capital firms was limited. In the venture creation model, the VC firm creates the company.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

In our industry we applaud the efforts for entrepreneurs to have tried and we know that today’s failure can bring the experience for tomorrow’s success. Marketing with long payback is precisely what requires venture capital. But that’s harder to build in 2016 than it was in say 2005.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 5, 2021

Kaszek Ventures, QED Investors and Greenoaks Capital also participated in the financing, which brings the startup’s total raised to $36.7 This isn’t the first venture for Cora co-founders Igor Senra and Leo Mendes. The paid had worked together before — founding their first online payments company, MOIP, in 2005.

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TechCrunch

JANUARY 6, 2021

Revenue-based investing ( RBI), also known as revenue-based financing, or revenue-share investing, 1 is a natural next step for the private equity and early-stage venture investment industry. Thomas Rush is founder of Bootstrapp and Head of Investment Platform at ConsenSys Mesh. Image Credits: Bootstrapp (opens in a new window).

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finance financing investing investment 121

AsiaTechDaily

AUGUST 14, 2023

” Formerly known as Cityneon, the company plans on an initial public offering in Singapore in 2005, raising approximately S$5.3

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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. When I first started as a startup CEO in 1999 there were no guides on raising venture capital. – entrepreneurs never seem to focus on anything other than ownership percentage. This article originally ran on TechCrunch.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 6, 2022

She also covers consumer packaged goods startups, and medical tech and biotechnology ventures. In Austin’s tech world, there’s an entrepreneur everyone knows by one name: Whurley. “Whurley” is the Unix username for serial tech entrepreneur Will Hurley, and it’s his brand. She launched Silicon Hills News in 2011.

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TechCrunch

APRIL 5, 2022

A single platform isn’t likely to solve all the data problems hamstringing the enterprise, but entrepreneur Brett Hurt believes his latest venture — Data.World — can affect at least some change. In 2005, he helped to launch the startup Bazaarvoice, which provides data about retail customers’ shopping habits. .

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TechCrunch

DECEMBER 8, 2020

Siemiatkowski also shares what’s next for the company as it ventures further into the world of retail banking after gaining a bank license in 2017. We also learn how, under his watch and as the company began to scale, Klarna missed the next big opportunity in fintech, instead being usurped by Adyen and Stripe.

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