A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MAY 5, 2021

There has been this narrative about investing in VC funds that you have to get into the top quartile (25%) or possibly the top decile (10%) in order to generate good returns. Manager selection remains an important part of VC investing because the lower half of VC funds do not outperform the stock market.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

I become a venture capitalist in September 2007 – exactly 6.5 As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. At the time I pointed out: “If I had realized exits almost certainly it would be because I invested in a company that failed. years ago.

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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. But any entrepreneurs raising capital should keep in mind that this opening of the markets could possibly be temporary. Why did the VC markets freeze so quickly?

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2015

At the time almost nobody had heard of the following funds: FirstRound Capital, TrueVentures, Floodgate and SoftTech. By fund II (2007) he was able to raise $15 million (if you watch the video you’ll hear an interesting story of how he did this) and he had a proper fund. I think they were all brand new or just forming.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

They take fewer bets, they don’t mind being counter-conventional and investing in things that make others scratch their heads. I know that I had things easier as a new VC because I came into the business in 2007 when the market was frenzied like today but an order-of-magnitude less so and the world wasn’t living in public.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

I’d rather be Roger Ehrenberg with a thesis around data-centric companies and base my investment decisions on my background. 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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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I know that most people who are close to them tend to deny their existence, as we saw in the great housing bubble of 2002-2007 and the dot com bubble of 1997-2000. I guess that makes USV, Spark Capital, Foundry Group, Accel, Benchmark, Revolution (along with several others) pretty happy right now. source: Capital IQ.

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Onevest

APRIL 30, 2015

But the data shows a rapidly growing trend in accredited investors investing together. Trending Investment Strategies Global investor surveys have shown that since the crises of the early 2000s more affluent and sophisticated investors are choosing to invest in partnership with each other. That means safety in investing.

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 2, 2014

What might be a more relevant date is May 22nd, 2007. My godfather got me IBM stock right after that, so that''s how I knew that a stock market and investing existed. Venture Capital & Technology' Three years ago today, I grabbed the domain name BrooklynBridgeVentures.com. So when did I really start Brooklyn Bridge Ventures?

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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 didn''t actually get to meet him in person until SXSW in 2007. Venture Capital & Technology' That was the year Twitter took off.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

There are real changes in the venture capital industry and it would have been fun to talk about them. The VC industry has different segments in it that have different fund sizes, different investment amounts and different risk / return expectations. If you invest it in startups you’re a VC professional money manager.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

If you invested in the first angel round of a startup company it is usually very hard to sell your stock – usually for many years if ever at all. The earlier you invest the higher the chances the company won’t work out and thus you pay a lower price than later-stage investors. Private markets for stocks are the opposite.

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Gust

DECEMBER 13, 2011

Here are the trends in venture capital financings from 2006 through 2010 – the number of seed stage deals funded and total investment by region in millions of dollars. . VCs in NYC invested, on average, only $2.4 US Angel Investment – All Regions. Investment. All Seed-VC. Silicon Valley. New England.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Our guest this week on #TWiVC was Dana Settle , partner at Greycroft Partners , a venture capital firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles. Current rount: $8.14mm in Series A from Redpoint (lead), Foundry Group, with previous investors, First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital (Chris Sacca), Ravi Narasimham. Founded in 2007.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2010

Since then Mike his built his career by investing in early-stage companies (seed or series A), which is remarkable given that Polaris Ventures is a $1 billion fund. Simple: according to Mike Polaris has followed on nearly every seed investment that they’ve done. Founded 2007 in Boulder, CO. Competitors: Google.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2013

But less as a complaint and more as advice to younger networkers, the more you invest in relationships the more you will get when you need. Early in his days when he was raising capital for DocStoc he came to see me a lot. When I joined GRP Partners in 2007 I was offered a role as a General Partner. I wrote about there here.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2010

This is part of my series on Understanding Venture Capital. VC’s don’t invest 100% of their own money. They raise money from institutions who want to have some allocation of their investment dollars in a category known as “alternatives,&# which is supposed to mean higher risk, higher returns.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

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). DST invested $180mm last fall. To see the video of This Week in VC click on this link.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 26, 2016

I recently sat down with Troy Carter to talk about what he does and why he believes it is applicable to venture capital. Troy represents what I believe the best magic of Los Angeles is – the merging together of creative talent with technical talent and he brings the lessons learned from these two fields into investments nationally.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

My original thinking from Oct ’09 was, while I didn’t (and still don’t) have a crystal ball I worried that: consumers were over-stretched with debt (and make up 77% of the economy), unemployment would continue to rise, which in turn would drive the stock market south and cut the rate of M&A activity and VC investment even further.

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Innovation 2 Enterprise

APRIL 1, 2020

(iMCI), recently led an $11.535 million go-to-market investment in Oklahoma City-based Linear Health Sciences. The investment comes on the heels of continued successes for the Orchid SRV, the company’s flagship medical device designed to reduce accidental IV catheter dislodgement in a novel way. Since 2007, iMCI and i2E, Inc.

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TechCrunch

AUGUST 17, 2022

Multi-asset social investment network and Robinhood competitor eToro has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Gatsby — a fintech startup which also aimed to go head to head against Robinhood — for $50 million in a cash and common stock deal. The acquisition marks eToro’s fourth major one since its 2007 inception.

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This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 12, 2011

More importantly, I know them both for a while--Hilary since August of 2007 through twitter and, of course, getting to work with her at Path 101, and Kara since I used to e-mail her about her Boomtown columns in the WSJ over ten years ago. Venture capital isn't a game or club any more than any other industry is.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

When I first got into the industry it was 2007. By 2008 I had gotten more serious about championing companies through our investment process. And just when I thought I had the deal that was worthy of bringing to investment committee the world changed. Let’s review all of our existing investments. Cut where needed.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

I became a VC 12 years ago in 2007 when the pace of deals was much slower. Just as I was getting the swing of things the world shifted beneath my feet and the stock market went into a free fall and venture capital all but shut down for nearly a year. We not only have our Series A funds that can write $500k?—?$15

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JUNE 28, 2018

Until recently it was headquartered 2 blocks from our offices in Santa Monica so we literally saw it emerge under our feet and we proudly invested in the last 3 rounds of financing. Today the company officially announced its most recent round of capital ?—?having having raised $300 million?—?less There is nothing viral! Not really.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

Facebook had grown stratospherically from 2004-2007 to 100 million users and was everything that MySpace wasn’t. Close shop to try and control monetization and you can only rely on your own internal innovation machine & capital. In May 2007 there were fears that Google was becoming a monopoly.

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AsiaTechDaily

OCTOBER 20, 2023

Register Venture investment is a high-stakes game that demands vision, persistence, and adaptability. Although venture capital is often viewed as a maze, there are those who have paved the way, making the journey smoother for others. Bookmark ( 0 ) Please login to bookmark Username or Email Address Password Remember Me No account yet?

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

Most prefer not to say this publicly for two reasons: 1) they have an entire portfolio of startups, many of whom are raising capital and 2) they prefer not to be attacked publicly or seem “anti entrepreneur.” We write about $40 million of first-checks into new deals / year and about $40 million of follow-on investments.

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OurCrowd

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

The week’s top investment deals from OurCrowd. Green light for cleantech investment. Green light for cleantech investment. Annual investment in cleantech increased tenfold from about $400 million a year to peak at $4.3 I believe we have now reached the inflection point that Doerr foresaw in 2007. Introductions.

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Gust

OCTOBER 8, 2014

There weren’t a lot of seed funds in 2007 so this was often done by angels, funding consortia or sometimes early-stage funds that existed then (First Round Capital, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, etc.). 5 million was always the classic definition of an A-round between the late nineties (crazy financings aside) and say 2007.

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Founders Coop

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

. ——— In the Beginning: Champions of the Local Startup Ecosystem Techstars launched its first program in Boulder in 2007. From the beginning, we were deeply committed to Techstars’ “give first” ethos and mentorship-driven approach to startup investing. Bottom line, Techstars needed cash.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 21, 2009

On the third Wednesday of every month I co-chair a meeting called the SoCal VCA (venture capital alliance), which represents participants from all of the top venture capital firms in Southern California as well as prominent members of the Tech Coast Angels (TCA). We feature a prominent speaker at every event.

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TechCrunch

JULY 13, 2022

Kontent, a platform designed to help companies manage business-related content in the cloud, today announced that it raised $40 million from Expedition Growth Capital as part of a growth capital infusion. Kontent competes against Contentful , Contentstack , Strapi and Storyblok in a headless CMS software market that could be worth $1.6

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Travel booking startup Hopper today announced that it closed a $96 million follow-on investment from Capital One, bringing the company’s total raised to $740 million. Travel app Hopper raises $96M from Capital One to double down on social commerce by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

It had grown stratospherically from 2004-2007 to 100 million users, which actually was slightly smaller in December 2007 then MySpace was. Close shop to try and control monetization and you can only rely on your own internal innovation machine & capital. In May 2007 there were fears that Google was becoming a monopoly.

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TechCrunch

OCTOBER 22, 2020

But in recent years, corporate docs are being drawn up in English to facilitate communication both inside Switzerland’s various language regions and foreign capital, and investment documentation is modeled after the U.S. A CHF 1-2 million Series A or a CHF 5 million Series B investment is common.

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