Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

This is something I think entrepreneurs don’t totally understand and it’s worthwhile they do. No VC will be so naive as not to see straight through it. When I first became a VC, seed rounds were typically $500k – $1.5 If you''re newer to VC math here''s a great primer]. Nobody cares. Why the latter?

VC 399

VC advice financing finance 399

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). Are “strategic investors&# (e.g.

VC 225

VC social gaming venture capital networking 225

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2016

I joined Upfront Ventures in 2007 and took over as co-Managing Partner in 2011 along with the founder, Yves Sisteron. From 2007-2012 I scoured LA constantly. Greg truly is a prolific deal maker and is amongst the most helpful people to entrepreneurs in our ecosystem. He’s pushed us to be out in the community more.

disruption 226

disruption VC communities ventures 226

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2014

I often talk about what I’m looking for when I meet with an entrepreneur. Above all else I’m looking for a genuine passion for what the entrepreneur is doing. You can sense when it is a “mission” for this entrepreneur to succeed and she will continue the journey even if success isn’t easy or immediate.

peer-to-peer 373

peer-to-peer VC pitching entrepreneurs 373

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

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. SEEING THINGS FROM THE VC SIDE OF THE TABLE While I was a VC in 2007 & 2008 those were dead years because the market again evaporated due the the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).

VC 466

VC culture sustainability capital 466

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 28, 2013

The biggest question I think VC''s face right now is whether or not, in the future, the best founders will look and act like the best founders of the past. If you are a venture capital investor and you''re not preparing yourself to succeed in a more diverse ecosystem of entrepreneurs, you''re just going to get left behind.

venture capital 410

venture capital VC ventures capital 410

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

And that was evident on today’s Angel vs. VC panel. The VC industry is segmenting – I have spoken about this many times before. The VC industry has different segments in it that have different fund sizes, different investment amounts and different risk / return expectations. Answer: Not much. It’s a shame.

disruption 308

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.&#. 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.

founder 329

founder VC advice pitching 329

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. As I was trying to figure out the role I wanted to play in the VC world I decided I wanted to focus on businesses that were building deeply technical products to solve problems for business users. VCs have different views and strategies on this.

VC 223

VC venture capital capital investing 223

Gust

DECEMBER 13, 2011

I’ve recently taken a look at seed stage funding by venture capitalists (VCs) and angel investors over the past five years. For VCs, I chose to look at all seed stage VC deals (from MoneyTree©) as well as those in five of the most active regions in the country. All Seed-VC. VCs in NYC invested, on average, only $2.4

entrepreneurs 162

entrepreneurs angel investing VC venture capital 162

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. It’s a non-fiction story of many of the players at the heart of the financial crisis that became exposed in 2007/08.

angel investing 306

angel investing investing investment VC 306

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

VC funding. We love capital efficiency until we love land grabs until we abhor over funding until we get huge payouts and ring the bell for more funding until we attract every non-VC on the planet to invest in startups until it crashes and we start the cycle all over again none the wiser. The industry did that in 2007.

ventures 419

ventures VC capital SaaS 419

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.

VC 374

VC peer-to-peer entrepreneurs investing 374

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.

entrepreneurs 308

entrepreneurs advice real estate venture capital 308

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2015

I rarely talk to any startup entrepreneur or VC who doesn’t feel it and somehow long for simpler times despite the benefits we all enjoy from increased enthusiasm for our sector. For entrepreneurs there’s too much money sloshing around. We are experiencing a frenetic time. My general advice is to do less.

advice 398

advice VC entrepreneurs transportation 398

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2013

One of the most common questions I hear from first-time entrepreneurs is, “How do I meet angels?” It’s why I talk about building VC relationships early – Lines, Not Dots. Fill your VC good will, build relationships, be helpful to them not just asking for things. “I’ve never been a VC before.

advice 407

advice VC networking entrepreneurs 407

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2010

For entrepreneurs who want to learn about how to work with investment banks, how to position yourself to be acquired and what the IPO markets look like this is the episode to watch. They have relationships that are hard for entrepreneurs to build. Founded in 2007 by Oxford Univ. TechCrunch. GroupSpaces. students. -Is

VC 242

VC venture capital ventures capital 242

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 14, 2010

It’s meant to be a bit provocative but the reality is that I give this advice to entrepreneurs all the the time and I usually leave the “e&# off of the end. I normally offer this advice in the capacity of really wanting to help entrepreneurs so please bear with me. Not so VC. The list goes on.

venture capital 289

venture capital capital ventures advice 289

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

I become a venture capitalist in September 2007 – exactly 6.5 “I think the best VCs help drive exits alongside their entrepreneurs. I have done 6 VC investments – all within the past 20 months. Any VC 3 years in saying otherwise would either be exaggerating, lucky or an extreme outlier.”

VC 387

VC venture capital financing finance 387

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 3, 2009

When Twitter first became popular with niche crowds in 2007 it seemed to take hold initially with bloggers. 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.

VC 219

VC creativity networking media 219

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. The reason is that no VC wants to see the venture debt provider get burned if you become bankrupt.

startup 383

startup VC frameworks capital 383

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.&#.

entrepreneurs 176

entrepreneurs startup VC real estate 176

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2016

In 2007 I started using Twitter and most of my friends & colleagues wondered why people would care what I ate for lunch. In 2008 I started VC blogging. I had blogged when I was an entrepreneur. In 2006 I started using Facebook and most of my friends & colleagues thought I was strange.

networking 230

networking advice VC finance 230

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. That was the year Twitter took off.

board 274

board venture capital entrepreneurship creativity 274

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!”

startup 285

startup VC entrepreneurs investing 285

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 financing finance 309

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. Does that make it a viable strategy for every new entrepreneur? Are there examples of that?

data analysis 298

data analysis venture capital communities entrepreneurs 298

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

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. Yet nearly any entrepreneur who has an idea that other people aren’t doing will tell you that it’s hard to get investors excited.

angel investing 299

angel investing investing investment real estate 299

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. 2007, 2011) and for the hottest of companies and in bad markets for fund raising (2003, 2008) prices test the bottom end of the range. I’m a VC so I have an obvious bias.

startup 336

startup advice pitching investing 336

Gust

OCTOBER 8, 2014

Cautionary note: No competent VC is actually fooled when you show up after raising $6M in seed financing and say you’re now raising an A! This is something I think entrepreneurs don’t totally understand and it’s worthwhile they do. No VC will be so naive as not to see straight through it. Nobody cares. Why the latter?

VC 136

VC advice financing finance 136

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

StartupNation

JULY 28, 2021

It would be reasonable to assume that VC funding would drop in 2020, especially during the uncertainty of the pandemic. Only about 12% of decision makers at VC firms are women, and of all the partners at these firms, only 2.4% Alternatives to VC funding for female founders. at its all-time high. . However, U.S.

VC 111

VC founder venture capital leadership 111

Revolution

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

According to PitchBook , VC investments were down 30% in Q2 2022 compared with 2021, and IPOs hit a 50-year low. When deal-making slows, VC dollars typically favor the perceived market leader, starving other venture-backed businesses in the same space of capital. The last category is most actionable.

startup 130

startup board VC venture capital 130

TechCrunch

DECEMBER 2, 2020

Nash said on Twitter that the two met at LinkedIn, where Nash was himself VP of product management for four years beginning in 2007. After moving on to a bubble-era company that no longer exists, Nash tried his hand at VC for the first time, joining Atlas Venture as an associate. Nash is also riding a very big wave.

startup 104

startup VC education pitching 104

TechCrunch

OCTOBER 22, 2020

European entrepreneurs who want to launch startups could do worse than Switzerland. Venture Kick was launched in 2007 with the vision to double the number of spin-offs from Swiss universities and draws from a jury of more than 150 leading startup experts in Switzerland. Olaf Hannemann, partner, CV VC AG.

startup 144

startup ecology education ventures 144

Founders Coop

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

This post is an attempt to unpack the changes we observed both during and after our time with Techstars, to draw out potentially useful lessons about how things might have gone differently. ——— In the Beginning: Champions of the Local Startup Ecosystem Techstars launched its first program in Boulder in 2007.

startup ecosystem 189

startup ecosystem accelerator communities support 189

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

This is part of my series on what makes an entrepreneur successful. I originally posted it on VentureHacks , one of my favorite websites for entrepreneurs. I started the series talking about what I consider the most important attribute of an entrepreneur : Tenacity. Entrepreneurs are inherently risk takers.

entrepreneurs 293

entrepreneurs VC advice consulting 293