Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

If you read this blog often you'll know that I'm a huge fan of First Round Capital. One example is that they introduced a program where their founders can pool together shares from their company and exchange them for a small portfolio of other First Round Capital companies. In 2008 they raised a much larger fund $132.5

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

I am thrilled to announce that we have added Hamet Watt as a Partner at Upfront Ventures. This is a big news day at Upfront Ventures. He first came to see me in 2008 when we was raising money for his 1st startup – NextMedium. He will be a venture partner. I’ve known Hamet for 5 years. I stayed close.

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Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

Paul Martino, General Partner at Bullpen Capital. 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?

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

We had a special edition of This Week in Venture Capital this week shooting out of the Next New Networks offices in New York. Our guest was Mo Koyfman of Spark Capital. The Spark Capital website (it’s one of my favorites). Founded in 2008 by Mehdi Maghsoodnia. Total raised: $16.0mm. . - TechCrunch article.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 30, 2015

Sam Altman of YC recently pointed out that pulling back during the downturn in 2008 would result in several big misses: In October of 2008, Sequoia Capital—arguably the best-ever in the business—gave the famous “RIP Good Times” presentation (I was there). A few months later, we funded Airbnb.

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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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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2010

I had an hour to interview Mike Hirshland of Polaris Ventures. 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. And Mike believes that entrepreneurs often need less capital to get started these days.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2016

At the Upfront Summit in early February, we had a chance to have many off-the-record conversations with Limited Partners (LPs) who fund Venture Capital (VC) funds about their views of the market. In fact, if you add the capital flows of the past ten years, there have been just shy of $50 billion in net cash outlays.

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venture capital capital ventures VC 205

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

There has been much discussion in the past few years of the changing structure of the venture capital industry. The rise of alternative sources of capital (crowd funding and the like). But it still takes VC to scale a business (thus large capital into industry winners like Uber, Airbnb, SnapChat, etc). Where are we today?

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Tomasz Tunguz

AUGUST 6, 2023

What will a venture capital turnaround feel like? In 2008, I had just become a venture capitalist. With 15 years’ perspective, I plotted the QQQ (Nasdaq) value against venture Investing activity & venture Exits activity (all log normalized). Will it be gradual or sudden? for QQQ/Exits.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Current round: $20.0mm Series-B led by Andreesen Horowitz, with USV and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Company plans to use the capital to build out sales and marketing and r&d. -a led by Altos Ventures and Maverick Capital, with Larry Braitman. Incubated by Clearstone Ventures in 2008. See: TechCrunch.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 1, 2011

Back at the end of 2008, when the economy was in the tank, and funding was tough to come by, NYC Seed, a small local fund with some government and local academic backing supported my startup, Path 101. Investments in innovation can often have unforeseen positive ripple effects.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 14, 2015

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. What is your revenue growth rate and what does this imply about your number of months of capital remaining? ” It goes like this: What is your net burn rate? ” Listen.

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This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 21, 2011

But I am also someone who is very colored by my past experience of seeing the venture implosion after the first bubble and walking through the fundraising tumbleweed of late 2008. I'm all for people putting $25k to work to try something out--and if it works, having the momentum to raise more capital.

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communities innovation incubation angel investing 308

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 6, 2013

Tech entrepreneur mayor presides over NYC tech during an explosion in company creation, job growth and venture funding. In fact, much of the groundwork of the NYC tech community''s growth came before the late 2008 economic crash--when the city started paying attention to the tech community as the economic savior poster child.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

So as of 2008 total LP commitments were still at nearly $250 billion. Our current fund was raised in 2008/09.] Some funds like Battery Ventures have bucked the trend by raising $750 million. After all, most people don’t understand that “venture capital is a get rich slowly&# scheme. Others will, too.

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TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 10, 2020

Andy Areitio is a partner at the early-stage fund TheVentureCity , a new venture and acceleration model that helps diverse founders achieve global impact. When you’re running your own venture — especially if it’s your first — it’s unlikely you will find the time to deep dive into how venture capital firms work.

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 11, 2014

Rob messed around with some local video thing in 2008, which everyone but Rob thought was a pretty terrible idea. " — Charlie O'Donnell (@ceonyc) December 29, 2008. 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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board venture capital creativity entrepreneurship 262

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I guess that makes USV, Spark Capital, Foundry Group, Accel, Benchmark, Revolution (along with several others) pretty happy right now. source: Capital IQ. In any given year there are about 50 venture-backed companies or so that are bought for $100 million or more. source: Capital IQ. And well they should be.

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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. How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? What happened? It’s just a market.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

I become a venture capitalist in September 2007 – exactly 6.5 I spent my first year developing proprietary deal flow and learning the business and then the Sept 2008 / Lehman Bros collapse / financial meltdown happened. As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JULY 27, 2021

The two most used measures of a venture fund’s performance are the “cash on cash” return and the “internal rate of return” (IRR). Our 2008 vintage early-stage fund has generated about 5x cash on cash but only generated a 22.5% Venture capital funds do not take down the entire capital commitment upfront.

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opportunity venture capital strategy investing 279

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

And so it happened that between 2000-2008 I was the biggest buzz kill at dinner parties. They have marked-up paper gains propped up by an over excited venture capital market that has validated their investments. For venture capitalists this isn’t troubling. It is slowly becoming Florida Condos. Same with VCs.

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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. Founded in August 2008 in Palo Alto, CA, by Sam Christiansen and Keith Lee. When the show has been processed it will be available here (estimated 8pm PDT). Total raised: $29.5mm.

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Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 2, 2022

When I asked him what he meant, he replied because capital was so plentiful and accessible today, he hired more expensive people, spent more time developing a product, and invested with a longer time horizon before demonstrating evidence of success. Capital availability on the x-axis and evidence on the y-axis to illustrate his point.

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capital real estate enablement development 143

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

My thesis on why this is happening is that large tech companies didn’t invest enough in R&D between 2008-2010 (Google even went through layoffs!!!) First Round Capital & True Ventures seem to spend as much time cultivated relationships with “second round capital” as they do entrepreneurs.

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angel investing investment investing VC 284

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

This was really a fun week at TWiVC because we decided to have an entrepreneur come and talk about raising capital rather than having a VC come on. Raised angel money from Rob Lord, Reid Hoffman, Benchmark Capital and others. Recently raised $7 million from Atlas Ventures out of Boston. Brought in new CEO, Russ Reeder in 2008.

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VC founder advice ventures 214

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 1, 2024

As we enter 2024, the capital markets have found their footing and are moving higher. That is good news for the innovation economy because healthy capital markets are a necessary support system. However, optimistic capital markets are necessary but not sufficient for a healthy innovation economy.

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energy venture capital innovation capital 236

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

I am excited to share the news of First Round Capital 's recent investment in cloud-to-cloud backup service Backupify. Back in late 2008, I noticed that one of my Flickr contacts seemed to be short a few photos--like, a few thousand of them. Tags: First Round Capital Venture Capital & Technology. I freaked out.

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investing investment communities board 286

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

It quickly became impossible to raise venture capital. History repeated itself in September 2008 with that market crash. It isn’t even a story about raising venture capital or M&A. This is part of my ongoing series with Startup Advice (although this also applies tightly with Raising Venture Capital ).

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

In my previous post, The VC Ice Age is Thawing (for now) I wrote about the reasons why the VC market came to a screeching halt in September 2008 and remained largely shut until at least April 2009. With First Round Capital, Sequoia and Founders Fund obviously a lot of respected investors think highly of its potential.

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This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 8, 2014

Even the old Pfizer headquarters, active as recently as 2008, is now home to the production of everything from microchips to pickles. Politics Venture Capital & Technology' Refactory is trying to create an end to end process from design to manufacturing for hardware on Sackett Street.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

Next Wednesday we’ll have Dana Settle of Greycroft Partners, a New York / LA early-stage venture capital fund. 6mm in Series A: Investors: Union Square Ventures (Brad Burnham) (lead), Ron Conway, Chris Dixon, Caterina Fake, Naval Ravikant, Nirav Tolia, Joshua Schachter, Micah Siegel, Bob Pasker – Read more: VentureBeat.

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Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 4, 2020

We reviewed the data in May and compared it to the effects of the financial crisis in 2008 on startup fundraising. As a reminder, 2008 saw a 40% reduction in venture dollars invested in startups. These corrections match 2008. We venture capitalists have raised record amounts of capital in the last 2-3 years.

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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). Paul discussed his perspective having been at SAP Ventures.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2010

Had a great chat with Jim Armstrong who is a General Partner at Clearstone Venture Partners today on TWiVC. Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners (Jeremy Liew)(lead), with existing investors: U.S. Venture Partners, Grotech Ventures, Revolution LLC (Steve Case). Investors: Google Ventures. AppDynamics.

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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. We need venture debt, factoring companies and public markets. Dave McClure argued passionately that since the overwhelming majority of exits are sub $100 million we need to readjust how much capital goes in.

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