Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

I’d rather be Roger Ehrenberg with a thesis around data-centric companies and base my investment decisions on the skills I’ve developed in my career. To some extent Keith Rabois agreed with me about domain knowledge and argued that most of his investments are in the consumer Internet space as a result. Always have been.

angel investing 284

angel investing investment investing VC 284

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

Rustic Canyon is an LA-based, but geography-agnostic VC that is currently investing from a $200 million fund. They were originally founded inside of Times Mirror and had a huge string of major investment success before spinning out as a fully independent fund. The investment will be used for product development initiatives.

venture capital 270

venture capital capital ventures VC 270

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. So, too, investments. Neither do I.

finance 344

finance financing ventures real estate 344

Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

Martino founded Bullpen in 2010 with a focus on post-seed, pre-Series A startups, and he led the fund’s investments in companies like FanDuel, Namely, Ipsy, SpotHero, Classy, and Airmap. This geographic distinction is now less about actual geography and more about mentality and style of investing of these types of firms.

ventures 334

ventures startup capital board 334

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. Josh Kopelman will be working closely on this investment as well. Joining our investment in the $900k round were General Catalyst, Betaworks, Jason Calacanis, and Chris Sacca. I freaked out.

investment 286

investment investing communities board 286

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). These sound fundamentals drive the venture capital market over the long term.

startup 419

startup venture capital disruption sustainability 419

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. He says they are just as selective on seed investments as they are in later stage deals.

VC 230

VC ventures venture capital capital 230

Dream It

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

Via TechCrunch by Arman Tabatabai: Venture capital has been flooding the various subverticals under the robotics umbrella in recent years, and the construction space is one of the largest beneficiaries. Matt Murphy and Grace Ge, Menlo Ventures Which trends are you most excited about in construction robotics from an investing perspective?

construction 259

construction investment investing opportunity 259

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 14, 2010

I know that the tone of the title and post will seem a bit aggressive for a post from a venture capitalist on fund raising. If you want to raise venture capital more easily the advice could be quite practical and counter-intuitive. Find out whether they plan to pass on the investment internally. Clean up your own shite.

venture capital 289

venture capital capital ventures advice 289

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2010

Imagine the positions of Sequoia (Google, Zynga, YouTube), Kleiner Perkins (Google), Accel (Facebook), Union Square Ventures (Zynga, Twitter) and so on. I’m obviously only naming a small fraction of their investments since I don’t feel inclined to research them all and many other great venture firms have this kind of access.

angel investing 280

angel investing investment investing VC 280

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've heard that most new angels make 70% of their lifetime investments within the first year of starting to invest--i.e.

communities 308

communities innovation incubation angel investing 308

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. Limited Partners or LPs (the people who invest into VC funds) have taken notice as 2014 is by all accounts the busiest year for LPs since the Great Recession began. On the surface the narratives have been. Why is this?

VC 398

VC venture capital peer-to-peer ventures 398

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

The VC industry grew dramatically as a result of the Internet bubble - Before the Internet bubble the people who invested in VC funds (called LPs or Limited Partners) put about $50 billion into the industry and by 2001 this had grown precipitously to around $250 billion. So as of 2008 total LP commitments were still at nearly $250 billion.

VC 311

VC startup real estate finance 311

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.

education 303

education venture capital communities ventures 303

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 1, 2011

Investments in innovation can often have unforeseen positive ripple effects. 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.

pitching 267

pitching support financing finance 267

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.

VC 387

VC venture capital financing finance 387

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. Rob messed around with some local video thing in 2008, which everyone but Rob thought was a pretty terrible idea.

board 262

board venture capital creativity entrepreneurship 262

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

million pre-money valuation is now raising $1 million at a $12 million valuation the next investor has nowhere to go but up (or sit out the investment). Just because the valuation in absolute terms isn’t a big difference does not mean that people aren’t paying higher than intrinsic value for these investments.

real estate 309

real estate entrepreneurs financing finance 309

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.

opportunity 279

opportunity venture capital strategy investing 279

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). for QQQ/Investing & 0.93 for QQQ/Exits.

venture capital 92

venture capital ventures capital support 92

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. led by Altos Ventures and Maverick Capital, with Larry Braitman. Founded in 2008 in Santa Monica by Ron Goldman (former CRO of shopping.com) and Rahul Sonnad. Incubated by Clearstone Ventures in 2008. Kontagent. -A

VC 248

VC incubation ventures capital 248

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.

angel investing 152

angel investing investment investing VC 152

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 11, 2020

The most recent event to use as an analogy is the 2008 financial crisis. In 2008, I had just joined the venture industry, and then Lehman fell. In 2006, VCs invested about $3.5B That grew to about $5B per quarter in 2007 and early 2008. Then the investing velocity fell by half to $2.9B, $2.7B, and $2.3B

ventures 143

ventures VC investing investment 143

Entrepreneurs' Organization

JULY 6, 2020

Like the downturns in 2008 and 2001, this has been a very trying time for entrepreneurs running startups. Many entrepreneurs are reliant on outside funding, whether angel investors, venture capitalists or strategic investors , to keep the venture going. A startup is not a lone adventure. Join a CEO peer group.

peer-to-peer 321

peer-to-peer startup advice entrepreneurs 321

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. However, they have been sending VCs far more investment checks in the last ten years than they’ve gotten back as distributions.

venture capital 205

venture capital capital ventures VC 205

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

I can't take credit for this meme, even though I've already invested in it.twice. The seminal application of the collaborative web--Github--was launched in April 2008. Once with Docracy, once with a super cool company launching in the first quarter of 2013.). It's a web where 1+1 really does equal more than 2.

collaboration 351

collaboration media SaaS VC 351

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. Spark Capital is relatively new to VC (founded in 2005) yet has become one of the hottest new VCs having invested in Twitter, Tumblr, AdMeld, Boxee, KickApps and many more companies. TechCrunch article.

VC 217

VC capital venture capital networking 217

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. We need venture debt, factoring companies and public markets. Answer: Not much.

disruption 308

disruption VC entrepreneurs financing 308

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 3, 2010

Recently raised $7 million from Atlas Ventures out of Boston. And the broader question of whether VC’s will continue to invest in the Twitter ecosystem. Current round: $3.35mm in Series A by TomorrowVentures (Eric Schmidt’s personal investment vehicle), Saban Ventures, Founder Collective, SK Telecom Ventures.

VC 214

VC founder advice ventures 214

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. But there are many zombie VC’s with no more investments left in their portfolios so it’s hard to know which trend has more impact.

VC 255

VC venture capital networking innovation 255

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. The amount of available dollars to invest is high. Data source: Crunchbase.

collaboration 145

collaboration accelerator capital investing 145

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. In the early 80’s he left academia to work on venture capital investing with Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies. Investing Strategy.

capital 284

capital board VC pitching 284

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. 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. . Investment. All Seed-VC.

entrepreneurs 162

entrepreneurs angel investing VC venture capital 162

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.

VC 240

VC peer-to-peer advice ventures 240

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.

VC 225

VC social gaming venture capital networking 225

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. Clearstone currently invests out of a $200 million fund based in LA with offices in Menlo Park and in India. Segment One: Jim’s background and Clearstone’s investment strategy. eCommerce is hot again!

VC 236

VC venture capital ventures support 236

Dream It

JANUARY 23, 2019

According to a recent report , B2B brands’ investments in marketing communications and earned media is now on par with their paid media spend. Between that time and now, TrendKite raised approximately $46 million in venture funding.

real estate 210

real estate media accelerator pitching 210