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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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

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). The overall trends in our industry have breathed a new life into the venture capital industry. Why is this?

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Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

In New York, for instance, there are now venture funds with a West Coast mentality and firms with an East Coast mentality; the same is true for firms in San Francisco. Will a financial crisis affect how venture funds deploy capital? Do startups need to conduct due diligence on a venture fund’s LPs?

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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. Venture Financings we Discussed. Spun off from Freewebs in 2008, based in Palo Alto.

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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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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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venture capital ventures capital support 92

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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education venture capital communities ventures 303

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

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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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.

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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. And what we think about Sequoia’s website , First Round Capital’s and True Ventures (we both like to copy stuff from True). TechCrunch article.

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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 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. We have an entire generation of startup founders who don’t have muscle memory from getting their burn rates back into shape from 2008/09 or 2001-2005. Others will follow.

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VC capital culture venture capital 392

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

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 1, 2024

Satoshi gave us the playbook to build a decentralized internet stack back in 2008 and I feel quite confident that we will have massive mainstream applications running on this decentralized stack well before 2028. So if we have healthier capital markets and more innovation than ever, what is up with the venture capital ecosystem?

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energy venture capital innovation capital 236

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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VC startup real estate finance 311

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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mix-use communities venture capital creativity 316

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

JUNE 22, 2011

source: Capital IQ. In any given year there are about 50 venture-backed companies or so that are bought for $100 million or more. I said, “It’s much easier now than it was in 2008/09.&# That happened a lot in 2002 and again in 2008. It’s what I love about entrepreneurship and about venture capital.

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real estate entrepreneurs financing finance 309

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 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. So get out there and start raising your capital! Let’s be honest – the same is true for VC’s.

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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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angel investing investment investing real estate 299

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?

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VC culture sustainability capital 466

This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

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. Josh Kopelman will be working closely on this investment as well. The origin of this company is pretty interesting.

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investment investing communities board 286

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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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. . All Seed-VC. Silicon Valley.

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entrepreneurs angel investing VC venture capital 162

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

APRIL 20, 2011

In the early 80’s he left academia to work on venture capital investing with Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies. The discussion with Howard Morgan starts off by acknowledging Josh Kopelman as a co-founder of First Round Capital. In 2008 they raised a much larger fund $132.5

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

The seminal application of the collaborative web--Github--was launched in April 2008. It's a web where 1+1 really does equal more than 2. The collaborative web arrived after the social web hit a tipping point. That is the very month that Facebook became the largest social network, outpacing MySpace.

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collaboration media SaaS VC 351

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2010

This episode of This Week in Venture Capital featured Michael Montgomery, president of Montgomery & Co. You have to be selected to present and it is typically reserved for companies that have already raised early-stage capital and are well into revenue growth. Should you use investment banks to raise venture capital?

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 1, 2009

In the first post in this three part series I described why I believe the VC market froze between September 2008 – April 2009. It’s my job to invest wisely in entrepreneurs who are capital efficient, who innovate in ways that pay off economically in good markets or bad and who plan for worst-case scenarios.

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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. That may be a great return for him/her but for a venture investor it’s not. Answer: Not much. And that was evident on today’s Angel vs. VC panel.

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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). 2009 has been the worst year for M&A in a decade.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

On a panel that I sat on with Ron in LA in 2008 he stated that there were no circumstances in which the founder should take money off of the table. Tags: Pitching VCs Start-up Advice VC Industry startup technology vc venture capital. I already had this argument with Ron Conway and we disagree on the topic.

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founder VC advice pitching 329

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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