Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 24, 2015

It will make follow-on financings much harder and people will have to consider whether or not to do inside rounds. These are all normal things but in this big run since 2009 we’ve all gotten used to nearly 100% follow-on financing rates, valuations only moving up, deals clearly the convertible note caps and low mortality rates.

financing 344

financing finance ventures real estate 344

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. YCombinator had a great run from 2007 through early 2009 investing at a time when there weren''t nearly as many seed funds and accelerators as there are now. That''s less than 10%.

venture capital 407

venture capital VC ventures capital 407

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

I would argue that the shut-down of September 2009 was equally severe yet there are signs that this “VC Ice Age” has begun to thaw. The rest of this post series deals with the reasons why VC froze up in the first place, why investments have heated up recently and why the future of VC funding at the current pace is not certain.

VC 263

VC board investing investment 263

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2021

This “overnight success” was first financed in 2004. Imagine if, say, Autodesk had purchased it in 2009 for $100 million? Of the first four investments I made as a VC in 2009, two have exited and two (Invoca & GumGum) still are independent and likely to produce $billion++ outcomes . Maker Studios?—?sold

venture capital 363

venture capital capital ventures VC 363

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2012

I would never as a VC fund a round and then expect somebody else to pay a higher price right after me. I also would never expect another VC to do that to me. Since 2009 I have been counseling people to offer discounts to the first angel investors. For the most part I agree with Fred.

financing 294

financing finance pitching VC 294

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 7, 2014

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 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.).

VC 399

VC advice finance financing 399

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

” This is a frequent theme of mine when asked to speak to audience about the VC industry. And this is fueled by the VC culture in Silicon Valley. I was recently talking to a VC about a business I was looking at and I was asking whether he found the business interesting, too. It is VC math, like it or not.

startup 390

startup VC venture capital entrepreneurs 390

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

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). THE VC VALUATION GOD Valuation obsession wasn’t restricted to startups.

VC 466

VC culture sustainability capital 466

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. It’s just not a VC investment.

disruption 308

disruption VC entrepreneurs financing 308

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. Helping companies get to next financing round successfully: I was just beginning this phase in Sept 2010 and said so. I’ve now been involved with many other successful foll0w-on financings. 5 years ago. Since then?

VC 387

VC venture capital financing finance 387

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2010

That would mean that the increased number of new business startups will lead to a “funding gap&# of deals that can’t get financed. 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.

angel investing 299

angel investing investment investing real estate 299

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 3, 2012

I had this ethical dilemma pop up on one of the first deals I even did as a VC. ” I was learning which VCs I wanted to work with, what stage & check size I wanted to commit do and what teams would be a good fit for me. .” The call from a fellow VC to “look harder” made me decide to request a site visit.

VC 356

VC finance financing investment 356

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

This is where VC comes in and why it’s needed in the industry no matter how much populist sentiment exists against the VC industry. got picked up early without raising a lot of VC. That is why I find it curious when angels start shouting that VC’s are dinosaurs, evil, money-grubbing and non-value-add.

angel investing 284

angel investing investment investing VC 284

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2014

It was 2009 and it was terribly difficult to get any financing (if you can remember a time like that!) Throughout all of these years I was a full-time VC so Launchpad really came out of evenings and weekends for me. Adam had a full time startup and then was doing consulting (he later raised a VC fund). But my prediction?

accelerator 290

accelerator mentorship peer-to-peer VC 290

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 21, 2014

Since 2009 we’ve been in an unequivocal bull market. An impressive number of new VCs have been created – most of them with new seed funds. We’ve had an explosion of alternate sources of financing from crowd-sourcing, angels, accelerators, incubators, corporates, corporate incubators.

incubation 354

incubation board VC innovation 354

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

But they weren’t there in 2009 when you were up late nights shitting yourself whether you really were smart for pursuing this idea. That was back when VCs weren’t so quick to respond to emails. I hope to offer experiences from being an entrepreneur and being a VC.&#. I agreed to finance a company today.

advice 391

advice VC finance financing 391

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

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

In the early spring of 2009, the fundraising nuclear winter of the previous year hadn't yet thawed. Two Sigma is a technology and finance company in Soho filled with incredibly bright engineers and developers, so I’m really excited about leveraging that partnership in a number of cool ways. VCs pitch for money, too.

ventures 280

ventures pitching VC startup ecosystem 280

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 15, 2012

He spotted Facebook in 2004 and Spotify in 2009. or would he have been convinced to take a financing round? Companies going for the long ball aren't discovered--they're juiced up to go for the homerun, with financing. Parker made a huge dent in the web as co-founder of Napster, then built Plaxo up to 20 million users.

startup 278

startup finance financing venture capital 278

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

It had been written that NYC was built by industries of zero sum games like finance and real estate, and that DNA wouldn’t work in the startup community. In 2005, it was a risky bet to join Union Square Ventures and plant my VC career here in NYC. You need both. You also need to establish a culture of sharing and collegiality.

communities 434

communities startup real estate mentorship 434

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

2021 saw phenomenal returns for our industry and it topped off more than a decade of unprecedented VC growth. In fact, I am still active on two boards where I first invested in 2009. The industry has obviously changed enormously in 2022 but in many ways it feels like a “return to normal” that we have seen many times in our industry.

ventures 408

ventures startup peer-to-peer venture capital 408

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

What is the True Sentiment of VCs? I recently survey more than 150 VC friends from all stages and geographies what they thought about the market by asking “Which of the following statements best describes your mood heading into 2016?” But not a VC or Bill Gurley or myself would have spooked it 2 years ago.

startup 285

startup VC entrepreneurs investing 285

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2011

I was saying that I was happy it was all out in the open because I felt at least everybody could now understand the issues & opportunities from the perspectives of angels, entrepreneurs and VCs. Let’s be clear: AngelList doesn’t scare a single VC I know. But it’s not cutting VCs out. It is additive.

VC 292

VC peer-to-peer investing investment 292

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

.” I applaud all efforts by people to take on this issue and especially be Adeo who – let’s be honest – was really the first champion of trying to make the VC world more transparent by launching TheFunded, which didn’t exactly endear him to VCs initially. They’ll get priced soon enough by a VC.”

startup 354

startup VC entrepreneurs financing 354

Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

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. VCs were basically ‘out to lunch’ and not making new investments during this time.

ventures 334

ventures startup capital board 334

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! 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].

VC 136

VC advice finance financing 136

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

This is where VC comes in and why it’s needed in the industry no matter how much populist sentiment exists agains the industry. got picked up early without raising a lot of VC. That is why I find it curious when angels start shouting that VC’s are dinosaurs, evil, money-grubbing and non-value-add.

angel investing 152

angel investing investment investing VC 152

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2016

Invoca had grown steadily and consistently since 2009 and by 2015 SaaS companies with scale had become hot – trading at a median of 7.3x We knew better than to start funding raising in August, when larger VC firms have a harder time assembling full decision teams – so in August we would plan and September we would commence.

SaaS 236

SaaS VC board financing 236

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

There has been little movement in the amount of VC dollars going to women-founded companies since 2012. This should come as no surprise, given that fintech combines two sectors traditionally dominated by men: finance and technology. VC funds must look at ways they can bring in more women decision-makers, all the way up to the top.

VC 123

VC startup leadership communities 123

AsiaTechDaily

DECEMBER 4, 2023

MoveinSync’s Strategic Funding Round This financing round is intended not only for growth but also to provide an opportunity for some of its early investors to partially exit. They aim to secure between $50 to $60 million. Among the interested investors is Bessemer Venture Partners.

innovation 98

innovation transportation incubation consulting 98

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 7, 2009

I’m sure I’ll spark the ire of some VC’s for saying so, but there is certainly such a thing as black-out days in venture capital. It is also very hard to raise VC from July 15 – September 7th. (you The VC process is almost universal in how it works across firms. Many VC partners take 2-3 (4?)

VC 304

VC venture capital advice capital 304

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

I got a job at a bank, and I worked in their corporate finance group. We had a finance group for all of the bank branches based in San Diego, and I wrote programs to download stuff from the mainframe so we could do analysis three days faster than they could send us the data. ” They said, “You’re a serial entrepreneur.”

startup 337

startup entrepreneurs consulting board 337

TechCrunch

MARCH 28, 2023

After a founder takes the quiz, the Funding Finder algorithm points them to what could be their best bets: debt financing, community development financial institutions (CDFIs), banks, bootstrapping, family and friend rounds, or even crowdfunding.

capital 94

capital founder education startup ecosystem 94

Founders Coop

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Just two years later, in 2009, we worked out a deal to create the Techstars Seattle program, with our first program running in 2010. From the beginning, we were deeply committed to Techstars’ “give first” ethos and mentorship-driven approach to startup investing.

startup ecosystem 189

startup ecosystem accelerator communities support 189

StartupNation

JANUARY 20, 2022

Defined as a type of private equity investor funding given to startups that have growth potential , VC can play a huge part in business growth success and can facilitate a number of startup-based costs. In fact, VC-based funding has boomed within the last decade, reaching a whopping $753B worth of investments since 2009.

venture capital 89

venture capital capital ventures startup 89

Innovation 2 Enterprise

MAY 23, 2021

i2E made an initial concept investment through the OCAST Technology Business Finance Program (which iThryv repaid) early in the company’s life, and then in June of 2009, we made another investment in the form of a convertible note from the Oklahoma Seed Capital Fund (OSCF).

technology 83

technology venture capital innovation capital 83

TechCrunch

MAY 17, 2022

The judges for this pitch-off will be Yoon Choi (Muirwoods Ventures), Mar Hershenson (Pear VC) and Gabriel Scheer (Elemental Excelerator) on day one; and Sven Strohband (Khosla Ventures), Victoria Beasley (Prelude Ventures) and John Du (GM Ventures) on day two. ” Mar Hershenson — Pear VC. Gabriel Scheer — Elemental Excelerator.

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pitching energy startup consulting 76