Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 12, 2010

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. Topics we discussed in the first 45 minutes of the video include: What is VC like in NY? Our guest was Mo Koyfman of Spark Capital.

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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. In particular I tried to do most of the “entrepreneur advice on VC” up front so that if you don’t want to watch our views on the deals you don’t have to. OTHER DEALS: 1. MetaMarkets.

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APRIL 2, 2010

I’m writing this series because if you better understand how VC firms work you can better target which firms make sense for you to speak with. It in not uncommon to see a VC talk about “total assets under management&# as in “We have $1.5 What is a VC fund? VC’s don’t invest 100% of their own money.

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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.

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OCTOBER 21, 2009

They do around 7% of the total VC-backed deals in the US per year or just under 40 deals / year on average (present year excluded!). Where I add commentary from myself or my fellow VC colleagues from our discussion after Jamie left I’ll put in red. 2009 has been the worst year for M&A in a decade. per year.

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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). This is astounding and myopic in my view.

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 21, 2012

It was even earlier when I talked to Jason at Shopkeep--December of 2009 by my records. It took almost two years for the company to raise their first outside capital from RTP and Greycroft--and honestly, my bad for not staying close to the company. Good for him--I'm happy to see him get resourced to built out his vision.

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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.

venture capital 407

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2010

It was especially fun for me because we got the chance to talk about the VC industry and how entrepreneurs should think about the VC industry in addition to discussing deals. Segment Three: “VC Deals Funded this Week”. Segment Four, “VC Discussion – How Should Entrepreneurs Think about ‘Strategic’ Investors?”.

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MAY 24, 2021

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 . My first ever investment as a VC was Invoca. Maker Studios?—?sold Entrada Ventures? —?that

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2014

The speaks to the continued confidence in the venture capital markets and as I had predicted some time ago the VC markets right now are a great place to invest – especially relative to other places to put one’s money. If you want to understand how the VC industry is changing there is a great primer in the link.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

What's worse is that this end of the market is even affecting early stage VC mindset. If you're a VC and you think for a second that whether or not Square pricing at $2.9 billion or $6 billion has anything to do with that Series A you're about to do, please pick up your marbles and go home. Congrats on your huge disappointment.

angel investing 407

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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.

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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.

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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. We are experiencing a frenetic time. For entrepreneurs there’s too much money sloshing around. Year in, year out.

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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. I see it in many young pups. Same as I felt.

ventures 419

ventures VC capital SaaS 419

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2011

I will argue that LPs who invest in VC funds will also need to adjust a bit as well. These two trends had a major impact on the computing industry from 2000-2005 but the effects weren’t yet felt by the VC industry. Spawning of Micro VCs. When I built my first company starting in 1999 it cost $2.5 Enter Amazon.

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MAY 6, 2015

As an active investor in the Los Angeles technology market we’re always seeking to better understand the data and trends of why our market has grown so rapidly since 2009. If you’re an LP and want to know who these emerging funds are please call me and/or attend our Annual VC Summit.

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VC opportunity media innovation 307

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MAY 5, 2021

There has been this narrative about investing in VC funds that you have to get into the top quartile (25%) or possibly the top decile (10%) in order to generate good returns. I have heard that for as long as I have been in VC and probably have written it here a few times. As you can see, investing in VC funds can be very profitable.

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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. But I’ll judge the angel class of 2009/2010 on a 7-10 year time horizon. I was very active in 2009 / early 2010.

angel investing 299

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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.).

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MAY 25, 2013

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. According to FLAG Capital there are 100 active VCs (as defined by making at least $1 million in VC per quarter for 4 consecutive quarters). Their data looks at tech VCs.

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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

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 14, 2013

There was no strategic goal to build venture backed startup companies, but yet at least three companies in her community got VC investment last year. Yet, you can''t just hire me to be your local community VC. She started out by simply taking a space and filling it with the kind of people that inspired her. How can they be helped?

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communities coworking spaces economic development funders 314

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.

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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.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

Gogii came in my office in 2009 with three of the most talented founders I had seen. When I started blogging as a VC I had zero idea it would lead to my current audience level of 350,000 page views / month. By the next Monday we had lost the deal to a NorCal VC. I have to love both – but it’s in that proportion.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

In a world where the economy only heads in one direction (read: 2009-2014) most investors & entrepreneurs forget to pay attention to gross burn. The reason is that no VC wants to see the venture debt provider get burned if you become bankrupt. If Pre-VC be mindful that in tough times capital can take longer to raise. *

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MARCH 24, 2014

As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. “I think the best VCs help drive exits alongside their entrepreneurs. I have done 6 VC investments – all within the past 20 months. 5 years ago. . None have exited. That’s normal.

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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?

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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. It’s when the noise stops and you can actually get customer attention, press articles and VC meetings. It’s when the game slows. ” The Lessons of Shelfware.

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APRIL 17, 2010

We held a 90-minute demo session where 150 of LA’s VC’s and senior technology executives watched the LPLA V2 group present in small groups of 12-15 each. The VC’s & executives were then asked to make “commitments&# (in writing) to 3-5 of the companies that they felt they could make some sort of contribution to.

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AUGUST 24, 2015

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. The impact hits VCs in an immediate way that most entrepreneurs don’t realize. Watch the market closely.

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financing finance ventures real estate 344

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

Back in 2009, I wrote a post called The Venture Capital Math Problem. This 2009 piece from @fredwilson (literally the best in the biz) predicted significant venture industry contraction when in fact the last 10yrs have seen massive expansion. But regardless, I was dead wrong in that post back in 2009 and I have learned from it.

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venture capital capital ventures VC 199

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 27, 2010

Geolocation is so 2009. I can be frustrating for entrepreneurs who can’t seem to get a VCs interest until someone else is interested as well, but there’s actually a logic behind it, believe it or not. Ok, so we’re all doing social TV now. Haven’t you heard?

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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. 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

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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. Back when I was pitching my previous startup to investors, it had never really dawned on me that they had experienced what I was going through--and that a VC firm was essentially a startup. VCs pitch for money, too.

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