Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2015

If you want to understand the software trend that drove the creation of the seed-stage VC phenomenon I wrote about it that linked blog post but in short: cloud computing drove down the cost to create startups enabling a new category of investor. Some quick highlights include: The Role of a Seed Stage VC. Startup Lessons'

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MAY 5, 2023

This is how Fred Wilson described me back in 2010. I took a lot of pride in that when I first read it. Part of what I’ve always strived to do was to be present and accessible in the community—from the countless panels to the hundreds of neighborhood dinners we’ve organized over the last decade.

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Both Sides of the Table

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. Nearly 50% say they will increase their activity levels in 2010 (hallelujah!)

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MAY 15, 2010

It’s always fun chatting with Jason because he’s knowledgeable about the market, quick on topics and pushes me to talk more about VC / entrepreneur issues. The following was available: “I kept hearing about startups that raised VC funding, but which hadn’t filed Form Ds (nor issued a press release).

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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. Other Deals.

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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. I know that in late 2010 it’s not as popular to say this because we’re in the era of “super angels&# and feel-good startups. It’s hard to say.

angel investing 284

angel investing investment investing VC 284

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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DECEMBER 21, 2012

I met him in April of 2010--almost two years before he got a venture round. Actually, I wouldn't even really call them passes, because in a couple instances, they were just conversations--"Pre Deck" if you will. Devrim Yasar just raised an additional $7.25 million for Koding.com. He wasn't even working on this fulltime.

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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”. 14mm in Series C; $25mm in Series B raised in March 2010; $44mm raised in total. LivingSocial.

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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. 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.

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MAY 23, 2012

I can’t help feel a bit of rear-view mirror analysis in all of “VC model is broken” bears in our industry. To really assess what opportunities the VC industry has over the next decade, one needs to first look at some of the root causes of poor returns in the past decade. The number of venture capital funds has shrunk by two-thirds.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

In 2010 somebody posed the question on Quora, “Is Mark Suster a Successful Venture Capitalist?” Helping companies get to next financing round successfully: I was just beginning this phase in Sept 2010 and said so. This is what I wrote on that Quora answer from Sept 2010. Lemons ripen early, great companies take time.”

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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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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series “ Start Up Advice &# but I’d really like to call this post, “VC Advice.&#. We exchanged ideas when I was an entrepreneur along side him in NorCal in 05-07 and my point-of-view on founder / VC relationships hasn’t shifted even 1% since I went to the dark side. You lose the dream.

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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. My own track record as a VC across First Round Capital and Brooklyn Bridge Ventures actually starts in January of 2010, *after* the Airbnb class of Winter 2009.

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Haystack

JANUARY 18, 2020

Having spent time around and then in the world of VC in the Bay Area during the last decade, I’ve been reflecting on how different norms in the industry have changed. At the start of 2010, there was some unwritten VC industry conventions that have been tested, challenged, and upended in the last decade.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Over the past month a colleague ( Chang Xu ) and I sifted through data on the venture capital industry (as we do every year) and made a bunch of calls to VCs and LPs to confirm our hypotheses. Between 1999–2005 the costs went down by 90% and between 2005–2010 they went down a further 90%.

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Gust

DECEMBER 13, 2011

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. 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.

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FEBRUARY 17, 2014

In 2010, I funded his company, Backupify , which has gone on to raise over $19 million in funding and is set to have their best year of revenue to date. The best spend of sponsorship money I''ve ever seen might be the $50 in balls and chalk that Dennis probably spent building the Foursquare court that beat Gowalla in 2010.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MARCH 28, 2022

So I saw this tweet by Semil Shah yesterday: A friend who works in an industry far from tech startups & VC asked what would be the single article I’d share to read on each topic. So I clicked on the link to my Competing To Win Deals post, which I wrote in 2010, and read it. That is a failure of the system.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JULY 27, 2021

Our first Opportunity Fund, raised two years later in 2010, has generated only 3.9x That explains why our 2010 Opportunity Fund has a lower cash on cash return but a much higher IRR than our 2008 early-stage fund. Our 2014 Opportunity Fund has a higher cash on cash return but a lower IRR than our 2010 Opportunity Fund.

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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.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 21, 2011

Will you get the TechCrunch bump, the tier-1 VC anointment, followed by great PR firm support and then the NY Times or WSJ story that follows? So as I get around the country speaking at college campus in 2010 & 2011 I have been preaching the same theme. Not every problem has to be a huge VC-fundable business.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

I’m often asked about the differences between being at a VC and being an entrepreneur and whether I prefer one or the other. But as LA as a tech community grew massively the percentage of our LA deals went from 15% to 50% from 1996 to 2010 and it has remained solid since then.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

I don’t believe that search is the only answer in 2010 as it was in 2000. I found this investment strange since normally VC’s hate to bet on gaming companies. In my mind, not a typical VC investment. In the interview we also covered: - How are VC funds structured: closed-funds vs. evergreen funds? OTHER STUFF.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 1, 2016

When Chantel asked investors for $3mm for her seed round back in 2010, people stood up and took notice. So if you're a super early stage with just a prototype, you might not think that a VC fund is the right fit for you--so you wind up at an angel group. VCs don't go later and angels don't go earlier. Venture investing is hard.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

This was the first episode where Jason wasn’t on the show, which gave me the chance to have another VC on the show to discuss deals. Rustic Canyon is an LA-based, but geography-agnostic VC that is currently investing from a $200 million fund. VC Financings: 1. I keep meaning to get him drunk to spill the stories.

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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. I know that in late 2010 it’s not as popular to say this because we’re in the era of “super angels&# and feel good startups. got picked up early without raising a lot of VC.

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SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

Now that he’s become a VC he’s promising me he’ll provide way more public information and discourse so please welcome him by following him on Twitter and better yet welcoming him with a Tweet of your own linking to his Twitter handle or this post. And he followed through. So he had had a taste of it.

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SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

Yet the truth is that I see angels with great deal flow & great instincts whom I believe will only perform well in times that favor angel investors (like 2010) where there are early exits. Tags: Startup Advice Tech Market Analysis VC Industry. I don’t believe these times will last. Part three will be published shortly.

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angel investing investment investing advice 288

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APRIL 14, 2010

It is 2010. That means that they likely raised money at a particularly high price relative to 2010 prices. Not so VC. Reputation – Equally, the investor might not be worried about squeezing out your existing VC, per se, but doesn’t want to develop a reputation as a VC with an edge. So what happens?

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

In 2010, Antonio Garcia Martinez, the founder of AdGrok, wrote, “New York will always be a tech backwater, I don’t care what Chris Dixon or Ron Conway or Paul Graham say.” In 2005, it was a risky bet to join Union Square Ventures and plant my VC career here in NYC. They’re less impactful on a year to year basis.

communities 434

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2010

This led Roy Rodenstein (whose company Going.com was sold to AOL ) and others to discuss , what happens when VC’s need to invest across multiple funds. And VC’s don’t like to invest across multiple funds. A totally new VC is willing to invest in the company but at a $15 million pre-money valuation.

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This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 13, 2012

I first met Wiley Cerilli on April 23, 2010. A VC once said about him that "I'm not sure about the company, but I sure do want him reading bedtime stories to my kids."). Now I feel like I'm kind of a "real" VC now that I've got a second exit (GroupMe) in less than a year. Wiley was soft spoken and extremely professional.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 29, 2015

In part because as a VC I reached the longevity where you see some things fail and have to ask yourself, “would I readily work with that person again? I saw this in 2001-2003 and in 2008-2010. But I’ve been thinking a lot about failure in the past year or so. Why or why not?”

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Both Sides of the Table

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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SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

I recently read a blog post by Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director of Sapphire Ventures about why entrepreneurs should care about from whom their VC funds raise their capital. There are a lot of things I think entrepreneurs should care about when raising from a VC: How big or small their fund is? Beezer did.

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