Both Sides of the Table

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. By the end of 2011 the Internet population was estimated at 2.3

venture capital 347

venture capital capital ventures VC 347

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. If 2011 & 2012 look like 2010 then the current crop of angel investments will look great. So where are we now? It’s hard to say.

angel investing 284

angel investing investing investment VC 284

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2016

I joined Upfront Ventures in 2007 and took over as co-Managing Partner in 2011 along with the founder, Yves Sisteron. In the end, if you’re not developing a deep bench of talented professionals who keep you on your toes, you’re bound to be disrupted.

disruption 226

disruption VC communities ventures 226

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.

transportation 309

transportation VC networking energy 309

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 12, 2013

Because my role as a VC requires me to take and endless stream of meetings I long ago decided I need to learn as much as I can from the meetings I attend so I often just ask tons of questions and assimilate knowledge. When I think about what defines us as a VC I think: Operationally knowledgeable / strong startup competence.

VC 360

VC communities investing investment 360

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

That’s how it felt then and a bit how it feels in May 2011. People who comment to me privately about how surprised they are by how rapidly I’ve “built a name for myself in VC&# remind me of this fallacy. I hope to offer experiences from being an entrepreneur and being a VC.&#. I started blogging 2 years ago.

advice 391

advice VC financing finance 391

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2014

By 2011 the market had started to change dramatically. Throughout all of these years I was a full-time VC so Launchpad really came out of evenings and weekends for me. Throughout all of these years I was a full-time VC so Launchpad really came out of evenings and weekends for me. We announced Fund I in 2011.

accelerator 290

accelerator mentorship peer-to-peer VC 290

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2016

Dan asked Fred about “generational change” at USV and in the VC industry more broadly. And honestly it was the single biggest roadblock at Upfront when we raised out fourth fund in 2011. But there was another element that was very subtle and nicely handled that I’d like to expand upon.

VC 176

VC peer-to-peer board disruption 176

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

I believe that over capitalizing companies too early often favors the VC. Talking about whether to raise more money or not, their VC allegedly said to them: “If you had more capital, could you get to the future faster? It’s the whole basis of my investment philosophy, which I call “ The Entrepreneur Thesis.&#.

entrepreneurs 374

entrepreneurs incubation board VC 374

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 17, 2020

I woke up to a dream this morning where I was playing a game that was very similar to Turntable.fm , a failed effort to create a social music experience that had a moment back in 2011 and that I had invested in via USV. It comes with the territory in VC. It was as fun to play it as it was to play Turntable back in the day.

investing 205

investing investment VC venture capital 205

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. Will that trend hold in 2011?

entrepreneurs 162

entrepreneurs angel investing VC venture capital 162

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 15, 2011

The VC partner, somebody I greatly respect said, “Yeah, we like Gil and what they’re doing. And this Silicon Valley bias isn’t limited to any single meeting – it has been a recurring theme in my time as a VC. That’s convenience when your VC is hoping to write the next $20 million check.

VC 313

VC venture capital media culture 313

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

APRIL 21, 2020

I went to that blog post and clicked on the link and sure enough someone had swapped out my cap table template from 2011 with their own cap table. So I went to my google drive and searched and found the cap table that I had built for that post back in 2011, made a copy, made it public on the web but view only, and fixed the link.

education 187

education VC technology entrepreneurship 187

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2017

Transitions do happen in VC funds but many fail to make the move in a timely fashion and lose key younger personnel who break off and do their own funds or else the strong personalities of senior partners make it harder for new partners to flourish. How can high profile VC personalities best transition to younger partners.

leadership 161

leadership VC venture capital ventures 161

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

She worked for 5 years as a VC at Battery Ventures and co-headed M&A at IAC working with Barry Diller. Just as Yves mentored me when I became his co-managing partner in 2011, he didn’t seek to ride off into the sunset either. He said to me (only 9 years ago), “I hope you’re not just hiring her because she’s a woman.” (I

ventures 361

ventures leadership mentorship venture capital 361

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2016

In 2008 I started VC blogging. In 2011 I started using Instagram. In 2007 I started using Twitter and most of my friends & colleagues wondered why people would care what I ate for lunch. I had blogged when I was an entrepreneur. I went to an industry event where people actually called me self-centered for writing publicly.

networking 230

networking advice VC finance 230

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2011

2007, 2011) and for the hottest of companies and in bad markets for fund raising (2003, 2008) prices test the bottom end of the range. Prices have definitely gone up in 2011 as depicted in the anecdotal chart below. I’m a VC so I have an obvious bias. I saw this kind of pricing when I first entered the VC market in 2007.

startup 336

startup advice pitching investing 336

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 7, 2015

I myself coined the term ENIFA (everyone now is a f **g angel) in 2011 but it didn’t stick as well as the term Unicorn did. They now have a strong VC lead from Foundry Group and from experience when you get advice from Foundry it comes with authority, experience, empathy and the right amount of straight talk.

startup 323

startup advice pitching VC 323

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. If 2011 & 2012 look like 2010 then the current crop of angel investors will look great. So where are we now? It’s hard to say.

angel investing 152

angel investing investing investment VC 152

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 1, 2014

So, if you''re going to argue that the process of venture capital is inherently unfair to women, here''s the logic that you *should not* use: "Less than 3 percent of the 6,793 companies that received venture capital from 2011-2013 were headed by a woman, according to a study from Babson College released Tuesday.

venture capital 328

venture capital capital ventures founder 328

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

Our interest in web3 which started back in 2011 was also grounded in the idea that new forms of funding are necessary to finance innovation and creative work. In the last thirteen years, Kickstarter has helped direct $6.2bn towards creative work that would not have been funded by the legacy institutions that support creative work.

financing 226

financing finance creativity innovation 226

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

While Google and Facebook will buy “acquihires” (at least as of Dec 2011), many acquirers hate the idea of buying companies that aren’t profitable. Do you imagine eventually raising VC and trying to build a faster growing company?” It allows you many more exit opportunities. ” Harsh, but reality.

startup 418

startup VC investing investment 418

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2011

Still, as a VC I value proprietary dealflow & long term relationships. I know it was over heated when a deal where I wrote one of the first checks on (as an angel, not VC) went out on AngelList. Mostly, I don’t believe that a VC not being on AngelList is “anti entrepreneur&# – it is not. My personal use.

angel investing 267

angel investing VC mix-use entrepreneurs 267

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

OCTOBER 27, 2021

That was USV’s initial web2 thesis: USV in 140 characters: invest in large networks of engaged users, differentiated by user experience, and defensible though network effects — Brad Burnham (@BradUSV) June 8, 2011. Chris Dixon called that “come for the tools, stay for the network” in this blog post.

networking 272

networking opportunity investing investment 272

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 16, 2024

When Marc and I started the firm in 2009, the conventional wisdom in Venture Capital was that in any given year, only 15 companies would ever generate $100M in revenue and those 15 companies would drive almost all of VC returns. At that time, the conventional wisdom was right. Shortly after we started the firm, all that began to change.

venture capital 144

venture capital networking health VC 144

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 16, 2016

Mattermark just posted a short report full of such statements and the former 21 year old institutional LP analyst in me (the job I got my VC start in over 15 years ago) flipped his s**t upon close review. VC funds raise money, on average, between every 3-4 years--and many more often than that. So what percent of the market is that?

venture capital 210

venture capital ventures capital VC 210

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

MARCH 20, 2022

I told him the story of how I bumped into Rikki Tahta walking through the garment district in NYC in the spring of 2011 and Rikki told me he was working on a Bitcoin startup. My friend Gordon asked me last night how I got into Bitcoin. I replied, “a what coin startup?” ” And Rikki told me to read the Bitcoin White Paper.

investing 255

investing investment ventures startup 255

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

I spoke about how Amazon Web Services deserves far more credit for the last 5 years of innovation than it gets credit for and how I believe they spawned the micro-VC category. I said that I felt that Micro-VCs were the most important change in our industry. It is great for entrepreneurs and great for VCs. I believe that.

real estate 309

real estate entrepreneurs financing finance 309

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

Bill Gurley tweeted his blog post from 2011 that “ all revenue is not created equal.” So how you value and how you finance low margin businesses becomes very important. They can’t be valued too highly or you risk a financing crisis. ” That is a great way of saying what I was trying to say.

financing 142

financing finance VC disruption 142

TechCrunch

MARCH 13, 2021

Business writer Gordon Pitts pinpoints 2011 as the game-changing year for the Atlantic startup scene. In his book “Unicorn in the Woods: How East Coast Geeks and Dreamers are Changing the Game , ” Pitts recounts how in March 2011 Salesforce purchased New Brunswick-based social media monitoring company Radian6 for approximately $300 million.

venture capital 137

venture capital capital culture advice 137

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

FEBRUARY 25, 2021

I remember meeting Zach Sims and his co-founder Ryan Bubinski back in 2011 when they started Codecademy. Zach was still in college and thinking of dropping out to focus on the Company. I just realized this morning that it has been ten years since then. Time does fly. Like many great companies their idea was simple, but powerful.

education 150

education sustainability founder entrepreneurship 150

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 13, 2020

I used this title for possibly the most regrettable blog post I have written on AVC back in 2011. Alex starts off his post with this assertion: 2019 was the year when VCs and startup founders soured on paid acquisition. Back in 2011, I wrote: He said “every company needs a marketing budget.”

startup founder 156

startup founder startup founder entrepreneurship 156

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

AUGUST 14, 2019

There was a time around 2010 and 2011 when Tumblr was the most engaging social platform that I was on. Tumblr was both a blogging platform and a social media application and while I always loved the versatility of the platform, native mobile applications benefit from simplicity, not complexity.

media 201

media investing investment development 201

Haystack

JANUARY 14, 2019

When I moved back to the Bay Area in early 2011, the technology and startup sector didn’t feel as big or expansive as it does today. Now, contrast 2011 with 2019, and we have an entirely different situation. Today in 2019, this deal information among the top VC brands is only really moving through smaller, trusted networks.

technology 123

technology culture VC investing 123

Revolution

MARCH 1, 2023

VC dollars are at risk, we conducted a historical analysis of top quartile fund managers over the past quarter century (as far back as we could access reliable Cambridge Associates data). We looked at the analysis in two parts: the 1997–2010 time period and the 2011–2020 time period. since 2011. But what could that look like?

advice 147

advice founder finance financing 147

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 19, 2021

HubStop introduced usage-based pricing in 2011 to boost its retention rate, then near 70%. “You have to wonder if every VC worth a damn in the future will have their own raft of SPAC offerings,” says Alex. .” A fraction of Robinhood’s users are driving its runaway growth. and Khosla Ventures Acquisition Co.

SaaS 73

SaaS VC transportation pitching 73

TechCrunch

MAY 24, 2021

Long before SoftBank launched its $2 billion Innovation Fund in Latin America, and before Andreessen Horowitz began actively investing in the region , Sao Paulo-based Kaszek has been putting money into promising startups since 2011, helping spawn nine unicorns along the way.

VC 97

VC founder capital opportunity 97