Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2017

WINTER For starters when we conducted our annual VC & LP survey in December of 2016 to prepare our annual Upfront State of the VC Industry report we found that twice as many VCs cut their investments in 2016 relative to 2015 with > 30% of VCs having cut investments. And more than 50% of CVCs said they plan to invest even more in 2017.

venture capital 229

venture capital capital ventures VC 229

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 20, 2015

Here’s a short video we did of our 2015 Upfront Summit : We also shot this one last year to highlight some of our portfolio companies. If you want the back story about how Rion went about making these videos you can read about it in the link.

startup 339

startup mix-use creativity communities 339

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

Helped merge company with Seedling – on track to do $20 million combined revenue in 2015 – will now become Chairman). Startup CEO experience (Founded P.S. XO along with my good friend Soleil Moon Frye.

VC 408

VC networking board ventures 408

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2014

Our 3rd fund began investing in March 2009 (raised in 2008) and our 4th fund started in April 2012 so this fund will naturally begin investing around March / April 2015. In 2015 we go back to square one and start to build a brand new portfolio. That’s why the best firms tend to raise every three years. It’s exciting.

ventures 396

ventures VC venture capital real estate 396

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 3, 2015

Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky) April 29, 2015. I went as far as to call it the best Tweet of 2015 so far because it encapsulated my advice so succinctly. I saw this Tweet recently by Scott Belsky, co-founder and CEO of Behance. conviction > consensus. He took two words where I take 1,000!

advice 332

advice peer-to-peer startup frameworks 332

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 1, 2014

You see, the USV analyst position has always been subject to much competition.

peer-to-peer 343

peer-to-peer ventures venture capital accelerator 343

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 6, 2015

Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) November 22, 2015. And at just the right moment when my head was about to explode Twitter came to the rescue. Remember, it’s better to create something and be criticised than to create nothing and criticise others. Or I guess more appropriately Ricky Gervais came to the rescue with his Tweet.

culture 271

culture support investing investment 271

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

30% of all real income growth in 2005–2015 was from Latinos (U.S. home ownership in 2015 (NAHREP). Latino purchasing power will reach $1.7 trillion in 2020 (U.S. Census), surpassing total expenditure of even the much sought after Millennial population. Advertisers, wake the f**k up. Or how about your biggest gains in beauty products?

media 269

media leadership economic growth economic development 269

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 Every VC who’s been the business for a long time realized first hand that the VC markets were changing rapidly as early as Q3 of 2015. 2015 turned to 2016. Fall turned to winter.

SaaS 236

SaaS VC board finance 236

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

That was a question I had been asked by LPs in 2015 when we began our Early Growth program. When we get involved in Seed investments we usually represent 60–80% in one of the first institutional rounds of capital, we almost always take board seats and then we serve these founders over the course of a decade or longer.

ventures 408

ventures startup peer-to-peer venture capital 408

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 5, 2015

Anyway, 2015 marks a couple of big career anniversaries for me. It''s my favorite thing to teach as well--and I''ll be giving a class at Startup Institute this Tuesday night about it. They''re a career accelerator, which is a pretty neat concept--doing what YC and Techstars do for startups, but for your career.

startup ecosystem 342

startup ecosystem VC networking venture capital 342

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2016

With a massive increase in companies created and a huge number of sources one trend that we witnessed from 2012–2015 was the rise of the undisciplined round. In Q3/Q4 2015 the market changed noticeably for VC funds and the market started to realize this by Q1 2016. Now seed funding is conventional wisdom. I Leaderless Rounds.

venture capital 271

venture capital capital ventures VC 271

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

For example, we’re now already well into our third growth fund that we started in 2015 (the first returned 2x cash in 3.5 I’ll still work with Kara managing the next few funds, but I’ve already been pushing for our firm to do more to diversify our activities and this will allow me to focus on some of that.

ventures 361

ventures leadership mentorship venture capital 361

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2016

In 2015 I opened up my Facebook page to the public. To this day I mostly just find it a fun escape to post pictures of life and to follow the lives of my friends. It was a break from information overload of Facebook. My friends said, “I don’t need another network. I already have Facebook.”.

networking 230

networking advice VC finance 230

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 15, 2014

She told me that 2015 is going to be the craziest year she''s ever had. A friend of mine is starting a huge new project. I suggested to her that it will certainly be the busiest, but that she didn''t have to let the crazy in.

venture capital 395

venture capital entrepreneurship capital ventures 395

Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

AUGUST 18, 2020

TransWave has come a long way since its formation in 2015. Equality for All Foundation Jamaica Ltd (J-FLAG) provided support to get TransWave Jamaica running and they held their first campaign in 2015. “We I saw the need to provide space not only for myself, but for other young trans leaders to emerge,” says Neish.

sustainability 246

sustainability mentorship communities advice 246

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2015

Tuvia Elbaum (@Tuviae) July 14, 2015. Mark Suster (@msuster) July 14, 2015. I sit down to get things done. And I finish. msuster and here’s the shorter version for those who don’t have time https://t.co/HSzvQK63th. HSzvQK63th. Iran deal reached. and the beauty of Twitter is that within 60 seconds I had been corrected.

VC 347

VC entrepreneurs creativity advice 347

Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

AUGUST 19, 2020

By the end of 2015, the movement had over 200 volunteers focused on engaging citizens in the local development processes of their communities. “In When she returned to Peru in 2013, she launched The Millennials Movement and began offering resources on volunteerism.

sustainability 246

sustainability creativity communities networking 246

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

If one entered between 2009-2015 he or she is no doubt in the “hazard” phase where one need to be careful about thinking he know more about the industry than perhaps he do. It’s kind of a truism for life and certainly our industry. I see it in many young pups. They enter the industry knowing that they know nothing.

ventures 419

ventures VC capital SaaS 419

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 24, 2015

You thought media twitter was bad… You thought tech twitter was bad… — Hunter Walk (@hunterwalk) August 24, 2015. If markets come back quickly then you’ll see a return to normal 2015 funding timeframes (which I can tell you are much quicker than in times past). My favorite Tweet of the morning came from Hunter Walk.

finance 344

finance financing ventures real estate 344

Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

MARCH 25, 2021

I moved back to El Salvador and started working toward my own dream at the end of 2015 with Masshii and started inspiring others to do the same. Since then, I worked independently importing containers from China to Central America and started projects fulfilling other people’s dreams. What is the mission of Masshii? .

sustainability 246

sustainability communities education opportunity 246

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2016

What it did is confirm that our intuition about the slow down of the market in Q415 was real, the situation is likely to get more challenging and many other startups were cutting costs (as many of ours has done in late 2015). We promised that we would clean up the dataset and publish it to all of those who participated.

peer-to-peer 277

peer-to-peer VC advice ventures 277

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 10, 2015

Because even in 2015 I still see people riffing on ideas and working on business plans, product flows or coding on projects without first forming a company, signing contracts that assign intellectual property to that company and trusting that “friends” would never sue you. Lawsuits are particularly common amongst co-founders.

startup 352

startup advice board founder 352

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 13, 2019

Everyone is documenting through e-mail screenshots how they invested or didn’t invest in the early days of Uber—showing off their access to the early deal as a badge of honor, but where are the screenshots of the 2014, 2015 e-mails to the team showing their concern about the journalist harassment issues, driver earnings, or privacy concerns?

culture 343

culture incumbents enablement sustainability 343

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Between 2010 and 2015, Evernote raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital from investors including Sequoia, Meritech Capital and Japanese media company Nikkei. Evernote’s chief operating officer, appointed in June 2015, left after just a few months. This proved to be a winning strategy — at least at first.

leadership 127

leadership collaboration venture capital accelerator 127

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2016

In 2015 in the US there were $77 billion written into startup tech companies. Median valuations went up 3x in just 2 years, followed by a precipitous drop in Q4 of 2015. But when you see some of your deals not getting done (as happened in Q4 2015 and is continuing) then when you look at new deals you suddenly get more price sensitive.

startup 285

startup VC entrepreneurs investing 285

Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

On top of his demanding work of technology repairs, Janeel has made the time to discover new ways to help others as a radio personality and program director at Dominion Radio since 2015 with his program IT Talks.

leadership 246

leadership education advice communities 246

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2015

At Upfront we have huge conviction around topics that aren’t exactly 2015 sexy and I think that will set us up nicely for 2018-2020 if we’ve played our cards right. This is exactly where my head is at and it’s been great to watch Fred. I remember writing about online video nearly 5 years ago.

advice 327

advice board VC investing 327

A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 1, 2023

I believe that “new normal” is more or less where we were in 2015 where seed rounds were done around $10mm, A rounds were done around $15mm to $25mm, B rounds were done around $25mm to $50mm, and growth rounds had a cap at 10x revenues.

leadership 267

leadership VC capital venture capital 267

Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative

AUGUST 25, 2020

In 2015, she was able to merge these two passions together to create her company, Beleaf. By Angie Garozzo. 2018 YLAI Fellow Cinthya Andino is most passionate about design and about protecting the environment.

sustainability 246

sustainability communities education advice 246

Entrepreneurs' Organization

JUNE 14, 2022

Natalie Portman, Harvard, 2015. Rather than delivering Hollywood glitz, the Academy Award winning actress gave a raw, introspective speech at Harvard commencement in 2015. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”. Watch | Transcript.

advice 220

advice energy culture board 220

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2015

I don’t know what blogging will bring in 2015 but I hope to go back to the day when I was just blogging for the hell of it. In December we announced our newest fund – Upfront V – had closed. I took that as a moment to have a break and come back refreshed. It feels good to be back.

creativity 305

creativity advice strategy support 305

Entrepreneurs' Organization

MARCH 27, 2024

Surprisingly, after 2015, the trend reversed, with remote teams not only catching up but also leading in innovation. It revealed that post-2010, tools like Trello, Zoom, and Slack bridged the gap in remote collaboration, leading to a significant reduction in the innovation deficit previously observed in remote teams.

innovation 217

innovation creativity collaboration consulting 217

Entrepreneurs' Organization

JULY 22, 2019

He didn’t win the global competition that year, but Carlos went on to participate in GSEA in a variety of roles—first as a special guest in the 2013 finals, then as a jury member in the 2015 semi-finals in Thailand and, most recently, as a jury member in the 2017 semifinals in Germany.

entrepreneurs 207

entrepreneurs entrepreneurship creativity media 207

Entrepreneurs' Organization

JUNE 21, 2023

In 2015, Bob and Mike came to him seeking to create meaningful change within their company, with a single question on their minds: What could BIGGBY do that would change the world? By 2017, the majority of employees reported significant improvements in how they were treated, a stark contrast from their response in 2015.

culture 193

culture leadership support capital 193

Entrepreneurs' Organization

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

Although women make up 47% of the US workforce, in 2015, they held only 25% of computing jobs — in a time when tech is booming and has been for decades. A lack of strong female representation creates a vicious circle that maintains the status quo. An employment gap now means an employment gap later.

culture 253

culture leadership mentorship development 253

TechCrunch

OCTOBER 30, 2020

Founded in 2015, Freshly is a New York City-based startup that offers healthy meals delivered to your home in weekly orders, which can then be prepared in a few minutes in your microwave or oven. Nestlé USA just announced that it has acquired Freshly for $1.5

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startup accelerator capital innovation 138