Startup Grind

AUGUST 15, 2018

He has worked with several startups, invested in companies like Mayvenn, Gimlet Media, Blavity, Airspace Technologies, Codeverse, and many others Pitch your startup for a chance to meet with Cross Culture VC Q&A: What is your / your fund's mission? We started to invest out of our inaugural fund, Cross Culture Ventures I in April 2015.

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culture VC pitching investing 111

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 5, 2015

Anyway, 2015 marks a couple of big career anniversaries for me. You can''t rise up as fast taking a job at a VC firm in NYC the same way you could 10 years ago--and you can''t get that USV job as easily as you could. Who''s the VC that everyone *isn''t* trying to network with. I had something VC firms were interested in.

VC 316

VC startup ecosystem networking venture capital 316

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2015

We talk a lot about his schooling, his early jobs as a developer and then as a VC and we talk about his decision to spend winters in Los Angeles. Fred is generous with his time and advice and I hope has shaped a generation of VCs for the better. You can’t time VC investing markets. VC investing is hard work.

advice 327

advice board VC investing 327

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2015

As a VC (especially based in LA), I see hundreds of video apps. Imagine if your friends could all contribute the Burning Man 2015 album and create a group story. Mark Suster (@msuster) April 23, 2015. That was just a question of limited resources and wanting to get V1 right. So Why Did We Invest? L1I6RUWYJu.

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investment investing media collaboration 323

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2016

Our last thoughts on the VC funding markets heading into 2016 was published here and I followed up with a little more context on the resetting of the venture industry , some thoughts on how startups are valued and how to think about burn rates at startups. VC survey data 2016 from Mark Suster.

peer-to-peer 277

peer-to-peer VC advice ventures 277

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

However, while many startups exist in cities like Turin, Bologna, Naples and Rome, Milan is generally seen as a bigger ecosystem because of its mercantile culture and a significant share of VC funds. The good news: VC funding in Italy has grown. It has an estimated 67 VC funds, with 18 of them started since 2015.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 3, 2015

. — Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky) April 29, 2015. It spoke to me because it so resonates with my nearly daily advice to entrepreneurs and VCs alike. I went as far as to call it the best Tweet of 2015 so far because it encapsulated my advice so succinctly. He took two words where I take 1,000!

advice 332

advice peer-to-peer startup frameworks 332

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?” In 2015 in the US there were $77 billion written into startup tech companies.

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startup VC entrepreneurs investing 285

TechCrunch

JANUARY 18, 2022

Although many VCs seem to be new to quantum technologies, some investors foresaw this movement several years ago and are now making their first quantum exits. The company was founded in 2015, and it went public in 2021 through a SPAC at a $2 billion valuation. Take IonQ, a U.S.-based billion valuation.

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VC consulting technology enablement 141

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. Non VC Growth Rounds. In Q3/Q4 2015 the market changed noticeably for VC funds and the market started to realize this by Q1 2016. VC Infighting.

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venture capital capital ventures VC 271

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.

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SaaS VC board financing 236

TechCrunch

JANUARY 25, 2021

” Badamosi, who returned to Nigeria from the UK in 2015, worked as the general manager for Starta Africa, an online community for African tech entrepreneurs. 2019 saw the local VC firm invest in six companies. This time there was a representative outside Nigeria — Ghanaian fintech startup, Bitsika.

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VC accelerator venture capital startup accelerator 138

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

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.

financing 344

financing finance ventures real estate 344

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. 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 He said to me (only 9 years ago), “I hope you’re not just hiring her because she’s a woman.” (I

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ventures leadership mentorship venture capital 361

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 6, 2016

In 2008 I started VC blogging. In 2015 I opened up my Facebook page to the public. They thought it was like MySpace and why did I need a MySpace page? 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.

networking 230

networking advice VC financing 230

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2014

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). We have some announcements set for 2015. We plan to continue working with our good friends Jim & Peter on this.

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accelerator mentorship peer-to-peer VC 290

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2015

Tuvia Elbaum (@Tuviae) July 14, 2015. Mark Suster (@msuster) July 14, 2015. As I’ve said before, “ You’d Have to be a Really Big Baby to Complain About Being a VC.” I called in the Y0 Yo Life of an Entrepreneur but it really applies to me as a VC as well. I sit down to get things done. HSzvQK63th.

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VC entrepreneurs creativity advice 347

David Teten VC

MARCH 5, 2021

(co-written with Katherine Boe Heuck , a MBA candidate at MIT Sloan (class of 2022); past intern at Versatile VC ; and a current intern at Metaprop NYC.). We reviewed CB Insights’ global list of “40 of the Best VC Bets of all Time.” For funds with an overall return of 3-5x, which is what VC funds aim for, the overall return was 4.6x

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VC investing investment founder 82

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. That was a question I had been asked by LPs in 2015 when we began our Early Growth program. In our best-performing companies we often write follow-on checks totaling up to $10–15 million out of our early-stage fund.

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ventures startup peer-to-peer venture capital 408

TechCrunch

JUNE 8, 2022

The dynamics that play into this forecast, aside from the impact of COVID, include a youthful population (the youngest globally), rising smartphone adoption and internet penetration that has led to a burgeoning tech ecosystem backed by local and international VC dollars. Image Credits: Crunchbase/Endeavor.

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VC investing investment transportation 97

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

It’s a tricky subject, because VCs only exist to make money—not really to oversee the running of these companies as beneficial to the world, unless it gets so bad that it affects the economic outcome. Not only that, we have other portfolio companies to worry about.

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culture incumbents enablement sustainability 317

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 21, 2017

When Ample Hills first raised $4 million in 2015, people asked if it was a seed round. Investing in you isn't always their immediate priority, and they're used to dealing with people they know a lot better than the typical VC knows a founder when they pull the trigger. Here's what I think everyone involved learned in this process.

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pitching VC strategy investing 236

TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

billion, about four times more than they did in 2015. In Q1 2021, Southeast Asian startups raised $6 billion, according to DealStreetAsia, positioning 2021 as another record year for VC investment in the region. Regional VC investment grew 5.2 billion in 2015, as we can see in the table below. Image Credits: Jungle VC.

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VC venture capital investing investment 97

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2016

At the Upfront Summit in early February, we had a chance to have many off-the-record conversations with Limited Partners (LPs) who fund Venture Capital (VC) funds about their views of the market. A normal VC fund raises a new fund every three years if they are strong performers. That’s money that fuels our startup ecosystems.

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venture capital capital ventures VC 205

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 30, 2021

The time it takes for a dollar to appear in an LP’s pocket, for the LP to wire it to a VC fund, and for the VC fund to invest can be measured in minutes. VC fundraising will achieve a record. A venture dollar’s velocity has never been faster. Valuations are at decade highs.

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VC financing finance ventures 133

TechCrunch

MARCH 10, 2023

” Q1 2023 market map: SaaS cost optimization and management New wave of VC funds show it’s time to rethink how many LPs is ‘too much’ Image Credits: Getty Images Between 2015 and 2021, the average number of limited partners associated with a venture fund steadily increased.

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VC SaaS pitching ventures 91

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

Most experienced VCs won’t push you to give up founder control at this stage of the business nor should they. With small amounts of money invested (sub $3 million) the risks are reasonably low for most VCs and the consequences of bad decisions or decisions a VC has limited say in is tolerable.

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board media mentorship advice 325

David Teten VC

MARCH 5, 2021

(co-written with Katherine Boe Heuck , a MBA candidate at MIT Sloan (class of 2022); past intern at Versatile VC ; and a current intern at Metaprop NYC.). We reviewed CB Insights’ global list of “40 of the Best VC Bets of all Time.” Why are all of the VC home runs from white men, or Asian men in Asia, plus a few Asian men in the U.S.?

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VC investing investment founder 52

Tomasz Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2022

marked the upside case for most VC software and infrastructure investment memos. 2015 Return Multiple by Round. RM at $1.5b (2015). The silver lining: the median public software company in 2022 is three times as valuable as in 2015, which suggests valuations should settle higher than that era. From 2007 to 2016, $1.5b

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SaaS VC investing investment 115

TechCrunch

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

Perhaps it’s no surprise that he also became convinced early on of the promise of NFTs, persuading Venrock to lead the $15 million Series A round for a young startup, Dapper Labs , when its primary offering was CryptoKitties, limited-edition digital cats that can be bought and bred with cryptocurrency.

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VC media networking ventures 137

TechCrunch

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

from Seoul when she was a child and started a global accelerator in 2015. I figured out LPs have set a criteria, and I didn’t fit into that: I don’t come from an investment banking background and don’t look like a typical VC. Chang is an angel investor who moved to the U.S. She really cares.”.

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ventures VC accelerator culture 98

TechCrunch

JULY 25, 2021

It recently completed its fourth VC round that values it at a whopping $6 billion , triple the price it fetched a year earlier, and it has so far raised at least half a billion dollars. China doesn’t need any more good platforms,” Tang told his team in an internal email in 2015, “but it does need good products.” billion this year.

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incumbents networking entrepreneurs opportunity 129

David Teten VC

AUGUST 19, 2019

Does the traditional VC financing model make sense for all companies? VC Josh Kopelman makes the analogy of jet fuel vs. motorcycle fuel. VCs sell jet fuel which works well for jets; motorcycles are more common but need a different type of fuel. . Absolutely not. So what is Revenue Based Investing?

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founder investing investment VC 99

TechCrunch

AUGUST 15, 2023

Brett Calhoun Contributor Share on Twitter Brett Calhoun is the managing director and general partner at Redbud VC. Amid these turbulent times, the VC accelerator industry has emerged as a stalwart player. At the dawn of 2022, there were 2,900 active VC firms, marking a 225% increase since 2008. psychedelics or construction).

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accelerator peer-to-peer startup VC 96

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 1, 2015

In addition, VCs have been participating in the seed stage market as well, making 2013 a banner year for seed investment. And what does it mean for 2015? Round sizes have increased in most fundraising stages , likely because 2014 was a decade high year for VC fundraising. Startups raised 132% more in seed rounds than in 2012.

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investing investment VC financing 40